#hes so average except he has a sword and is bad at talking to people

[vitamin-zeeth]

Matt is so correct Colin is just the player character in the Calorum video game. He doesn't know what he's fucking doing and literally just latched onto the first guy who gave him a Quest and has not left him for 2 years. He looks exactly like every Skyrim/Assassin's Creed/other similar game player character. I can just imagine him going around pressing X to interact

[books-are-my-life-stuff]

Happy 1106 day!

1106 is also known as the Adler dorm number for Rayne Ames (and his roommate Max Land), so November 6th is commonly celebrated in the Japanese fanbase as "Rayne Ames Festival Day".

As a celebration, I've roughly translated Rayne and Max's fan book profiles under the cut! It's full of interesting information about them as an individual character that doesn't manage to get explored much in the main series, so hope you enjoy it!

"A taciturn sword that sticks to his convictions, and a Divine Visionary that strictly speaks on one's back."

Rayne Ames

Quote: "You need to shut your mouth, before I shut it for you." (from Volume 13, chapter 117)

Small memo (near little Rayne and Finn image): A minimalist with a penchant for saving money, except for things related to rabbits and his younger brother.

A magician who becomes a Divine Visionary to change the Magic World from the ground up for the sake of his family. He's pursuing such a dream as he balances his work as a Divine Visionary and his responsibilities as a student. Profile (these have been translated in wiki and thus taken from there)

Birthday: March 3 Age: 18 years old Height: 175cm Weight: 67kg Dominant hand: Left Foot size: 27.5cm Family: Finn Ames (younger brother) Good subjects: Magic History, Magical Zoology Bad subject(s): Fortune telling Hobbies: Rabbit sucking, sewing Favorite food: Bean sprouts, vegetables Favorite words: Say what you want Favorite type of the opposite sex: Never thought about it Dislikes: Talking more than necessary Frequently visited school spots: Purchasing department How to spend money: Savings, rabbit breeding expenses How to spend holidays: Taking care of rabbits

Relationship Chart

Rayne to Mash: A troublesome junior Rayne to Finn: Must be protected at all costs Rayne to Kaldo: Thank you for taking care of my brother Rayne to Max: Only best friend Rayne to rabbit: *sighs softly* Rayne to Wahlberg: Old geezer who likes to boss people around

Magic: Sword Magic

A magic that can summon countless swords. The personal magic, named "Partisan", has a power level measured through percentages that can be adjusted, an average student usually can't even handle 10% of it.

The caption of Rayne calling out Partisan picture: It's one of the most deadly magic in the Magic World, but he brandishes it only for the sake of justice.

Divine Visionary: of Sword Cane, as well as one of the Directors of the Magical Items Department

All the magical items existing in the Magic World have very strict control. Newly manufactured tools are delivered to the Bureau of Magic to ensure safety. After carefully examining them and making sure the new items are safe, they'll be delivered to the citizens.

The caption of the Magic Mirror (used by Cell War against Mash): The loss of the Magic Mirror marks a great mistake for all of the directors of the department.

Pick-up: An Awkward Big Brother

Rayne, who rarely talks but always shows through his actions, makes people have a lot of trust in him, and many students follow his way too. However, his lack of words often causes many misunderstandings.

Quote for upper image: "I've always been really terrible at encouraging people." (Volume 6, Chapter 47)

Caption for upper image: He tried to put himself in the position of the junior who's taking reckless challenges.

Quote for left image: "I'll make sure that brazen kid, goes as far as he can go." (Volume 6, Chapter 46)

Caption for left image: He forced Margarette, who was after Mash, to retreat by using his Thirds.

Quote: "Words only have a meaning when paired with actions. If you can't act, it's the same as not saying anything at all." (Volume 6, Chapter 45)

Caption: This principle came from his late parents who passed away without words or promises. Since that time, he always lived up to his words.

Quote: "I still remember you used to come crying at me over the smallest things. You've grown up." (Volume 14, Chapter 119)

Caption for his moments with Finn: For the sake of his younger brother, he had always been shouldering many burdens. However, after seeing his brother's growth, he changed his mind.

Pick Up: A Genuine Rabbit Lover for Life

It all began when Max suggested Rayne, who was at that time aiming to be the Divine Visionary, to start having rabbits out of concern for Rayne's mental health's well-being. Now, Rayne has never stopped to pour an extraordinary amount of love for his rabbits.

The caption of Rayne surrounded by rabbits: This scene too is a display of Rayne's "survival of the fittest" between the strong and the weak (?)

The caption of Rayne's rabbit handkerchief: Should you ever find a lost rabbit-patterned goodies, please give it to Rayne first and foremost.

