#and trapped him in that kind of role (not that it’s a lesser role. but the expectations would’ve been extremely limiting)

[puckpocketed]

Eric Stephens u are the ONLY sports journalist to ever exist !!!!

[call-me-strega]

Frostcup brainrot is still going strong so please consider this scene I'm imagining that isn't technically part of my last post but it's also not not in the same AU potentially.

Okay so I just have this really vivid idea for this scene sometime during/post Race to the Edge and Httyd 2 where Hiccup has just had a talk with his dad about his responsibilities and the role of a chief, heavy implications that Hiccup should start thinking about what kind of leader he is going to become.

His dad is telling him to start think about decisions to be made for the good of the tribe. To figure out what it means to be responsible for others. Encouraging him to figure who the people he wants to keep by his side are, both as a partner/spouse and advisors like Gobber or Spitelout. Stoick heavily implies he might want to scope out some of the dragon riders for those roles, suggests people like Fishlegs, Jack, and Astrid.

So Hiccup walks away from this conversation anxiously contemplating his future and decides to walk around town. He does his usual son-of-the-chief duties and stuff contemplating who he wants in what roles in the future. Fishlegs would be a good advisor and deputy to help run things. Astrid would make a strong general he could trust both on a battlefield and to protect Berk. Snotlout for all his contrarianism might make a good advisor simply because his constant challenging of Hiccup would make Hiccup stop and think. He'd be a good enforcer if working with Astrid at the very least. Tuffnut and Ruffnut, for all their insanity, are incredibly clever and good with traps. They would make valuable masters of defense. Plus what with their ardent belief in Loki, and to a lesser extent the other gods, the twins might benefit from a few spiritual teachings from Gothi.

And he walks through town contemplating these thoughts until he nearly gets bowled over by a rabid pack of Berkian children. He calls out and his gaze follows the direction the kids are running. What he sees takes his breath away.

It's Jack, being his amazing self. He expertly wrangles the kids and starts entertaining them with tricks and games and stories. He picks up one little girl and carries her on his shoulders. The kids all adore Jack and its clear to see he loves them as well.

And Hiccup stands there slack-jawed. He's simply astounded by the ease with which Jack handles the feral gremlins Berk calls children. Awed by how he seems to glow with mirth surrounded by kids and a giggling child in his arms. How he seems to radiate love and joy. And the only coherent thought Hiccup can seem to string together is that he definitely wants Jack to be a part of his future.

TLDR; Jack is amazing with kids and Hiccup definitely finds that attractive.

[locatebiome]

Hello hello! I'm especially curious on your headcanons of Herobrine as a romantic partner 👀 If you don't mind sharing!

MAKES OUT WITH YOU SLOPPY STYLE FOR SENDING THIS

sorry to keep you waiting anon, it took me a few days to answer because i had a LOT to say!! thank you so much for giving me the chance to ramble about this ahhhh i love him so much <333 everyone reading this you are Encouraged to tell me what you think, i LOVE seeing people's reactions to my guy!!

one MILLION bullet points under the cut because this got LONG. enjoy!!

I see Herobrine as bi/pan, demisexual, and some flavor of aromantic spectrum, though he doesn't know that vocabulary exists and doesn't care to find out. He definitely does experience feelings that could probably be classified as romantic attraction if he wanted to put a label to it (he does not). In fact, he tends to be put off by hard lines drawn between "close friendship" and "romantic relationship", and to a lesser extent, labels in general; he'll happily take you out for dinner and kiss you under the stars, but he can't call it "a date".

As previously mentioned in an ask game, Herobrine is incredibly slow to trust. The first several times someone looks out for him, or tries to include him in something, or is bummed out by his absence, he has no idea how to respond and usually freezes for a few seconds, then tries to joke about it to remove any potential for emotional depth, or just ignores it entirely. As time goes on and that person continues to reach out without leveraging their niceties against him as a bargaining chip, he begins to accept their kindness at face value and responds more genuinely.

He responds similarly to being given gifts. If it's something practical that he'd want more of (example: redstone components), he might fake gratitude at first to encourage more of the same, followed by suspicion when the gifts pass the threshold of "too" nice, and eventually real appreciation. Once you've seen his actual gratitude, the difference between genuine and fake thankfulness is striking; when faking it, he's smooth and articulate, approving but aloof. When actually thankful, he gets excited over the details of the gift for a minute, and only if you're lucky, will he remember to thank you for it afterward. (That's okay, seeing a genuine smile from him is usually thanks enough.)

As you may have gathered, Herobrine isn't big on words of affirmation. He has a reputation to maintain, after all. His affection is better expressed through keeping hostile mobs off your back, bringing you on adventures, giving thoughtful gifts, being a massive fucking annoyance, teasing, physical touch, and setting non-lethal traps.

"aw cute wait what was that last thing" ok in his defense, this one's not entirely his fault. First of all, one of the ways the universe itself shows love is by giving you things to do and explore, challenging you, rewarding you for getting through it, and due to his unique awareness of the universe as a whole, that "love language" bleeds into his mannerisms as well. Secondly, after so long interacting with humanity in the role of the boogeyman, Herobrine kind of... doesn't know anything else. And hey, him putting in the extra effort to make sure his traps can't inflict more than a few bruises or scrapes means he likes you!

The good news is, as long as you're close with him, hostile mobs will never bother you ever again. And if they do, he'll make a show out of intimidating said mobs and getting across the point "they're with me." which some viewers may find attractive. (This will end up teaching Casey some really bad habits later in We Are The Daylight LOL)

That's convenient, because one of his greatest joys in life is savoring the awe on someone's face when confronted with the beauty of the natural world and/or the complexity of his projects; which is easier to achieve without mobs being a distraction. He's always enjoyed exploring weird formations or experimenting with contraptions, but if he enjoys your presence, getting to do that and banter with you at the same time is even better.

One can only hope you feel the same, because you're not getting a choice in the matter. He'll just show up, interrupt whatever you're doing, and goad you into/physically drag you into coming with.

This leads nicely into my next point, which is that Herobrine is really fucking annoying. He'll appear without warning to make you jump, offer unprompted commentary and ominous "advice"(?), and says shit like "dude why'd you do that?" when you make an obviously unintentional mistake. guy who teleports behind you just to say "nothing personnel kid 😎". And as the two of you get closer, this begins to include insufferable play-flirting (until the plausible deniability is no longer plausible and it's clearly just. flirting.)

However, he also quietly looks out for you in his own ways. If you offhandedly mention wanting a specific thing, or if he notices you being inconvenienced by lacking something, he'll either make it himself or keep an eye out for it until he can find one and give it to you. If you get hurt, he'll carry on about how reckless and stupid humans are, and won't let you go anywhere until he's had the chance to look at it and cast a quick healing command. When exploring, you'll often come across small signs of his presence, ranging from strangely symmetrical nooks and crannies in a cave, to lone redstone torches, to flowers that are somehow growing underground. As well as... not so small signs of his presence (i.e. corridors lined with traps).

Herobrine likes to show you jaw-dropping caves and vistas, point out constellations until you're falling asleep under the night sky, explore ancient structures and biomes you've never seen before floating by your side, teach you dances he picked up from illager and piglin culture... If he had to pick just one "love language", ultimately it'd boil down to sharing the universe with you.

For all his teasing and unusual ideas of affection, when you're actually truly upset, he does want to help (much to his own chagrin). His methods can be abrasive, as his go-to strategy is to pester you until you tell him what's bothering you (he's very "do as I say, not as I do" in this regard, I fear). But if you make it clear that talking about it right now wouldn't help, he'll switch to much gentler tactics, and attempt to distract you or just be a quiet, calming presence for once. Surprisingly, he gives really good back rubs, which is his go-to strategy to calm someone down and cheer them up a little.

Especially post-banishment, Herobrine is possibly the most touch-starved individual alive. I don't think he could ever be the first to initiate physical contact in a relationship, but once you've gotten to the point where you can playfully punch his arm or roll your eyes and push him away when he's fucking with you, he's the touchiest mfer on the planet. Constantly leaning on you to be obnoxious, ruffling your hair to say hello or good-bye, grabbing your hand to lead you places, flexing his height by resting his chin on the top of your head (he's 6'0" btw) (if you're taller than him he'll simply float to make up the difference anyway) (says he's 5'10" to make other guys panic about their height). Pulling you closer to wrap his arms around you and bury his face in your shoulder during quiet moments in the morning or at night. Melting into the touch helplessly when you cup his jaw. When in bed together, he's either the big spoon or using your chest as a pillow.

He's especially fixated on heartbeats. When laying around or leaning on each other comfortably, he'll slide his hand up your arm and idly rest his fingertips on your pulse. When his hands are near your hands or wrists for any other reason, before moving away he usually checks your pulse without thinking about it. It's almost like he needs to keep reassuring himself you're still alive. His favorite pulse point is the carotid artery because its beat feels so strong, but grabbing someone's neck isn't really something you can do casually so it's saved for special occasions (emotionally-vulnerable cuddling, after waking up from a nightmare and accidentally waking you in the process, sexual encounters, etc.)

It doesn't come up a lot because he doesn't hang out in populated public spaces a lot, but he has absolutely NO shame around PDA. Herobrine is already used to being stared at wherever he goes anyway; so let 'em stare, fuck are they gonna do about it? Confront him? Yeah, right. The majority of the time he doesn't care either way, but sometimes, if someone's really annoying him, he'll get more physically affectionate just to fuck with them.

Similarly, he wouldn't get the chance very often, but if someone else is talking to you and making you uncomfortable? I think he would fucking relish the opportunity to be all threatening and intimidating until they back off. He likes feeling helpful! (He likes being protective.)

Over time, as he gets more and more comfortable with the relationship dynamic, Herobrine doesn't mind you or outside observers referring to the two of you as the romantic partner of the other. Honestly, he might even like it :] Deep down, he's fond of the idea of you being his human.

[vickyvicarious]

Oh yes, the feeling that you have to rely to the creeper who you loathe so much that you have come to hate even the rooms he resides in, that he's not the scariest thing in your life, that you have to run to his arms for safety. Horror! Dracula claiming him was the high point of the entry (than the almost-bite)

Honestly, yeah. The dynamics between Dracula and Jonathan are so scary, to the point that all the supernatural events are the cherry on top rather than the main course, as far as the horror of this section goes.

Dracula does so much manipulation here, holds so many different kinds of power over Jonathan, and multiple levels of each too. He's got physical power - both in the sense of the castle being a prison, and in the sense of his incredible strength. He's got social power - as a noble, and as a client/boss. He's got monetary power over Jonathan too, able to potentially make or ruin his career. He has so much control over Jonathan's ability to express himself - he's the only company available to him, he's forcing him to keep up a pretense of friendship, he's limiting and controlling his communication with others. Jonathan has no escape: he can't go out of the castle because he's locked in, he can't go many places inside the castle because he's locked out of them, and now he can't leave the rooms Dracula wants him in because otherwise the vampire ladies will get him, and within those rooms there is nowhere safe from Dracula himself. Jonathan has seemingly no action he can take: if he sneaks around behind Dracula's back, a greater threat awaits. If he acts openly, Dracula's own threat may become realized. If he doesn't act at all, he's doomed. If he acts at all, he's doomed. If he trusts Dracula, he's doomed. If he doesn't trust Dracula, he's doomed.

Of course, the supernatural elements are the mechanics by which Dracula increases the stakes, the threats underlying the charming veneer. Specifically, the introduction of the vampire women is what puts Jonathan in this seemingly inescapable box, and one with potential threats to something even greater than his life.

