disney-garden

[lets-try-some-writing]

Just a thought here but since alpha trion adopted optimus when he was Orion what would be the other original 13 (dead or alive) reactions to having a nephew?

Assuming this is set in a universe where Optimus isn't the Thirteenth, this will be interesting indeed.

A New Prime?

Alpha Trion had exactly one function, that being to serve as Primus's recorder and prophesier. He was to watch, he was to quietly direct the flow of events, and he was to wait for the day when it would come time for his brother to make his return. That was his purpose, and he was content in it.

However one stormy night, things changed.

Alpha Trion hardly left his archives, but when he did it was always with purpose. He never expected for a storm to blow in and viciously tear across Cybertron's surface. He was forced to abandon his task and seek shelter in among the towering spires that made up Cybertron's wilds. There he waited out the acidic rains and the howling winds that made even the largest mecha struggle. It was unexpected, but it was a momentary setback in his mind... right up until as if sent by some sort of divine power, a young mech emerged from the foliage.

Even though his huge optics and the remnant sensory panels lining his helm spoke of the mech hardly being a vorn into younglinghood, he was large for his age, coming up to roughly Alpha Trion's waist. His frame was slim and heavily armored, his denta were sharp and fanged, and he had claws deadly enough to shred most creatures adorning his digits. He was a dull gray, but his optics were so wide, so full of life. However most notably was the face that the mech had a face and an aura that caused Alpha Trion to pause in consideration.

He looked exactly like Thirteen. He wasn't Thirteen, his spark was too youthful and didn't possess the same touch of ancient power, but Alpha Trion knew him for what he was. This mech was meant to be Thirteen's vessel, his chosen child meant to house him when the time was right. That was all Alpha Trion needed to know to have a good reason to collect the mech and begin dragging him back to Iacon even as he snarled and flailed like a wild animal.

He brought the mech back to his archives and didn't hesitate to begin taming the wild youngling. It was not easy by any means though.

The youngling who he affectionately named Orion Pax was nothing short of a monstrosity. He was downright feral in every aspect and even with the Covenant offering slight insight into the future it didn't make managing him any easier. Orion needed to be kept away from others for over a vorn while Alpha Trion training him out of chewing on everything. He needed to get Orion some frame alterations to make him more presentable and he more often than not emerged from meeting with Orion covered in claw marks and bites. It was even harder trying to convince the youngling to consume his energon in a civil manner and not eat it like an animal. He was covered in energon more times than he cared to admit as he tried to assist Orion in figuring out how things worked.

It was tiring and all the kept Alpha Trion going was the promise of his brother's return in the frame of the youngling some day. He just needed to make sure the youngling was worthy and then when the time was right, the Matrix could be given and Thirteen could take control. That was the plan, that was all it was. There was no reason to care more than necessary for the feral little thing. He needed to ensure the youngling was educated in all that was related to their history and skilled in all matter of things so that Thirteen could absorb those abilities when it came time. He was not required to be loving or affectionate.

But as with all things, time took its toll and eventually Orion began to calm while at the same time Alpha Trion got attached. It started small, that with Orion uttering his first garbled glyphs in the old tongue as Alpha Trion had taught him. It warmed something in his spark to have Orion call out his designation in a staticky mess alongside hisses and whistles. He found it... endearing. Even as he worked to correct Orion's speech and help him adapt to better speak the old tongue and then later the modern, he always loved the little calls of "Sire" Orion was so fond of crying out to him once the youngling learned the meaning of the word.

He tried to tell the youngling that he wasn't his Sire, but Alpha Trion's spark thought otherwise as a fledgling bond between Orion and him formed. The youngling, as soon as he was somewhat civil, followed Alpha Trion everywhere. Like a loyal guardian he would stay as close as possible, often clinging to Alpha Trion's cape and growling at any who came too near. He was dutiful, watching and keeping an optic out for threats at all times. It was honestly adorable considering his size and his wide optics. He thankfully never attacked anyone, he would always listen to Alpha Trion in that regard.

Of course then Orion had to go and show himself to be curious and only get Alpha Trion more invested in the youngling. He always peeked over Alpha Trion's shoulder when he was reading with little wonderings of "What that Sire?" and so on. Eventually Alpha Trion had no choice but to begin teaching Orion reading and writing, a set of lessons that managed to civilize Orion more than simple instructions did. The youngling was quick to read and write, learning every dialect and sub-class of language in record time. His ability to speak skyrocketed and before Alpha Trion knew it, he saw the youngling as his sparkling more than a ward, especially as he began speaking clearly and expressing greater interest in the archives.

Many a cycle was spent with Orion buried in datapads discussing the past and going over history together. Those were good times, filled with smiles and eager enthusiasm. Alpha Trion grew to truly love his sparkling as Orion grew in knowledge and showed himself to be just like Thirteen in mentality. He was kind, he was soft-sparked, he was intelligent, empathetic, dutiful, and so much more. Thus when Orion was grown and the time came to take him to receive the Matrix.... Alpha Trion waited. He told himself it was because Orion wasn't ready, that he needed further training. As such he sent Orion on trips to study, had him dig into old mysteries, anything to keep him learning and working.

He practically threw Orion down to the pits to get him working with Megatronus and very nearly forced Orion to go meet with Ratchet to learn from him. Perhaps a Prime wouldn't even be needed if his sparkling could stop things before they grew to large... at least that was his hope. He missed his brother, yes. But Orion... Orion was his sparkling who he had raised and forged into the mech he was. He knew based on how he had raised Orion that if asked the mech would gladly give himself to the Matrix and Thirteen. However Alpha Trion didn't want to lose the one good thing he had gained since his brothers scattered.

He tried. He tried so hard to keep it from happening, but with how Cybertron was deteriorating... they needed a Prime. Alpha Trion hated every moment when he took Orion a day before his meeting with the high council and dragged him to Primus's core. He hated himself when Orion screamed out for him as the Matrix was offered. He hated how cruel it all was when his dear and precious sparkling was left to fade away, his spark locked within the Matrix so that Thirteen could take his place.

However, Thirteen never took control. He could sense his brother was within Orion's frame, but Thirteen did nothing, merely pulsing within the Matrix in curiosity. Orion, or rather Optimus was confused but took to his position well. Unbeknownst to the living, the Primes were conflicted and joyous at the same time.

When Thirteen connected to his chosen vessel, the first thing he sensed was the mech's connection to Alpha Trion. It startled him so much that he did not try to force control over the frame offered to him. He instead sat back within the Matrix, watching as the youngling who had been modeled after him fulfilled the purpose set before him without Thirteen even needing to be involved. This one was loved, this one was deeply connected to his brother. Thirteen could never in good conscience ever take his brother's only sparkling from him. Thus he instead opted to serve as a guide, directing Optimus and offering him the wisdom within the Matrix as needed. He was there to bear the brunt of the woes Optimus experienced and he came to quickly care deeply for the youngling.

Optimus was pure, Optimus was just like him. His new Prime was loved, he was kind, he was everything Thirteen was and more. Thirteen didn't need to take control, Alpha Trion had raised Optimus so well it was unnecessary. Instead he came to care for Optimus, watching and guiding as a mentor. He couldn't leave his nephew alone after all.

Solus from within the realm of the Primes did a complete double take when she saw the one Alpha Trion had taken as his own through the Matrix. Her first instinct was to call slag on it, Alpha Trion didn't care for others like that. However upon seeing Optimus she conceded and agreed that Optimus was indeed worthy of her brother's affection. Thus when possible she would speak through the Matrix to Optimus, smothering him in affection through emotional waves. He was so sweet and lovely, a baby Prime indeed. He needed an Aunt there to play a more maternal role throughout everything. She would gladly take on that role.

Prima was skeptical of the new Prime, but those worries disappeared when he saw Alpha Trion of all mecha care for the newly named Optimus Prime. He was marveled even more when Thirteen didn't try to take control of the new Prime and instead served as a guide. Thus not to be outdone, he joined his brother and his sister in teaching, quickly coming to care for Optimus as well. The baby Prime was young but wise. He embodied everything Prima sought in a true Prime, a perfect leader for the damaged world above.

Vector cared very little for the birth of a new Prime. He saw it amidst the push and pull of time that passed him by, however he gave it little thought. If nothing else, Optimus was a chance for Alpha Trion to grow and for Cybertron to change. However he was just one spark among a sea of others, not worth too much attention in the grand scheme of things.

Micronus was confused above all else when it came to Optimus. Why was Thirteen not taking control? Optimus wouldn't fight back, he was too good for that. If he believed it to be for the greater good, he would gladly give himself willingly. So why wait? Why not take what was offered and fix things? Micronus got his answer when he decided to watch the newest Prime and saw how much Alpha Trion cared and how he very nearly cried when Optimus was not locked away and instead allowed to continue living. He did not love Optimus, but he saw how much he meant to Alpha Trion and thus endeavored to teach if only so that Optimus could fulfill his duties.

Alchemist for his part knew about Orion long before he was a Prime and quietly supported Alpha Trion from afar. He was pleased that his most isolated brother aside from the fallen was finally getting some interaction. He was also so very pleased when Orion began wandering to his bar once he got older. Alchemist was perfectly happy to offer Orion some low charged drinks on exchange for a few stories. Orion was such a sweet young mech, he was perfectly content to be a kind listening audial and an uncle to the little mech Trion loved so much. He still remained at his bar offering drinks when Orion became the Prime, nothing changes about how he treated him and Optimus appreciated it.

Nexus had optics everywhere with so many of his component parts running around. He was well aware of Orion and played a role in getting him from point A to point B. He thought it was great fun luring Orion into new situations to try and get the youngling to have fun. He also tended to keep close watch on his nephew at Alpha Trion's behest. Orion was a good mech, but he got himself into all sorts of trouble, especially after becoming Prime. He didn't like intervening too much, but if only to calm his brother, he would drop in at times to make things happen. Optimus never knew it was him, but Nexus knew Optimus and he was fond of the little Prime. Still so very young and worth protecting.

Onyx Prime was not enraptured with Optimus once he claimed the Matrix at first. It took him time to determine Optimus's worth, but once he did, he was willing to offer much needed spiritual guidance. Thirteen offered wisdom, Solus offered love, Micronus offered wits, Prima offered skill, and Onyx brought his understanding of sparks to the table. He was there to direct Optimus to places of interest and helped to protect him from the EM attacks of others that could rattle his spark. The young Prime needed guidance, it wouldn't do to sit back and watch while Optimus dealt with the fallout of millennia of abuse and corruption alone.

Amalgamous thought Optimus was the best thing since processed energon the moment he saw him from within the Matrix. He was just so very pure and so hopeful. Amalgamous adored that about him and was so very pleased when Optimus allowed himself to enjoy life a little bit. Where other Primes guided Optimus to perform better, Amalgamous preferred to instead convince Optimus to rest and relax, to take care of himself after long days. He was also there to feed the little Prime good memories and happy feelings after everything. Optimus needed joy just as much as he needed everything else. And Amalgamous couldn't possible leave his dear nephew to wallow could he?

Quintus for his part didn't care much for Optimus. He preferred creating over watching growth. He would offer bits and pieces of knowledge and come forward to watch when something of interest happened, but beyond that he was content to remain largely uninvolved. Although when Optimus deviated too hard, he would fight bitterly to force Optimus back onto track. It got him scoldings from all his siblings, but to Quintus it was worth it. Sometimes young Primes needed reminders of why they fought. Being allowed only support could lead to imperfections.

Liege was for his part denied any and all access to Optimus when possible. The Primes didn't trust him, they didn't want him whispering lies and other cruel things into their baby Prime and nephew's audials. Thus they fought bitterly to keep him away, however even with their efforts there were times where his influence managed to sneak through. He was not a kind mech, but he did care for his kin to a degree. When he was allowed access, he guided Optimus on how best to use his words to manipulate in quiet ways. He always whispered sweetly, never too loudly and never too boldly. He always made sure to sound as though he were loving and caring, and often, much to his glee, Optimus took his advice.

Then there was the Fallen. Simply put, he felt the shift around him as a new Prime was born, but other than that he knew nothing. He was temped to return to Cybertron to greet his newest brother, but he abstained. It wasn't his place, not after all he had done.

[cecexwrites]

Harry Potter Masterlist

*Not including The Amortentia Archives Characters

Name: Ainsley Violet Astor Fic: Bury Me Someday Ship: Theodore Nott FC: Angourie Rice The youngest Astor, Ainsley always felt the extreme pressure to be like her older siblings, Felix and Romy. Her only relief from that pressure was her best friend Draco. However lately he's been acting weird and pushing her away. Ainsley is detirmined to figure out what's going on, even if it means working with Theodore to find out the truth

Name: Altair Sirius Black Fic: Bury Me Someday Ship: Lola Lestrange FC: Gabriel Gueara The only son of notorious criminal, Sirius Black, Altair is daddy issues on legs. Hurt and jaded because years ago his father chose revenge over his family, Altair became the son that Sirius would never want. A Slytherin prince, best friends with the son of the dark lord, Altair finds that as more time passes, he's being torn further and further apart.

Name: Arden Calpurnia Rosier Fic: We All Fall Down Ship: Sirius Black FC: Phoebe Dynevor Everyone knew about the Rosier family. Evan was part of The Dark Lord's inner circle, Felix was slotted to be the minister by the time he was 35 and Arden Rosier was a prime example of everything a good Pureblood Princess should be. But watching her best friend, Regulus slowly go mad over the pressure to be everything his parents want has Arden rethinking everything she thought she wanted in life.

Name: Bryce Concordia Rowle Fic: The Faith Departed Ship: Draco Malfoy FC: Emily Alyn Lind Dumbledore is dead, Harry Potter and his friends are gone and the Dark Lord has taken over the school. Bryce is watching as all around her people are suffering. When her father comes up with his 'brilliant' plan to keep her safe, she finds herself attached to The Prince of Slytherin against her will.

Name: Elara Walburga Black Fic: The House of Snakes and Stars Ship: Rabastan Lestrange FC: TBD The story of the Brothers Black is a tragedy of Epic proportions. The brother who died, the brother locked away forever. What they don't speak of is the story of the sister who survived.

Name: Eris Marlene Black Fic: Bury Me Someday Ship: Mattheo Riddle FC: Madisyn Menchaca Eris often swears she was born to give her older brother grey hair. The ornery nature of Sirius Black, the cunning of Arden Rosier, a better and worse princess couldn't have been created if one tried. Eris learned a lot from her mother and her cousin Narcissa. Eris knows how to play the game and she knows how to play it well, but she has much more fun overturning the board

Name: Grier Astor Rosier Fic: Bury Me Someday Ship: Draco Malfoy FC: Marissa Long Grier has always been the black sheep. The Family embarrassment who didn't get into Slytherin, not even a respectable house like Ravenclaw. No, she committed the sin of being sorted into Gryffindor. Now that the war is coming, her parents decide to make a play to save her red and gold ass, betroth her to the man whose family once faced this exact same problem.

Name: Leighton Grey Greengrass Fic: Bury Me Someday Ship: Blaise Zabini FC: Sadie Stanley The middle of three daughters, Leighton knew that her chances of a good match were slim. But that honestly didn't bother her. It meant freedom, it meant she could do as she pleased. She was the second daughter. However, when she catches the eye of Blaise Zabini, she can feel the walls closing in on her and freedom slipping through her fingertips and somehow- she likes it.

Name: Lola Zara Lestrange Fic: Bury Me Someday Ship: Altair Black FC: TBD Growing up in France one might think Lola was kept away from all the dirty details of the impending Dark Lord takeover, especially when her father, Rabastan, was locked up for the torture of of the Longbottoms. But this princess knows so much more than anyone could expect. And when she's transferred to Hogwarts for her final year of school, She finds herself in the middle of it all.

Name: Lysander Cornelius Nott Fic: The House of Snakes & Stars Ship: tbd FC: Alex Fitzalan Lysander has, for as long as he can remember, been head over heels in love with his best friend Elara. Unfortunately for him, Elara has been betrothed since she was a kid. Forced to move on with another woman, Lysander knows where his heart lies, not with his wife and son but with the bright-eyed girl he sat next to on the boat in first year. Even if she can never be his.

Name: Aurelia Lovelace Fic: A Song for the Broken Hearted Ship: Tom Riddle FC: Lily Collins Aurelia loved Tom Riddle. Before he was the Dark Lord, before he was Voldemort. When he was just brilliant and brooding Tom Riddle. When the man betrayed her, she made a promise with her dying breath, that he would never truly escape her. decades and a war later, she's finally getting her revenge. And it's never tasted so sweet.

Name: Odelia Rosalie Marceline Rosier Fic: 1001 Reasons Why I Hate The Boy Who Lived Ship: Harry Potter FC: Sadie Soverall Odelia's life since she was 2 years old could be marked by all the ways in which Harry Freaking Potter screwed her over, intentionally or otherwise. This is the 1001 reasons (abridged) why she hate the boy who lived and his stupid lightening scar.

Name: Poppy June Evans Fic: Briar & Bloom Ship: Sirius Black FC: Lily Rose Depp Sirius had always known that Lily had sisters but until the wedding, he'd never actually been faced with them. One dance with Poppy Evans and he found himself falling head over heels for the vivacious muggle. Now dragged into the middle of a wizarding war she knows nothing about, Poppy sees the direction of the narrative and she's desperate to turn it around, not just for herself and Sirius but for everyone she loves.