Mash's Room Corner (a corner to talk about gossip relating to the character, with Mash's commentary)

"I've been in the same dorm as Rayne since middle school but...that Rayne...there were quite a few times when the screws in his head were loose. He takes jokes a little too seriously, and because of that, I had to teach him lots of them." (from Max)

Mash: An unexpected side of a good person.

The Secret Story of Rayne as told by ***!! (a corner about various characters' opinions of a character, in this case, their opinions of Rayne)

Ryoh: I understand the feeling of pushing yourself away for your family's sake, but sometimes relying on others is what makes a man, Rayne.

Margarette: I saw Rayne trying to help a lost child in the city. However, he accidentally made the child cry even more because of his unfriendly looks and unsociability.

Brad: So you've become the Divine Visionary through hard work. Well, depending on Mash's hard work, my promotion might not just be a dream anymore.

Cell War: Since you're one of the directors of the Magical Items Department, it's really difficult to sneak in. Still, the staff canteen's foods are really delicious.

"Summarizing the Adler Dorm: Honest and full of conscience"

Max Land

Quote: "Let's solve this together!" (Volume 6, chapter 49)

Small memo (near the picture of running Max): His foot speed is number one! He also has a playful side when he pulls a prank and runs.

A third-year at Adler dorm who is open-minded and friendly. Since he is well-liked within the school, he often shares his wisdom and consults others.

Profile (these have been translated in wiki and thus taken from there with slight adjustment)

Birthday: November 19 Age: 18 years old Height: 168cm Weight: 64kg Blood type: O Dominant hand: Right Foot size: 26cm Family members: Father, Mother, Eldest brother, Older brother Good subject: Magic history Bad subject: Broom class Hobbies: Exploring the school while making his body smaller Favorite food: Deep-fried salamander Favorite words: 平凡 (Heibon: Ordinary or commonplace) Favorite type of opposite sex: People who have their own world Dislikes: High places Frequently visited school spots: Purchasing Department How to spend money: Book fees (mainly comic books) How to spend holidays: Going to Marchette Street with friends and taking care of rabbits when Rayne is away

Relationship Chart

Max to Mash: Junior Max to Rayne: You're so awkward I can't leave you alone Max to Finn: Like my own little brother Max to Carpaccio: Lately, when I look around, you're suddenly sitting next to me.

Magic: Size-changing Magic

This magic can change the size of people and objects. Up to 3 different people and/or objects can be resized at one time. This personal magic is very handy for support, as shown during the selection exam where he helped his ally.

Image caption: He made himself and Mash smaller to get away from the eyes of Deadervants.

Mash's Room Corner

I consulted with him the other day, but that guy has the face of an ordinary person but still manages to look handsome. It's plainly and doubly frustrating. (from Dot)

Mash: I feel sorry for Senior Max for being blamed unreasonably like that.

Pick-Up: A Selfish Desire as a Senior

He has a naturally caring personality who won't ever leave his troubled junior behind. But the truth is he just wants to "prove himself like a man", which he despises himself for.

Quote for upper image: "My premonition was right..." (Volume 6, chapter 50)

Quote for left image: "Say, Rayne. Did I do my best for the younger students?"

Caption for left image: Supporting the junior that Rayne is interested in.

The Secret Story of Max as told by ***!!

Tom: I invited him to join Duelo, but he declined because he is scared of heights. Senior Max, you're like a bamboo that's stuck on the ground!

BONUS (from the Q&A session with the original creator Komoto Hajime-sensei):

Q17: In the final chapter, are Rayne and Finn of the Ames brothers able to get along again?

A17: Rayne (addressed as 'onii-tama here) is a tsundere, but I think they're able to get along well!

Q18: Why does Finn call Rayne with "Nii-sama" instead of "Nii-san"?

A18: Because of the distance between them...

(A/N: In the original Japanese version, Finn does not call Rayne by name, but calls him "Nii-sama", this has a lot of meaning and nuances that unfortunately are hard to translate and doesn't have an English equivalent, hence the change. "Onii-tama" on the other hand is a baby talk version of "onii-sama".)

[iguessyouregonnamissthepantyraid]

can we....can we hear a little bit more about Sig? 👀

CAN you! absolutely!

first of all, it has to be said, i was not thinking about the fact that loki's mythological wife's name is sigyn when i named this guy sig, i just did what i did for all of my asgardian OCs and looked through a list of norse names until i spotted one that felt like it fit. also my childhood crush on sig from the jak and daxter games may have had something to do with it shh