But Dracula's playing this Bluebeard role and could have done so with some more mundane threat as well, without changing too terribly much about his own actions. Where he's scariest (at least to me) is in these interactions with Jonathan, in these manipulative webs and traps he lays out in his words, in the way he pushes so many boundaries until they're forced to collapse or warp under the pressure. Jonathan's privacy keeps getting worn away. Dracula's speech and touch get more familiar and more possessive. He started out the first night blaming Jonathan for the things he did himself ('oh, why did you make your conversation so interesting we had to stay up all night?') and escalates until now he's making Jonathan be the one to act, and to suffer the consequences: whether in forcing him to lie to his loved ones, or in dangling the bait of sleeping outside his room and then only barely saving him when he does. And Jonathan has no real choice but to act. To fail to do so, in one way or another, would mean giving up all hope at escape or likely even survival. But because he has to act, he winds up feeling complicit. He ends up in situations where Dracula thanks him, forgives him, saves him. It keeps putting them on seemingly the same side, with Jonathan in a lesser/reliant role. And that's all a huge lie, at its core. But in a very real way, it's true too, to an extent. More and more, he's getting layers of resistance scraped away, and having to seek safety from Dracula now is so, so horrifying. In many ways all he truly has left is his will to live, his internal determination to resist - and now he's been given powerful incentive not to trust in that latter part too much. It's absolutely brutal.

He's walking a wire that just keeps getting thinner and thinner. All he can possibly do is try to keep this balancing act going, and hope for something to change that will give him more options down the line.

[natequarter]

season 18 is one of my favourite doctor who series, full stop. granted, its first two serials are kind of terrible, but even then they still contribute to the broader point of the series: it's about entropy. the series is obsessed with entropy. at the centre of every single story is a stagnant society broken into by entropy; in every single story some core part of the doctor's life is, effectively, broken. going one by one:

the leisure hive: the argolins are a species which have reached an apparent dead end and seem like they're about to die out due to being infertile, but the villain's machinations backfire on him and accidentally lead to new life; k9 blows up, and the doctor is aged into an old man and is effectively incapable for large chunks of the story

meglos: the tigellans are a stagnant society divided into an obsessively religious and an obsessively technological faction, depending on a mysterious power source they don't understand, and their society literally collapses when the villain steals that power source to attempt to destroy the planet. the villain is capable of changing form and is the last of its kind; the doctor and romana are trapped in a time loop by the villain which they ultimately only escape by exactly replicating then changing their actions, and the villain impersonates the doctor to get into tigella, leading to the doctor impersonating the villain to defeat it

full circle: alzarius is home to a stagnant society which believes itself to be superior to the other life forms around it, only to be forced into the starliner, according to legend. as it turns out, none of the wise old men know how to pilot the starliner and it turns out they evolved from the "lesser" humanoid spider lifeforms that they previously viewed as the villains. there's no grand antagonist, just incompetence and the passage of time; the time lords insist that romana go back home, and the doctor tries to take her back, but romana defies the odds and refuses to go. they fall through a cve and into e-space, which puts both of them out of their comfort zone. i mean it's literally called full circle

state of decay: again, it's literally called state of decay. the villains are fucking vampires, the ancient enemies of the time lords, and they are literal bloodsucking feudal lords ruling over a stagnant society; as in all her best moments, romana is the doctor's equal - he's her copilot

warriors' gate: a metaphorical minefield, the humans and the tharils are both shown at different points to be corrupt enslavers of each other, with the tharils in a vision of the past being a stagnant society founded on cruelty and the humans (the ones in power, anyway) in the present being a stagnant society founded on cruelty and obsessed with profit; k9 breaks down, the doctor is essentially irrelevant except to wander around some shattered ruins of the past, and romana must save the day, culminating in her leaving and the doctor returning to n-space with adric

the keeper of traken: traken is - let's all say it again - a stagnant society! where nothing changes! until the master is introduced as a very literal representation of entropy and death which slowly, first metaphorically then literally, upsets the balance of power in traken until the entire society is destabilised; the master steals the role of keeper of traken and actually immobilises and incapacitates the doctor within his tardis, but ultimately chooses to steal the body of nyssa's father, a kindly man who was supposed to be the next keeper

logopolis: also a metaphorical minefield. speedrun - the logopolitans are a stagnant society which literally crumbles to dust and is consumed by entropy when the master stops it functioning (it holds the universe together through. maths), taking a large chunk of the universe with it; the doctor is haunted by peter davison in really thick makeup and then regenerates

[papagabu]

AMY’S CHARACTER BIO: METAL BREAKERS AU

NAME: Amy Rose

AGE: 28

SPECIES: Hedgehog

HEIGHT: 3’4”

WEIGHT: 85 lbs

OCCUPATION:

Head of Humanitarian resources.

PHYSICAL STATUS:

Amy is physically fit; although her role rarely requires combat, she prefers to stay prepared. She makes routine visits to the training hall to keep her body in top condition for any unexpected encounters with bandits or Metal Empire patrols. 

MENTAL STATUS:

Amy is mentally stable, faring fat better than her found family and acting as the voice of reason when Tails and Knuckles falter. Though the wasteland and her role have made her more stern, her kindness, compassion, and drive to help others remain unchanged.

COMBAT EFFICIENCY:

Amy is a ruthless and highly skilled fighter, wielding her Metal Breaker Hammer with both strength and precision. The hammer is a custom made weapon designed by Tails, forged from a chaos energy infused alloy that makes it nearly indestructible. The face of the hammer is tuned to a specific energy frequency engineered to counter the unique properties of Metal Spawn armor, allowing it to tear through enemies that are otherwise impervious to conventional weapons. In addition to her natural combat prowess, Amy received training in the martial traditions of the Echidna warriors, under Knuckles’ guidance (though to a lesser extent than Tails). This has given her a solid foundation in disciplined combat techniques, complementing her already formidable strength.

RELATIONSHIPS:

Amy is the most social member of the inner circle, so she naturally has the most connections. As head of humanitarian resources, she maintains ties with leaders of settlements across the wasteland. Her closest relationships include Big, Rouge, Kit, Surge, and Cream. Her long standing bond with Tails and Knuckles has grown into a familial connection, with Tails as her troubled younger brother and Knuckles as her stoic, protective older brother.

BACKGROUND:

Amy was once a young girl searching for her place in the world, trying to understand where she belonged and who she was meant to be with. She turned to tarot cards for guidance, which led her to Little Planet in search of her destined knight in shining armor. There, she met Sonic the Hedgehog, who she believed was the one the cards had spoken of. She was instantly captivated by his bravery and skill as he fought through the robots that had overtaken the peaceful planetoid. Enthralled, she followed his journey, cheering him on and giving him a few surprise hugs along the way.

However, her adventure took a dark turn when she was suddenly kidnapped by Metal Sonic and taken to Robotnik’s factory. There, she was used as bait in a trap meant to lure Sonic into a final showdown with Metal Sonic, a battle Robotnik and Metal believed would be Sonic’s last. But Sonic triumphed, defeating Metal Sonic and rescuing Amy, who greeted her hero with another unexpected hug. He then stormed the factory, destroyed the Egg Spinner, and foiled Robotnik’s plan to seize control of Little Planet. As the factory collapsed, Sonic grabbed Amy and rushed her safely back to earth, vanishing before she had a chance to properly thank him.

Amy didn’t return home after that encounter. Still convinced Sonic was her destined love, she continued to follow him, eventually arriving at Tails’ workshop just as Sonic had come to meet the young fox. This marked her first meeting with Tails. While she could tell he found her infatuation with Sonic a bit silly, he treated her with the same kindness she showed him, and they quickly became friends.

Her time with Sonic and Tails here was brief however, as Tails' scanner suddenly detected a distant energy signal. As the two prepared for an unexpected new adventure, Amy offered to help and asked to join them aboard the Tornado. But Sonic gently persuaded her to stay behind.

Amy's breath caught in her throat. Her legs felt like they would give out from under her as she stumbled forward, eyes locked on Tails' limp form. Questions tumbled through her mind, but none of them reached her lips. She was too stunned, too afraid to even ask where Sonic was. Knuckles approached her, his gaze heavy with unspoken sorrow as he laid Tails gently on the ground. He explained that Tails and Sonic had been attacked during their mission, blindsided by something neither of them had anticipated.

Amy stayed at Tails' workshop while Sonic and Tails were off on their adventure, determined to take care of the place until they returned. She spent her days cleaning, organizing Tails' workbenches, and keeping everything in order, wanting to be there to greet Sonic with a smile the moment he came back. After three long days, the sound of the Tornado's engine signaled their return, and she rushed outside, eager to see them. But her excitement quickly turned to shock as a red echidna stepped out of the plane instead, carrying a bloodied and barely conscious Tails in his arms. His right arm was gone, hastily bandaged with vines and leaves, leaving Amy horrified and confused about what had happened, and why Sonic wasn't with them.

Knuckles explained that Tails and Sonic had been attacked, and he barely managed to catch Tails before he bled out or hit the ground. He wasn’t sure what had happened to Sonic, but they assumed he was either dead or captured. Amy's heart sank as she tried to process the news, unable to accept that Sonic was gone. He was always so strong, so unstoppable. But Knuckles’ solemn expression left no room for doubt. Whether dead or captured, Sonic wasn’t with them. Amy wanted to collapse, overcome with grief, but the sight of Tails, injured and barely holding on, kept her grounded leaving her no time to mourn the possible loss of her true love.

Despite her sorrow, Amy stood strong for Tails, who was now unable to fight for himself. She stayed by his side, helping him recover, and once he could stand again, she joined him and Knuckles on a harrowing journey through a world collapsing under the Metal Emperor’s iron grip. They fled from city to city, dodging destruction, aiding civilians, and watching society unravel with each passing day. 

Years passed, and Amy’s role shifted from a hopeful girl chasing destiny to a leader carrying the weight of countless lives. Alongside Tails and Knuckles, she helped found the Metal Breakers, a resistance force born from the ashes of what once was. The group became the last spark of rebellion in a darkening world. While Tails led as their chief strategist and scientific mind, with his lab assistant Chris at his side, Amy took charge of humanitarian resources, ensuring the survival and well being of every soul who dared to stand against the Metal Empire, as well as the innocent lives of those roughing it through life in the wastelands.

Through it all, Amy never forgot Sonic. Her love for him remained, buried beneath duty and resilience. But it was her found family, Tails, Knuckles, and the people who now depended on her, that gave her purpose, strength, and a reason to keep fighting.

[theangrycomet]

As a Preface, before I get into this, this isn't a critique or a complaint, just my observations as a casual viewer- who does NOT look into interviews or the read the comics beyond skimming the the transfomers wiki and whatever random ass comic panel is posted on this hellsite- with an admited bias towards certain characters so-

WITH THAT BEING SAID- Let's dive on in.

Watching the show, there are a few character in Prime that kind of feel like the writers wanted to originally use other characters for, but substituted the current cast with instead.

Other posts have explained it better but Wheeljack is the biggest example of this, with "lone samurai who works alone" vibes to him, I feel like the crew wanted originally to use Drift, but given he was a more obscure (comic exclusive) character at that point, it makes sense that they went with a more well known (if lesser used in present times) guy for that role.

BUT, I also can see this argument other three other characters.

More, specifically, a certain blue femme who shot Shockwave in the face and lost their red mech (possibly romantic) partner at the hands of STARSCREAM of all people.

Arcee and Cliffjumper could have easily been Chromia and Ironhide. (sorry boys RIP).

I mention these points specifically, because in the original episode where the female autobots debut, Ironhide and Chromia were the ones to corner Starscream, with her being the one to mock the seeker for his cowardice and before shooting him.

Chromia was also the one to stay behind when Moonracer (bless her dumbass) got trapped and to shoot Shockwave and break her teammate out of his trap.

Obviously these are two minor occurances but given Chromia's extremely limited appearances at that point, I think it's good enough.

Now, the third, is Smokescreen and Hot Rod. The young, reckless lovable dumbass to whose sort of set up to take the mantle of Prime after Optimus (and trying to deny/avoid it).

[whatisluniana]

You Called, I Answered

Summary: An undercover operation gone wrong, but my kidnappers forgot to remove my brooch.

Content: Sylus/Fem!Reader, Heavy petting, Hurt/Comfort, Romance, Fluff, Implied/Referenced Torture, Handcuffs, Rescue

ADO: Read Here

The assignment had come from top officials at UNICORN; an undercover sting operation involving a crime family that was potentially selling illegally altered proto-cores. Our wing of UNICORN had been asked to provide the agents, as the local branch in Hillport was well known to the family, and would be made too easily if involved. Stefan and I had been approved, for the foreign criminals we were to impersonate looked most like the pair of us, same look and hair. Xavier didn’t look happy about it, but nodded his permission to Stefan, as though passing on a torch that technically wasn’t his to pass.