Name: Portia Anna Pettigrew Fic: Thistle & Thorn Ship: Regulus Black FC: Sabrina Carpenter The marauders may have run the school but Portia Pettigrew couldn't be bothered with her older brother and his friend's nonsense. No, this charms master was busy catching the attention of Regulus Black and his gang of troublemakers. At the end of the day, a crew's a crew, right?

Name: Violet Eleanor Astor Fic: We All Fall Down Ship: It's complicated FC: Adelaide Kane Being chosen by The Dark Lord is an honor. An honor that Violet Astor finds herself faced with. Half of the people in her life are overjoyed while the other half, including her best friend, are telling her she needs to run. But how can she run? She's the chosen one.

[pixies-and-poets]

https://www.instagram.com/p/CvPzjsNO6Ud/?igshid=NjIwNzIyMDk2Mg==

I'm sorry if this message seems odd, but there's a secret message in this post that you might be exited by! (Just ask me if you can't figure it out or don't want too.) Again, sorry if this ask is weird!

NO, NO, IT'S NOT WEIRD AT ALL

I CAN'T FUCKING BELIEVE THIS BECAUSE I HAD *THE DREAM* LAST NIGHT AND I WAS JUST SITTING DOWN TO POST ABOUT IT..... I guess I'll do it in this ask then!

OK SO WHAT I MEAN BY "THE DREAM" is the prophetic Phantom dream that all of us M+R fans seem to be having, in our own ways. It finally happened to me!

So I dreamed I was on vacation with my parents and brother, like the one I just came back from, except this time we were in this weird steampunk version of New York City. There was a lot regarding that I could talk about, but the important part for our purposes is that Ubisoft randomly dropped the third DLC out of nowhere the day I was going to leave, so I decided to take the Switch even though I don't normally take it on trips.

I didn't have much chance to play it because I wasn't able to download it until I got to my destination, and then I was trying to grab little moments here and there when we were on public transportation, or in our hotel. So my dream was jumping back and forth between the steampunk New York scenes and the game.

As for the game, the heroes had landed on this planet that I could best describe as looking like Palette Prime in the spring (similar vibes but a lot more green), and I think my brain forgot this was supposed to be a Rayman thing lol because all the Mario characters were there. When they got there, they found there was a strange cult and everyone was talking about their "new leader" and how some people respected him but others were afraid.

Then cut to a scene of Phantom spying on the heroes! He was in some kind of abandoned church or temple, looking out an ornate window, and he also had some kind of little underling with him. He was infuriated that the heroes had arrived there and he flew threw a wall.

The rest of my experience with the game was mostly just exploring, except Phantom would send up menacing faces/images into the sky to scare the Heroes (like translucent holograms/illusions), but they were just generic scary faces (not his own) so they hadn't figured out who it was yet.

Now that I'm thinking about it, I'm sure this whole cult thing came from @hostess-of-horror comparing Phantom to Cthulhu with him invading our dreams and us trrying to summon him, lol.

I was super happy but I had vowed not to get on the internet until I beat the DLC so nothing would be spoiled for me, but I just knew everyone would be happy. And when I woke up, it all seemed so real that I said, "He's coming back for sure!" But throughout the past few hours, that wore off and I came back to my realistic and grounded self who never gets her hopes up!

And THEN as I sit down to type up the dream and share it with you all, I see this ask!

What a day!

(Btw I pre-ordered this album a while back lol so I will get it eventually!! And we have the old tech to listen to it on because my partner is a vintage stuff enthusiast)

Ahem but anyway

THEY'RE JUST FUCKING TELLING US NOW

FLKASJFLKASJDFLKA GAAAAAAAAARHGHLAKDSHF ALKDSJFLDJSLKFJLKSJ

We were RIGHT this time, friends. The theories, the foreshadowing, the attention that we paid, it will be rewarded!!!

Ok now I have to go back to my job... somehow......... I'm expected to work......

[talenlee]

Talen's Birthday, 2024

Somehow this one feels less of a big deal than last year. I dunno, maybe it’s because turning forty has been a big monument in my mind, turning forty-one feels just like turning forty again.

I had a fanciful idea that I could do something with the fact that 41 is a prime age; that I have turned 1, 3, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29, 31, 37 and now 41, and then I thought it’d be interesting to see if I ever turned a prime age in a prime year. Now, if you’re at all good at math you’d be able to point out that by being born in 1983, every year I turn an odd age, the year is even and vice versa, meaning that for roughly half the population at any time, they’re never a prime age on a prime year, since no even number is a prime.

It’s not a complicated math puzzle here.

Making a birthday post on my birthday doesn’t feel that special now. It’s not a milestone, it’s not important. Comically, because City of Heroes is burned into my brain, I do think of 41 as a level where you used to get access to your first Epic Power Pool choice (except now you get them at level 35, which is cool). It’s good though: This was a good way to fight the anxiety of the birthday. I remember when I turned 35 I had a real horrible moment thinking I was done, that I had wasted my entire life up to that point. I remember part of what made it okay was seeing Adam Savidan on Youtube, playing Magic: The Gathering and saying ‘I’m thirty five or thirty four years old and I don’t need this.’

A thing about Loading Ready Run that makes me feel a tiny bit bad is that it’s this big long project that a bunch of friends have been making and running for twenty years, as an ongoing hobby that became a job and then became an institution managing multiple people creating things. Sometimes I get sad thinking about how what got that big project to happen was, in part, two dudes with supportive parents and supportive school supplies in the late 90s were able to work on a project, together, for long enough to become very good at it.

How do you do something for twenty years?

Well, you start.

You start, and you keep working on it while you work on things.

The internet of today is poisoned. The internet of today demands you create for it, it wants you to produce Content. Your status updates, your pictures, your everyday drama, your existence, they are all things that are being fed into advertising machine to space out the ads in the name of being ‘content.’ It isn’t how it used to be. It used to be people had websites for their special interests, the interest being the primary thing. My first website I can remember was an Animorphs fanfiction space, and I remembered how when I stopped trying to host other people’s fanfiction, and instead just hosted my own, the one author I took down got sad at me. She was probably also like, fourteen like I was.

It used to be that people made things because they wanted to share them. It used to be that people were making websites and stories and web-novels and web-comics and diaries and blogs and vlogs and microgames and RPGs and they were making stuff. It was stuff. It was not for consuming in its own continual sense, it was not being part of a pipe of things that were fed to you, it was not content, it was a lot of different stuff and that difference gave everyone a reason to do things.

But now, it’s Content.

Now, your effort, your creative material, is being pushed into a single tube for four companies who suck and you know they suck and you don’t like them and yet you make things for them anyway. Because that’s where it is. That’s where the habit forms.

Arbor Day - The Lads // Arbor Day

Watch this video on YouTube

I’m fond of this song, Arbor Day by a band that can be politely described as ‘pretty good, for a Church choir.’ The song, very simply, is that hey, do you need a reason to make a change in your life? Well, today is Arbor day, that’s a good enough reason.’ It’s been an idea bubbling around in my head that yeah, Arbor Day is a nearly arbitary reason to make a big change in your life, but that may be all you need. Sometimes you just need something, anything to mark the psychological change between ‘before I tried this’ to ‘after I tried this.’

Here’s my request for you, on my birthday.

There is something you want to make. There is something you care about. There is something you are interested in trying. Today is a day to do that. Today is a day to even just describe a plan, or a hope. Do you want to write a book? Write a description of what that book is about. A series of books? Describe all of them! Do you want to make games? Start, download one of the programs you need to use today.

Don’t waste money on things for this post’s sake, but you know there are steps you can take to make things, and I want you to make them. I believe in a world where people make things because we like making things, I believe in a world of creative people playing with creativity, and I believe that the important thing of online spaces ie being able to share them.

So please, make something, and show it to me.

No matter how small it is, no matter how little progress on it you get to make. Just spend a little time today starting something, continuing something or finishing something.

I’ll be proud of you, no matter what.

I promise.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[galaxysharks]

au where mazzarra meets baby maddox and baby jet

For the purposes of this au we are operating under the assumption that 'baby' is in reference to the 4-6? (Idk how children work) versions of these losers that we get to see in Jets flashback while singing Right Place. Mainly because meeting a literal baby is pretty boring, they don't really do much.

Ok let's establish some basics of this Au

Mr Mazzara is the teacher for a class of gifted children. He becomes the siblings teacher.

Maddox took two years of preschool, mostly for schedule convenience and in order to acclimate her to social environments

That means the babies are in the same grade, and the same class.

They were originally going to be in different classes as is normal for siblings sharing a grade, but there was some.....rather insistent clinging on Maddox's part, Jet also didn't want to be separated.

The siblings' parents frequently run late on picking them up, of they don't just have Auntie do it instead. And even she needs 40~ minutes to get there.

In the meanwhile, Jet and Maddox hang out with Mr Mazzara while he sets up the experiments for the older kids in the after school STEM club.

Maddox is of course already prime leash child material, as Mazzara discovers when he finds her somehow IN THE CHEM CLOSET.

Jet plays with Ducky and messes with the xylophone over by the window.

He is Mazzara's angel child, all he has to do is put a book or flute, or game in front of him and he's good.

He's spends most of his time with little Kourtney Greene, a girl from the next age group who comes down to his room during her free period.

Maddox is a menace and a threat to her own safety and Mazzara's sanity.

Ms Jenn, the kind drama teacher from TWO FLOORS ABOVE has brought her back, tangled in the wires of the microphones, twice, and it's only August.

Ricky Bowen, a little boy from one of the regular classes showed Maddox how to catch a mantis. There were six of them on his desk the next day.

The ONLY person on staff that can corral the little beast is Coach Dewey, who for some reason can actually get through to her.

Except now she's leaving pinecones everywhere.

But wait! There is a god and her name is Auntie. She drops off a Very large dog named Joe-Jack and he pretty immediately becomes the best asset in having Maddox actually sit still during free periods.

[quietplace26]

Made this for dapperwerewolf.

This au is all about Akito being able to turn monsters into cute squishmallow plushies. Enjoy~

Squishmallow au

Akito loves plushies.

Even now as a young man in his early twenties, he still loves collecting soft plush toys. Big or small. Ugly or cute. If Akito liked it, he added it to his collection.

He did however like it when his plushies were chubby and squishy. Like a squishy marshmallow! A squishmallow!

Mari didn't help help with his addiction at all. She somehow always manages to find the cutest, softest, chubbiest plushies for him to love!

But there was a big secret behind Akito's massive plush collection. Some of his plushies... weren't originally plushies.

To explain further, let's flashback to when Akito was just a little boy.

It happened on a clear, sunny day. The Izuki family was outside relaxing. Akito was sitting on a soft blanket and playing with some toys. Right beside him was Mari, who was just a baby at the time, and she was sound asleep.

Their parents had just gone inside the house to get something when Akito noticed he and his sister weren't actually alone in their yard.

Standing not to far away was a man in a black suit. He was holding an umbrella and he had no face! Oh, and now he was walking toward Akito and Mari!

But before this thing could touch either Akito or his baby sister... *SMACK* Akito smacks the thing's hand away with all his child like strength. "Leave me and Mari alone you meanie!"

There was a *POOF* sound, and the thing was gone. In it's place was a some kind of plush toy... that looked weirdly similar to the thing that was there moments eariler.

His poor parents had no clue where this weird looking plush toy came from, so they just threw it in the garbage, but after that fiasco, more of those things started popping up, meaning more weird plush toys started appearing around the Izuki household.

Akito eventually learns over the years that his 'plushie powers' only worked on creatures that had ill intentions for him. If it had no intention to harm him, the creature wouldn't be turned into a plushie.

He finds this out one day when he saved a tiny floating kitten from being killed by another floating cat. When Akito held the floating kitten, the kitten remained alright, but the moment he touched the violent one, it turned into a plushie.

Turns out he just saved a real life Nekomata kitten... and turned another one into a plush!

Thankfully, the Nekomatas didn't hold any grudge against him for turning one of their own into a plush since that one was about to hurt a kitten, and that was a crime in Nekomata culture.

The Nekomatas quickly become Akito's closest friends/business partners. If there was plushies he couldn't take home with him he goes to the Nekomatas and sells them.

It was actually kinda amazing how much these felines were willing to pay for one of Akito's plushies...

All that money Akito got from the Nekomata's eventually comes in handy when Mari got into her accident. He was able to pay for the best care, and the doctors had very high hopes that Mari would wake up soon.

Then Shibuya goes to hell one night and Akito gained an unwanted grumpy passenger in his head called KK. And adding to this mess was the large amount of visitors walking around!

With an annoyed look o his face, Akito flexes his hands and walks into the chaos. Now then... How many plushies will he make tonight?

"What the hell are you doing brat?!" KK was panicking as Akito calmly walked over to the closest visitor, a rain walker if he remembered correcty.

While he couldn't see KK's face, Akito could feel the utter shock from the wraith when he smacks the visitor and turns it into a plushie.

"What. The. Hell." Was KK's only words as Akito turned every visitor in his path into chubby plush toys.

Things only got weirder and weirder the further they got into Shibuya, and a prime example of this was what happened after they found out what happened to KK's body.

When Akito heard KK yelled how this thing in front of them was his body, he didn't think, he just slapped!

"...Did-did you just slapped my face?!" Akito rolls his eyes at KK's incredulous tone. "Yes. Yes I did. But that doesn't matter now! Look!"

There on the ground laid KK's prone body... and right next to it was a rather ugly looking plush.

Akito grinned as he felt KK's shock course through his head. "Ready to get back in your own body old man?"

After getting over the fact he was now back in his own body, KK was quick to take charge of the situation. "I'll handle all the fighting from here on out! So no more fucking plush toys!"

Not even five minutes after KK made this rule, Akito disappears. He reappears several minutes later with a trembling Erika by his side and a even more hideous plushie in hand.

KK wanted to be mad, but after hearing what exactly happened to Erika... Well, he'll let this slide.

Akito still ends up turing more visitors into plushies as they made their way through Shibuya. After like the tenth rain walker plush, KK just stopped complaining.

Eventually they make to Hannya where KK finally gets his chance to shine and starts beating the ever loving shit out of Hannya!

And while KK is beating Hannya up, Akito is in the background turning all the visitors Hannya summoned to help him into harmless plushies.

Seeing how KK was almost done with Hannya, Akito turns his attention to Mari. He was relieved to see she was alright and even awake!

As Akito finished explaining what happened to Mari, a cheerful, blood covered KK walks up to them. Hannya was no where to be seen, and quite frankly, Akito didn't even want to know what happened to him.

With Hannya gone, Shibuya finally returns back to it's normal self... if not counting the fact there was visitor plushies lying around everywhere!

Akito looks at the mess he caused and sighs. "...I'll go talk to the Nekomatas. They'll handle this mess."

With the chaos now over, Akito heads home with Mari. He honestly never expects to see KK again, but a few days later, Akito is shocked to find KK at his door.

The man looked rather awkward as he stood there. "Hey kid..."

Akito lets KK inside, and as the man looks around Akito's living room in slight horror, as there was visitor plushies scatter about everywhere, KK's eyes zeros in on certain plushie.

"...Is that a fucking Kitsune?!"

Akito looks over at the giant, chubby Kitsune plush sitting innocently nearby, and then looks back at KK. A smile blooms on his face. "Yep! Wanna hear how I got it?"

KK kept coming back after that. The man would always say he was just stopping by to check up on Akito, making sure he and sister was staying out of trouble, however after many, and I mean MANY visits, KK gives him a present.

It was a chubby cat plushie. One that was obiviously bought from some toy store, but it was cute. Akito liked it.

"Heh..." KK grins as he heard how much Akito loved his gift, but that grin fell as a nervous expression took over. "...Akito?"

"Hm?" Akito had his back to KK. He was trying figure out where to place his new plush.

"Are you free this weekend?"

The plush slips from Akito's grasp and falls to floor as the young man looks at KK in shock. "Eh?!"

And that's how Akito started dating KK~

But even though he's now dating the yokai hunter, this doesn't stop Akito from doing the one thing KK absolutely hated with every fiber of his being.

"Akito! How many times do I have to tell you?! Stop turning visitors and yokai into fucking PLUSH TOYS!" KK yells as he tries moving through his home that was now covered head to toe in all sorts of plushies.

Akito howls with laughter as he ran away from a pissed off KK. "Never!"

[bobbiworks]

Beyond the Bell's Chimes | Part 58

The sound of the pouring rain outside and the inaudible chatter of customers in the background felt like home as she stared at the slow spinning of the brown bubble on her coffee. Some people were dismayed about the gloomy weather, but a few in that cafe were blissful, taking a break from their hustles outside.

Jiwoo, like the others around her, was taking her time to breathe from work by staring at the busy street under the pouring rain. With a cup of joe on the golden brown mahogany table in front of her, she indulged herself in a mini photoshoot of the subject: the lone coffee cup.

Satisfied with the shots, Jiwoo had the feeling to snap a photo of herself sitting on the gray cushioned couch. Tilting her phone to a certain angle to hide her unflattering aspects, she got to see a beautiful her. She was proud as she checked her photos until she heard the music playing all over the place.

She couldn't help but feel giddy about the song. It had been years since she heard that song. She read in a post that there are things in this world that unlock a person's core memories—whether it's a smell, taste, sound, look, feel, or hear. With a single thing, she began to remember all the feelings she had when she was younger.

She began to wonder all the what-ifs and all the things she could have done in the past with the wisdom and knowledge she has now. Will she be able to experience those things still? Or will everything change and be forgotten?

Jiwoo woke up from a light tap on her shoulder. It was the server at the cafe. She didn't notice that she fell asleep after thinking so much. What surprised her was that she had her coffee not too long ago. She looked outside, and the rain had already ceased. She thanked the server and even gave her a tip before she stood from her seat.