ANYWAY. sig is my obligatory "regular asgardian citizen" viewpoint that we don't really get if we're always focusing on thor, loki, val, or heimdall. any of the asgardians are many times stronger than the average human, but he doesn't have magic like thor and loki do, and he doesn't have centuries of training like val does. he DOES have centuries of smithing behind him, so like, he's not a twig, but until ragnarok he'd never really seen any serious battles, and he'd certainly never killed anyone - that marauder he killed with loki's sword was the first. he's gonna get through that with minimal angst though, because asgardians have different perspectives when it comes to killing in battle, and also because he's got his daughter to worry about, so there's bigger fish to fry. like, this man will try to 1-v-1 against the collector if given the opportunity and if his daughter's in danger. asgardians are brave idiots and he is no exception, and also, after ragnarok, runa is literally all he has left

so like, sig is a dad above all else. he's a nurturing kind of person, he's really good at talking to people and kind of coaxing them out of their shells (hence his first interaction with bruce) and he's sort of taken it upon himself to look after runa's friends, since their parents didn't make it through ragnarok. he's not the only person caring for runa's friends, since asgard has sort of by necessity become more of a communal situation where there's a lot of childless parents and parentless children, but he's always keeping an eye out for them (when he's not light-years away being dragged on an adventure to save his daughter from an infinity stone and a bunch of bounty hunters and a superpowerful megalomaniac, anyway)

as far as his relationship with the revengers: he sort of implicitly trusts thor, because that's asgard's golden boy and everyone is sort of in agreement that they'd all be dead if thor hadn't shown up in a blaze of lightning and fought hela off while they escaped. he VERY implicitly trusts heimdall, and honestly no one on that ship doesn't after he kept them all safe during hela's attacks. he's a little starstruck about val but manages to be cool about it, and he loves that there's an honest-to-god valkyrie on the ship with them, because it certainly makes their precarious situation feel a bit safer. bruce, he's immediately bonded with and now considers a friend. and loki... okay so it helps if you know that my headcanon is that all the asgardians knew or at least suspected that it was loki posing as odin that entire time, they just didn't care because there were no wars going on and he wasn't actually doing a bad job as odin, so they just sort of... let him get away with it?

so, you're sig. your planet's been destroyed, you're grieving your wife and your home and the rest of your family, you're trying to keep your daughter safe, but now she's been possessed(?) by an infinity stone and the only person who can probably help her is the guy you'd only heard stories about before, who was impersonating the king for a few years and also might have committed some treason at some point, you don't really know the details. but now he's teleporting you and your daughter across the cosmos, and he's definitely saved you and your daughter more than a few times even if he's being kind of standoffish about it, and also he might be suffering from a little infinity stone possession of his own, but shit, you don't know how any of this works, he's the magic guy, but also it's a little concerning that the guy who's supposed to be helping you with your daughter's infinity stone problem also kind of looks like he's got a foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel, and his eyes and his veins keep glowing blue which, i mean, that can't be a good sign, can it?

fast forward way past the events of the revengers to avoid spoilers, but i like to imagine that eventually, the little mini-oneshot i posted on tumblr happens (you'll find it under my "revengers: the show" tag if you haven't already seen it) where runa seeks out loki years later and demands to learn magic because the whole infinity stone situation sparked an interest in it, and she wants to know how to do all that stuff he does, and THAT would be the "meticulously crafted 100K of slow burning build up" that i was referring to earlier, where loki's teaching her magic and sig's, like, VERY reluctantly allowing this to happen. because like, yeah, he and loki are cool now, but he's seen how out-of-control magic can get, he's seen how reckless loki in particular can be, and this is his daughter. loki is on thin ice forever as long as runa's involved.

but yeah, that's sig. and you may have seen me mention this before, but i've fancasted him as dev patel from the beginning. it just feels right, and that's who i'm picturing when i'm writing his scenes :)

[m1d-45]

Okay wait a min! You know how like the abyss mages and the hilichurls are all like in the lore to be part of khanriah and in general they’re the ones to quickly recognize that the imposter is the creator and they protect us and stuff? So like does that people of Kahnriah has some special ability to recognize us? So wouldn’t that make kaeya, albedo, dainself to recognize us? (Sorry I’m absolutely struggling to spell kahenriah)

Also I had a thought how does our interactions with Dainslef go? Like typically in imposter aus he doesn’t seem to care much about the creator. But if he’s met with the actual creator would he protect them? But like personally I think he would hate them at first for what they did to Kahenriah but slowly comes to care and love them? Because he begins too see and realize this is truly the creator when they see how Teyvat bends to their will and stuff

(Also could I be 🦑 anon?)