Stefan was a good hunter, tall and lanky, with kind eyes. His Evol was water-based and he fought with a long bow staff. We spent a week training together until we could move as a unit, and I knew the best ways to resonate with his Evol. All along, we called each other by our code names, memorizing the background story that had been provided to us, as well as the layout of the building where we were to meet the crime syndicate to negotiate for the proto-cores. Along with us, we’d take four other highly trained hunters, our ‘bodyguards’ for the mission.

The plan was to attend the auction for the proto-cores, try to get an invite to a private viewing, and then do our best to arrest as many of the ring leaders as possible. Our partner branch would be on standby outside the building, waiting for our signal to enter the building and back us up. Xavier personally reviewed all the plans in the evenings and pensively gave his approval. Dr. Zayne gave me a clean bill of health. Rafayel was overseas and wished me a safe journey through fishy emojis.

I texted Sylus that I would be away for a week on a mission, and told him to keep the explosions in the N109 Zone to a minimum until I got back. The pudgy raven emoji he sent me looked nonplussed, then he reminded me to keep the raven brooch he gave me on my person at all times. It would lend some credibility to my story, so I readily agreed.

The flight to Hillport was just two hours long, and I spent my time reviewing the files and the layouts with Stefan at my side. We’d been lent a personal jet to support the ruse, and when we landed, we all settled easily into our appropriate roles, moving from the jet to a private limo that would take us to the auction. We drove downtown to the ritzy hotel in the seedy north end, did one last check on our coms, and headed inside. The lobby and the initial ballroom played out just as we had expected. We were welcomed politely, but warily, by the sellers with the lesser wares. We schmoozed and made our way around the room, inspecting the proto-cores on display, before being ushered into the auction itself. I remembered telling myself that Sylus would be interested in hearing that proto-core auctions in Hillport were remarkably similar to those in the N109 Zone.

A young man in a black tuxedo showed us seats in the center of the auction, with enough space for our ‘bodyguards’ to feel comfortable. We had our numbered paddles ready; we chatted with the criminals to either side. The lights went down for the auction to begin, and they didn’t come back on again.

The whole auction had been a setup, a trap. In our ears, the static of the signal jammer told us that no one was coming. Every person in that room was more than prepared for the six of us. The glowing eyes on our enemies, likely some sort of night vision, were really all we had to know where and what to hit. We fought like demons, trying to stay close together, to stick to the elaborate training we’d done, to work as a team.

It was obvious that our enemies’ first tactic was to separate Stefan and me. Every action taken against us was intended to move us further and further apart, removing any Resonance between us, until I was fighting with brute strength and bullets alone.

And when we’d cut down as many of the enemies as possible, the Wanderers began to arrive. Grotesque figures, their misshapen bodies reminded me of others I had seen, strange combinations of men and Wanderers. The experimental proto-cores were not the only experiments to view that night. I watched my teammates fall, one by one, but the Wanderers were not allowed to kill them. Instead, more men arrived, driving back the Wanderers and picking up my team. They were going to take us to a second location. The terror renewed the fight within me, and I tried desperately to get back to Stefan’s side, to push-pull on his powers so that I had more – and he had more – to give our enemies.

It was the shock of a Wanderer breaking my right arm that gave them enough of a window to knock me flat. I had no idea where Stefan, or any of the rest of my team was. Panicked, I reached for the one life line I had left. With my good hand, I slammed my fingers down on the ruby of the raven brooch on my chest. The last thing I saw was a deformed claw-hand moving fast at my face. I tried to deflect it with my good hand, but the blackness took me first.

*

When I woke the first time, I was being held down on a table while someone did a piss poor job of setting the break in my arm. At first, there weren’t enough of them to hold me down while I screamed and thrashed. Someone had forgotten that without someone to Resonate with, I had only myself, and I was used to fighting hard, and fighting dirty. Sure, I looked small, but looks can be deceiving. I almost made it off the table they were using as a makeshift hospital bed. One of them finally had enough of me, and punched me back down into the darkness.

*

The next time I awoke, I was lying in a twin-sized bed in what looked like a dingy hotel room. The walls were yellowing, the fake-wood panels on the desk in the corner were peeling off, and the drapes that potentially hid a window or sliding doors were stained as though something had seeped up them from the floor and no one had ever bothered pulling them down to wash them.

One of my captors stood near the door, his back to me, a phone to his ear, grunting acceptance to whatever was being told to him.

My broken arm was bound tightly to my chest, but something felt wrong about the binding. Not just that it was hastily done with minimal effort, but that there was something else there. My free hand was handcuffed to the headboard behind me. Every inch of me hurt, and breathing wasn’t easy, signaling that perhaps a few of my ribs had been broken. My shoes were long lost, my dress torn and stained, but to my amazement, the ruby brooch still glinted up at me from my chest.

I glanced at my captor; he was still engrossed in his phone call. The handcuffs were just a touch too short for me to reach the brooch. I glanced again, still not looking at me, I wiggled, trying to push my body up towards the headboard, inching my fingers to that ruby.

A backhand caught me unawares, along with a snarled ‘what do you think you’re doing?’, that flipped my head away from my chest. When my vision cleared again, my captor was snarling in my face, demanding to know what I knew. I knew that I didn’t know his face; he hadn’t been part of our briefings. I also knew, as the brooch remained on my chest throughout the interrogation, the continued beating, that he was a fool. They all were, if they’d seen the brooch and just left it. I said nothing, and eventually, he was pissed off enough to knock me out again.

*

It was a different man the next time I was startled awake with a glass of ice water thrown in my face. I spluttered and coughed while someone chuckled nastily. Shaking my wet hair from my face I glared up at the new face. This one, at least, I recognized. He was not very high in the organization, but enough that we’d been told who he was and to watch out for him. If he was in attendance, then the family we were to arrest were not far away.

The interrogation started again, but his tactics were worse than the first bully of a man. This one was very aware that I was a woman, and seemingly at his mercy. I let him touch, grab and prod me a bit, giving him a false sense of security about how weak and vulnerable I was. He took the bait, and I was able to knee him violently in the chin before kicking him in the chest hard enough to toss him off the bed and away from me. He coughed and snarled as he climbed to his feet. “You’ll pay for that,” He snarled, uninspiringly, and I got another backhand that rattled my brain and the blackness threatened to take me again.

In a rage now, he punched my broken arm, pushing me backwards on the bed with the force of it, eliciting a wail that brought a grin to his fat lips. He came near me again, holding my legs down this time, and began whispering all the terrible things he was going to do to me, until I begged him for death.

He was close enough to me while he whispered that when I pushed the ruby on the brooch on my chest, he heard the faint ‘click’ of it. The rage in his face fell into confusion, as he looked down at my brooch, at my restrained hand hovering just over it. Understanding seemed to dawn upon him as he gazed at its shape, and he looked up at me once more.

Somewhere outside the room, a crow screamed.

His skin went pale.

There was a brief, uncomfortable buzzing noise, and the room suddenly filled with the metallic scent of blood. Just as suddenly, a fist sent my captor flying across the room. Sylus was there, and I Reached, trying to push the Resonance between us, but nothing worked. My broken arm ached, and my wrist felt like it was burning.

Sylus didn’t need my help, anyway. My captor was dispatched in moments, and just as quickly, Sylus had pushed the broken desk against the door to stop any others from coming through. He then stormed to my side, his eyes bright crimson, assessing my condition in an instant before he yanked on the handcuff, breaking the links that held my wrist to the bed.

I was in his arms with no memory of him colleting me, cradled to his chest while he yanked back the stained drapes and pulled open the sliding glass door to the balcony. “Sylus, wait.” I managed to whisper, my free hand pushed at his chest. “My team, Stefan. We can’t leave them.”

Sylus stepped out onto the balcony, touching his chin to the top of my head. “It’s alright, kitten.” He rumbled. “Luke and Kieran will find them. And if they don’t, I will.”

He held me tight as he moved to the edge of the balcony. I didn’t fight the blackness when it came for me that time. I knew, at last, I was safe.

*

I woke from an interrogation dream, a torture dream, with a scream that was echoed by the mechanical crow perched on the bedside table. Mephisto took off in a flutter of feathers and screeches. I managed to push up onto my elbows, my broken arm pulsing with pain at the effort. I was not restrained, the wine-red silk sheets and dark masculine aesthetic of the room reminding me that Sylus found me, came for me. I was in his room, in the N109 Zone. I was safe, but why couldn’t I get control of my breath again?

Sylus was there, crooning softly in his deep voice, coaxing me back down onto my back, encouraging me to breath, “Just breath, Kitten.” He touched the side of my face with such softness, I found myself wondering what I must look like, that he would touch me so gently, so carefully. No doubt my face was a wash of bruises, wine-red like his sheets on my pale skin. He breathed with me, his scarlet eyes willing me to follow his lead, to calm my breaths. Finally, I was able to fill my lungs fully, to take the deep breaths he was coaching me to do, and I closed my eyes, listening to his deep voice, unable to find meaning in the words as my own slowing heartbeat filled my ears.

I was safe, but what of the others? My eyes whipped open again, and I grabbed for him with my good hand, taking a fist full of his grey shirt. “The others, Sylus, my team…” I whispered, my throat aching, but from dryness or screaming, I couldn’t be sure.

“Shhhh…” he stroked my face again. “All as safe as I could make them.” He told me. “They weren’t being kept in as nice an accommodation as you. But we found them all, and gave them back.” Again, he encouraged me to breathe with him, to release the panic, and let my heart slow down.

“Here.” He reached for something on the bedside table, and pressed an ice chip to my chapped and broken lips. I accepted the offering, closing my eyes at the soothing wet that coated my mouth and throat. He repeated the offering twice more, and I gladly accepted.

“Did you tell them…?” I whispered, thankful I was not croaking this time.

“That I don’t trust any of them to take care of you, after this debacle?” he smirked down at me. “Of course.”

I found my eyes fluttering closed once more. I was safe. Sylus was here. The others were rescued, and know that I’m safe. Well, safer with Sylus than I had been. To those waiting to hear from me, safe was a relative term. But Xavier would tell Zayne, and perhaps I’d be home in time to tell Rafayel before he burned down the UNICORN office looking for me. I registered that beside me, Sylus was humming a quiet melody, when sleep took me away again.

*

“Come back to me, kitten.” That deep dark voice teased me to the surface, long, gentle fingers stroking my cheek again. “We need to deal with that arm of yours.” I opened my eyes and squinted through the near darkness at his large form. “Resonate with me, dove, and it’ll be like it never happened.”

I met his dark gaze and croaked, “I can’t.”

I saw the frustration in his gaze and panicked, as though this seeming rejection would cause him to leave. I grasped at his shirt as he turned away. “No, Sylus.” To my surprise he turned back again with an ice chip in his hand. He fed it to me and took the hand clawing at his shirt, almost soothingly. “There’s something… stopping me.” I whispered around the ice chip. “I can’t Resonate. It hurts to try, my wrist…”

His dark gaze turned down to my broken arm, the poorly arranged cast. He traced his long fingers down it and easily found the odd bump at my wrist, as though they’d wrapped a bracelet up underneath.

“We’ll have to take the cast off to get the dampener off.” He was obviously not pleased with this turn of events, frowning darkly at my broken arm. Finally, he pulled his eyes up to mine, and brushed an errant curl away from my face. “I’m going to put you under for it. Rest.” He pushed off the bed and moved to a large med kit on the table nearby. I followed the indirect order and closed my eyes. I don’t even remember him returning to my side.

*

The pain pulled me back awake, screaming, fighting, but Sylus had a hold of my uninjured arm. Weak as I was, he was able to hold me down, even as he pulled the last of my captors' poorly constructed cast off and tossed it off the side of the bed. He was still crooning, whispering as he pulled me to his chest, asking me to breathe with him again, through the pain.

Once I’d calmed again, we both inspected the dampener on my wrist. It was half a set of handcuffs, the chain and second cuff removed. Unexpectedly, Sylus pressed his lips to my damp forehead, got off the bed, and went digging through the drawers in one of his long dressers. He returned with a small kit which opened to reveal an elaborate set of lock picks. He made short work of the cuff, popping it open and tossing it off the bed onto the floor with the cast.