"Leaving so soon?" Her uncle Wooseok was sitting at another table, looking as handsome as he did during his prime. She smiled and greeted him with a hug. "You could have given me a call if you're out here spending time alone," he said.

"I'll make sure to do that next time," Jiwoo smiled. "This cafe somehow reminds me of the old one I used to work at," she commented.

"Well, there are things we have to keep and things we have to let go. It was a great place, to be honest," Wooseok sighed, remembering the good old days. He quietly looked at Jiwoo with fondness the same way he would look at her when she was little. Wooseok, a bachelor still, always saw Jiwoo as his own no matter what. "Have you visited your mom?"

"I actually plan to spend the weekend at home, for Woojae's birthday," she smiled. "You must be there. You really have to be there," she said, holding her uncle's hand.

"Alright. I will be there," he chuckled. Jiwoo gave him a big tight hug before she left the cafe. Her uncle Wooseok had given up the cafe for commercial property reasons, but he was able to pull himself back by moving it to another location and successfully constructing a couple more branches in the city.

Jiwoo's parents were very healthy and happy now that her father had retired from work. They were able to purchase a piece of land in his hometown, where he grew vegetables for the local market. Woojae had grown into a wonderful high school student at Segye High School. He was still the sweet, thoughtful kid that Jiwoo always loved.

~

It was a spring day in the year 2023. Jiwoo received an invitation from the school's president about the high school homecoming of all graduates from Segye High School. A mix of excitement, anxiousness, and curiosity dwelled in her mind as she read the details and immediately confirmed her attendance. She began to wonder how her friends were now. It had been so long since they last met. They were together for a year after graduation, but university life had taken a toll on each of them until they no longer met. It was like an untold goodbye for Jiwoo, who remained still for her friends to come back anytime, until she too had to leave.

"Noona," her train of thoughts were cut when Woojae knocked on her door. "Dinner's ready."

"I'll be there," she replied and closed her computer. She then followed Woojae downstairs. Woojae had prepared bibimbap, her favorite for dinner. "Wow, looks good."

"Well, I had to make it because you seemed down these days. Is everything okay?" He asked. Jiwoo still couldn't accept the fact that Woojae had become a teenager who was so thoughtful and not rebellious. He had been so good at taking care of her despite being young.

"Hmm, I went to Uncle's cafe," she said while stuffing her mouth with food. "And it somehow reminded me about my friends back then."

Woojae sighed, "Don't tell me you miss them?"

"Of course, I do," Jiwoo replied. "You'll get there when you grow old."

"You're not that old, noona," he replied. "It's just that every time you think about them, you get sad, especially when you remember Euns—" He stopped halfway, realizing that he should not mention the man who became his sister's world but disappeared. "Dad wanted us to sell this house and move to a better apartment," he changed the topic.

"What's wrong with this house?" she asked. "It's well-maintained and could use a little renovation."

"Dad wants us to find a better place, noona," he tried to explain to his sister without telling her that she should move on.

"Hmm, I'll stay here, Woojae. If dad needs money, I can give it to him. I am doing well at my job," she assured her younger brother. "I've made a couple of investments too, so we don't really need to sell this house."

"Noona, I want you to be happy. I can take care of myself here," Woojae began to cry. He watched his sister sacrifice her adolescent life working to the bones when their dad got into an accident. Her savings in high school, which were supposed to be for her college fees, were all spent on the medical fees for her dad until he recovered. She did a lot of odd jobs and barely slept. She barely had time for herself, which made her lose the person she cherished. "Noona, we are okay now. You really should be living for yourself, not for us."

Jiwoo works as an art and humanities assistant professor at Sejong University. She is still pursuing her doctorate degree, which keeps her busy. Her job is fulfilling, and the students are all pleasant. Despite working there for three years, she hasn't encountered any familiar faces. During lunch with her coworkers, her phone rang, reminding her about the reunion later in the evening. She almost forgot about it, shocking her. She hadn't prepared anything, not even a dress. The reunion would take place in Segye High School's gymnasium, with an elite catering service managing the food and decorations. She wondered who planned such an extravagant event. With just two hours to prepare, she quickly finished her meal and sought permission from her boss to leave work early.

Being one of the favorite professors at Sejong University, Jiwoo's boss granted her permission to leave early.

She rushed to an upscale fashion store in the city, embarking on a treasure hunt for the perfect outfit. As an art major, Jiwoo had learned the basics of mixing and matching clothes and had interned as an assistant fashion coordinator for a famous magazine. Despite her introverted nature, Jiwoo had come a long way, learning how to prepare for an event like a reunion. She aimed to make a lasting impression.

After shopping, she headed to the salon to have her long hair styled. She had gorgeous black hair that reached her waist, but due to her busy schedule, she decided to cut it a few inches down her shoulders for the event. She also opted for a full glam makeup look that would complement her outfit, drawing inspiration from photos on her phone.

To give herself space and privacy as she prepared, Jiwoo booked a hotel room for the night. Standing in front of the mirror, fixing her hair, she gave herself affirmations. She felt anxious, not knowing who would be at the reunion. The thought of seeing Eunseok embarrassed her.

The memory of the night when everything seemed too hard haunted her. Her dad hospitalized, finances dropping, and her mind falling apart. Jiwoo didn't know if her life's difficulties would be temporary, and Eunseok, who loved her deeply, wanted to help. But she refused, feeling small and ashamed. She decided to break up with him and push him away. Since then, she never saw him again.

A tear fell as she remembered the pain she caused him. Despite the passage of time, Jiwoo still loved him. She hadn't dated anyone else. If she could turn back time, she would have held onto him and faced life's challenges together. If only she could.

The Segye High School was buzzing with activity, filled with cars in the parking spaces, and the gymnasium alive with music and people dancing. It felt like a school festival reminiscent of the old days, with laughter, sharing life's journeys, and a happy atmosphere.

Anton and Suyoung arrived at the venue, drawing attention as they linked arms. The crowd's focus shifted to them as they witnessed world-class cellist Anton Lee walking with Suyoung. Sohee, who was talking with Hanbin and Minseul, recently married, noticed them.

"I thought you two aren't together," Hanbin remarked upon seeing Sohee give Suyoung a kiss.

"We kinda remained lowkey and kept everything to ourselves. Our wedding wasn't grand, just a few friends and family," Suyoung explained.

"So, Jiwoo knew?" Minseul inquired. "I haven't seen her in ages."

"We haven't heard from her in a long time," Anton replied, his tone tinged with sadness. Anton deeply loved Jiwoo, and her sudden disappearance without a trace affected him profoundly. He didn't know what happened and couldn't find her.

"Oh my god, is she—" Minseul began to speculate the worst, but Suyoung immediately stopped her. "What about Eunseok?"

"Hmm, they broke up? I am not sure. Haven't heard of him in years," Suyoung shared.

"Well, I can sense the sadness here. We all miss each other, but it's not the end of time," Sohee tried to comfort them. "Anton, can you keep Suyoung company here? You can sit at that table," he gestured. "I have to meet Seunghan and Wonbin."

"Oh my gosh! They're coming?" Suyoung gasped in excitement.

"I'm not sure if Ji's phone number is still the same. I haven't really seen her for such a long time. Ever since her dad got into an accident, she had been so busy trying to make ends meet. I couldn't even have time to check on her because it was my finals…" Seunghan explained as he walked with Wonbin to the gymnasium. Wonbin had just arrived from New York, dressed all in black with his hair reaching his shoulders and thin-rimmed specs completing his look for the evening. Seunghan, on the other hand, worked as a general manager in a huge food company. "I am actually worried about not seeing her."

Wonbin stopped, "Don't you think she will hate us?" He asked, turning to Seunghan, who immediately shook his head sideways. "That's Jiwoo. If we are worried about it, how much do you think she will do? I mean, I wouldn't miss this opportunity if I were in her shoes. And I.. I wouldn't miss this opportunity too. So, she'll be fine. I am sure she will be here.." Wonbin assured.

"Wonbin! Seunghan!"

The two men turned their heads to see Sohee waving at them. Their faces lit up, and they instantly forgot that they were not teenagers anymore, running to each other and hugging.

"What the hell! How come you didn't invite us to your wedding?" Seunghan asked as he ruffled Sohee's hair.

"Whoa, easy with the hair! My wife took hours to fix that." Sohee chuckled, pulling away from his friends' hands. "Anton and Suyoung are inside. Did you know Minseul and Hanbin got married too??"

"Whoa! Really?" Wonbin asked, eyes widened in shock. He remembered the time Minseul pretended to flirt with him when they were younger. "Wow, sure time flies fast." He laughed.

"I am so glad you came here," Sohee sighed and ushered his friends to go inside.

~

Sungchan and Miyoung broke up after high school. Sungchan decided to take a break for a year while Miyoung pursued her studies, but they remained great friends. However, Miyoung found new love and was already engaged, while Sungchan remained single. He was waiting for Shotaro at the school front gate. He became closest to Shotaro, feeling like they were on the same level, and Shotaro had been his best friend during the tough times. His smile appeared when he saw Shotaro riding his motorcycle. He stopped and had Sungchan hop on before driving inside the school.

"I heard everyone's there. Eunseok's not really coming?" Shotaro asked and only received a shrug from the latter. "Well, I am in charge of the RSVP, and Jiwoo confirmed her attendance. You better tell him that she's coming. I am sure your friend has been waiting for her…"

~

Eunseok was inside his car stranded in the traffic along the main road. He had an appointment at 7 at the Hyatt Hotel, one of the blind dates his mom set up for him. Tired of meeting different girls every month, he rubbed his temples to ease his headache from the stagnant flow of the road when his phone rang.

It was Sungchan calling about the reunion.

"Hey, I have an appointment. I don't think I can—" He stopped when he heard Sungchan's news.

"Everyone is here," Sungchan said from the other line. "I mean, everyone will be here. Shotaro confirmed the RSVP."

Eunseok's heart began to race when his thoughts started to think about Jiwoo, seeing her again. "Wait… Is she there?"

"Well, you have to come here and see," Sungchan replied and immediately ended the call. Eunseok was left dumbfounded, not knowing what to do. Are they pulling a prank on him? If they do, this isn't a good prank at all. He began to think of a lot of possibilities that Jiwoo might be there. He didn't want to miss this opportunity; he didn't know when he would see her again.

"Sir, we are at the hotel now," his driver announced after stopping the car in front of the entrance gate. Eunseok paused for a moment and thought. He had to reject the blind date he had tonight for the unsure opportunity of meeting Jiwoo again at Segye High School. He doesn't know if she is going to talk to him, but all he knows is that he will give up everything he owns just to be with her again. He stepped out of the car and fixed his suit before walking into the hotel. He went straight to the lobby where he saw his date. He was about to take steps towards her, but his eyes caught a familiar face.

It was Jiwoo in the flesh, holding onto the arms of a man while walking out of the elevator. His entire world stopped when he saw her again after all these years looking so happy and beautiful. He couldn't control his emotions and even himself. He walked past his date and went to grab Jiwoo's hand that was holding onto the other man's arm.

"Shim Jiwoo," he spoke, as if her name was the only reason he breathed.

Jiwoo, surprised to see Eunseok in the hotel she was staying at, couldn't form a word to say to him. The way he looked at the man she was with, she could see the pain in his eyes.

"Eunseok-hyung?" the man spoke, making Eunseok get back to his senses and looked at the man who spoke his name. "Eunseok-hyung…"

"Hyung?" Eunseok stammered, turning to Jiwoo for answers. She looked hesitant, but she was able to pull her hand away from his hold.

"It has been a long time since we last saw each other," she smiled, "This is Woojae now."

"Woojae?" Eunseok stammered once more and realized that the little brother Jiwoo loved had become a young man he barely recognized. "Woojae!" He smiled as he pulled the boy for an embrace. "I'm sorry I did not recognize you."

"I heard a lot about it," Woojae chuckled, returning the embrace to his older friend. "What are you doing here, hyung?" Woojae seemed to have taken the conversation with Eunseok after seeing his sister's reaction to seeing him all too sudden.

"I was—" Eunseok was about to speak when a woman dressed in white, with orange wavy hair, tapped his shoulder. She looked sophisticated and was totally in the same league as Eunseok.

"I thought you saw me," she said, linking her arm with Eunseok. "I can't believe you are ignoring your date!" she huffed.

Jiwoo smiled; she felt the woman was trying to make a point with those words that she quietly tugged onto her brother's arm. "It seems we caught you in the middle of something, hyung. We'll be going to the reunion," Woojae said and slowly excused themselves.

Eunseok watched Jiwoo walked away without saying a word to him. He knew he would never have a chance to speak to her again if he let this slip.

"Shall we have dinner, Eunseok?" the woman asked as she was still holding onto his arm, but Eunseok gently pulled his arm from her hold.

"I'm sorry Hana, I came here to tell you that I am sorry. I really do," Eunseok said and was ready to follow Jiwoo, but Hana grabbed his hand once more.

"This is the 4th time our parents planned this date, Song Eunseok." She frowned. "Is she the one you've been waiting for?" she asked.

"I'd rather die than miss this chance to talk to her," he replied, on the verge of tears when he looked at her. Hana's hold slowly loosened and finally let go of him. He thanked her and ran after Jiwoo, but it was too late. She had already left.

[dgknightblue]

Bumblebee and Sari wanting to switch color pallets with their mom and brother and somehow they end up in another universe with these pallets on and they all decide to go by nicknames.

Soundwave- Wavy

Bumblebee- Bebe

Sari Sumdac- Sarbar

Optimus Prime- Optima (Prima)

Optimom and her babies are wandering around in a small ship until they get picked up by natives of the universe.

I’m not sure about height to be honest.

A couple of bots try to flirt with Prima, her kids hate how uncomfortable she is.

The Optimus or whichever parental bot in that universe that sees her and goes “That is my daughter now and those are my grandkids,don’t touch them or we’re going to have a problem.”

Eventually a portal open and out steps a young Bulkhead with a magnet shaped in a bow.

“Boss bot! There you guys are!”

“You’re wearing the bow I got you?”, said Prima.

“Yeah! I missed you so much! I see that you still haven’t switched back colors.”

“Felt like it would be dangerous if we did.”

“Well, come on, everybot is waiting!”

They all promptly get sprayed by a mist until their original paint jobs are back.

Surprise!

“Good to have you back bumblebee.”

“Good to be back, big bot!”

Bumblebee goes through the portal.

“Hey Soundwave, can’t believe I actually missed the loud music you’d play in the base.”

“Soundwave: Impatient to do so again.”

He goes through the portal.

“Sari! I’m so happy to see you- I got you you’re favorite candy!”

Sari transforms to her human self.

“Yeppy! Thank you!”

The candy is confiscated right a way.

“You can have it later.”

Sari walks into the portal.

“Bossbot! Sir- ma- ma’am! I worked diligently with the seekers, the city and the earth has been safe while you were a way!”

“I missed you too and thank you for working hard. Go a head, I have a few parting words I want to say.”

Bulkhead walked into the portal.

“Thank you so much for taking care of me and my children. If you haven’t guessed by now, I am Optimus Prime and-“

“Are you a femme?”

“Oh uh yes I-“

“Do you have a bot back home?”

“Well no remember-“

“Want to go out?”

“W-what????”, flustered- Optimus ran a way.

The three idiots were then glared at.

Decepticons, am I right?

Plus that one Autobot with a deathwish.

Or something like that. What do you think? What universe would be somewhat cool with a chill family bonding story. Cute little mommy and baby times.

Sari is 3 years old in this.

Soundwave is like 13-15.

Bumblebee is 18.

Optimus is 24-27.

I don’t know how to convert ages into cybertronian for a rough estimate.

Who would flirt with a seemingly yellow femme that kind of looks like Optimus Prime and is also protected by said Optimus Prime? Even after finding out she is a red and blue femme Optimus Prime? Can’t have the “real thing” so why not go for the alt?

Of course if they ever get to Optimom’s universe will have a bunch of hostile depending on who they are.

Optidad adopting Optimom: only an idiot would be in the way or jealous

Idiots flirting with Optimom or with one of her kids (BB or SW): death by dying

Something.

[poems-of-a-lover]

nick watches spiderman

oh boy okay. agh. here we go. right off the bat the opening is just SO good??? its so sick and for what??? the soundtrack to both films also is very clearly 2010s pop music or whatever but still im a fan. shoutout to 2012 and 2014 specifically (bc thats when the movies came out KJHKJASHG)

peter playing hide and seek with his father in the beginning of tasm is very cute until u realize why his fathers hiding =]

AGH. richard parker.

oh yeah i forgot abt the office. so richards office gets broken into and like ransacked bc oscorp employees (????) were looking for his data on the spiders. is this ever stated in either film? no.

anyway! time to abandon our child and leave the country! - richard and mary parker

we learn basically nothing abt mary btw like we have noooo idea who she is shes just there

OKAY ALSO in the first film when theyre leaving richard says "be good" and just shuts the door. in the SECOND one he holds peters hand and rubs his thumb over it then says it and leaves. idk why its different its probably just a mistake but i noticed

FLASH THOMPSON this flash is soooo interesting he has such a fun character

peter being a scrawny brunette white boy and a skater and photographer in like the 2010s and also somehow being single is baffling to me

anyway hes abt to get his shit kicked in

remember how i said flash is a fun character? hes not rn he kinda sucks BUT he gets better

like he hits peter a few times but he gets better i promise

SHOUTOUT TO GWEN shes awesome she doesnt suffer from "only worth being a love interest" disease she actually has a full character

also her checking on peter after the fight is so cute

most of her character development and stuff comes in the second film bc it focuses on their relationship more but its so fun

"ben parker dont u even think abt leaving that filthy box in my kitchen" "these are my bowling trophies" "oh well then by all means please leave that filthy box in my kitchen" I LOOOOVE MAY AND BEN

ben is such a fun father figure for peter. like he says he doesnt know how to parent and take care of him well enough but honestly? he does a pretty good job

THIS. GODDAMN BRIEFCASE. THIS BRIEFCASE RUINS SO MUCH.