YOU X2.

i know i’m guilty of this trope but in truth i never thought about it that much. i suppose i was operating under the assumption that it’s the same as the animals or the wind: they just Know. the people do too, but due to humanity having silly little things called critical thought, doubt, and generally more than one thought at a time, the acolytes don’t follow the slight buzz in their skin when they’re near you. if anything they assume it’s adrenaline.

but like. hilichurls clearly do have thought left—they have language and some sort of society, clearly… hm- you know how in the chasm quest it’s said they’re like eternally cursed or something-? let’s assume the creator lightens that pain, making their existence more bearable. this is something they know to be impossible except by the divine, and they don’t have loyalty to the false god, ergo you must be their god!

abyss mages are mages, so i’m gonna assume they’re a bit more tuned into their elements/the leylines/general auras or whatever. for this same reason i don’t think mona would join the hunt, but that’s for another day.

in addition! they’re affected by the abyss itself, which is just more “you lighten this impossibly heavy curse i have. hey god.” but like more reverent.

now. onto the more human khaenri’ahns.

dainslef is canonically afflicted by the Curse from before and i imagine he is more familiar with your visage/behavior/attitude/powers/whatever simply due to his age and all the time he must have spent studying holy books. also, though he is a Human Person—and hence suffers from the lifelong condition known as critical thought—he’s definitely more likely to follow his instincts. cokes with the territory of being the twilight sword, i suppose.

albedo is. hm. he’s not a child of khaenri’ah- it’s up for debate whether he’s khaenri’ahn at all, really. he was created by rhine, who was khaenri’ahn…. but he held no part in the calamity 500 years ago, and nor does khaenri’ahn blood run in his veins—he’s a child of alchemy, synthetic. he also isn’t canonically cursed. however, as an alchemist—and doubly so for a student of khemia—i’m certain he has a higher interest than average in the creator. whereas dainslef would know you’re you by your kindness, your speech, the way you talk and all your mannerisms, i think albedo would figure it out by how the world acts around you. the spike in leyline flow, the suddenly perfect weather, the way the wind always blows behind you, how the flowers and plants around you are the healthiest.

kaeya… is an interesting case. he’s khaenri’ahn by blood, yet isn’t cursed to my knowledge. i think, like albedo, he’s more likely to realize the difference in how the world treats you. he’s an observant and clever guy, i’m certain he can put two and two together. less on the technical side than albedo… but he’ll notice how the weather suddenly sours before one of the knights’ patrol, how their luck seems to be as bad as bennett’s when searching for you.

moving onto the second part of your ask,,,

because i want people to be happy i have somewhat… creatively interpreted what happened in khaenri’ah during the calamity. obviously every version of sagau is going to be different, but because i dearly adore both kaeya and albedo, here’s my version of events(copied and paraphrased off my post on the subject for ease of reading):

khaenri’ah was built entirely by people. they did worship you, but refused to allow you to meddle with their nation. you could have all of teyvat but you could not have their nation. they lived underground, away from your holy light, and in the dark of a cave with only the earth as their witness, they began to learn khemia. they began to learn how to create, how to mimic your power. theirs was more transmutation, less pure creation, but it was so close to it that rhinedottir let it get to her head.

that glosses over some details, but it’s enough for this discussion.

in my version of sagau, he would definitely protect the creator. he wouldn’t worship the one on the throne, nor would he engage in the hunt (because he knows both are lies), but if you happened to ran into him, you would be safe.

to reiterate: in my version, khaenri’ah collapsed under its own hubris. hence, dainslef would have no reason to dislike you. be awkward, yeah, he hasn’t had an intelligent conversation with another person since the traveller, and before that it was 500 years.

that being said, he could be a bit resentful, even if he didn’t blame you. after all, you didn’t stop rhine, you didn’t do anything to keep the calamity from occurring. yeah it’s because khaenri’ah staunchly refused to have you involved no he hasn’t put it together yet. give him time.

of course, though, this is all my opinion and carries no actual weight.

oh, and welcome!

[asha-mage]

            Aegon reached out a hand, running it over Sunfyre’s side, willing the dragon to feel his presence. Sunfyre shifted, his pale wings curling tighter around him as he turned his head, refusing to stir.

            “None of that.” Aegon muttered, moving his hand up the dragon’s neck, to scratch directly behind the crest of pale horns. Begrudgingly, Sunfyre opened a single eye, and the coal in the back of Aegon’s mind exploded with flame. Aegon grinned, scratching a little to the right, and watching Sunfyre twist, trying to suppress the soft screech of pleasure it felt.

            At swords Aegon could admit he would only ever be passable. At books, sums, and histories he was below average, and at people he was a dismal failure. But at dragons? There was no one better. Not Aemond with his stolen legend, or uncle Daemon with his nimble Blood Wyrm. Not even Jace, for all he loved Vermax. Here, and here alone, was Aegon unchallenged in his mastery.

            It helped when you got lucky and hatched the best Dragon to ever take flight.

            “Come on.” Aegon murmured, stepping back and spoke in High Valyrian. “ Rise! We fly Sunfyre!”