Sylus took my chin and forced me to look up into his eyes, away from the bruised mess of my broken arm. Though I felt like my whole body was pulsing with the pain of my arm, dancing with the beat of my heart, I accepted the distraction. “Resonate with me, kitten, let’s see if we can find the path together.” His long fingers slid down my uninjured arm and pushed my hand open until he could tangle our fingers together.

My heartbeat drummed, the pain pulsed, and Sylus’s right eye began to glow. Just as I’d done with my teammates, Xavier, Zayne, and Rafayel, I Reached and pushed outwards with my heart. I focused on his gaze, and his hand clasping mine. When we had tried this previously, Sylus had pushed, had been the one Reaching, and I’d walled him off, away from me, and my Evol. This time, I Reached, and he Reached. Hot, like a desert wind, his Evol swirled along my skin, and into me. I felt my eyes close as the warmth of it, the bright, red, energy of his Evol met my own, and grew, pulsing with my heart beat. I heard Sylus inhale deeply, and hum in appreciation. “Yes, just like that.” I heard him whisper into my ear, nuzzling my throat. “It’s been too long…” 

And then the pain began to subside. The heat moved through me, across my skin, pulsing. I felt it pool in my broken arm and chest, felt the heat grow, heard Sylus’s breath grow labored as it pushed and knitted what had been broken back together. My bruised cheeks and eyes burned with it. I felt it begin to move away from my chest, arm and face, searching for more hurt and began to pull myself back, to extricate my Evol from his. “It’s alright Sylus.” I whispered, touching his cheek with the hand once bound to my chest. “I can take it from here.”

I opened my eyes and looked up at him. The glow of Sylus’s right eye pulsed, his lips spread in a thin smile. “Are you sure, Kitten?”

I squeezed his hand and pressed my nose up against his neck. “You came for me.” I whispered, touching my lips to his throat.

Sylus let out a dark chuckle, even as he shifted our positions so he was looming over me, our hands still clasped. His eye no longer glowed, but he still grinned. “You called, I answered.” He responded, and then captured my lips with his own, a deep, claiming kiss that echoed through me, tightening my core with pleasure. He clasped his left hand tightly to mine, his right holding him up and over me, and then the kiss began to trail away from my lips, down to my throat and then bare shoulder. His teeth nipped at the skin where my neck met my shoulder and I heard myself gasp, the surprise and the pleasure at the action echoing through me.

“Sylus.” I whispered as he spread kisses down my shoulder, his lithe fingers slowly starting to draw the hanging remnants of my dress away from my skin. “Sylus.” I pressed at him, trying to draw him back up to my face. I was tempted to ask a third time when his lips returned to mine for another breath-stealing kiss before he finally focused on my face. “Sylus, I want you.” He rewarded this pronouncement with another kiss. “But I want a shower more, please.” I found myself wrapping my now-healed arm around his neck, he was still holding my other hand in his own, pulling him close. “I don’t want to smell… like them… like him… when I’m with you.” I couldn’t stop the full-body shudder that wracked my body. Briefly, I watched the anger flare in his eyes, felt him press his body down on mine, as though he could banish the attack from my mind.

Moments, and one more deep kiss, later, he was carrying me into his bathroom and setting me gingerly on the long marble counter, framed by jack and jill sinks. He flipped on the shower and let the water warm while pulling off his grey shirt and slipping out of the black slacks he’d been wearing. He left his black briefs on for now, though there was no doubt that he had been enjoying himself immensely before my request. Returning to me, he put himself between my legs and continued the effort to peel the ruined black dress off my form. Somehow, he managed to make pulling the blood-soaked garment away from my still-tender skin its own form of foreplay, kissing each inch of skin he revealed, leaving my black bra and underwear until last.

He was kissing me thoroughly when he finally unclasped my bra and dumped it on the floor. Those long, talented fingers teased my ribcage before cupping my breasts, thumbs dancing briefly around the areolas, sending another shiver of pleasure through me. After a brief appreciative squeeze, Sylus slid his hands down my sides and cupped my ass before sliding me off his counter and pulling my underwear off to join my bra on the tile floor.

He cupped my ass again as he lifted me into the air and took me into the shower with him. Sylus let me revel in the perfectly hot water, lolling my head back to wet my hair while he pressed butterfly kisses to my collar bones. “Can you stand?” he purred in my ear, setting me down enough to explore the answer. At my nod, he leaned me back against the cool tile before removing his briefs, dropping them outside the shower and collecting a handful of bodywash. He returned to my side and began sliding those large talented hands over my body while he leaned down to capture my lips once more. Our height difference forced him down onto one knee, but it was quite obvious he didn’t mind as his kisses continued to trail my body while he washed the blood and sweat away.

When he was satisfied that he’d washed every inch of my body, he nudged me around to face the tile, squeezing a butt cheek in thanks at my pliancy. Standing, he took a little bit longer with my hair, scrubbing thoughtfully at my scalp with those talented fingers, his shampoo smelling of eucalyptus and wood. I enjoyed the pampering, closing my eyes, and tried to keep myself from tipping backwards into his broad chest. Once satisfied that my hair was clean, he pulled me back against his chest for a rinse before he leaned me back up against the tile. Sylus’s conditioner smelled crisp and spicy somehow as he quickly combed it through my hair before leaning me back under the spray for another rinse.

He picked me up again, an arm under my frame, taking us both out of the shower and finding a pair of towels. He perched me on the edge of the sink again and handed me my towel while he quickly dried himself off. When he returned to my side and attempted to help me towel-dry my hair, I felt my eyelids fighting to stay open. “Sylus.” I murmured quietly, wrapping my arms around his waist and pulling him close. “I’m not sure I’m going to be able to stay awake.”

I looked up, his expression was almost soft as he pulled me back into his arms and moved back to the bedroom. “No objections, kitten.” He purred in my ear as he tucked me under the luxurious sheets of his huge bed. “It took a lot to put you back together, I think I could use some sleep as well.” 

“Can you stay with me, for a little while?”

When that dark honey voice murmured, “Of course.” I smiled and allowed my eyes to close.

[north-noire]

What's your opinion on Lefty?

Ah, Lefty... I probably have a not-so-great take of Lefty (writing-wise) but I really don't like the way they were used narratively in canon. I don't hate Lefty in fanworks or AUs, in fact people who have them in their AUs generally write an actual good reason why Lefty is there and why Henry had to resort to using them (both for good or not-so-good reasons, it varies from AU to AU and how they write their Henry and Marionette/Charlie.), it's certainly better than the canon we have where it's super vague and conflicting at best. I love the way they go with Lefty's concepts, it's really cool to see how you can interpret Lefty like that!

I also love Lefty's design as well! They look so eerie in their own way, especially the sunken eyes.

Generally though, I don't see a good reason why Henry had to resort to using Lefty in canon other than of course, getting Charlie to him (then again I have my gripes with Henry in FFPS and how they inserted him in the franchise anyway - I swear I loved his speech there, but everything else... I have some issues with. Like I genuinely wished Michael had a speaking role in FFPS, or even had his own speech too + some idea of where Henry had been the whole time would've been nice to know because we're kind of left to interpret where he had been this whole time) - surely Henry was aware that his daughter is alive, but instead he forcibly traps her in this robot-machine thing, shocking her all around (whether that be to power the Puppet, or genuinely to shock her, we don't know, all we have are the blueprints for this and it's either a lesser evil Henry had to resort to, or Henry intentionally did it that way, either way, we don't know).

It conflicts with his speech where he clearly loved his daughter, but ends up trapping her like that anyway, like what's the purpose? Did they argue, did something between them that we don't know? Did Michael find nothing wrong with this?

Then again, this is Scott's writing we're talking about, when has that guy's writing ever not been bonkers or vague in the slightest? it's probably a blessing and a curse to have, because on one hand everyone is going crazy about the lack of answers, but on one hand, it's such an interesting playground to work with and has a lot of potential for creatives to do their take on FNAF with. (no wonder FNAF AUs are so common, really! it's so cool seeing the way people handle their version of the FNAF timeline and characters!)

TLDR; I don't hate Lefty, just mostly writing wise is what I have an issue with, just wished they made a lot more sense because we really barely know anything about Henry in the games (and I generally treat TSE as an alternate canon anyway) to really know if he built them out of desperation to find Charlie again, genuine sincerity to unite with her again, perhaps Charlie's had been far too gone and Lefty was there to stabilize her, or bad reasons as a whole (whatever those might be, we don't know. there's no concrete reason why he did it, to his own daughter no less.), so the concept ends up falling flat. We can only really interpret about it all day and it's kind of a bummer, really.

[kinnenvy]

In defense of season five Brian Kinney

(this has been in my drafts for months because i'm scared to post it sjkfhs)

We all feel a certain kind of way about season five, it's like... kind of unfortunate from beginning to end lmao. BUT STILL the one thing that I will always do is try to defend that babygirl, I will carry him out of the storm of criticism princess style and take him home on a white horse.

disclaimer: this is a confused stream of consciousness and I will get some things wrong because it's the season I've watched the least lol.

Why does Brian act the way he does? We know why he acts a certain way throughout the series and to me his behaviour in s5 is not that unwarranted or different from the other seasons.

1) At the end of season 4 he asks Justin to move in, he talks about wanting to spend more time with Gus, but does any of it happen? no.

Justin leaves and Brian is happy and proud of him, but honestly I would also see why that would make him feel a certain kind of way. He already thinks he doesn't deserve love and companionship and one of the few times he asks for it he doesn't get it. He prepares a trip to go see Justin, but at the last second he decides not to go, he gets cold feet because it sound like Justin is leaving him forever. Sort of, kind of, but it's enough. The same happens with Gus (imo). Like he's accepted that with time all his relationships will end and no one actually wants him to fight for them, because no one actually likes him enough to want to stick around. But do you know who will always stay by his side? Michael. Until...

2) Confession... I don't hate the assimilation plotline. It was handled horribly, but I still think it's pretty cool they dedicated so much time to it. They were doing this in the early 2000s and now most lgbtq+ media can't handle to seriously get anywhere close to it.

Brian and Michael's roles are on the opposite spectrum of the debate and Justin ping pongs between them way too pointedly, because (imo) the writers decided to use him as a plot device instead of a character. (Unironically to me Justin feels the most like Justin when he is being a dick to his mom about her boyfriend) (and even then I find myself questioning whether s4 Justin would do or say any of that)

ANYWAY Brian sees his best friend/brother travel where he can't follow him. Michael has a family, he is married, he has a house in the suburbs, new, more mature friends and Brian is looking at him from afar, wondering why he suddenly thinks the life they've shared is a meaningless, shameful thing of the past. Not directly, but in a way wondering why Michael can't just accept him the way he is anymore.

BTW Brian might have celebrated the wedding of his friends... but that doesn't mean he changed his mind on weddings as a whole. Actually his wildest marriage nightmares are proven right by the two married couples he knows. He probably looks at Mel and Lindsay destroying each other, stuck in a legal battle with Michael /and/ Ben, looks at the kids trapped in that mess and is glad that will never be him.

UNTIL IT IS. Justin, in his infinite wisdom, decides he wants all of that actually and he tries to "tame" (quoting Cowlip) Brian until he leaves him behind because the domestication isn't sticking and him alone is not worth as much as weddings and kids. There's supposed to be something MORE. Staying with Brian suddenly means settling for something lesser than what Michael has. This process starts way before the break up (talks of... puppies?) and it's there where (imo) Brian just breaks.

No Michael, no Justin, constant talk of marriage and kids and divorce and custody. No one fucking cares Brian has a reason to behave the way he does. It's normal to want different things in life, but no one in the cast has experienced what Brian has and no one tries to understand it and understand what he wants and why either.

Brian's entire existence in the series is being questioned: his worth, what he has to offer, what he can't/won't give as well as what he can/will give, what HE IS, everything amounts to literally nothing. he is being left by everyone, he's wrong and not enough. Meanwhile he hates being alone, he's needy and touch starved and sweet, he needs his special people around, but why would he ask them to stay, when they make it so clear that they think he is not worth anything? (he's left with literally only Lindsay who is so bad at keeping her mouth shut and just offering support and Ted who's mostly just thinking about his own dick 24/7 and is more of a distraction than anything else).