"guess who sold it to him? your mother, thats how they met" AGHHHH THATS SOOOO CUTE anyway whatever back to peter

oh yeah the photo of richard and curt. the start of it all. KGJHSKJGH this causes so many issues for everyone now

peter parker in glasses. i wanna be him.

im genuine peter parker is like prime gender envy for me i wanna be him soooo bad

THE DOOR LOCK he managed to build his own remote controlled door lock its so fun

ben is suchhh a good character to compare to richard. bens not even blood to peter but he treated him so incredibly well. and ik richard was in danger and thats why he left but he also just left his son. its more complicated than that for sure but at this point chronologically thats all we know

curt and richard working together is soooo interesting bc richard was just out here working for everyone JGHSKJHG

"youll find your badge to the left" [peter looks for two seconds] "are you having trouble finding yourself?" MAAM GIVE HIM TIME KJGJKSHF

like yes he snuck into this very important building and stole an internship slot from someone else but still!! let the man find a fake name!!!

GWEN oh yeah gwen is dr connors head intern she is so incredibly smart JKGHJSKHGKJ like u see her intelligence a lot more in the second film but shes so smart and i love her so much im a gwen stacy fan

each of the spiderman villains (or marvel in general) either want revenge or to make the world perfect. or both. gimme somethin new. /LHLH ITS FUN I ENJOY THE LIZARD PLOT

"hes second in his class" "second?" "yeah" "are you sure about that?" "im pretty sure" peter and gwen my beloveds <333

they have such a fun relationship and it drives me crazy theyre so cute jhafkjhskj even when theyre not together theyre still like. friends. (dont think abt the second movie we're not there yet)

i wish i was watching this with someone so i wouldnt have to explain whats happening on screen while also giving thoughts abt it. whos gonna step up and watch spiderman with me.

PETER. HE JUST BROKE INTO THE BIG SECRET SCIENCE LAB> U CANT JUST.

hes a little stupid

this might go without saying but if ur arachnophobic i do not recommend watching the first movie bc this whole lab sequence is just a shit ton of spiders. the second movie should be good but this one is. not.

anyway peters touching things and its not going well for him

OH YEAH CURTS TALKING ABT NORMAN okay so dr connors work is strictly to work on curing norman osborn bc he has retroviral hyperplasia (the osborn curse) hes not actually working to help ppl, thats not what he was hired for, hes here to help cure norman so that he doesnt die from this disease that no ones cured yet

so what theyre essentially doing is trying cross species genetics to see if some animal with like. self healing abilities. (like a spider) would cure norman if used in the correct way. thats also what richard was working on with him but we dont learn abt that for a while.

ANYWAY MY FRIEND IS DOING STUFF SO IM GONNA PAUSE HERE. ILL PICK BACK UP ON THIS LATER TONIGHT <3

[nothorses]

Interview With An Ex-Radfem

exradfem is an anonymous Tumblr user who identifies as transmasculine, and previously spent time in radical feminist communities. They have offered their insight into those communities using their own experiences and memories as a firsthand resource.

Background

I was raised in an incredibly fundamentalist religion, and so was predisposed to falling for cult rhetoric. Naturally, I was kicked out for being a lesbian. I was taken in by the queer community, particularly the trans community, and I got back on my feet- somehow. I had a large group of queer friends, and loved it. I fully went in on being the Best Trans Ally Possible, and constantly tried to be a part of activism and discourse.

Unfortunately, I was undersocialized, undereducated, and overenthusiastic. I didn't fully understand queer or gender theory. In my world, when my parents told me my sexuality was a choice and I wasn't born that way, they were absolutely being homophobic. I understood that no one should care if it's a choice or not, but it was still incredibly, vitally important to me that I was born that way.

On top of that, I already had an intense distrust of men bred by a lot of trauma. That distrust bred a lot of gender essentialism that I couldn't pull out of the gender binary. I felt like it was fundamentally true that men were the problem, and that women were inherently more trustworthy. And I really didn't know where nonbinary people fit in.

Then I got sucked down the ace exclusionist pipeline; the way the arguments were framed made sense to my really surface-level, liberal view of politics. This had me primed to exclude people –– to feel like only those that had been oppressed exactly like me were my community.

Then I realized I was attracted to my nonbinary friend. I immediately felt super guilty that I was seeing them as a woman. I started doing some googling (helped along by ace exclusionists on Tumblr) and found the lesfem community, which is basically radfem “lite”: lesbians who are "only same sex attracted". This made sense to me, and it made me feel so much less guilty for being attracted to my friend; it was packaged as "this is just our inherent, biological desire that is completely uncontrollable". It didn't challenge my status quo, it made me feel less guilty about being a lesbian, and it allowed me to have a "biological" reason for rejecting men.

I don't know how much dysphoria was playing into this, and it's something I will probably never know; all of this is just piecing together jumbled memories and trying to connect dots. I know at the time I couldn't connect to this trans narrative of "feeling like a woman". I couldn't understand what trans women were feeling. This briefly made me question whether I was nonbinary, but radfem ideas had already started seeping into my head and I'm sure I was using them to repress that dysphoria. That's all I can remember.

The lesfem community seeded gender critical ideas and larger radfem princples, including gender socialization, gender as completely meaningless, oppression as based on sex, and lesbian separatism. It made so much innate sense to me, and I didn't realize that was because I was conditioned by the far right from the moment of my birth. Of course women were just a biological class obligated to raise children: that is how I always saw myself, and I always wanted to escape it.

I tried to stay in the realms of TIRF (Trans-Inclusive Radical Feminist) and "gender critical" spaces, because I couldn't take the vitriol on so many TERF blogs. It took so long for me to get to the point where I began seeing open and unveiled transphobia, and I had already read so much and bought into so much of it that I thought that I could just ignore those parts.

In that sense, it was absolutely a pipeline for me. I thought I could find a "middle ground", where I could "center women" without being transphobic.

Slowly, I realized that the transphobia was just more and more disgustingly pervasive. Some of the trans men and butch women I looked up to left the groups, and it was mostly just a bunch of nasty people left. So I left.

After two years offline, I started to recognize I was never going to be a healthy person without dealing with my dysphoria, and I made my way back onto Tumblr over the pandemic. I have realized I'm trans, and so much of this makes so much more sense now. I now see how I was basically using gender essentialism to repress my identity and keep myself in the closet, how it was genuinely weaponized by TERFs to keep me there, and how the ace exclusionist movement primed me into accepting lesbian separatism- and, finally, radical feminism.

The Interview

You mentioned the lesfem community, gender criticals, and TIRFs, which I haven't heard about before- would you mind elaborating on what those are, and what kinds of beliefs they hold?

I think the lesfem community is recruitment for lesbians into the TERF community. Everything is very sanitized and "reasonable", and there's an effort not to say anything bad about trans women. The main focus was that lesbian = homosexual female, and you can't be attracted to gender, because you can't know someone's gender before knowing them; only their sex.

It seemed logical at the time, thinking about sex as something impermeable and gender as internal identity. The most talk about trans women I saw initially was just in reference to the cotton ceiling, how sexual orientation is a permanent and unchangeable reality. Otherwise, the focus was homophobia. This appealed to me, as I was really clinging to the "born this way" narrative.

This ended up being a gateway to two split camps - TIRFs and gender crits.

I definitely liked to read TIRF stuff, mostly because I didn't like the idea of radical feminism having to be transphobic. But TIRFs think that misogyny is all down to hatred of femininity, and they use that as a basis to be able to say trans women are "just as" oppressed.

Gender criticals really fought out against this, and pushed the idea that gender is fake, and misogyny is just sex-based oppression based on reproductive issues. They believe that the source of misogyny is the "male need to control the source of reproduction"- which is what finally made me think I had found the "source" of my confusion. That's why I ended up in gender critical circles instead of TIRF circles.

I'm glad, honestly, because the mask-off transphobia is what made me finally see the light. I wouldn't have seen that in TIRF communities.

I believed this in-between idea, that misogyny was "sex-based oppression" and that transphobia was also real and horrible, but only based on transition, and therefore a completely different thing. I felt that this was the "nuanced" position to take.

The lesfem community also used the fact that a lot of lesbians have partners who transition, still stay with their lesbian partners, and see themselves as lesbian- and that a lot of trans men still see themselves as lesbians. That idea is very taboo and talked down in liberal queer spaces, and I had some vague feelings about it that made me angry, too. I really appreciated the frank talk of what I felt were my own taboo experiences.

I think gender critical ideology also really exploited my own dysphoria. There was a lot of talk about how "almost all butches have dysphoria and just don't talk about it", and that made me feel so much less alone and was, genuinely, a big relief to me that I "didn't have to be trans".

Lesfeminism is essentially lesbian separatism dressed up as sex education. Lesfems believe that genitals exist in two separate categories, and that not being attracted to penises is what defines lesbians. This is used to tell cis lesbians, "dont feel bad as a lesbian if you're attracted to trans men", and that they shouldn’t feel "guilty" for not being attracted to trans women. They believe that lesbianism is not defined as being attracted to women, it is defined as not being attracted to men; which is a root idea in lesbian separatism as well.

Lesfems also believe that attraction to anything other than explicit genitals is a fetish: if you're attracted to flat chests, facial hair, low voices, etc., but don't care if that person has a penis or not, you're bisexual with a fetish for masculine attributes. Essentially, they believe the “-sexual” suffix refers to the “sex” that you are assigned at birth, rather than your attraction: “homosexual” refers to two people of the same sex, etc. This was part of their pushback to the ace community, too.

I think they exploited the issues of trans men and actively ignored trans women intentionally, as a way of avoiding the “TERF” label. Pronouns were respected, and they espoused a constant stream of "trans women are women, trans men are men (but biology still exists and dictates sexual orientation)" to maintain face.

They would only be openly transmisogynistic in more private, radfem-only spaces.

For a while, I didn’t think that TERFs were real. I had read and agreed with the ideology of these "reasonable" people who others labeled as TERFs, so I felt like maybe it really was a strawman that didn't exist. I think that really helped suck me in.

It sounds from what you said like radical feminism works as a kind of funnel system, with "lesfem" being one gateway leading in, and "TIRF" and "gender crit" being branches that lesfem specifically funnels into- with TERFs at the end of the funnel. Does that sound accurate?

I think that's a great description actually!

When I was growing up, I had to go to meetings to learn how to "best spread the word of god". It was brainwashing 101: start off by building a relationship, find a common ground. Do not tell them what you really believe. Use confusing language and cute innuendos to "draw them in". Prey on their emotions by having long exhausting sermons, using music and peer pressure to manipulate them into making a commitment to the church, then BAM- hit them with the weird shit.

Obviously I am paraphrasing, but this was framed as a necessary evil to not "freak out" the outsiders.

I started to see that same talk in gender critical circles: I remember seeing something to the effect of, "lesfem and gender crit spaces exist to cleanse you of the gender ideology so you can later understand the 'real' danger of it", which really freaked me out; I realized I was in a cult again.

I definitely think it's intentional. I think they got these ideas from evangelical Christianity, and they actively use it to spread it online and target young lesbians and transmascs. And I think gender critical butch spaces are there to draw in young transmascs who hate everything about femininity and womanhood, and lesfem spaces are there to spread the idea that trans women exist as a threat to lesbianism.

Do you know if they view TIRFs a similar way- as essentially prepping people for TERF indoctrination?

Yes and no.

I've seen lots of in-fighting about TIRFs; most TERFs see them as a detriment, worse than the "TRAs" themselves. I've also definitely seen it posed as "baby's first radfeminism". A lot of TIRFs are trans women, at least from what I've seen on Tumblr, and therefore are not accepted or liked by radfems. To be completely honest, I don't think they're liked by anyone. They just hate men.

TIRFs are almost another breed altogether; I don't know if they have ties to lesfems at all, but I do think they might've spearheaded the online ace exclusionist discourse. I think a lot of them also swallowed radfem ideology without knowing what it was, and parrot it without thinking too hard about how it contradicts with other ideas they have.

The difference is TIRFs exist. They're real people with a bizarre, contradictory ideology. The lesfem community, on the other hand, is a completely manufactured "community" of crypto-terfs designed specifically to indoctrinate people into TERF ideology.

Part of my interest in TIRFs here is that they seem to have a heavy hand in the way transmascs are treated by the trans community, and if you're right that they were a big part of ace exclusionism too they've had a huge impact on queer discourse as a whole for some time. It seems likely that Baeddels came out of that movement too.

Yes, there’s a lot of overlap. The more digging I did, the more I found that it's a smaller circle running the show than it seems. TIRFs really do a lot of legwork in peddling the ideology to outer queer community, who tend to see it as generic feminism.

TERFs joke a lot about how non-radfems will repost or reblog from TERFs, adding "op is a TERF”. They're very gleeful when people accept their ideology with the mask on. They think it means these people are close to fully learning the "truth", and they see it as further evidence they have the truth the world is hiding. I think it's important to speak out against radical feminism in general, because they’re right; their ideology does seep out into the queer community.

Do you think there's any "good" radical feminism?

No. It sees women as the ultimate victim, rather than seeing gender as a tool to oppress different people differently. Radical feminism will always see men as the problem, and it is always going to do harm to men of color, gay men, trans men, disabled men, etc.

Women aren't a coherent class, and radfems are very panicked about that fact; they think it's going to be the end of us all. But what's wrong with that? That's like freaking out that white isn't a coherent group. It reveals more about you.

It's kind of the root of all exclusionism, the more I think about it, isn't it? Just freaking out that some group isn't going to be exclusive anymore.

Radical feminists believe that women are inherently better than men.

For TIRFs, it's gender essentialism. For TERFs, its bio essentialism. Both systems are fundamentally broken, and will always hurt the groups most at risk. Centering women and misogyny above all else erases the root causes of bigotry and oppression, and it erases the intersections of race and class. The idea that women are always fundamentally less threatening is very white and privileged.

It also ignores how cis women benefit from gender norms just as cis men do, and how cis men suffer from gender roles as well. It’s a system of control where gender non-conformity is a punishable offense.

[goosedawn]

//Oh gods, welp, here I go [cracks knuckles]

//Tiny farmer Techno Au,,,, prepare for some future lore cjkhcxk

Timestamps from: "I Became the Mayor of Skyblock" by Technoblade

--

(5:39) "I decided to call in an old rival..." - Technoblade

Techno continues on with his life for days on, but finally, he somehow finds his way to society again, seeing that the entire town has been taken over by a tyrant of a mayor. The townspeople called for aid, and from the depths of his cold heart, he decided to help (....what do you mean he only did it so people would buy his potatoes-).

For a bit, he did his work by himself, only getting help from some other living scarecrows (listen, I really like the idea of some scarecrows coming alive [cough] PHIL [cough]), TimeDeo and Jyn (...? Is that how you spell their name?). (Dunno what the process for taking over the mayor would be exactly but,,, chchskdlcx,,,)

But you can only do so much work with... living scarecrows. With a bit of reluctance, he calls for help from SquidKid. And then together they defeat Dante :]

(Also, it's funny to think that the town has a mayor that they've never seen. All they know is that the previous mayor is gone, and the new one is pretty chill. /Lh)

--

(6:31) "Is there any way to do the teleport room without just like.. guessing?" - SquidKid

(6:36) "You are like... little baby, watch this." - Technoblade

-

Being tiny has its perks.

"Wait, what do you mean you can solve this maze in an hour or less?"

Techno turned towards the bigger hybrid, crossing his arms as he nonchalantly stared up at them. SquidKid only gives him a baffled look back, their tentacle-like hair slightly sprung up to further show their confusion.

He knows this only because he's known the man for far longer than they've known him.

He knows more personal information than should be shared, somehow finding the other farmer's parent's numbers along with a few other things. He had jokingly pocketed away the parent's number in the back of his mind, although, he had no real plans of ever using it. Well, maybe he had played with the idea of calling SquidKid's parents to dunk on the fact that a wild borrower had been winning their competition, but he ultimately decided not to for obvious reasons.

He knows the hybrid's schedule like the back of his hand, having to work around it for the better part of an entire year. Using that knowledge, he had sabotaged countless of SquidKid's tools, poking small, unnoticeable holes into their hoses and irrigation systems.

And he knows SquidKid's behavior from how they speak to how they express any sort of emotion. Lies were easily debunked from the small twitch of the corner of their mouth as they suppressed a smile, and anger was easily shown from how their strange hair pieces would spike up.

Yet, he can't help but feel slightly at unease in front of them. He supposes it's only natural, seeing that there's a huge height difference between them. Plus, this was practically the first time they've been closer than two fields of length in between them. Well, disregarding the times he's gone snooping around the bigger farmer's place, but that's neither here nor there.

"Squid, look at me," he raises his hand, gesturing towards himself, "I'm tiny, yes?" the squid hybrid nodded slowly, and he pointed at the stalks of tall fern and crop, "to you, this would basically be a wall you can't get through. For me, though...."

He jumped off his perch, tightly holding his trusty bag and sliding towards the flora before easily disappearing behind the thicket and appearing moments later at eye level, holding the stalk of the crops easily,

"It's easy to go through."