            Sunfyre regarded him with one, skeptical amber eye, until Aegon repeated the command, and then, shaking loose his ashes, the dragon stood back on his hind legs, pushing itself up with its clawed wings. Another command in High Valyrian brought Sunfyre’s neck down, offering it for Aegon to climb.

            Aegon reached out to begin mounting Sunfyre and hesitated, suddenly aware of the way his heart pounded wildly, his breathing short and quick, his skin clammy and sweat slick. This was it, the last chance to turn back and abandon this madness. Past here, there was no return, he knew it. Past here, he moved from flouting grandfather, to open rebellion against him. The moment he set out for Dragonstone, he was defying and betraying his family.

            You can still go back. That voice whispered in his mind. It’s not too late.

            For the first time, Aegon was tempted to listen. He could tell Pelerian he changed his mind, or else, go for a quick circle around the bay and come back, claiming he had just needed to clear his head. No one would ever have to know he had contemplated more. He could commit himself fully to his family, to their cause, as penance. He could marry Helaena, and force himself to like Aemond, and….well not give up drinking, he wasn’t mad, but he could hold himself in better check. He could try, really try, to be the Prince, the King that everyone wanted him to be.

            He started to let his hand fall.

            And then he thought of Jace, and that ache deep in his chest throbbed. Would it really be so bad to see him again? Would it really be a betrayal, to try and find a way out of this, without bloodshed, without having to tear the realm, the House , apart? His mother was wrong about Jace, though he could never bring himself to say it aloud and never to her face, he was kind and good and….and Aegon missed him so much .

            One visit, that was all. A quick jaunt to Dragonstone, a talk with Jace, an apology for what happened at aunt Laena’s funeral, and all would be well again. And if that was a sin, well, the Gods would just have to forgive him or smite him.

            Seizing hold of one of Sunfyre’s scales, Aegon climbed up, ignoring the way his heart slammed against his chest like a battering ram making the bruises on his chest flare.

-- A Cloak of Black, Chapter 1: Threads

All Aegon has ever known is his mother's fear and rage, his father's cold indifference, and his grandfather's blind ambition. Unable to handle eternally falling short of their exceptions, or to face the threat of war on the horizon, he buries himself in his vices in order to cope, and waits for the world to be set aflame by the King's passing.

Until Helaena gives him some advice that changes the course of his life, and the future: try and revive his old bond with his nephew, Jacaerys. If Aegon can convince him that he is no threat, then maybe Rhaenyra and the rest of the realm will believe it too.

And if that means sneaking out to Dragonstone on Sunfyre? Learning more of his eldest sister and her family then he has ever before known? Realizing how kind and brave, smart and maybe even beautiful Jace is? And if those things together, shift the course of the Dance of Dragons, and House Targaryen forever?

Well, who could have foreseen that?

Or:

Aegon accidentally joins the Blacks, falls in love, and fights a war, not necessarily in that order.

[sunnyoldbear]

Luca Headcanons Part 3!

I can’t fucking stop please someone help me

Luca:

All seamonsters have a lot of fish qualities and different sea monsters take on different fish qualities, even within a family.

While Luca isn’t as equipped to handle the deep as his uncle is, his father does have some traits that would help him out. Luca doesn’t know this, but he can survive deeper pressure than most others can. Like, significantly deeper, but not to the point of the Deep. He’s have to get accustomed to it and he might not have even survived.

His species can also echolocate! He also doesn’t know he can do this even though it’s from his mom’s side. He just thinks he clicks and squeaks when he’s happy, he doesn’t know he can also echolocate. Since, again, he hasn’t been to the Deep, the ability is very diluted and he can’t locate things very far but… he can, if he tries hard enough. He won’t, though, cause he just thinks his clicks and squeaks are just that.

He loses his shit when he finds out about dinosaurs. He loves them.

If you even mention a museum he will practically beg to go and he will be in there from opening to closing and still come back for more. He takes in every bit of information he possibly can

He doesn’t flip people off, he just sticks his tongue out

Cloud watches! He thinks it’s cute :)

Is cold blooded. They found this out when he passed out in the middle of class one day during the winter. Winter months are very hard for him at school because of it, so he treasures the break and stays under a bunch of warm blankets.

Talks with his hands a lot

One day when he was swimming to the surface after seeing his family, a fisherman who wasn’t too approving of sea monsters tossed their harpoon at him. It grazed his arm and it hurt like hell, but he still tried to hide it. Of course, since he was clutching his arm and there was blood between his fingers, the Marcovaldos panicked and healed him tot he best of their ability, but Luca simply smiled, turned to Alberto, and said “look, we match now!” (If you see Alberto standing beside Luca so that their scarred arms touch since they’re on opposite arms, no you didn’t)

He finds out about bubble wands and thinks they’re the coolest thing!