The only gateway to attention and affection he has left is sex except that isn't working as well anymore.

[2.2) (little aside about Justin) To me he is a bit like a moth flying into bright, shiny things. He's still stubborn and driven, but in season five his decisions feel shallow, like he's doing things out of boredom. At the start of the season he's coming back from hollywood, where he was happily living in kinney-like debauchery, and he's disappointed to be back to his old life. So (imo) he finds a new thing to obsess over: marriage. Then he gets to go to new york and weddings, kids and manors are suddenly a thing of the past. This is why to me, in season 5 he's just a big nothing of nothing, genetically modified to accompany the brian/michael assimilation plot line and then Brian's ending.]

3) Confession n 2 I don't hate Brandon and even though the competition is SO cringe, it's meant to be that way (i hope at least), to me the way it ends is what makes it clear. We get a glimpse of season one Brian, broken and lost, terrified, hanging onto the one thing that makes him feel wanted, safe and alive (sex). He wins, but the ending to the competition is not satisfying, Brian doesn't claim his prize (he doesn't want it). We get an unsettling, super close close up on Brian and Brandon instead, the lines are not good, but the visual storytelling carries that scene effortlessly. Past and present looking at each other, the future looming over them right out of frame where none of us can see it.

Aging is a main theme throughout the story and to me it feels very fitting to ham it up towards the ending. Justin spitefully telling him he looks good after sighing and moping around for entire episodes can't fix Brian's lifelong obsession with the loss of his youth. Brian is left to deal with it on his own when it's at its worst. He is old and lonely, Brandon and the competition is an escape, one last glimpse at what it's like to be the young, hot, reigning stud of Liberty Avenue, while being fully aware that his time is up.

In conclusion, Brian has not taken steps back imo, he is struggling to come to terms with the changes around him, while also feeling confident about his own convictions. Sometimes he is bitter and lonely and we get to see him say extreme things, but he's also more well adjusted than he was in season 1. He knows what he wants but he's still scared to admit it. Partly because (and the failure with the moving in thing could be a factor in this) he doesn't think he should ask for anything, partly because the people he loves are expecting him to change even more and against his will.

A the same time, he is able to question himself because he has grown and worked through some of the trauma that shaped him, also he has found a new kind of intense love with Justin, different from the codependency he has with Michael (and Lindsay) and the surface level friendship he has with everyone else, which is something that has made him realise so much about himself and what he wants and would like to be.

For the same reasons he is able to look at his empire crumbling and accept it, because during the show he found other reasons to fight and stay alive. When those same reasons are taken away from him, or he doesn't find the courage to go after them, he tries to comfort himself through sex, even if it's unsuccessful, but he's not closing into himself like he used to. He still thinks he'll get Michael back eventually and he's happy to let Justin go if it means he'll find what he is looking for, Brian doesn't want another relationship he doesn't care for it, the only reason Justin became his boyfriend is because he forced his way into his life and his heart ugh cringe lol. Obsessing over sex, age and fighting with his loved ones is not necessarily a sign of regression, just a momentary way to cope with the world pulling the rug from under his feet.

He went from attempting suicide to celebrating being cancer free. He wants the people who make him happy to be happy, even if it hurts him. He's not possessive and he's not particularly brave when it comes to relationships, but he's also growing constantly, willing and unwilling he changes and moves forward in his own way, sometime turning to look at the past but with no excuses, no apologies, no regr[GUNSHOT]

Then episode 10 comes and a lot more shit happens that i could write another 20 pages about but im done for now lmao ok bye

[dailycharacteroption]

Deity Drop 6: Daclau-Sar

We’re back with more deities, and we’re starting off with another lesser divinity in the form of our first nascent demon lord!

With extremely rare exceptions, demon lords do not emerge fully-formed from the Abyss. Usually, such paragons of evil arise over time, though the starting point may vary. Some demons spend millenia rising through the ranks of their kind, while some mortal souls were so wicked that they immediately ascended to nascent status immediately upon entering the abyss.

No matter where they start, however, nascent demon lords have become powerful enough to take on a unique form separate from the rank and file of demonkind. Such a form may be influenced by who they were in life, or the circumstances of their ascension or the forms of evil they favored. However, they are not quite as powerful as true demon lords, and not strong enough claim an abyssal realm of their own. Instead, they lurk in semi-private corners of individual layers of the abyss, including those ruled by true demon lords, whom they live in concealed fear of, hoping to grow in power enough to ascend before they decide that the newcomer is a threat to their power.

In any case, that brings us to today’s subject: Daclau-Sar, the Lord of Carrion!

Long ago, the demon lord Lamashtu tricked the god Curchanus into a trap and slew him, taking his dominion over beasts, an act which fueled her ascension into true, terrible godhood, leaving the slain deity’s carcass to rot.

From his defiled corpse, however, arose a new demon-lord-to-be in the form of Daclau-Sar, the patron of carrion, the scavengers that feed on it, and the defilement of corpses. However, unlike other demons of his status, he has no interest in subtlety or politics, and if he has any plans of ascending to become a demon lord in his own right, it is through the gradual process of continuing to indulge in his foul hungers and gather worshippers until he accumulates enough sinful power to do so.

While not spawned by Lamashtu, Daclau-Sar has an appearance befitting the Mother of Monster’s progeny, resembling a six-legged hyena with two heads and a pair of vulture’s wings on his back.

As mentioned above, Daclau-Sar has no realm of his own, and instead dwells in the Xorian Mountains, a region on the border of Lamashtu’s realm of Kurnugia, where he rules over the lesser monsters there and feasts upon their slain.

Like all of his power level, Daclau-Sar has few worshippers, but he does have notable followings among some remote tribes of the orcs in the Holds of Belkzen, who emulate their Lord of Carrion by picking battlefields of corpses for use as trophies, as materials for undead war-beasts, or as the main course in their rot-blighted feasts. It is likely they and other such worshippers believe they gain some power over death by utilizing mortal remains, as well as demonstrating their right to survive by consuming those who failed to.

As a nascent demon lord, Daclau-Sar doesn’t quite move in the circles to have a lot of relationships with other powers, not that he has much interest in other powers unless they get between him and a meal, or look like they’d be appetizing once bloated and rotting to perfection. It can be assumed, however, that he has a wary fearful respect for true demon lords and deities, especially Lamashtu, and does not care to know or learn about non-evil entities beyond their role at the dinner table.

High in the Xorian Mountains, the Lord of Carrion rules over a petty court of monsters and lesser demons on the outskirts of Lamashtu’s territory, though calling it a court gives it far too much credit. In truth, Daclau-Sar makes the rounds bullying the other denizens of his territory, giving them full knowledge that he will devour their corpses when they are dead, and that will be very soon if they do not obey. Only the knowledge that his target is a servant of the Mother of Monsters might give him pause, the emphasis being on “might”.

As a creature barely above a beast himself, it only makes sense that Daclau-Sar favors the Animal domain, as well as Destruction, and of course Chaos and Evil. Meanwhile, he favors the subdomains of Demon (by way of Chaos or Evil), Feathers, Fur, and Rage. All of which reflect his nature as a master of the corpse-devouring beasts and his viciousness.

Sadly, nascent demon lords have not been given the deity treatment in Second Edition, so we have nothing much to go on here.

He does, however, have an obedience, albeit granting only a few spells. In exchange for eating a pound of carrion each day, the worshipper becomes more resistant to disease, and can cast magic to devour the ebbing life of the dying, spread disease, and take on powerful beastial forms.

Daclau-Sar hasn’t been mentioned in Starfinder, so he might have been slain, ascended, or remained as he was. He might have an influence on any world or civilization where it is considered unclean or taboo to devour the dead.

In any case, that does it for today, but the week is just beginning, so look forward to more as the week progresses!

[cospinol]

time for the summer 2024 isekai log☆! the count of actual, by-the-books isekai this season was surprisingly low, on about even footing with the number of single-wold rpg sludge settings; it's purely an academic distinction, but is nature healing...? both populations' crops were pretty decent this season either way, though, so maybe there's something in the water

far and away the best of the bunch is of course isekai shikkaku. this show has essentially the perfect premise, because probably the most interesting aspect of the genre as a whole - and always, by design, completely unaddressed - is the way it so often functions as a suicide fantasy. miserable about your everyday life? bullied at school or beaten down by your shitty job? Don’t worry, the perfect solution is always waiting for you, just a half-step away - all you have to do is die! it’s quick, painless, and also obviously always accidental (whether truck or random heart failure) because you can’t just admit that the power and joy of your escapist fantasy make the death of the ‘real life’ proportionally appropriate, desirable, and necessary; most shows move past their premises as quickly as possible to escape the implication but that doesn’t make it any less present.

so isekai shikkaku’s dazai (who is coincidentally hit by a truck moments before going through with suicide, establishing a Narrative for all the other characters who are coincidentally hit by the same truck while at the lowest points in their lives) is the perfect lead for a show about drawing portraits of the circumstances that lead people to seek that kind of escape, hearing them out, and sending them home. it’s an incredible anti-fantasy, and I could easily see myself outright hating it in a slightly lesser work, but this show is sympathetic and clever enough in its character depictions that the payoffs of characters being returned to their everyday regular lives for a second chance always feels satisfying & well earned.

it’s still not the perfect show by any means; it takes several episodes before it actually gets to the point, and not all of its standalone stories work (tama’s focus arc is unfortunately weak, for example), and although most of its comedy/antics work, it has an equal amount of gags about vestigial genre trappings that aren’t any funnier than they would be played straight (don’t show me those goddamn dialogue boxes). Still, this series has way more meat on its bones than any of its peers and is among the best of the season, even outside of the genre!

of course the other show I kind of liked is its polar opposite iseyuru, new reigning sovereign of No Thoughts Head Empty. once you’ve read the sentence ‘average op isekai protagonist adopts two equally op kids and takes them on low-stakes adventures’ (which is also the series’s title, incidentally) you can easily picture every single thing that happens in this show’s entire run.

the only thing that’s unusual to any degree about this show, given how overwhelmingly by-the-book it is in every other respect, is the absence of 50% of the usual hax-and-harem staples granted to mc-kun. totally excising any ecchi inclinations is not only reasonable but imo necessary to the success of a show with this specific premise, of course, but the absence of any romance on any level was a little surprising to me and, in the void left behind, left me feeling like this might actually be a sleeper Gay Isekai. beyond just being love-interest-less, it’s almost entirely homosocial; all but one of the adult characters takumi spends any amount of time with are men, as are the majority of the supporting roles, not to mention the divine co-parent who saddled him with the kids in the first place. Like…

this is where the main heroine goes in the op, right? also, there is a subplot with an explicitly gay character who wants to kill takumi for supposedly trying to take his man, and the whole thing is just brushed off as kind of a no-harm-no-foul situation. much to consider

i initially assumed that konofuka would end up in a much higher position on this list since it was one of my most anticipated shows of the season and the energy its first few episodes generate is honestly a rare treat. the atmosphere is incredibly rich for a simple trapped-in-vr-mmo story (with an intentionally simple storybook aesthetic), and the tension is electric; the power dynamics/interplay between player groups operating under limited information & the carefully-placed moments of horror/violence in its semi-cutesy setting all work together to raise its stakes in a way that feels natural and immediately immersive.

unfortunately, at the show's approximate halfway point, that just...... stops. it's not shocking for first-arc villains to be dispatched at the end of the first arc, but once our main party foils the enemy debugger team, there's simply nothing left. it has places left that it wants to go, but is content to meander there with no sense of urgency at all. i'd be less bothered by this if the first group of opponents our main party was facing felt like less of an urgent threat, but what sold me on this show was the real sense of danger that suffuses the first arc, and the pivot to kind of half-hearted stumbling-into-danger-that's-not-danger that ensues just isn't compelling in the least in comparison.