SquidKid makes a quiet 'oh' sound with another nod of their head, looking slightly in awe. The amazed look turns to one of confusion again, though, and he awaited their next question with a raised eyebrow, "but... the maze is big, how are you going to get through it all without tiring?"

Techno grinned, lifting a hand to his mouth and loudly whistling. He doesn't hesitate to slide back to the floor as a blur of white fur bounds towards him.

"Carl!" he exclaims, wrapping his hands around the rabbit's fluffy neck and combing through the fur with his fingers. He backs away to pull out a broken-off piece of a carrot, feeding it to the eager bunny before turning towards the astonished squid hybrid with a grin, "my noble steed," he waves a hand towards the still feeding rabbit.

"You tamed a rabbit," they dumbly point out, having to metaphorically pick up their jaw off of the floor.

"Yup, I did. you can stop gawking now," he huffed, "you're going to catch a bug with your mouth if you keep your mouth wide open."

"...And you named it Carl?"

"What kind of question is that?" he snorts, shaking his head, "yes, I named him Carl, and yes he's going to be the one helping me through the maze. Any other silly questions?"

The man stumbles over their words for a second, and he amusedly watches from below, "I- yeah, yeah, you bozo," they finally settle on saying.

"Alright, cool, I'm going to go find the exit now," he turns away from the hybrid, climbing on the back of the rabbit's back, "see you there."

He doesn't give SquidKid the chance to respond, already setting off through the thicket. And he sure doesn't suppress the grin that crawls up his face as Carl bounds past stalks and stalks of crops.

Having distracted SquidKid enough to get away, the bigger farmer had barely thought to ask how they themselves would traverse the maze.

They must have realized soon enough, though, since not seconds later, he hears a strangled yell of his name along with a loud groan.

--

Pain, it's been too long since I've written something /Lh

--

"(Also, it's funny to think that the town has a mayor that they've never seen. All they know is that the previous mayor is gone, and the new one is pretty chill. /Lh)"

When the townspeople come to greet the new mayor, they come thinking that it's SquidKid who's done everything since it's always been SquidKid going into town and doing the talking- the scarecrows being unable to do so for obvious reasons, and Techno unable to do so without revealing his entire existence.

So when the sheepish farmer calmly explains that he's just a helper of the mayor, they're... rightfully confused. At first, they want to know the real identity of the mayor, but SquidKid wearily tries explaining that said mayor really doesn't want to be revealed. They only conceded when he shakily points to the unknown farmer's territory, most of them getting the message.

Techno is very thankful that SquidKid doesn't take his title and also doesn't reveal his existence.

-

"It would have been so easy for the squid hybrid to just pluck his tiny form from their back pocket and shove the wrathful spotlight onto him.

He wasn't even able to even escape now as he found himself stuck in the hybrid's pocket. The crowd had come quickly after SquidKid had removed the other mayor for him, and he remembered feeling panicked as he stared at the other hybrid. The next thing he knew, he was shoved into their pocket.

He couldn't get out without tumbling to the ground with a splat, and, even worse, the possibility of one of the townspeople pointing him out with gossip-drinking eyes was incredibly high too.

He shakily gulped, greedily taking the air around him as he tried to stay calm. He never liked being near anyone- not even the scarecrows - so the second-hand contact with his past rival was not the finest experience.

"I- uhm," the squid hybrid stumbled over their words, "t-the mayor really would rather not... have the entire town to greet them.."

The crowd hushedly mumbled to each other, and one straggler called out, "well, tell them to come out anyway!"

By the Blood God, he hated this. He shrunk to the bottom of the pocket. This was one of the worst worries for a borrower; he had already been pushing his limit with the scarecrows and SquidKid, but this was another level for him.

"...Uh, well, in that case," he felt SquidKid shift, and a hand brushed over his pocket. He tenses, waiting for the fingers to tug him out and waiting for SquidKid to finally prove that they're not as kind as they look, for them to finally get some semblance of petty revenge.

"You can find them over there." He pauses, confused to as why there's no hand reaching down for him. The words finally dawn on him, and he's both relieved and perplexed to what SquidKid could have meant by that.

But hatever they've done has made the crowd fall unnaturally silent, and so he's at least a little relieved for that too.

The same voice that was brave enough to speak before pipes up, "you mean the ghost farmer?"

....He didn't know that the townspeople had come up with a name for him, but he's suddenly thankful that he's gained enough popularity that people stop and gawk.

"Y...Yes," SquidKid slowly acknowledges the villager, "they were the one orchestrating all of this. I was just helping with the... talking parts," the hybrid is silent for a moment before they burst into a stammering mess,

"And- uh, I-I should take my leave now, b-because I should really h-head back and ch-check up on them," he feels the bigger farmer start to take a few steps back, supposedly away from the crowd, "I'll answer any questions later!"

He has to push against the fabric to keep himself from bouncing around in the pocket as SquidKid starts running. He faintly hears the townspeople shout for the male, but it's muffled through the fabric.

As it starts to seem as if the squid hybrid would never stop running, they finally start to slow down, their breaths coming out labored and airy.

He doesn't speak up for a moment, letting the other regain themselves first. When they finally seem well enough, he speaks up,

"That's the best you can come up with?"

--

chKFCHKDSJFSDF oh my Primes, this is so LONG,,,, I have no idea how to write SquidKid,,,, plus, I had no idea how to like,,, oOGHgds,f,, pain.

Anyways, hope you had fun reading ALL of this cchjxcvxkdsf,,,

AAUBHJDUHFJHBFNDKUFHN WENDYYY /POS

i dont have anything to add this is just fantastic,,,,, DEO AND JIYN AS SCARECROWS AS WELL,,, FBJHDKUHSJHHDV,,,,,, i love that techno gets to have Carl still 🥺🥺🥺 and him leaving squidkid on the other side of the maze??? FHJBDJNJKBF

ALSO 🥺 squid protecting techno and not telling people abt him,,,,, aaajfhkdojfh good,, i also appreciate that everyone in the village just has to be like. "the ghost farmer is mayor????... well this isnt the weirdest thing thats happened to me"

SQUIDKID RUNNING AWAY,,,, "ill answer any questions later" djhshhjhjhbhbfhdjhbe

*holds this gently* aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa i adore

[shepard-ram]

Hello I'm light anon and i bring you the first chapter of an au i started awhile ago with the help of Ender anon (hi love you/p) , the supernatural au named Abnormalities and its very long

Abnormalities

Chapter One - Phasmophobia 2.5k words

:readmore:

“Prove it then.” 

Of course, Sap and Dream’s arguments always lead to some sort of challenge. Ever since you met them in middle school, it’s been like that. Sap would say something, Dream would fire back because Sap was clearly wrong in his eyes, and it would spiral from there. Today’s topic of debate: The existence of the paranormal. Specifically, ghosts.

What sparked it? A cheesy horror film you picked out for the monthly movie night. Your stereotypical ghost film with lazy jump scares with bad effects and acting.you only bought it so you four could laugh at it. You Guys laud sprawled on the couch while Sap took up the floor. All was well, Until Sap proclaimed that real ghosts wouldn’t be that shitty. Dream, heavily disagreed that ghosts even existed. George didn’t take a side but you backed Sap up. The world is to weird not to have ghosts in it.

”Oh absolutely.” Sap nodded, agreeing with your assessment.

Dream rolled his eyes “Sure, sure, just how are you going to prove me wrong? There isn’t a ‘haunted building’ anywhere in town.”

 At that moment George decided to speak up “What about the old willbeck farm?, the one a couple miles out of town. I always heard it was haunted by a kid or something.”

“That stupid place?  Those were just stories are parents told us to keep us from trespassing.”

You shrugged. “It’s a start.”

Next thing you know, you and sap blew your paychecks on ghost hunting equipment. You ordered the basics, an EMF meter, a good camera, a thermometer, you even bought a ‘Spirit box’ and some smudge sticks, all too spite Dream who complained that you were being scammed. 

You both ended up begging George to use his car to load up your equipment as he was the only one to have a large enough car for your equipment. He relented after a day of relentless begging. 

The Willbeck farm was a 40 minute drive from your home, which left a lot of room for discussion.

“You three are idiots.” 

You leaned forward to poke your head over the passenger seat. “You didn’t have to come, you know. You could have stayed back and do boring things like dressing up patches or something.”

He turned his head with narrowed eyes. “And make sure you guys didn’t fake your ‘proof?’ Not a chance.”

You laugh. “You’ll be the first one we feed to the ghosts.”

You bickered back and forth until George announced that they had finally made it. Not even seconds after he pulled into the clearing in front of the property, you and Sap practically kept out of the car and rushed to the trunk to get your gear. After distributing equipment amounts your group you took your first look at the house

The Farmhouse was much larger than you remembered reading about. It was a huge two story red building with a faded white trim. The word around it looked like it had been rotting for years and it definitely smelt like rot. AMany of the windows were broken in, and the glass was a gross brown color. The roof had some holes in it and the gutters had been ripped from the roof and laid scattered around the outside. A large barn was off to the side and had the same kind of wear to it. The entire property was surrounded by a torn up wire fencing, which had a lot of crows perched, eyeing you intensely. The Erie feeling the house gave off was intensified by the soft sound of the wind and the loud crow caws. 

If houses had a criteria to be haunted, this one checked off all the boxes

Sap let out a low whistle before lightly nudging your arm “Dude, this place makes your home look tiny!”

You scoffed at that. Sure your rented home was small, but was cheap enough to pay for while you worked your way through community college. A one bedroom, one bath, a combined kitchen/living space, all on top of a double garage was all you needed. 

It was a slow walk to the porch, all of you hesitant to actually set foot in the run down building. The steps creaked under you, and the wooden boards sunk slightly. You were at the head of the group, so you were the first one inside, taking a couple steps in the large foyer. It was full of outdated furniture, something you’d see out of the early 90’s. A large staircase sat to the left, hugging the wall as it pushed into the upstairs.  There was a door to your right, leading into what you believe was the kitchen.

You held the camera up and you got a good shot of the room, if there were no ghosts you’d at least have some cool photos.

The four of you spread out into  the room observing every corner of it. Sapnap was the one armed with the EMF reader. He waved the hand held device trying to get something, anything to read. He did manage to get one, honing onto a stuffed cow that was nestled into the couch.

It was dusty, like everything else in the room. Otherwise it was in semi good condition. It was... cute. Too cute to just be sitting in this old farmhouse for the rest of time. Dream had other opinions.

“That means nothing. It’s just a cow.” 

To be fair, it was the first time either of you had used this kind of equipment. You decided to put it in your bag, hoping to study it later. It could be a fluke, but you guys couldn’t bow down now!  The hunt has only just begun.

Every room on the first floor was subject to an EMF and Temperature checks. Dream and George fucked around while you and Sap scanned for anything that could be more than a fluke, the only thing that could be found was in the kitchen. A small carved statue of a crow.

It gave off the same readings as the cow plush, so perhaps it wasn’t a fluke. You found it sitting on the open windowsill, it was so life-like you almost mistake it for a living crow. Something was telling you that it was probably the oldest thing in the house. You gently placed it in your bag with the cow, another piece to your growing collection.

You took a moment to glance out the window. There were way too many crows sitting on the wire fence to be normal. It was the beginning of summer, so crows even migrate?

With the first floor cleared, you lead the charge upstairs. The floor boards only got louder with every step. You quietly asked whatever prime deity was watching that neither of your group would fall through the floor. The whole house felt unstable.

The top of the stairs lead you to a Hallway. It was small and only had two doors and at the end of it stood a large magnificent bookshelf.

You took the first door on the left accompanied by George while Sap and Dream opted to poke around in the hallway, formally splitting the group for the first time.

The room wasn’t very Large, nor could you tell what it was supposed to be used for as pretty much everything was covered with sheets of some kind. There were a couple of uncovered boxes laying on top of things, so it wasn’t completely boring. A couple of minutes of scavenging later, George called for your attention.

“Look at this” George presented you a beautiful lute from one of the few uncovered boxes. It was crafted out of a dark wood and had what you thought was engravings of fish along the sides. How old was this thing? Was it even usable?

“Let me see!” You asked, setting down the camera before making a grabby motion towards the lute, which was met with a questioning look from the Brit. “I want to see if it’s in tune.” 

He decided that it was a good enough answer before handing over the old thing. You strummed the strings, and it sounded surprisingly good, despite the cloud of dust that came off it. You paused for a brief moment before playing a quick melody, just a song you played back in middle school for a recital. You hummed along until yelps from outside and many thumps. 

You quickly set the Lute down and follow George out the door, fearing that something had gotten your two friends. However, instead of a gory mess, you saw Dream standing holding a book, while a whole pile of them at his feet, a few inches away from the bookshelf. 

“The shelves just collapsed on themselves.” He quietly said. The look on his face was puzzled, like he was still trying to figure out what had happened. 

“Or maybe,” Sap started. “The ghost doesn’t like you touching his stuff.”

“I’m keeping it then, the ghost doesn’t need it.” 

“What’s the title of it?” You asked as you fake over to view the damage. Dream opened the book and flipped through it. 

“It’s old, There isn’t a title nor is it in English, old English I think.”

What was such an old book doing in a relatively modern house? You shake the thought away and motioned for Dream to give it to you. “I’ll hold onto it, I want to see if I can get it translated.” Another treasure for your growing collection.

You turned back to check on George, he wasn’t next to you, instead he was messing with the final door, seeming to unjam the lock and push into the room. You decided to grab the lute and take it as a keepsake.

Picking it up again made your head feel... loud. You couldn’t tell which thoughts were yours and which were intruding. A pair of eyes were watching you somehow but the room was empty. Panic rose in your chest, your heart was beating so so loud. A cold hand touched your shoulders, yet you couldn’t tell if it meant you harm or not.

“Hey... are you okay?”

And it stopped. Everything was clear again. You turned your head to look back seeing Sap poke his head through the door. “You’ve been standing here for a while.”

You nod, “Yeah yeah... we should- we should stop splitting up.”

You’d only find out later that the Lute has the same effects that the other two objects did.

The house search was a bit of a bust. The only ‘Supernatural’ experience you had was the EMF meter going off and the strange experience with the lute which you opted not to tell your friends about, writing off as the Erie nature of the house getting to you.

Finding nothing else interesting, you took one last look at the entrance room before stepping out. You feel a weird sense of longing, something pulling at you not to go. You tried to shake off the feeling and you walked back to the car, just to put all your goodies away in the trunk. 

All that was left on your to-do list was to check the outside area and the barn. Being the person that you are, you went straight to the barn. They boys could handle the rest of the property alone. alone  The building had no doors you waltzed right though the entryway. Despite never actually being in a barn, it looked right to you.

It was devoid of any livestock, but there was Hay everywhere. Light shined through the holes in the ceiling, making the room clear enough. The soft blue liquid that was spread across the hay-

Wait. What?

Doing a second take revealed that the whole barn has some weird blue goo smeared everywhere. It looked too Fresh to be painted, it looked wet. There didn’t seem to be a set trail, just pools of it. You found most of it by a ladder that led up to a new section of the barn.

The blue substance was dripping from the loft of the barn. 

It had to be.

And you were right! Sort of. Finally dragging yourself up the old latter not really minding the blue that now stained your clothes, you found the source.

He was standing- floating?- there, as if waiting for someone. The man was tall, taller than you or any of their friends, absolutely towering over you. His entire pallet was muted, his skin was fucking Grey. His attire was strange too. Something out of a renaissance fair. What was the strangest was that he was translucent and bleeding? Out of a cut on his chest. That blue substance oozing out of his stomach onto the floor boards.

He smiled.

“You found me, little songbird.”

The temperature drop had you shivering, but that also could have been from the absolute terror of seeing a real ghost.

That loud feeling returned in full force, directing your attention onto him.. You had to go. But it was like you were frozen place. He moved to cup your face, cooing as he looked you over.

“It’s not polite to touch things that aren’t yours, yet you handle them with so much care... I don’t mind.”

He wasn’t acting out of malice, thank prime, but It didn’t make it any less uncomfortable. He was too close.

“.... pretty songbird. My pretty songbird.”

A beat past before you could hear your friends calling for you. Your head cleared for a moment so you took it and ran. Practically flying down the ladder and hurting yourself in the fall. Ignoring the pain you booked it to the car right past Dream and Sap, who were standing by the entrance to the barn.

“We- We have to go. Now. Please we need to... to...” you couldn’t really tell what you were saying, everything was moving too fast. Great Prime, that was a real ghost. You- You were talking to a ghost. A Ghost called you a Song bird. 

A Ghost.

That ended your hunt right there and then. You weren’t in a fit state to keep going. Especially not when you’re covered in... whatever this blue stuff is. You’d come to find later that you had a blue hand print on your face, right where the man had cradled your face.

You’re so out of it, you don’t realize when your friends are guiding you up the stairs to your home. One of them says something about leaving the loot in your garage, but you don’t really care. This is a future problem. You give a small thank you and a swift goodbye before passing out the second you feel your pillow under you.

So deep in sleep you don’t realize that your tiny home has a few new residents wandering about. 

Or the fact that one of them watched over you as you slept

-----------

I AM SIMPLY ASHAMED OF HOW LONG IVE BEEN PUTTING THIS OFF IT WAS A CRINE TO NOT LET Y'ALL SEE THIS EARLIER. LIGHT YOU'VE DONE A FANTASTIC JOB AAUAUGGG

[shepherds-of-haven]

So I follow MANY interactive fiction blogs and I just have to say that you're my favorite by a long shot because I just love answers that you give in response to hypothetical scenarios and AU's for your characters. Like you actually put in effort and give well-thought out answers, so I thank you for that. As for AU's I have one of my own if you don't mind please. What would be the RO's for a murder mystery a la Cluedo? Bonus points that they can't leave the mansion for extra chaos. Thank you!