Avoids every kid named “Bruno” at school like the plague because he doesn’t want them to think he hates them

Whenever something cool happens he instinctively turns to tell Alberto and his face drops when he doesn’t see him

Definitely the kid to accidentally say “mom” (and)or “I love you” to a teacher and then stare in horror

Grabs Alberto’s arm, wrist, or hand when they’re doing something together if he’s not grabbed first just so they don’t lose each other. It’s just instinct.

Once sobbed for an hour because he saw a dead frog in a pool

Falls asleep if his hair is played with

Still gets made fun of for smelling like fish but due to being a fish he can’t really bathe so Giulia and her mom just spray him with perfume. It makes him feel better.

Forgives Guido and Ciccio with no hesitation, will never forgive Ercole. In fact, he’s terrified of Ercole.

Technically canon, but he is the biggest mama’s boy. She learns from her mistakes and fixes her relationship with him and he becomes super close to her

Only lets those close to him call him “Bubble” like his grandma does

Loses his mind when he sees fireflies

He keeps his hair pretty short

Refuses to eat fish

Is more of a prey fish

That being said, he develops a few survival markings, such as a spot on one of his fins to look like eyes

For some reason I feel like he’d be like clownfish and be able to swim through anemone without getting zapped

Was never good at making friends. The Branzino kid often tried to befriend him but he was too scared of disappointing his parents since Daniela and Mrs. Branzino don’t get along

Wears a seashell anklet

His grandma taught him to read secretly when he was little

Never stops talking. Never.

In class, he’s always the kid raising his hand, even if he doesn’t know the answers, just because of his eagerness

Calls Alberto all the time, more than he calls his family

Carries Alberto’s drawing with him everywhere. Used to be in his pockets and then transferred to his wallet.

Is definitely more of a writer than an artist! With his vivid imagination he can write for days, and Alberto is more than happy to draw them out for him

Lets his hair grow out a bit towards the end of his final school year. The stress of school means he doesn’t quite care for his appearance

Can’t sit still. When he’s at school he’s always fiddling with something but when he’s in Portorosso he just grabs Alberto’s hand and plays with his fingers

Definitely a teacher’s pet

Gets bullied a lot. You can’t expect the world to just be okay with sea monsters overnight. A lot of the world will never accept him. There are kids that make his life a living hell at school.

As much as he loves school, he aches to be free sometimes

Gets super flustered super fast

Sits at Alberto’s side and talks about anything and everything and Alberto will sketch it

His scales are more like a duck’s water-resistant feathers. Water rolls right off.

Loves taking Nerone for walks

Definitely wears skirts and dresses in secret! He just thinks they’re neat :)

Loves romance movies but will never admit it

Literally bites his tongue to hold back from rambling. Giulia and Alberto constantly have to tell him it’s okay and he can talk all he wants, but he’s bullied so often for talking too much that he still holds back if he catches himself

Alberto:

Similar to a Betta Fish! His kind of sea monster aren’t known for bonding well and tend to fight.

When healthy, his scales are long and gorgeous just like a Betta’s! (Giulia is mesmerized by them)

You know how dolphins get high with puffer fish? It’s not just dolphins.

His teeth are a little sharper than most other sea monsters. Yes, he bares them at Ercole every time they see each other. No, he won’t stop

Definitely the “he ask for no pickles” friend

No one knows what he’s talking about half the time except for Luca, Giulia, and (sometimes) Massimo. They just kinda go with it.

Has his own words for everything. Only Luca and Giulia know what he means.

He’s actually super, duper close to Giulia, but they do fight pretty often. They’re siblings.

Likes to put his hat on Luca

Everyone thinks he’d be a bad flirt/get flustered super easily but the opposite is true! He’s a big flirt! He just knows what to say to make others fluster around him! Even if he’s not into you, if your his age or he’s trying to charm you, he’ll flirt up a storm. Living on your own from such a young age means you need to pick up survival tactics, and charm and streetsmarts were the ones he picked up.

Sometimes he faces small boats he sees just for the fun of it

He also sometimes grabs a rope or a net from Massimo’s boat when they’re fishing and just zooms to land to get them there quicker

Loves playing games with the kids when he’s on lifeguard duty, even if it can get him in trouble with his boss

You better bet he makes fun of those school uniforms. He laughs his ass off. He thinks they’re the funniest things.

If he sees or hears even a hint of danger, he is shoving his loved ones behind him and will protect them with his life.

Prefers to be barefoot

Heals surprisingly fast. Something about them fish genes.

When he’s fifteen he jokingly tells Luca he should become a teacher and then Luca’s eyes get all big and excited and Alberto regrets opening his mouth. But he still supports him every step of the way.