it doesn't help that none of the characters have any skin in the game after amano's gotten his (kind of...) revenge; it's a real killer combo of lack of character development, plot progression, or really any sense of purpose at all. there's a little bit of growth for nikola (and haga, by association)... and then a glimmer of akira's nascent maybe-my-team-is-evil arc, though curiously that one doesn't seem to be pointing in the direction of her PKing tendencies (i guess her murdering that man in cold blood was just fine) and instead is just about her getting teleported into a dungeon by alba in a random accident, and i have major issues with the premise of that entire arc and its main villain's villainous activities being a partial retaliation (and also an incidental straight up accident) against tesla, who initiated aggression and is actively trying to harm him. her (& haga's) rigid dedication to enforcing the game's rules to the detriment of others is an interesting setup, but with so little else going on in the back half of the show it can veer into slightly repulsive (i don't really know how else to describe the yamanaka situation and its conclusion), which would be great but i also don't think it's intended at all. so... meh (regretfully)

annnnnddddd at the bottom of the barrel, in every sense of the word, is failure frame, of course, lol. i can't even muster any real contempt for this show the way i can for a shield hero or even an arifureta; it's mostly just a little pathetic. you can tell that it's really aiming for the grimiest depths of those shows at every turn, but while it is almost always at least a little unpleasant, it's also incompetent enough that it's almost endearing; there's just something about how badly it wants the viewer to believe that mc-kun spamming the same three status effect spells and defeating the strongest man in the world before the show is even half over that makes me want to... just pat it on the head and send it on its way, i guess. there are so many little things that add up, like the ugly cg models of the two leads that the designers were so proud of that the entire op and ed sequences are dedicated to showing them off, or the fact that the protagonist has to tell us and his party multiple times not just that they are his found family, but which of his family members back home they individually remind him of. anyways, i'm not actually going easy on it, this show's shockingly badly made and never actually fun to watch, but it's at least not quite as repellent as its peers in the subgenre. also to be honest it gets 1 extra point because misaki watada voices a lead <3

andddd a brief lightning-round for the ‘all the required tropes except the isekai part’ light novel sludge:

mobkara is bad and looks bad but, in the season’s most shocking heel-turn, paid off the previously near-despicable secret-keeping drama between the two leads with a very charming moment of real character growth and mutual understanding. also, the real point of interest is whatever happened in this series’s production that resulted in the character voiced by kanahana regularly singing songs provided by nana mizuki, it’s so funny and jarring every single time

nazeboku looks bad and is bad, and somebody involved in its production should at some point have taken action re: the fact that its character designs/art style are complicated beyond its means to animate, & as such the sheer effort of trying (and failing) to keep them even close to on-model prevents the characters from ever emoting correctly. just nothing but stone-faced staring in all the most emotional scenes lol

and that's the state of the season, more or less! well, i guess i forgot i parry everything which is also genre slop but very pleasant about it. also i feel like i'm slowly dropping my pretence of caring about anything except seiyuu content here so it should be clear i wasn't paying attention to anything in that show except for toshihiko seki playing a smug blonde character. that's what watching anime is about, thanks for playing

[srsly-sirius]

The smell of leather and cigarettes - Rain falling onto windows - Long rides on a motorbike - A clear stary night - The sound of forced laughter hiding a broken spirits - Tattoos scattered across his body

We've all got light and dark inside us. What matters is the side we choose to act on. That's who we really are.

Sirius Black, born into the prestigious pureblood Black family on November 1, 1959, was burdened with privilege from the moment he drew breath. As the eldest son and heir to a family fortune, Sirius was subjected to unrelenting scrutiny. His upbringing was a carefully choreographed performance, each step dictated by his parents' rigid definition of respectability. Denied the freedom of childhood, he was moulded into the perfect heir, a role that suffocated his spirit. The weight of his family's expectations, far greater than those placed on his younger brother, felt like an invisible chain. He yearned for their approval, for a genuine sense of pride from his parents, but their harshness only pushed him further away.

Despite his constant efforts to conform, to remain the quiet, well-behaved child they craved, a flicker of rebellion burned within him. Though he never dared to truly misbehave, for fear of his mother's fury, his silences spoke volumes. His occasional snarky remarks were a testament to the suffocating pressure he endured, a subtle defiance that hinted at the rebellious soul trapped within the carefully crafted façade of a model heir. The weight of expectations, the constant pressure to live up to his family's rigid standards, began to chip away at Sirius's spirit. He felt adrift in a crowd of his own kind, a gnawing emptiness replacing the camaraderie he once felt. His parents' disapproval, their ever-present disdain, fuelled his growing sense of inadequacy. He envied his brother Regulus, a shining example of everything their family valued. Sirius, despite his wealth and social standing, felt utterly lost.

He sought solace in solitude, retreating to the back garden, hidden amongst the tall hedges. Under the starry night sky, he found a brief respite from the suffocating expectations of his family. He yearned for something more, something beyond the rigid confines of pureblood society, yet he dared not voice his doubts.

The whispers of prejudice and superiority, once accepted as truth, now echoed with a hollow ring in his ears. He began to question the foundations of his family's beliefs, the inherent right they claimed to power and privilege. The books he devoured, penned by those deemed 'lesser' by his family, challenged his preconceived notions. He saw intelligence and talent flourishing in those ostracized by his own kind, and a growing dissonance within him resonated with the silent cry for freedom. He was a prisoner of his own lineage, yearning for a world where he could be true to himself, where his worth was measured by something more than the purity of his blood.

The arrival of his Hogwarts letter was a beacon of freedom, a golden ticket out of his suffocating life. For the first time, he had a semblance of control. Away from home, he could finally escape the constant scrutiny and belittling. His parents' disapproval, however, followed him even to Hogwarts, manifesting in a scathing Howler after he was sorted into a house that shamed them. Despite this, he found solace in the school's vibrant community. He made friends outside his pure-blood circle, discovering that shared interests transcended lineage. This newfound companionship, a luxury denied by his family, filled him with a joy he had never known.

His years at Hogwarts were a haven, a period of unprecedented liberation. But the summer before his sixth year brought a terrifying ultimatum. His parents, weary of his defiance, demanded he join the Death Eaters, aligning himself with Voldemort and fulfilling their warped sense of pride. This prospect filled him with a chilling dread he had never experienced. He couldn't bear the thought of betraying his own morals and succumbing to their twisted ambitions. Without a second thought, he fled, embarking on a solitary escape, leaving behind a life that had become unbearable.

Torn between loyalty and conscience, he was forced to abandon his family, especially his brother. He couldn't conform to their expectations, couldn't walk the path they chose. The love he held for them was not enough to justify the path they'd taken. The war was morally reprehensible, and he refused to stand beside those who harmed others for their very being. Leaving, even though it shattered him, was the only option.

He never revealed the true reason for his flight, though his friends, piecing together his hints about his family, had their own suspicions. He didn't deny anything, but the betrayal was too profound to share. He couldn't bring himself to expose his family's allegiance to the Dark Lord, the very act that had spurred his escape. Despite his resentment, his family pride remained strong enough to prevent him from revealing their secret, which could lead to their imprisonment in Azkaban. He loved them too deeply to witness their suffering.

[libertyreads]

Book Review #130 of 2023--

His for the Holidays by Samantha Chase. Rating: 3 stars.

Read from November 10th to 11th.

Did I really just finish an epic Fantasy by John Gwynne, rate it 3.25 stars, immediately read a Christmas Romance and rate it 3 stars? Yes, I did. What is wrong with me? Wish I knew. I normally don't get a ton out of holiday Romance novels, but they're easy to read and light and usually give off some slightly spicer Hallmark vibes. And usually I eat up Fantasy and Sci-Fi novels and just beg for more. Reading these books in the same week really just makes me question a lot about my reading preferences. I think it just comes to John Gwynne isn't for me and I found a decent Christmas Romance to read shortly after. In this novel, we follow two people who live in the same building and, coming home from their different family Thanksgivings, wind up trapped in an elevator together for hours. They discuss everything about themselves--including her work/life balance issues and his family constantly trying to play matchmaker for him. While stuck there, they devise a plan: he takes a fake girlfriend to his family's week of Christmas festivities. He suggests that she play the fake girlfriend role and after some arguing gets her to agree. But what happens when the line between fiction and reality is blurred from the start?

This was a different take on Fake Dating than I usually enjoy so I did struggle with it a bit. Here they've both already kissed before the fake dating starts and they've both admitted to being attracted to one another. But because her work is taking her away from the city in the new year she doesn't want to actually start a relationship. The agreement? He comes to the holiday party for her work and she goes to his week of family chaos in the mountains. As they grow closer and closer, the timer is ticking in the background. I usually love the Fake Dating where they're both playing along until they realize that it's very real for them. Mutual pining? It's the love of my reading life. We get it here to a lesser degree, but I think the character work kind of makes up for it. I found the characters to be well rounded and I just liked them as people. I found it pretty interesting how this novel took a lot of stereotypically male traits and gave them to the female lead. I also just loved how emotionally open the male lead was. Especially towards the end when shit got really real for them.

Overall, it was a good way to spend some of my limited reading time now that I have a commute and work longer hours. I think that's going to be a big deal for my reading life in 2024: choosing, or attempting to choose, books that don't make me regret reading it over another book when my time is so limited. Also, this was a fun read and pretty Christmas heavy during some portions of the novel.

[forumkedis]

I love Fred so much. I love Lettie and Fred so much. I love that they genuinely like each other and at least more or less actually see each other and they would have honestly been such an outstanding match but the elders said NO for entirely arbitrary reasons and because of that they kind of? sort of? Actually get to be friends and kin in a way that Aldish culture would have normally said fuck right off with. Their marriage would have been one of deep, easy friendship and familiarity and support, and I think Lettie would have ended up regarded by Fred as his equal in a way you don't even see in Anne and Artur. At least, once his father goes, anyway. But Lettie also couldn't ever live a single day in a house with Frederick Sr, and the story demanded another match for her anyway - it would have been so simple, so easy for her to end up with Fred! - so that could never happen. And I didn't even intend it! Frederick and Frederick (and, to a much lesser but also greater extent.... uhh, Frederick) were entirely intended to be antagonists. Fred was supposed to be the cautionary example of Orafine men! But Fred is an honest fellow, whose father taught him to greatly value talent-quality, and Lettie is absolutely a medical prodigy (though, luckily for me, she doesn't have the resources to really flex that). Besides that, Lettie does actually come from exceptional stock, and while she isn't some extraordinarily outstanding beauty, she also certainly isn't homely. Her breeding is very good to someone whose eye would inherently pick up on that, and she's a mix of the right (remember: small community Alderode) degree of relationship (second cousins on one side) and genetic diversity (no particular relationships among their parents otherwise, and Lettie's mother was greatly valued because one of her parents was an import). Fred himself isn't that smart in an academic sense, but Sr. is, and I think that's one of those things he kind of beats his son up about. So, like, of course Fred is going to actually see that Lettie is good at what she is doing. Fred is going to see her as having all those traits his father sees him failing to have, and he's had all the things drilled into him that she'd be a good match in terms of lineage, and he can see that she's a quite fine Orafine girl. Besides, Fred grew up owing his life to Dr. Terne, and probably regularly needing his tending, so his view of Riven is really different from Sr's, who mostly focused on the not remarrying and letting his daughter functionally apprentice to pick up the slack while he fell to drink and depression and then sending her to college about it.

Anyway, I love Fred so much, and I love that he ended up just as trapped by the narrative and the culture as Lettie. Fred would have been the perfect second son, but he's become stuck as the heir. I love how he was meant to be a symbol of why she couldn't stay in Orafine, and ended up fulfilling that role in almost the terminal opposite way intended. I love that on the surface he's everything his father could have ever wanted, but his father is perennially dissatisfied with what's inside that six-or-so-feet of sun-tanned muscle anyway; while Lettie has every trait Orafine could have ever asked for in the next doctor, except the shell it's shoved into is all kinds of wrong.

[ao3cassandraic]

This is a fantastic meta, and it got me thinking a bit about what Heaven's analogue to Hell's/Satan's insistence on proskynesis might be.

I do think there is one. It's definitely not proskynesis. I might call it "supplication before a tribunal" staging. "Prisoner in the dock" would also work!