Ah, thank you so much for your kind words! 💖 I'm lucky to be a part of such a great community of talented creatives and kind, genuinely awesome people! Interacting with readers is such a pleasure, even if I do fall behind on messages and such I'm so sorry

I'm in North America, so I was genuinely like "what on Earth is Cluedo" gkljglfdjgd only because it's called Clue where I'm from! But I, uh, never played it, so I'm just going to go off of my knowledge from Knives Out 😂

SETTING: a Southern Gothic mansion in an undisclosed location, owned by a woman only referred to in jest as The Autarch by her adopted children. It is a stately manor, richly furnished and glittering with wealth, though imposing and dark-windowed during storms.

CONTEXT: a powerful and wealthy tycoon referred to only as "The Autarch" or "The Iron Lady" was once feared across the country for her ruthless business dealings and formidable empire. In her middle age, a mysterious experience and the sudden death of her husband caused her to have a change of heart, abruptly abandoning her empire to her only son and devoting her life to adopting six orphan children. However, stopping her business dealings did not completely change her personality: she was a hard, unforgiving woman, and her relationships to her children (now all grown) can be described as "strained" at best.

In her declining age, the lonely Autarch in her high mansion somehow came to befriend a psychic by the name of Mimir of the Silver Eye. Only the servants were witness to what was said between them, and even then, they never had the full story. The most that anyone knew was that the Autarch began to express more interest in resuming her business activities again, to the disconcertion of her only biological son, Enik, who had helmed the empire on his own for the last twenty years. Meanwhile, Mimir moved into the mansion to keep her older friend company, and to help advise her on matters both business and personal.

One stormy night, the Autarch calls all 7 of her children back home in order to discuss matters of great importance, including her decisions about her will. Some came eagerly, and others with great reluctance--there were arguments had that were years in coming, and there were private talks between siblings who hadn't interacted in years. But the matter that the Autarch was keen to discuss was postponed: the storm knocked out the power in the mansion, and all turned into bed, sleeping fitfully in rooms they'd abandoned decades earlier.

They never discovered why the Autarch had called them to their old haunting grounds, either, for in the morning, she was found with a knife buried in her heart.

CHARACTERS:

- Riel Syndran. A world-famous private detective and consultant famed across the world for his ability to solve any mystery, no matter how old or tangled. He is known for being comfortable with ruthlessly manipulating interrogation subjects and suspects in order to extract the truth and solve his case no matter what; this obsession and willingness to massage the rules--although he claims the truth is his only goal, above all other things--is what makes him unsuitable for conventional police work, but his results speak for themselves. He arrives on the mansion's doorstep mere minutes after the Autarch is found murdered and is claimed to have been hired by an anonymous party, casting suspicion on his timing and the pre-planned nature of the death. His signature move is being recognized by various people as "the detective who solved the Apple Killer case" (or some other famous case of his) and replying in irritable tones that it was actually "the Orange Killer case, but you were close". He abhors smoking and has doctorates in body language analysis and psychology, as well as a law degree, and is gifted with a photographic memory. He picks invisible lint off of his sleeves while he thinks.

- Blade Bronwyn. An FBI agent (think Agent Cooper in Twin Peaks) who has been in the town of Old Haven investigating a string of serial killings across the country. He hears about the murder of the Autarch from the local police and arrives at the manor a mere hour after they were alerted, keen to investigate the murder as part of his ongoing case. He plays the straight man to Riel's more eccentric detection methods, and is seen more as a serious, by-the-books rule-follower determined to get answers. The suspects in the manor find him to be emotionally-insensitive, blunt, and grim-faced. He has a better sense of smell and sight than Riel does, as well as more combat experience, and is the only person in the manor acknowledged to be carrying a weapon. He takes his coffee black and very strong.

- Enik Goldenson. The Autarch's only biological child and the oldest. He was granted full control of her holdings and business empire when she retired in order to focus on raising her new family. He has made his disdain of his adopted siblings very clear, not least because he resents having to share his future inheritance with them. He has historically been a bully and cruel towards his mother. Rumor had it that he was once studying to become a priest. He has avoided returning to the mansion ever since Trouble knocked his lights out at fourteen years of age. He was once briefly engaged to fellow heiress Lavinet Naveen, who eventually spurned him, finding him "repulsive." He has the most bad blood among anyone in the family and is considered one of the prime suspects in the Autarch's murder, as it was possible that she may planned to cut him out of the will. Blade places his suspect status as RED while Riel believes he is at an ORANGE: Enik may be far too clever to kill his own mother under such suspicious and bloody circumstances.

- Trouble Alder. The first of the Autarch's adopted children, he was once an urchin running a street-fighting racket on the streets of New Haven. He was nicknamed Trouble for his surly temper and quick ability to get into fights and settle things with his fists, necessitating being sent off to a military boarding school in an effort to curb his violent tendencies as a teenager. He is extremely protective of his other adopted siblings, and while he resented the Autarch in his youth, he has begrudgingly come to respect her more for taking him in as an adult. He now works as a decorated sniper in the military and is working to earn his pilot's wings. The revelation that he kept military weapons in his room casts suspicion on him as a murder suspect, though Riel quickly dismisses him as not being a good enough liar to get away with it.

- Tallys Ironwood. The second of the Autarch's adopted children, she made her hatred of the old woman very well known, and had an even poorer relationship with her than Enik did. Tallys's parents were victims in an accident caused by one of the Autarch's manufacturing plants, and she has always felt that her subsequent adoption was mere lip service to atonement for the Autarch, while she would have rather stayed with her more impoverished aunts and uncles. She ran away multiple times in her youth and has not spoken to the Autarch since she was 18. Her overt hatred and reluctance in coming back to the mansion casts suspicion on her as a murder suspect. She has a degree in plant science and works as an environmental activist, particularly targeting products and campaigns by Enik's company, creating unspeakable friction between them.

- Ayla Aescar. The third of the Autarch's adopted children, nothing is known about her biological parents. She was adopted from a neighboring country and has since returned to it as an adult, making an effort to reconnect with her origins and culture. Her relationship with "the old woman," as she calls her, was more neutral, though it comes out that the Autarch frequently bailed her out in secret whenever Ayla ran into trouble, such as trespassing on Jalis government grounds. Nominally, she works as a photographer for a travel magazine, but secretly, she is an investigative photojournalist looking into various covert practices by the Jalis government. This brings up a question of whether the Autarch's killing was political, and whether it was actually meant for Ayla.

- Chase Trinaeste. The fourth of the Autarch's adopted children, it's joked that he was intended to replace Trouble when he was sent off to boarding school due to having a more charming personality and sweeter face. However, he ended up being the most troublesome one of the bunch, having multiple run-ins with the law from a young age and displaying various tendencies towards larceny, grand theft auto, and more. He had no shame about stealing and pawning off valuables from the mansion and was a well-known skirt-chaser, leading to constant stress in their household about what he was getting up to when he snuck out of the house at night. At eighteen, he disappeared from the mansion, and no one has heard from him in the intervening years since. He completely ducks any questions from Riel or Blade about what he does for a living, leading most to conclude that he has gotten himself deeper entrenched in the criminal underworld. This has cast obvious suspicion on him and his involvement in the murder, as he was known to steal from the Autarch herself. He seems to feel some measure of loyalty and possibly remorse towards his adopted siblings, but hides it well under a polished veneer of charm and casual swagger.

- Briony Stormbreaker. The fifth of the Autarch's adopted children In a dramatic fashion, she was discovered as a young child swept away in a huge flood caused by a storm, with no ability to communicate (or seemingly remember) anything about where she could have lived or who her family was. She was subsequently adopted by the Autarch and is one of the few who had a fairly good relationship with her, always expressing gratitude for giving her a home and family (though this brought her into conflict with siblings like Tallys, as she usually tried to defend the Autarch when she wasn't there to speak for herself). She was the sibling who always tried to unite the others, and their constant arguments and conflicts constantly broke her heart. She was an easily-upset child who tended to be babied by Trouble and Chase, but after constantly bullying from Croelle and Enik, she toughened up and began taking martial arts classes, abruptly displaying her own ferocious temper and violent streak as well as unusually powerful physical strength. She currently works as a passionate public prosecutor. She was heard conversing with the Autarch privately with raised voices, on the night of the murder, and is known to sleepwalk during violent storms. She even had a phase with an imaginary, sword-shaped friend as a child, as well as repeatedly claimed that she's seen ghosts in the manor. This perceived paranoia has led some to wonder whether she could have harmed the Autarch in her sleep. As Riel says, "It's always the nice ones." Blade: "Not in my experience." Riel: "Not in mine, either, but in some continuity, it must be true."

- Croelle. The last of the Autarch's adopted children. He was by far the most anti-social and troubled part of the family, refusing to speak to those he deemed beneath him and breaking Trouble's arm in a disturbing display of dominance as youths. Unlike Enik, his cruelty is more ruthless and matter-of-fact, the way an animal might treat another animal, rather than pointed and manipulative. Regardless, he was a terror to all of the other siblings, and he was eventually thrown in juvenile detention (and later prison) for killing members of a gang, seemingly in self-defense. However, he never cared to divulge the full details of the story, and has been serving his sentence ever since. No one besides the Autarch knew that he was coming until they arrived at the manor. Croelle claims that he and the Autarch had been exchanging letters for the last few years, and that he has begrudgingly allowed her back into his life, which was why she decided to invite him to this gathering upon his release from prison. However, there is currently no evidence that any such letters exist. As an adult, he is currently quieter and more mellow and has shown no particular proclivity towards violence, but there is always a sense of danger lurking in his eye regardless. His social skills have not improved by much. He is considered one of the absolute top suspects for the old woman's murder. His feelings on his adopted siblings or really anything are extremely unknown. He keeps asking everyone about free will, which annoys everyone except Riel.

- Shery Acquell. A longtime maid for the Autarch and one of her closest friends and confidantes. She alone has been caring for the Autarch in her declining health, ensuring that she has been receiving the proper medical care and dietary attentions, and even reading her books in the evenings. Their closeness has led some to speculate that the Autarch may have bequeathed a part of her inheritance to the maid, or that perhaps Shery was motivated to ingratiate herself to the Autarch to attain said inheritance. She was the last person to see the Autarch before her death, knows something about what transpired between her and Mimir, and ultimately reluctantly admits that she believes in the ghosts that Briony has seen, too.

- Halek Prince. The manor's live-in chef. He is one of the few non-family members staying in the mansion the night of the murder, and suspicion is cast on him when his cooking seemingly gives Ayla, Briony, and Red an allergy attack, leading some to posit attempts at poisoning. Mimir claims to have seen him in places where he shouldn't be or even couldn't be, and he is generally someone viewed as a good suspect for the murder. Riel thinks something else is going on here.

- Red Antiqua. Ayla's journalist partner who accompanied her to the mansion, partly to serve as a buffer for the family awkwardness and partly because he was curious to learn more about the reclusive Autarch. Nominally, he is a travel writer, but secretly, he is working as the same kind of investigative journalist that she is. His secret photographs of the manor prove to be a key piece of evidence in uncovering the murder suspect. He is forced to be confined to the manor, the same as everyone else, to prevent information leaks or runaways. He uncovers a secret doorway in his room and is too curious not to duck into it...

- Caine Tavadon. The son of the manor's groundskeeper, he is often seen with his dog, peeping into the windows of the manor because he's incorrigibly nosy. His witness statements lead Blade and Riel to key footprints on the grounds. He claims to have seen a strange figure staring down at him from the windows of the mansion before.

- Prihine Naveen. Enik's current fiancee, she accompanied him on this odious visit to his mother's manor and is a witness in the proceedings. Although they can barely tolerate each other, their shared ambitions for wealth and power keep them together as a polite though distant couple. A file in the Autarch's study reveals that she has been watching Prihine for some time and discovered that she was having a secret affair. The file indicates that she planned to tell Enik face-to-face, leading others to speculate that Prihine may have murdered the old woman in order to preserve her engagement. Enik remarks that there was a period of time where Prihine was not in bed.

- Lavinet Naveen. Prihine's older cousin, and Enik's ex-fiancee. They've technically known each other since they were children and were schoolmates at the same prestigious institution. The Autarch and Lavinet's father initially had designs to marry the two to forge a powerful alliance between their business empires. However, Lavinet quickly backed out of the engagement, finally admitting that she couldn't stand Enik and would never marry him. Although this has generally caused relations between the two families to become frosty, she has strangely remained on good terms with the Autarch herself, who always admired Lavinet's chutzpah and steely will. (This was just another reason for Enik to hate his own mother.) Lavinet was free to come and go to the manor as she pleased, and dropped in on the Autarch once every few months, as her family's manor is nearby. She only recently discovered that her own cousin, Prihine, is now engaged to her ex, and rushed over on the night of the murder in order to dissuade Prihine from the marriage or convince the Autarch to put a stop to it. This led to a four-way argument (between Lavinet, Prihine, Enik, and his mother) of epic proportions, meaning that Lavinet is not clear on suspicions of murder, either.

- Mimir. The psychic who somehow came into contact with the Autarch and began to convert her to the ways of the supernatural. She has been the Autarch's closest friend and confidant for months, even going so far as to move into the mansion. Many point out the obvious designs on the Autarch's inheritance and possible sinister intentions for taking advantage of the older woman, especially since no one but Shery knows what Mimir has actually advised the Autarch to do. However, Riel points out that there has been no traceable financial irregularities when it comes to Mimir; the Autarch doesn't seem to have paid her for her services, only providing Mimir with food and a roof over her head. The psychic speaks in extremely cryptic tones and lapses into trance-like states. Riel in particular scorns her for her supposedly psychic abilities, insisting that she is a fraud, until she comments on aspects of his past that no one could possibly know, shaking him. She is a prime suspect for the murder until it's discovered that Mimir insists on being locked into a windowless room, only being released by Shery in the morning, to protect herself from the ghosts that haunt the grounds...

[xoruffitup]

Annette: The AD Devotee Review

So I saw Annette on its premiere night in Cannes and I’m still trying to process and make sense of those 2.5 hours of utter insanity. I have no idea where to begin and this is likely going to become an unholy length by the time I’m finished, so I apologize in advance. But BOY I’ve got a lot to parse through!!

Let’s start here: Adam’s made plenty of weird movies. The Dead Don’t Die? The Man Who Killed Don Quixote? There are definitely Terry Gilliam-esque elements of the unapologetically absurd and fantastical in Annette, but NOTHING comes close to this film. To put it bluntly, nothing I write in this post can prepare you for the eccentric phantasmagoria you’re about to sit through.

While the melodies conveying the story – at times lovely and haunting, at times whimsical, occasionally blunt and simple – add a unique sense of the surreal, the fact that it’s all presented in song somehow supplies the medium for this bizarre concoction of disparate elements and outlandish storytelling to all coalesce into a single genre-defying, disbelief-suspending whole. That’s certainly not to say there weren’t a few times when I quietly chortled to myself and mouthed “what the fuck” from behind my mask when things took an exceeding turn to the outrageous. This movie needs to be permitted a bit of leeway in terms of quality judgments, and traditional indicators certainly won’t apply. I would say part of its appeal (and ultimately its success) stems from its lack of interest in appealing to traditional arbiters of film structure and viewing experience. The movie lingers in studies of discomfiture (I’ll return to this theme); it presents all its absurdities with brazen pride rather than temperance; and its end is abrupt and utterly jarring. Yet somehow, at the end of it, I realized I’d been white-knuckling that rollercoaster ride the whole way through and loved every last twist and turn.

A note on the structure of this post before I dive in: I’ve written out a synopsis of the whole film (for those spoiler-hungry people) and stashed it down at the bottom of this post, so no one trying to avoid spoilers has to scroll through. If you want to read, go ahead and skip down to that before reading the discussion/analysis. If I have to reference a specific plot point, I’ll label it “Spoiler #___” and those who don’t mind being spoiled can check the correlating numbers in my synopsis to see which part I’m referencing. Otherwise, my discussion will be spoiler-free! I do detail certain individual scenes, but hid anything that would give away key developments and/or the ending.

To start, I’ll cut to what I’m sure many of you are here for: THE MUSICAL SEX SCENES. You want detailed descriptions? Well let’s fucking go because these scenes have been living in my head rent-free!!

The first (yes, there are two. Idk whether to thank Mr. Carax or suggest he get his sanity checked??) happens towards the end of “We Love Each Other So Much.” Henry carries Ann to the bed with her feet dangling several inches off the floor while she has her arms wrapped around his shoulders. (I maybe whimpered a tiny bit.) As they continue to sing, you first see Ann spread on her back on the bed, panting a little BUT STILL SINGING while Henry’s head is down between her thighs. The camera angle is from above Ann’s head, so you can clearly see down her body and exactly what’s going on. He lifts his head to croon a line, then puts his mouth right back to work. 

And THEN they fuck – still fucking singing! They’re on their sides with Henry behind her, and yes there is visible thrusting. Yes, the thrusting definitely picks up speed and force as the song reaches its crescendo. Yes, it was indeed EXTREMELY sensual once you got over the initial shock of what you’re watching. Ann kept her breasts covered with her own hands while Henry went down on her, but now his hands are covering them and kneading while they’re fucking and just….. It’s a hard, blazing hot R rating. I also remember his giant hand coming up to turn her head so he can kiss her and ladkjfaskfjlskfj. Bring your smelling salts. I don’t recommend sitting between two older ladies while you’re watching – KINDA RUINED THE BLATANT, SMOKING HOT ADAM PORN FOR ME. Good god, choose your viewing buddy wisely!