Whenever he hears Luca click or chirp, he calls out for him if he’s a distance away or grabs his hand since he recognizes it as echolocation before Luca does

More of a predator fish

Keeps his hair long and growing

I think he’d probably grow a mustache. Giulia hates it so much which is why he keeps it. Okay, he kept it to annoy her, but then he actually started to like it. But when Luca said he liked it, that solidified it

He’s so strong it’s kinda scary. Definitely stronger than the average fisherman, but was stronger even beforehand.

Sometimes just eats fish live and terrifies those around him

He’s super fast! Since he’s based on a tuna or swordfish, he’s pretty quick

Unlike Luca, he’s warm blooded. So when he heard Luca has to keep really warm during winters, he offers most of his clothes

His father abandoning him may seem cruel, but for his kind of sea monsters, it was what had to happen. Still, Alberto is a child and it shouldn’t happen.

Mainly a night eater

Can see further than most of his fishy friends

Good night vision too!

Was taught to read and write as a kid by his father but it’s not perfect so he asks Massimo to do it

Loves playing cards

Fins are sharper than average

Squishes Luca’s cheeks

Sword fights with Giulia except they’re sticks

Whenever Luca falls asleep on him (often), he just stays still and refuses to move

Scoops Luca up sometimes

Grabs Luca’s face and blows raspberries instead of kissing it. (Can be interpreted as platonic or romantic!! Italians kiss on cheeks as greetings)

Protectively wraps his tail around those he loves

Water clings to him a bit more since his built-for-speed scales are less water repellent

Every year he gets scared Luca won’t return

Paints the Hideout to look like Luca’s dream fish-stars after he’s told about it. The ceiling, anyway. Don’t ask how he did it, no one knows.

Changes his last name to Marcovaldo

Thinks pet fish and aquariums are hilarious and will poke fun at the fish (“haha, losers! No freedom!” “Alberto!” “What?!”)

LOVES DINOSAURS

He and Luca share a bed when Luca comes over!

The Vespa poster hangs in his room on his door

Calls Luca’s nightlights “light fish” as a nod to stars

Has Giulia and Luca’s names tattooed onto him because they’re his best friends

Tried to take Caligola and Machiavelli on walks… yeah that goes as well as you think

Giulia:

Is a fast reader

Isn’t a massive poetry fan but does have a few favorites

Also keeps a few drawings from Alberto in her folders

Also scoops Luca up randomly

Can and will bite you

Wears dresses as much as she does shorts

Ties her hair up when serious

Rubs her nose against her family’s as a sign of love. It’s just something she did as a kid, so sometimes she’ll just rub her nose against Alberto’s and he gets really confused

Is low key a little jealous of her brother and best friend being sea monsters

Is a bit of a builder! She makes a bridge from her room to the treehouse

Rarely starts fights with Alberto, but she’ll sure finish them

Half regrets teaching Alberto to swear

Though she seems pretty calm, she’s gotten into her fair share of fights at school. Mainly punches kids who bully her and/or Luca. Also sexists.

Although this is 1950/60s Italy, I imagine she’d be very accepting of homosexuality and not hide it, even if rumors of her being one start spreading and she gets hurt. She has a strong sense of justice and she doesn’t care about consequences.

She’s the only person allowed to make fun of Alberto. No one else is. She’ll quite literally attack anyone who dares.

Her parents were surprised she didn’t take after them in fishing or painting

Honestly I can see her mentoring the kids for the race every summer! Once she hits 18 and is no longer able to compete, she holds practice sessions and loves seeing the kids have fun

She definitely runs the race when she’s older. She moves to Portorosso since her marine biology career is helped by her sea monster brother and the town’s closeness to water

Teaches the boys to make sandcastles

Holds such strong resentment for Alberto’s father and Daniela. Lorenzo and Luca’s grandmother she’s fine with, but Alberto’s biological father abandoning him pisses her off more than she can put into words, and Daniela manipulating her son and sending him away makes her want to break something.

Her “santa (cheese)!” comments slowly change into “Santa (fish)!” exclamations. Like, “Santa Goby!” for example. 

Is more close to Alberto than he wants to let people know. She can read him like a book. He’s honestly her best friend. She tells him everything, they go to each other after nightmares, they share everything, all the fun cute stuff that Alberto would rather die than admit.

Still has no idea what “Silenzio Bruno” and “Piacere, girolamo trombetta” mean and at this point she’s too afraid to ask

Though she loves the Portorosso kids, she’d rather die than be a mother. Her parents understand, but secretly hope she changes her mind so they can spoil a grandbaby. 

Begs Massimo to coverup his sea monster tattoo, which he does

Also a “he ask no pickles” friend!