Look how many times, both seasons, Aziraphale gets hauled up to Heaven and ends up standing in front of two to four archangels. Look at the camera shots, too -- one trick they often use is having Aziraphale approach from a distance so that he can look small compared to them (they aren't shot from a distance!), and another is the too-close-ups of his darling angel face, which tend to make us feel uncomfortable because we are too much in his space -- and since the camera there is standing in for the archangels he's talking to, they're too damn close too.

(Both these tricks are also done to Muriel, when they report to Uriel and Michael about the matchbox. Saraqael gets the distance-shot treatment too, and I do think that an indicator of lesser rank relative to Michael and Uriel.)

We know Aziraphale's gone fully feral when he rejects his designated-by-Heaven role as tribunal supplicant/dock prisoner, using the Realtime Big Globe to escape. Gabe and Beez try to tribunal it up at the airfield, too, but Aziraphale isn't having any; he is never forced to approach them and they're never shot in any way that shows them dominating him. (Nobody else buys it either. In fact, Gabe has to abandon his height to try to talk to Adam! Watch him bending at the waist!) Crowziraphale's execution in s1e6 is absolutely another tribunal/dock staging as well. He turns it back on them by damn near taking them all out singlehandedly.

In this light, curiously, the way Gabe and Sandalphon trap Aziraphale in the bookshop in s1 is a bit of a form break. Needs must when the archangels aren't fully in control of the territory, I suppose. (I think a point may also be being made about how incompetent Gabe particularly is on Earth -- he can't even figure out his and Sandalphon's proper blocking!) In s2, though, the tribunal stagings are back in full force in the Job denouement (and, now I think about it, in Aziraphale's little research expedition up to Heaven), Heaven's Zoom-meeting setup that we see a couple of times, and the s2e6 denouement. In the lattermost, once again Aziraphale refuses his designated role -- in fact, he doesn't just escape his accusers, he fully takes control of them! And good for him!

Which leads us to the two solo characters who get to be tribunals all on their own: the Metatron and the Quartermaster. (Possibly not coincidence that they're both "the"s?) In both cases, their heads are allowed to take up the full frame, and the Metatron even gets to station his Big Giant Head well "above" our poor desperate angel in s1.

The Metatron sure is the kind of arrogant asshole who thinks he's judge jury and executioner. (Even Gabriel isn't that high on his own supply.) Giving him the same visual weight as a whole passel of archangels sets him up well as an (possibly "the") s3 Big Bad, I think.

(I confess that I have not bought in to @vidavalor's the-Metatron-is-Satan theory. What bugs me about it is that it lets Heaven slip off the hook for its general awfulness -- it's a major Heaven/Hell symmetry break, and one that I think breaks GO's Cold War motif and fascism-is-bad-including-from-the-"good-guys" aesop. That said, though, nothing I've said here positively precludes it... and a setup where the Metatron is not Satan but is actively backchanneling with him would absolutely work for me.)

What do you think is happening in the scene when Crowley falls to the ground in pain in Tadfield?! I find your thoughts about Satan and Crowley really interesting and sorry if you've already mentioned it but I think I've gobbled up all your metas on the subject and didn't see it. Thank you 🤗

Hi there! 💕 Thanks for reading & asking. I have an assortment of Christmas cookies to share. *gets the plates* Sugar feels extra necessary for Satan-related Crowley meta...

Let's talk about that 1.06 scene you mentioned where Crowley is dragged to the ground by Satan in Tadfield, what it has to do with a motif throughout both seasons around a thing known as proskynesis, and how all of that is relevant to The Final 15 in S2.

TW: rape (mentions of the non-consensual possession-as-rape allegory).

Note: Themes of bodily autonomy and its relationship to freedom overlap between Good Omens and Terry Pratchett's Discworld and that's the main reason why some of us are still here, not giving up on this rare, A+++ survivor story, despite also wanting to hurl a certain, other person once involved with it into an active volcano. Considering the topic, I felt the need to just mention that at the start.

Sooo... let's talk about what the scene in your ask has to do with a bunch of other ones, including that scene in The Final 15...

Good Omens has a few scenes that are dealing with a thing known as proskynesis. If you're unfamiliar with this, it's a word describing rituals of reverence and worship in royal courts, as formed originally in various parts of the ancient world, like Persia, Greece, and Rome, as well as rituals involving religious worship across many different religions.

Aspects of proskynesis exist into the present in different ways in different cultures. For societies that are monarchies, proskynesis is at the root of rituals regarding how subjects in those societies address royalty. Everything from kissing the ring of high-ranking clergy in some churches to doing the same with some mafia leaders has historical ties to this. Things like bowing and curtsying customs in Victorian England can also be rooted back to proskynesis.

There are also elements of it in everyday manners and customs in societies that you wouldn't think would have any connection in the modern world to things like this. In many democracies, for instance, as in many other countries of the world, the custom of getting down on one knee to propose marriage is actually rooted in proskynesis, even if the partnership is (hopefully) more equal in today's societies.

The Japanese, who have an intricate system of bowing as part of the social expectations of their society, are a great example of how proskynesis elements have evolved to not necessarily be related to royalty or religious worship but also form the roots of manners between people throughout all classes of a society.

The rules of proskynesis in a society or a religious group varied in details a bit between cultures but has always had the same, general, wide gap between different types of actions.

As a general rule, there's a polite head bob of a bow on one end of the spectrum of proskynesis, with different bows then getting progressively lower and more intense, until we're closer to the other, more extreme end of the spectrum. That end involves kneeling at the feet of the king or in worship of a deity. The absolute, opposite end of that spectrum from that polite, head nod/bob of a bow is fully prostrating, which is lying fully on the ground, and what of this is tied to the scene in your ask, as we'll look at here.

The sketch below is a good, simple visual of what I mean:

[User: Arseni on Wikipedia]

What's interesting to note here is that when you look at the above sketch and see different movements in it that are associated with different religions, these things came to those religions by first being associated with the royal court of ancient Persia and then being adopted, in part, into Greece and Rome. What physical worshipping in a religious way looks like to this day was adopted into different religions from how humans were showing deference to other humans as royalty.

One, big debate in Christianity is actually what kind of proskynesis was given to Jesus. The word is found in The New Testament but Jesus is the perfect example of the blurred lines here between venerating a human being and treating one like a god.

There are different levels of proskynesis for religious figures, with saints and the like being ok to venerate but proskynesis involving full worship supposed to remain only for God. What kind of treatment Jesus received or should have received and what he thought about it is a matter of debate. Is he a carpenter or is he a king of kings, right? Is he human or is he supernatural... or is he both?

Crowley and Aziraphale struggle with this, too, but what they wind up doing is not technically proskynesis but it's arguably a lot better. They bear witness to Jesus' suffering and murder. They show him empathy and respect. The scene we see shows them talking about him a bit, as two people might do at any wake or funeral or the like for ages to come.

When it came to royalty, what kind of proskynesis you would perform would be dependent in different courts on your rank and your relationship to the king. You might be expected to grovel with some really low bows if you were of low rank or to have a more modest bow or to kiss the king, if you were of higher rank. The lower ranked people were expected to go lower in their bows and do more work with all of this, in order for even the chance of being recognized by the king or another high-ranked royal.

When Crowley mocks Beez, addressing them formally as Lord Beezlebub, he does a formal bow, complete with the proper foot positioning-- you can see him step into it from how his hips move. He bows almost to the waist, complete with flourishing hand gestures that are showing mock-fealty and deference to the Grand Duke of Hell by sarcastically treating them as if they were a king.

This scene which, as we'll see, is related to the one in your ask, is only one example of a couple of Crowley sassing the fuck out of someone, specifically by using proskynesis. It also adds to the chilling nature of the scene in your ask by having occurred just a matter of moments prior.

Beez lets it pass entirely because they're really only Lord Beezlebub in an attempt to project power enough to try to survive Hell. Their title is more about self-protection than it is about an expectation of deference-- which is something that Crowley also knows and is at the heart of the mockery.

Like Aziraphale, with his respectful bowing to his friend in gratitude for the sushi in 1.01, Crowley has no issue with a polite, non-religious, non-royal version of proskynesis. If worshipping the humans is wrong, Crowley and Aziraphale don't wanna be right. They don't revere individual humans as kings or gods but they do revere humanity itself as a whole in that way. They show polite respect to those sharing that with them or educating them in it.

They also do that with one another. Crowley's soft, polite nod of a bow to Aziraphale when they meet in Eden is gentlemanly. It's respectful but not in a way that isn't just treating Aziraphale as an equal. Nina gets a similar treatment when they meet in S2.

Crowley still does something similar into the modern era with Aziraphale-- note the little nod/bow when Aziraphale accepts his lunch invitation in S1.

This is all very much on the egalitarian end of proskynesis; it's in where it basically formed parts of the foundation of gestures related to having good manners in different societies. It's respect and acknowledgement between people who view and treat one another as equals, as is the case with Crowley and Aziraphale.

Their relationship is one that is built around equality, free choice, and consent. Therefore, when Crowley apologizes in S2 in another scene that is related to the one in your ask by being an intentional, totally opposite contrast to it, Aziraphale can barely contain his laughter at Crowley's mock-submissive dance. The dance, in many ways, is really a satire of proskynesis.

Crowley is doing this "yes, my king" dance for Aziraphale with tongue firmly in cheek. The dance is poking fun at the difference between general submissiveness, which Crowley loathes and likes to mock, and voluntary sexual submission with one another, which different scenes have shown us that they both periodically enjoy as some light fun from time to time.

Aziraphale is desperately trying not to laugh long enough to reply with equal humor in his dry, self-aware, soft dom voice. He can't resist smiling a bit and mimes a kiss at Crowley-- seeing Crowley's droll mocking of proskynesis-- which is etymologically linked to words related to kissing and which can involve it in different stages-- and replying by bestowing upon Crowley a kiss.

Aziraphale is intentionally doing something that isn't really the result of proskynesis when in the royal circles that Crowley is referencing with The Apology Dance. The subject is meant to seek the king's favor and would be the one, if ranked high enough to warrant such a relationship with royalty, who would kiss the king-- not the other way around. By miming a kiss at Crowley, Aziraphale is meeting Crowley's mocking of inequitable aspects of proskynesis with some mocking of his own by being miming a kiss at Crowley, who is his equal and partner.

There's also a droll joke in there where the only royal subject of a king who could reasonably have expected a kiss from the king, if maybe not always in a public setting, was the king's queen. So, Crowley's whole mocking Apology Dance has a joking, "yes, my king" vibe to it and Aziraphale's response is to show equal humor towards and affection for the person who is-- in all senses of the word-- his queen.

The end of Crowley's dance is a combination curtsy and what's known as a bow-and-scrape-- the thing from which the phrase "to bow and scrape" comes. The scrape is the movement of the foot behind a person across the floor, done to be able to go lower to the floor on the bow.

To "bow and scrape" was to basically grovel in this really overly demonstrative way for favor with the king, in the hopes that he'd be impressed by your humiliating submission enough to bestow favor upon you. The phrase now refers to doing a large amount of work or groveling to someone in a position in authority, usually with the suggested reward likely not forthcoming.

The second word in the phrase-- scrape-- also contains the word for the thing Crowley has survived at the hands of that fucking monster, Satan, who lives for the demons to bow and scrape for his favor. That's intentional on Crowley's part-- the end of this apology dance is also a visual pun on the word scrape, which contains the word rape, and this while he's doing this mocking dance that is a perfect example of how completely different and very healthy his relationship with Aziraphale is by how he is free to be this hilarious, sassy shit with his partner versus the forced subjugation by his assailant.

You might think that wordplay-- visual or otherwise-- involving the word rape is a bit dark. I won't disagree with that but I just want to briefly show you other examples of it that I've noticed so you can see what they're showing as the rationale for it between Crowley and Aziraphale. It's actually more of an empowering thing when you see other examples of it that are in other scenes.

Crowley and Aziraphale's cant vocabulary-- their invented hidden language-- uses a lot of words-within-words, just like how rape lives within scrape. If you consider that, you might also notice a couple of foods that recur in Good Omens that also are related to this. In Crowley and Aziraphale's language and in their life together, food is food but food is also figurative language for sex. Their healthy relationship and all the food and sex that is part of their life together is their answer to the traumas they've both suffered.