The second scene comes sort of out of nowhere – I can’t actually recall which song it was during, but it pops up while Ann is pregnant. Henry is again eating her out and there’s not as much overt singing this time, but he has his giant hands splayed over her pregnant belly while he’s going to town and whew, WHEW TURN ON THE AIR CONDITIONING PLEASE. DID THE THEATER INCREASE IN TEMPERATURE BY 10 DEGREES, YOU’RE DAMN RIGHT IT DID.

Whew. I think you’ll be better primed to ~enjoy~ those scenes when you know they’re coming, otherwise it’s just so shocking that by the time you’ve processed “Look at Adam eating pussy with reckless abandon” it’s halfway over already. God speed, my fellow rats, it’s truly something to witness!!

Okay. Right. Ahem. Moving right on along….

I’ll kick off this discussion with the formal structure of the film. It’s honestly impossible to classify. I have the questionable fortune of having been taken to many a strange avant-garde operas and art exhibitions by my parents when I was younger, and the strongest parallel I found to this movie was melodramatic opera stagings full of flamboyant flourishes, austere set pieces, and prolonged numbers where the characters wallow at length in their respective miseries. This movie has all the elevated drama, spectacle, and self-aggrandizement belonging to any self-professed rock opera. Think psychedelic rock opera films a la The Who’s Tommy, Hair, Phantom of the Paradise, and hell, even Rocky Horror. Yes, this film really is THAT weird.

But Annette is also in large part a vibrant, absurdist performance piece. The film is intriguingly book-ended by two scenes where the lines blur between actor and character; and your own role blurs between passive viewer and interactive audience. The first scene has the cast walking through the streets of LA (I think?), singing “So May We Start?” directly to the camera in a self-aware prologue, smashing the fourth wall from the beginning and setting up the audience to play a direct role in the viewing experience. Though the cast then disburse and take up their respective roles, the sense of being directly performed to is reinforced throughout the film. This continues most concretely through Henry’s multiple stand-up comedy performances.

Though he performs to an audience in the film rather than directly to live viewers, these scenes are so lengthy, vulgar, and excessive that his solo performance act becomes an integral part of defining his character and conveying his arc as the film progresses. These scenes start to make the film itself feel like a one-man show. The whole shtick of Henry McHenry’s “Ape of God” show is its perverse irreverence and swaggering machismo. Over the span of what must be a five minute plus scene, Henry hacks up phlegm, pretends to choke himself with his microphone cord, prances across the stage with his bathrobe flapping about, simulates being shot, sprinkles many a misanthropic, charmless monologues in between, and ends by throwing off his robe and mooning the audience before he leaves the stage. (Yes, you see Adam’s ass within the film’s first twenty minutes, and we’re just warming up from there.) His one-man performances demonstrate his egocentrism, penchant for lowbrow and often offensive humor, and the fact that this character has thus far profited from indulging in and acting out his base vulgarities.

While never demonstrating any abundance of good taste, his shows teeter firmly towards the grotesque and unsanctionable as his marriage and mental health deteriorate. This is what I’m referring to when I described the film as a study in discomfiture. As he deteriorates, the later iterations of his stand-up show become utterly unsettling and at times revolting. The film could show mercy and stop at one to two minutes of his more deranged antics, but instead subjects you to a protracted display of just how insane this man might possibly be. In Adam’s hands, these excessive, indulgent performance scenes take on disturbing but intriguing ambiguity, as you again wonder where the performance ends and the real man begins. When Henry confesses to a crime during his show and launces into an elaborate, passionate reenactment on stage, you shift uncomfortably in your seat wondering how much of it might just be true. Wondering just how much of an animal this man truly is.

Watching this film as an Adam fan, these scenes are unparalleled displays of his range and prowess. He’s in turns amusing and revolting; intolerable and pathetic; but always, always riveting. I couldn’t help thinking to myself that for the casual, non Adam-obsessed viewer, the effect of these scenes might stop at crass and unappealing. But in terms of the sheer range and power of acting on display? These scenes are a damn marvel. Through these scenes alone, his performance largely imbues the film with its wild, primal, and vaguely menacing atmosphere.

His stand-up scenes were, to me, some of the most intense of the film – sometimes downright difficult to endure. But they’re only a microcosm of the R A N G E he exhibits throughout the film’s entirety. Let’s talk about how he’s animalistic, menacing, and genuinely unsettling to watch (Leos Carax described him as “feline” at some point, and I 100% see it); and then with a mere subtle twitch of his expression, sheen of his eyes, or slump of his shoulders, he’s suddenly a lost, broken thing.  

Henry McHenry is truly to be reviled. Twitter might as well spare their breath and announce he’s already cancelled. He towers above the rest of the cast with intimidating, predatory physicality; he is prone to indulgence in his vices; and he constantly seems at risk of releasing some wild, uncontrollable madness lingering just beneath his surface. But as we all well know, Adam has an unerring talent for lending pathos to even the most objectively condemnable characters.

In a repeated refrain during his first comedy show, the audience keeps asking him, “Why did you become a comedian?” He dodges the question or gives sarcastic answers, until finally circling back to the true answer later in the film. It was something to the effect of: “To disarm people. It’s the only way I can tell the truth without it killing me.” Even for all their sick spectacle, there are also moments in his stand-up shows of disarming vulnerability and (seeming) honesty. In a similar moment of personal exposition, he confesses his temptation and “sympathy for the abyss.” (This phrase is hands down my favorite of the film.) He repeatedly refers to his struggle against “the abyss” and, at the same time, his perceived helplessness against it. “There’s so little I can do, there’s so little I can do,” he sings repeatedly throughout the film - usually just after doing something horrific.

Had he been played by anyone else, the first full look of him warming up before his show - hopping in place and punching the air like some wannabe boxer, interspersing puffs of his cigarette with chowing down on a banana – would have been enough for me to swear him off. His archetype is something of a cliché at this point – a brusque, boorish man who can’t stomach or preserve the love of others due to his own self-loathing. There were multiple points when it was only Adam’s face beneath the character that kept my heart cracked open to him. But sure enough, he wedged his fingers into that tiny crack and pried it wide open. The film’s final few scenes show him at his chin-wobbling best as he crumbles apart in small, mournful subtleties.

(General, semi-spoiler ahead as to the tone of the film’s ending – skip this paragraph if you’d rather avoid.) For a film that professes not to take itself very seriously (how else am I supposed to interpret the freaky puppet baby?), it delivers a harsh, unforgiving ending to its main character. And sure enough, despite how much I might have wanted to distance myself and believe it was only what he deserved, I found myself right there with him, sharing his pain. It is solely testament to Adam’s tireless dedication to breathing both gritty realism and stubborn beauty into his characters that Henry sank a hook into some piece of my sympathy.

Not only does Adam have to be the only actor capable of imbuing Henry with humanity despite his manifold wrongs, he also has to be the only actor capable of the wide-ranging transformations demanded of the role. He starts the movie with long hair and his full refrigerator brick house physique. His physicality and size are actively leveraged to engender a sense of disquiet and unpredictability through his presence. He appears in turns tormented and tormentor. There were moments when I found myself thinking of Conan the Barbarian, simply because his physical presence radiates such wild, primal energy (especially next to tiny, dainty Marion and especially with that long hair). Cannot emphasize enough: The raw sex appeal is off the goddamn charts and had me – a veteran fangirl of 3+ years - shook to my damn core.

The film’s progression then ages him – his hair cut shorter and his face and physique gradually becoming more gaunt. By the film’s end, he has facial prosthetics to make him seem even more stark and borderline sickly – a mirror of his growing internal torment. From a muscular, swaggering powerhouse, he pales and shrinks to a shell of a man, unraveling as his face becomes nearly deformed by time and guilt. He is in turns beautiful and grotesque; sensual and repulsive. I know of no other actor whose face (and its accompanying capacity for expressiveness) could lend itself to such stunning versatility.

Quick note here that he was given a reddish-brown birthmark on the right side of his face for this film?? It becomes more prominent once his hair is shorter in the film’s second half. I’m guessing it was Leos’ idea to make his face even more distinctive and riveting? If so, joke’s on you, Mr. Carax, because we’re always riveted. ☺

I mentioned way up at the beginning that the film is bookended by two scenes where the lines blur between actor and character, and between reality and performance. This comes full circle at the film’s end, with Henry’s final spoken words (this doesn’t give any plot away but skip to the next paragraph if you would rather avoid!) being “Stop watching me.” That’s it. The show is over. He has told his last joke, played out his final act, and now he’s done living his life as a source of cheap, unprincipled laughs and thrills for spectators. The curtain closes with a resounding silence.

Now, I definitely won’t have a section where I talk (of course) about the Ben Solo parallels. He’s haunted by an “abyss” aka darkness inside of him? Bad things happened when he finally gave in and stared into that darkness he knew lived within him? As a result of those tragedies, (SPOILER – Skip to next paragraph to avoid) he then finds himself alone and with no one to love or be loved by? NO I’M DEFINITELY NOT GOING TO TALK ABOUT IT AT ALL, I’M JUST FINE HERE UNDER MY MOUNTAINS OF TISSUES.

Let’s talk about the music! The film definitely clocks in closer to a rock opera than musical, because almost the entire thing is conveyed through ongoing song, rather than self-contained musical numbers appearing here and there. This actually helps the film’s continuity and pacing, by keeping the characters perpetually in this suspended state of absurdity, always propelled along by some beat or melody. Whenever the film seems on the precipice of tipping all the way into the bleak and dark, the next whimsical tune kicks in to reel us all blessedly back. For example, after (SPOILER #1) happens, there’s a hard cut to the bright police station where several officers gather around Henry, bopping about and chattering on the beat “Questions! We have a few questions!”

Adam integrates his singing into his performance in such a way that it seems organic. I realized after the film that I never consciously considered the quality of his singing along the way. For all that I talked about the film maintaining the atmosphere of a fourth wall-defying performance piece, Adam’s singing is so fully immersed in the embodiment of his character that you almost forget he’s singing. Rather, this is simply how Henry McHenry exists. His stand-up scenes are the only ones in the film that do frequently transition back and forth between speaking and singing, but it’s seamlessly par for the course in Henry’s bizarre, dour show. He breaks into his standard “Now laugh!” number with uninterrupted sarcasm and contempt. There were certainly a few soft, poignant moments when his voice warbled in a tender vibrato you couldn’t help noticing – but otherwise, the singing was simply an extension of that full-body persona he manages to convey with such apparent ease and naturalism.

On the music itself: I’ll admit that the brief clip of “We Love Each Other So Much” we got a few weeks ago made me a tad nervous. It seemed so cheesy and ridiculous? But okay, you really can’t take anything from this movie out of context. Otherwise it is, indeed, utterly ridiculous. Not that none of it is ever ridiculous in context either, but I’m giving you assurances right now that it WORKS. Once you’re in the flow of constant singing and weirdness abound, the songs sweep you right along. Some of the songs lack a distinctive hook or melody and are moreso rhythmic vehicles for storytelling, but it’s now a day later and I still have three of the songs circulating pleasantly in my head. “We Love Each Other So Much” was actually the stand out for me and is now my favorite of the soundtrack. It’s reprised a few times later in the film, growing increasingly melancholy each time it is echoed, and it hits your heart a bit harder each time. The final song sung during (SPOILER #2), though without a distinctive melody to lodge in my head, undoubtedly left me far more moved than a spoken version of this scene would have. Adam’s singing is so painfully desperate and earnest here, and he takes the medium fully under his command.

Finally, it does have to be said that parts of this film veer fully towards the ridiculous and laughable. The initial baby version of the Annette puppet-doll was nothing short of horrifying to me. Annette gets more center-stage screen time in the film’s second half, which gives itself over to a few special effects sequences which look to be flying out at you straight from 2000 Windows Movie Maker. The scariest part is that it all seems intentional. The quality special effects appear when necessary (along with some unusual and captivating time lapse shots), which means the film’s most outrageous moments are fully in line with its guiding spirit. Its extravagant self-indulgence nearly borders on camp.

...And with that, I’ve covered the majority of the frantic notes I took for further reflection immediately after viewing. It’s now been a few days, and I’m looking forward to rewatching this movie when I can hopefully take it in a bit more fully. This time, I won’t just be struggling to keep up with the madness on screen. My concluding thoughts at this point: Is it my favorite Adam movie? Certainly not. Is it the most unforgettable? Aside from my holy text, The Last Jedi, likely yes. It really is the sort of thing you have to see twice to even believe it. And all in all, I say again that Adam truly carried this movie, and he fully inhabits even its highest, most ludicrous aspirations. He’s downright abhorrent in this film, and that’s exactly what makes him such a fucking legend.

I plan to make a separate post in the coming days about my experience at Cannes and the Annette red carpet, since a few people have asked! I can’t even express how damn good it feels to be globetrotting for Adam-related experiences again. <3

Thanks so much for reading! Feel free to ask me any further questions at all here or on Twitter! :)

*SYNOPSIS INCLUDED BELOW. DO NOT READ FURTHER IF AVOIDING SPOILERS!*

Synopsis: Comedian Henry McHenry and opera singer Ann Defrasnoux are both at the pinnacle of their respective success when they fall in love and marry. The marriage is happy and passionate for a time, leading to the birth of their (puppet) daughter, Annette. But tabloids and much of the world believe the crude, brutish Henry is a poor match for refined, idolized Ann. Ann and Henry themselves both begin to feel that something is amiss – Henry gradually losing his touch for his comedy craft, claiming that being in love is making him ill. He repeatedly and sardonically references how Ann’s opera career involves her “singing and dying” every night, to the point that he sees visions of her “dead” body on the stage. Meanwhile, Ann has a nightmare of multiple women accusing Henry of abusive and violent behavior towards them, and she begins growing wary in his presence. (He never acts abusively towards her, unless you count that scene when he tickles her feet and licks her toes while she’s telling him to stop??? Yeah I know, WILD.)

The growing sense of unease, that they’re both teetering on the brink of disaster, culminates in the most deranged of Henry’s stand-up comedy performances, when he gives a vivid reenactment of killing his wife by “tickling her to death.” The performance is so maudlin and unsettling that you wonder whether he’s not making it up at all, and the audience strongly rebukes him. (This is the “What is your problem?!” scene with tiddies out. The full version includes Adam storming across the stage, furiously singing/yelling, “What the FUCK is your problem?!”) But when Henry arrives home that night, drunk and raucous, Ann and Annette are both unharmed.

The couple take a trip on their boat, bringing Annette with them. The boat gets caught in a storm, and Henry drunkenly insists that he and Ann waltz in the storm. She protests that it’s too dangerous and begs him to see sense. (SPOILER #1) The boat lurches when Henry spins her, and Ann falls overboard to her death. Henry rescues Annette from the sinking boat and rows them both to shore. He promptly falls unconscious, and a ghost of Ann appears, proclaiming her intention to haunt Henry through Annette. Annette (still a toddler at this point and yes, still a wooden puppet) then develops a miraculous gift for singing, and Henry decides to take her on tour with performances around the world. He enlists the help of his “conductor friend,” who had been Ann’s accompanist and secretly had an affair with her before she met Henry.

Henry slides further into drunken debauchery as the tour progresses, while the Conductor looks after Annette and the two grow close. Once the tour concludes, the Conductor suggests to Henry that Annette might be his own daughter – revealing his prior affair with Ann. Terrified by the idea of anyone finding out and the possibility of losing his daughter, Henry drowns the Conductor in the pool behind his and Ann’s house. Annette sees the whole thing happen from her bedroom window.

Henry plans one last show for Annette, to be held in a massive stadium at the equivalent of the Super Bowl. But when Annette takes the stage, she refuses to sing. Instead, she speaks and accuses Henry of murder. (“Daddy kills people,” are the actual words – not that that was creepy to hear as this puppet’s first spoken words or anything.)

Henry stands trial, during which he sees an apparition of Ann from when they first met. They sing their regret that they can’t return to the happiness they once shared, until the apparition is replaced by Ann’s vengeful spirit, who promises to haunt Henry in prison. After his sentencing (it’s not clear what the sentence was, but Henry definitely isn’t going free), Annette is brought to see him once in prison. Speaking fully for the first time, she declares she can’t forgive her parents for using her: Henry for exploiting her voice for profit and Ann for presumably using her to take vengeance on Henry. (Yes, this is why she was an inanimate doll moving on strings up to this point – there was some meaning in that strange, strange artistic choice. She was the puppet of her parents’ respective egotisms.) The puppet of Annette is abruptly replaced by a real girl in this scene, finally enabling two-sided interaction and a long-missed genuine connection between her and Henry, which made this quite the emotional catharsis. (SPOILER #2) It concludes with Annette still unwilling to forgive or forget what her parents have done, and swearing never to sing again. She says Henry now has “no one to love.” He appeals, “Can’t I love you, Annette?” She replies, “No, not really.” Henry embraces her one last time before a guard takes her away and Henry is left alone.

…..Yes, that is the end. It left me with major emotional whiplash, after the whole film up to this point kept pulling itself back from the total bleak and dark by starting up a new toe-tapping, mildly silly tune every few minutes. But this last scene instead ends on a brutal note of harsh, unforgiving silence.

BUT! Make sure you stick around through the credits, when you see the cast walking through a forest together. (This is counterpart to the film’s opening, when you see the cast walking through LA singing “So May We Start?” directly to the audience) Definitely pay attention to catch Adam chasing/playing with the little girl actress who plays Annette! That imparts a much nicer feeling to leave the theater with. :’)

[cosmicjoke]

Levi and Zeke:  Their similarities and the Fundamental differences between Them:

I’ve recently been having a discussion with @ourmondobongo, and it’s spurred me to want to kind of analyze further the fundamental and philosophical differences between Levi and Zeke.  I know I’ve gone into this thoroughly already, but my discussion with ourmondobongo has really made me want to delve in even deeper.  First though, let me thank them for, as always, inspiring such insightful discussion among the fan base!

Some really interesting ideas were posted here, about Zeke’s experiences growing up in Liberio informing his world view and his views on the worth, or rather, lack thereof, in human life.   ourmondobongo suggested that, because of Zeke’s experiences with his parents, utilizing him as a tool for the Resistance, and his subsequent utilization by the Marlyean army as a tool of war, it ended up warping his perception, and influencing him to believe that all human life is inherently worthless unless it can be molded into a tool or a weapon to further some goal.  I agree with this interpretation of Zeke’s mindset and what shaped it.  This is undoubtedly how Zeke views the world, and humanity as a whole, and he’s deemed, because of his own suffering, brought about by his experiences affirming this world view, that life is not worth living.  Because he sees life as without value unless one can make themselves useful in some way, in his view, the suffering inherent in that makes life fundamentally pointless and meaningless and not worth the effort.

Now, where I diverge slightly from ourmondobongo’s view on this is in relation to Zeke’s influence upon Levi in the final arc, or rather, what they say about Zeke’s philosophy overriding or undercutting Levi’s own.  They said that Levi’s belief in an intrinsic value in human life is bombarded and undermined during the final arc of SnK, Zeke’s own belief in the worthlessness of human life being affirmed to him again and again by the chaos and destruction around them, the rightness of his philosophy and belief that this sort of destruction can only stop with the eradication of the Eldian people being confirmed.  But see, the thing is, I don’t think Zeke is at all showing Levi something new, or something which he hasn’t already known all his life.

Zeke claims that his experiences in life make him uniquely suited to understanding the conflict between Eldian’s and Marleyeans, and that his experiences make him uniquely capable of knowing how to solve that conflict.  But Zeke is nothing if not a unfailingly self-centered egotist, someone driven purely by selfish, egotistical viewpoints, unable and unwilling to perceive anything outside of his limited world view.  His life ISN’T unique, his experiences AREN’T unique.  They’re, first of all, shared by every single Eldian on both Marley and in other countries around the world.  Further, and more importantly to the point I’m about to make, they’re shared by Levi.  

Zeke grew up being treated and regarded as a second-class citizen, relegated to a limited area, an internment zone, which he wasn’t allowed to leave unless given direct permission by the powers that be, and regarded as something less than human by the people of Marley.  Well, these are all things Levi himself experienced growing up too, and, I would argue, to an even more extreme degree than Zeke.

Levi grew up in the Underground, a sprawling, subterranean city filled with the so called “dregs of society”.  A place where the poor, the persecuted, the sick, the dying, the deviant and the criminal were either forced to flee to, or more unfortunate still, were born into.  All this underneath the Capital of Paradis, Sina, the richest, most exclusive district inside the Walls.  A place where the elite of society lived and worked and raised their families in wealth and luxury.  The irony of the poorest, most poverty stricken area inside the Walls being directly beneath the richest, most affluent area inside the Walls can’t be overstated.  

Perhaps most relevant to note in this comparison between Zeke’s experience growing up in an internment zone and Levi’s growing up in the Underground, is that the people of the Underground were not only considered second-class citizens, but relegated to something even below that, considered not citizens at all.  They were literally denied citizenship within all areas above ground, within the Walls, and if they somehow managed to make it to the surface, and were found out, they would be promptly deported back to the Underground, where they would continue to be denied any and all rights given to the people up above.  And, it can be easily argued, that the people of the Underground were treated in many ways significantly worse than the Eldian’s inside the interment zone in Liberio.  The people of Liberio seemed relatively well provided for, able to find work, able to earn a living, able to have homes for their families and put food on the table, essentially allowed a sustainable and comfortable life, if one burdened by outside prejudice.  They weren’t made to live in squalor.  Largely, no doubt, because they were seen as an unwanted, but useful resource for the Marleyean government.  The people of the Underground were provided no such provisions.  They were viewed as simple refuse, society’s unwanted and unneeded surplus.  Poverty and depravation ran rampant in the Underground, a lack of resources and support from above resulting in high crime rates and desperation, to things like murder, prostitution, violence and other sorts of criminality.  Further, leading to things like rampant orphaning of children, likely due to starvation and disease claiming the lives of parents, etc...  It was a place literally cut off from the sun, a world of perpetual darkness, sickness, poverty and dire straits.  They received no aid or support from above, were not provided any of the benefits or privileges of the people on the surface, were not offered any sort of path to success, or betterment of their lives.  They were just plainly rejected and left to the whims of fate.  This alone makes it a more difficult and desperate place than the interment zones of Liberio, for even there the Eldian’s were given opportunities to improve their lives through the Warrior Unit programs.  

You might try to point out that Zeke’s experience differs from Levi’s in how he was taught that he, and on his assumption, every other Eldian, would only ever be seen and treated as a tool to be used for some greater gain, and that Levi, at least, had the love of his mother, and Kenny to show him the ropes of how to survive in a place as ruthless as the Underground, and so Levi couldn’t possibly understand what it means, the way Zeke does, to be seen as a tool, or to be deemed worthless outside of ones utility.  But I would counter this simply, by saying that Levi grew up, spent the first, several years of his life, in a brothel, where the very mother who loved him also worked as a whore.  Through this experience alone, it can be easily assumed that Levi was exposed to repeated instances of his mother being EXACTLY used as a tool, as an object who’s sole purpose was to give men pleasure.  From his birth, then, Levi was exposed and taught the brutal lesson that the sole most important person in his life, his mother, the one person we can assume was the only positive influence and relationship he had, for the first, several years of his life, was seen and treated by everyone else as nothing more than a tool for their basest and most perverse satisfaction.  I can scarcely imagine a more horrific or cruel example of a young child being taught the same lesson Zeke seems to think is unique to him alone, that people’s lives are worthless outside of what use they can provide for someone or something else.  Beyond that, Levi was again forced to face a situation in which he and his two, closest friends in Furlan and Isabel were used as tools by other people, recruited by Lobov to kill Erwin and retrieve from him an incriminating document, promised, if they succeeded, citizenship above and a handsome payday, only to find out later the entire scenario had been set up by Erwin himself to press Levi and his friends into military service, to be used as tools in the fight against the Titans.  Both of these are prime examples of Levi being faced with the lesson that he and those he cared about were seen by people above ground as nothing more than tools, to be used at their disposal.  So this was a concept Levi was already well acquainted with by the time Zeke showed up, a merciless lesson in the harshness, violence, brutality and suffering of life.  Zeke didn’t experience anything Levi didn’t in turn, and in many ways, with greater extremity.  

Anyone trying to claim, also, that Zeke had no positive influences in his life like Levi did would be wrong.  Zeke had Mr. Ksavar, for one, and his grandparents, for another.  Mr. Ksavar asked nothing of Zeke, merely showed care and concern for him, and a desire to spend time with him, playing catch.  It was Zeke who offered to inherit the Beast Titan from Mr. Ksavar, not something forced on him.  And while Zeke’s grandparents may have tried to enforce Marleyean history on him in regards to the Eldian’s, they did so out of love for him, in a misguided attempt to PROTECT him, because they cared, not because they were trying to use him in any way.  

My point in talking about all of this is to draw a parallel between Zeke’s life, and Levi’s, and then to demonstrate how, despite deeply similar life experiences, the two of them diverge in vital and fundamental ways which, more than anything, can only be attributed to their strengths of character and natural inclinations as people.

Essentially, the gist of my argument is this.  Zeke is a bad person.  Levi is a good person.  And there can be no excuses, or influencing factors found in either of their lives to credit for the way either of them turned out, other than themselves, other than their own natures.

Because Zeke let his life experiences twist him into a heartless, emotionless, unfeeling sociopath who murders other people without remorse, and regards other human lives as meaningless, worthless trash, expendable and disposable as a means to his own ends.  He let his experiences in life serve as an EXCUSE for his natural cruelty.  He chose to view the lives of others only through the prism of his own experiences, and cast a judgment upon the worth of those other lives.  The true reveal of Zeke’s megalomaniacal egotism is in how he finds himself unable to separate the lives of others from his own.  In how he’s unable to view the lives of others as anything other than an extension of his own existence.  Because he deems his own life worthless, then so too must be the lives of everyone else.

Levi, then, is perfectly his opposite.  It isn’t because of Levi’s life experiences that he’s turned out the way he is.  It is IN SPITE of his life experiences that he has.  Everything Levi’s ever experienced in his life, according to Zeke’s philosophy, should have turned him into a monster.  He should have come out of the Underground a sociopathic, unfeeling, brutally uncaring and violent man, ready to take from and use others for nothing more than his own, personal gain, because that was the lesson his life had taught him.  Because that was what he’d been shown over and over again.  That life is cruel, and ruthless, and uncompromising in its unfairness, and that to live is to suffer.  And yet, Levi came out of the Underground with a greater capacity for compassion, feeling, love and kindness than any other character in SnK.  He continually and routinely, throughout the series, demonstrates an incredible empathy, consideration, sympathy, generosity and understanding for other people.  He is immensely accepting and nonjudgmental, and always, always goes out of his way to express gratitude towards others for their own sacrifices and efforts.  He does his absolute best to protect the lives of others, constantly putting his own at risk to help others live, constantly putting his own at risk to save whoever he can.  Constantly and consistently, Levi places the lives of others above his own in terms of worth.

And here’s the thing that makes Levi most remarkable of all.  The thing which demonstrates beyond any shadow of a doubt the immense strength of his character.  Levi very well knows that life is cruel, that life is brutal, that life is unfair, and that often people die for no damned good reason at all, that they suffer for no reason at all.  He very well knows that people are breathtakingly cruel and terrible to one another, that people treat one another in unspeakably horrific and unforgivable ways.  He very well knows that the dream of a lasting and peaceful world, a lasting peace between humans, is nothing more than a pipe dream, an unrealistic, unattainable ideal.  A fancy only a child should genuinely be able to believe in.  And yet, once again, despite KNOWING this, despite every lesson and experience in his life impressing this awful reality upon him again and again and again, Levi still does everything within his limited power to ease the suffering of others, to improve their lives, to protect them and show them kindness, to help in any way he can, whichever way he’s able.  Despite knowing the futility of life, the pointlessness of suffering, the injustice of other people’s cruelty, despite knowing these things INTIMATELY, Levi still has in him an open, generous, kind and caring heart.  Levi still has in him a deep, unending well of compassion and an unwavering desire to protect and better the lives of all the people around him.  It isn’t even Levi’s own dream that he fights for, it is the dreams of OTHERS that he fights for.  He can’t ever fully embrace this notion of a peaceful existence, free of violence and deprivation and cruelty, because he knows too well the way of the world.  He’s been too mired in the indifferent reality of nature and the human condition to ever, really believe it.  But in spite of that, IN SPITE OF IT, he fights to protect that dream and belief that others carry, that others strive towards, that others commit themselves to.  He gives everything he has, every piece of himself, to protect a dream that he himself can’t even fully believe in, and for no reason more than that it is something which gives others hope, something which gives other’s a sense of purpose, something which one day, possibly, however slim the chance, might come to pass.  

It is all in spite of Levi’s experiences in life, all in spite of his weary and cynical understanding of the world and the people in it, that Levi commits himself to kindness, compassion and the chance to help others, in whatever ways he can, even as he knows deep down the ultimate futility in it, even as he knows his own, relative powerlessness in the face of nature’s unyielding and uncaring apathy. 

And that really is the fundamental difference between Levi and Zeke.  Two men who have experienced such similar lives, and who have learned early on their lives the cruelties of existing in this world, but one who reacts to those cruelties with defiance and courageous opposition, standing in the face of overwhelming odds, while the other yields to it and lets it excuse his cruelty in turn, bowing to its power and letting it consume him. 

[thatgrammarboy]

dark academia types: the strategist

OBSESSED with military history

reads intelligence leaks obsessively

talented manipulator; they know people intuitively. they are extremely observant and can ‘see’ people in the abstract. in the same way a brilliant mathematician might see prime numbers as differently coloured, they see motivation, emotion and desire as shades of different colours.

without question went to an elite private school that they //somehow// got into on a full scholarship. in some cases, depending on the wealth of the school, they were able to arrange a stipend. but of course, if you were to ask them, their parents “run a moderately successful business”. If you were to Google that business, you would find a registered company, a website and clients. the staff always said the “fees were paid on time”, so nobody questioned anything. their classmates don’t see them as different, and they are invited to Summer all over the world, their middle/lower class parents dazed at how wonderfully accepting their “rich friends” are.

despite their adolescent strategic focus, they excel in debating, chess and sport (rowing and martial arts are particularly favoured). They make a tight friendship group with people they come to love and would kill to protect.

brilliant marks at the end of school, despite a somewhat inconsistent interest throughout. academics are a game and the object is to win.

master of active recall/’smart’ study methods. it’s all just strategy, right?

studied military history/strategic studies and Classics in undergrad (though they took some economics and politics classes -- perhaps more than they were allowed to -- for good measure)

probably goes to law school after, followed by possibly a Masters of Public Policy, and an MPhil or a PhD.

full scholarship to both undergrad and postgrad, definitely with stipends and high-paying Summer internships.

has the attitude that their friends are sacred and untouchable. everyone else is fair game.

in saying that, they love to romance and to date. they want to find their ‘one’, which is just the one with whom they want to rule the world

deeply empathetic in very specific circumstances and with very specific people

despite common perception, they are very very emotional people. it is their hubris. they need to act dispassionately but their emotional centre is what gives them the intuition that sits at the centre of their gift.

loves the people closest to them, especially their s/o, more than most people ever could

lowkey looks down on anyone who can’t read Latin or classical Greek

reads obsessively but (unlike many of the other ‘Academic’ types) parties like a wild animal

when they party, it’s only a successful night if they take more than two peope home. naturally, they are masters at cooking breakfast

(breakfast is the best way to ensure the love-making from the night before and the early morning continues well into the late afternoon)

probably cuts their teeth doing legal work. either criminal law (white collar crime, baby) or into corporate law. they do some pro-bono work though.

before long, their talents are recognised and they get approached by a government or intelligence agency for consulting. they end up becoming indispensible, demanding whatever they want in compensation, well out-pacing their (extremely well-paying) lawyer’s salary.

eventually, they start a business related to government/military/strategy

after they build up a strong enough power base, they run for prime minister or president, taking an impressive victory. from there, it’s only up.

by this point, they’re still the cold hearted planner they always were. but they’ve met the love of their life (almost undoubtably somebody caring but hyper successful; might be a doctor or run a non-profit) and their two little kids help ground them. unlike them, they would not have to strategise their way into financing their secondary and tertiary education.

(but they set up little challenges for them along the way because their children are fast-becoming heirs to a throne)

they apex in their art form as the head of state. they become a true master of the game, seeing every move 100 steps in advance. they have a keen sense for what the ordinary people in their nation desire and so they are almost always popular.

somehow, world leaders seem to always offer their country the best trade deals. nobody really knows how, but the offering country’s leader always seems very grateful to them.

when there are those foolish enough to raise their sword against them, they tend to find it is blunt before the first strike. the modern strategist has very little need for war, unlike their ancestors who relied on ground conflicts and territorial expansion. the modern strategist wins the war before it has begun.

(but for good measure, they are practiced in the arts of old. if they need to conquer, you can rest assured knowing they will, in record time)

by the end of their term (either by term limit or voluntary retirement), they have earned the respect of their nation, the leaders of the world, and (most importantly) their family.

they retire (quite young) happily. they spend their days with their quickly growing children (11 & 12 now!!), whom they teach the classics and to play chess and go.

their kids somehow drag them into playing fancy VR video games, with which they become quickly obsessed.

these days, they cook not for the promise of a raunchy afternoon, but to show their love for their family. (and, with their wealth, cooking is a choice, not a need)

they have come to appreciate their gifts more wholistically, still holding close their zeal for conquest, for strategy, for dominance. they still obsess over strange and ancient battles, still read books obsessively.

but they have come to settle in, leaving the battles of today to the new generation of strategists. they pass the baton, feeling all too comfortable being a warrior in a garden.

as they sit and gaze from their city views in the nicest neighbourhood in town, they watch their children excel in chess and debating. they watch them develop interests in politics. in history. in games. from a mentor’s distance, they watch as the sun rises on a new generation of academic planners who refine and develop the unique skillset of keeping our world safe and prosperous.

gloria principibus

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typical (but not exclusive) star signs: libra, scorpio

favourite films: red sparrow, thirteen days, wargames

favourite books: The Prince (Machiavelli) but honestly give them anything relating to political shifts or military conflict, especially niche and relatively unknown ones, and they will be entertained for hours.

guilty pleasure: anything by Tom Clancy (including the films), Paradox games, Call of Duty with pizza on a Friday night with their high school friends

real life examples: Napoleon, Genghis Khan

fictional examples: Mycroft Holmes, Artemis Fowl.

Myers-Briggs: their true one is probably ENTJ, but these tests are so predictable that they will get whatever result might benefit them in the moment.