It's sensual, mindful living that focuses on healthier, positive experiences that help them to provide one another with a quality of life that the pain of Heaven and Hell does not. As a result, some frequently mentioned food and drink is held up between them as examples of the loving, enjoyable, pleasurable relationship with one another that they have that stands in contrast to Heaven and, especially, Hell.

Crowley enjoys wine, right? Which is made from? Grapes, as Aziraphale orders in 1601...

The opposite of the rape-related issues that Aziraphale unintentionally triggered in Crowley in 1793, for example, is what he then offers him for lunch-- both figurative and euphemistic crepes.

Not coincidentally, that's also what Aziraphale suggested the day after Crowley was assaulted by Satan on the night Armageddon began-- the crepes of Paris, 1793-- and Crowley, as we could see, was all for it:

Another covert reference to this is Aziraphale's magic trick of changing a turnip into an inkwell. It's a metaphor on a couple of different levels but one of them is that the word rape overlaps with a type of plant that is also called that and is the category name for a group of plants and vegetables, the most famous of which is the turnip.

Turnips are also a pretty clever food metaphor for rape. They have been in existence for forever and are, horrifyingly, really common, but no one-- no one lol-- has ever really wanted to eat a turnip. They're not a terribly appealing food and I would wager that if you lined up every person on the planet and asked them to name a delicious food no one-- at all-- would say the turnip.

So, adding that into the etymology of the vegetable being tied to the word rape, then turning "the common turnip" into "an inkwell"-- when sea creatures, like octopi, are often sources of ink, and 'well' meaning both healthy and a flowing source of liquid? It's Aziraphale making a magic trick that is a metaphor for him helping Crowley heal from the rape-related inorgasmia referenced subtly in a few, other scenes, and which is the subject of the Fish meta, if you're interested in that.

Anyway, the healthy, humorous, proskynesis-mocking apology dance is one of the scenes that serves as a direct contrast to the scene in your ask where Crowley is forced to the ground by Satan in Tadfield. That scene involves the other, more extreme end of proskynesis, which is number 6 on the sketch near the start of the meta: prostration.

To be clear: how people want to worship in any way, if they do, is no one's business, so long as it's not harming anyone else. There's nothing inherently wrong with any of this if it's of someone's free will. The scene in your ask, though, doesn't involve free choice, it involves forced subjugation, which is from where the horror of it comes.

Prostration involves lying flat and face down on the ground with your arms outstretched. It involves kissing the feet of the king or the ground that you believe belongs to the deity you're worshipping.

Prostration is complete submission. It's basically a rejection of any sense of self in full deference to the king or the deity.

In Hell, all the demons are seen as belonging to Satan. Several of them, like Hastur and Shax, refer to Satan as "our Master." They are all seen as Satan's subjects and his property-- all known as a collective referred to by Hastur in S1 as The Fallen, as we also looked at in relation to Aziraphale being Mr. Fell in this meta.

In Heaven and Hell's view, The Fallen do not belong to themselves but to Satan. Crowley's sense of autonomy and his relationship with Aziraphale are secrets he keeps because of how they conflict with Hell, where he's not supposed to have any other desire but to live to serve his rapist, who believes that he owns him.

All of Crowley's mocking of anything more than a polite nod when it comes to proskynesis is more than just being generally anti-royalty and anti-authority. The root cause of all of it is Satan.

In the scene in Tadfield, Satan is forcing Crowley to first kneel and, then, to prostrate, before him.

When Crowley clutches one hand to his chest and uses his other hand under him to keep himself an inch or two above ground, he's doing so in an effort to resist fully prostrating.

He's trying to keep his hands from being pulled out in front of him and to keep up enough to keep his lips from kissing the ground in forced subjugation to Satan.

This is probably the darkest scene in the show-- even darker, maybe, than 1.01's scene of Satan attacking Crowley in The Bentley-- because this is a whole new level of horror here. Crowley is shaking with the pain of fighting for enough control over himself to keep from prostrating any more than he is being forced to. This is happening with other people present-- including Aziraphale and kids, including Satan's own kid-- with the obvious humiliation factor being part of the attack.

Unlike in 1.01, when Satan took complete control of Crowley to a point that he couldn't speak, he's left him that ability in this scene, getting off on hearing Crowley protest. This scene shocks because the 1.01 scene of Satan attacking Crowley, and subsequent scenes reinforcing the non-consensual possession-as-rape allegory throughout the story, lead the viewer to believe that this is how it will always be referred to in the story. It lulls us into a sense of complacency where we think we know what the show will do, which has the desired effect of making this scene, in which they shift that tone pretty dramatically, all the more impactful and terrifying.

Furthering the allegorical here is that Crowley is outmatched, power-wise, for the most part, but is putting up a fight. He's moved by an assailant against his will, quite violently. He's dragged to his knees and then pushed forward to the ground. He's in pain and distressed, he's lost control of his body, his legs end up splayed, he pulls in on himself as much as he can, and he's repeatedly saying the word no. I think it might be pretty much impossible to make a scene full of more direct correlations to rape than this scene. They're doing so to really underline this survivor story with Crowley that is running through so many of the other scenes.

Crowley grabs his right leg when he is forced down to the tarmac, presumably because that's the side that is being forced to move by Satan to drag Crowley to his knees. It's possible, though, that this might be also be an allusion to the aftermath of 1827.

When we saw Crowley in 1862 in the scene that functions as him still trying to deal with what happened in 1827, Crowley was carrying that cane that many think was more than a fashion statement. Something that could cause Crowley periodic pain, while also still allowing for other scenes in which he pretty clearly isn't in any pain, is the possibility that, in the 1827 aftermath, Satan broke one or both of Crowley's legs.

As any of us who have ever broken a part of our human corporations know, they can often be painful long after they heal and frequently subject to weather and stress. It's possible that Crowley had recurring pain for decades and might still into today. This is all speculative but why else might this idea also fit?

Possibly just because there are so many scenes in Good Omens that are nothing but Crowley just walking freely or hopping, owning his human body by sauntering around on the legs that are often symbolic of his life as a human of Earth, as he very notably doesn't have them in snake form... and his snake form is something that he associates negatively with his fall and Hell.

Crowley's walk at any given time is related to his sense of empowerment and, sweetly, there are also a bunch of scenes of Aziraphale just gazing at Crowley as he walks around. Including, darkly, the one that was happening when Crowley was dragged to Hell in 1827:

The scene related to this that I like best, though, is when Crowley and Aziraphale both get one over on Satan and The Metatron by successfully hiding Gabriel in S2. They grin at one another as Crowley hops down from the chair, fully in his body, landing gracefully and happily on the legs that, whether once broken or not, we have seen in 1.06 ripped out from under him by Satan before.

Hell also has some Godfather-referencing, mafia-like nods in different scenes in the series and breaking someone's legs is kind of classic mob stuff but, really, I think it's more tied to the whole forced subservience snake thing. Crowley, telling Aziraphale that he'd changed his name to one we learn in S2's Job minisode is associated for Crowley with freedom, autonomy, choice, and Aziraphale...

...from one that is "a bit too squirming-at-your-feet-ish" to Crowley. It's a comment made more horrifying when 1.06's scene in Tadfield makes it clear that this isn't just a metaphor here-- Crowley's unwillingness to be Crawly and his discomfort with being a snake makes even more sense once we have this scene in Tadfield that sees Satan knock his human legs out from under him and force him into literally squirming like a snake at his feet.

No wonder why Snake!Crowley has a tendency to prefer roaring like a lion when transforming into a snake-like monster, like he did in the paintball scene...

Crowley and Aziraphale working to reframe and claim The Serpent from Crowley's negative associations with being a snake is something I talked about in the other meta I posted recently, should you also be interested in that.

The other thing of note when it comes to this scene of Satan trying to force Crowley to fully prostrate is then the fact that, while we've looked at the horror that Crowley is experiencing here, there are some other scenes that are subtly referencing positive life experiences that can be associated with this same type of position, if the situation is consensual and of someone's free choice.

They're also the exact types of things that can be complicated by having been assaulted. Lying face down are obviously both common sexual and sleep positions, for instance...

In S1, one of the scenes that got cut was supposed to be Crowley waking up from a nap in his flat. The script book says it was supposed to be that Crowley was sleeping on the ceiling in his bedroom, which also looks to be how they were filming it from the picture of it that exists. DT filmed it standing up, presumably so that they could flip the shot around and make it look like Crowley was sleeping on the ceiling. In addition to the heat-seeking snake aspect of this, there's some interesting psychology that may be at work here.

Crowley's flat in S1 was not owned by Crowley-- Hell owned it, as we can see even more in S2-- and he was not technically safe in it. Hell isn't great with boundaries and, although Crowley had structured the flat to make it so that he might have some warning if someone were to come through the front door, there was no guarantee that they would do that. Crowley sleeping on the ceiling in the bedroom in his flat might suggest that he did so, at least in part, to try to have an advantage over someone who might show up in his flat.

It might suggest that Crowley likes to sleep on his stomach but he felt too vulnerable to do that in the bed in his flat so the only way he could make that happen there was to sleep on the ceiling, where his position would potentially be a bit more advantageous. Where Crowley likely does not have that issue is in the bookshop, as he's much safer there.

In another area of life? After 1.06 showing where the proskynesis theme was leading in that season, this scene below is then retroactively given another layer:

As looked at before, Aziraphale's hand gestures here are actually massage movements. His dialogue is also full of massage-related puns-- need/knead, back, practice. Probably also not coincidentally? In addition to just being fun and relaxing, massage is also often suggested by therapists working with couples where one or more partners has been assaulted, as it can be therapeutic on a variety of levels. The scene is suggestive of Crowley being comfortable with a variety of different kinds of pleasurable prostrate positions with Aziraphale, which stands in obvious direct contrast to the horrors of Satan.

So, here's where we're going to end this by talking about some mirroring to the scene in your ask with The Final 15, especially through using etymology. The word proskynesis comes from the Greek and is a combination of pros (meaning: towards, in this case) and kyneo (meaning: kiss). Some translations of it actually wind up being less "towards the kiss" more along the lines of "to kiss in the presence of."

Yeah... There's a word in the mix in this story that means "to kiss in the presence of" and that feels pretty relevant to the last few minutes of the most recent episode we've seen, no? 😂

In the S1 finale, the season's recurring moments of proskynesis lead towards the Tadfield scene, in which we watch Crowley wind up forcibly prostrated before Satan and resisting a kiss with everything he's got. While he'd do that anyway, what's the biggest reason as to why he was in that moment? Aziraphale, right?

It's because Aziraphale is right there and this is all already more than horrible enough. Crowley does everything in his power to retain enough control to resist this kiss because he is absolutely not kissing the Earth Satan claims is his, in forced deference to him, with Aziraphale watching.

Poor Aziraphale can't do anything about this in the moment that it's happening. He can't go to Crowley without giving away that he's Crowley's partner. They've been terrified for a long time that Satan would kill Crowley if he found out about them and, based on what we've seen of how violent and dangerous Satan is, it doesn't seem like that fear is at all unfounded.

By S2, Crowley and Aziraphale are becoming a bit less of a secret but the people who they are letting in are ones they feel are trustworthy. None of them have any affiliation with Hell or Satan. The one person around them each a bit that does have affiliation with him-- Shax-- is the one they're both still attempting to fool.

The S2 mirror of the proskynesis/"kiss in the presence of" moment from 1.06 of Satan attacking Crowley in Tadfield and Crowley resisting the kiss in front of Aziraphale involves these same three characters again... but some aspects of it are-- as they would be with a mirror-- shifted around a little.

In 2.06, it's Crowley with a kiss again-- but, this time, it's Aziraphale that he's kissing. Instead of being the person who is watching the kiss be resisted, Aziraphale is the recipient of a kiss that Crowley is actually willing to give.

Aziraphale, like Crowley in 1.06, is mostly resisting the kiss. While Crowley pushed to resist it entirely in S1 for obvious reasons, Aziraphale isn't put off by the idea of kissing Crowley in general but, in S2, is resisting it as much as he's able to do so.

Why?

Because Aziraphale knows with almost complete certainty that it's Satan watching them through the window.