Is super patient with Luca and Alberto’s adaption to the human world (though she doesn’t like it when Alberto shoves his feet on her-which he loves to do because it pisses her off)

Secretly saves money up for the boys to get a Vespa

While she isn’t the best cook, her pasta meals are pretty damn good! 

Has the trophy from the Cup in her room next to a picture of the three of them on the Vespa

[robininthelabyrinth]

I’d love anything from Baxia’s POV. Maybe her spirit stays to protect Huaisang after Mingjue’s death?

ao3

Untamed verse

Humans did not remember the moment they were forged, which was, in Baxia’s opinion, probably the source of most of their troubles.

Baxia remembered her own forging: earth and wood as the raw ingredients, the warmth of the fire to shape her, the hiss of water as she was quenched, the sudden coalescence of her spirit bursting into life. 

It was not dissimilar to the moment Nie Mingjue’s golden core was formed, a moment she recalled quite fondly: they had broken through together, all at once, in an unexpected attack in the middle of an otherwise boring and supervised night-hunt. The night had been dark, pouring rain and pealing thunder, and the blood of the beast they had slain was wet on her blade; his blood had boiled with their frenzied victory, the heat of it shaping him as thoroughly as the flame had her, the rain quenching him even as their cultivation ran wild together, her spirit entwined with his soul.

And yet it was still different – before her forging, she was nothing; after, she was Baxia. But Nie Mingjue still remembered who he’d been before, and perhaps that was where the softness came from. The softness that made him hurt inside when people spoke ill of him, when he saw the man who killed his father, when he stayed his hand against evil because of politics and etiquette, all foolish human concerns…

He’d be better off without that softness.

Baxia herself had none. She was steel, straight and true; she was a saber, vicious and rigid and unyielding. She did not pity the weak or forgive fair-weather friends – she destroyed evil and protected without reservation that which was precious to her.

A very short list.

Mostly just Nie Huaisang, really, stubby little pocketknife that he was, and by association there was Aituan, who was more of a fat metal stick than a proper saber, but who was a great deal of fun to bully. There would be no making something of them – you couldn’t change someone’s fundamental forging without melting them down and starting again, and the pain necessary for something like that was not a fate she’d wish on her precious ones even if she did wish it on just about everyone else – and even Nie Mingjue knew it, but pride was pride and he kept on trying.

But for all that they were useless, they were blood – iron of her iron, made by her maker, and the same pulsing red of her rage lay there hidden deep beneath their frills and fecklessness.

So they were precious to her.

But most precious of all was Nie Mingjue, of course, her master and beloved. His blood had been spilled on the metal that formed her, once at the moment of his birth and once again at the moment of hers; it tied them together, made her a reflection of him and him a reflection of her.

Some sabers didn’t like being mastered like that, but she was proud of it, proud of Nie Mingjue himself. His spirit was as close as she had ever seen a human come to being a saber spirit, steel right down to the core of him, principles held as stiffly as her blade even when the results of those principles turned to cut against him. Full of rage, just as she was, but tempered, just like her – disciplined, fearsome, just.

is he (Nie Mingjue) one (singular unit) of us (swordspirit)? Sandu asked her one day, his voice still sleepy from the effort of starting to wake up. did he (Nie Mingjue) steal (evil) a birth (forging)?

of course not (negative), she said back, haughty and proud. he (Nie Mingjue) would never (negative, past-now-future). not (negative) a thief (evil). and what do you (Sandu) mean, one (singular unit) of us (saberspirit)? you (Sandu) are barely (negative) one (singular unit).

we (saberspirit-swordspirit) are closer (similar) to each other than humans (living), Sandu grumbled.

even my (Baxia) human (Nie Mingjue)?

Sandu conceded the point, muttering gloomily about it, then asked, do you (Baxia) think it is possible (positive) to fix (sharpen) my (Sandu) human (Jiang Cheng) to be more (similar) like us (swordspirit)?

too soft (living), Baxia declared, knowing why Sandu was asking. reforge him (Jiang Cheng).

nobody (negative) needs to be reforged, Suibian said, butting in with a chirp where no-one wanted them as always. humans (living) are just different from us spirits, that’s all, and there’s nothing (negative) wrong with that.

is that (reason) why you (Suibian) keep trying (swing) to talk like them (living)? Baxia snapped. cultivate faster (guai) instead.

Suibian huffed, and Sandu sighed. why do you (Baxia) dislike (negative) them (Suibian)?

doomed (negative) forging, Baxia said succinctly, cutting to the point as their kind always did. bad (negative) fate.

superstition (living), Suibian scoffed. i (Suibian) defy fate!

Baxia wasn’t impressed by such grandiose declarations. then reforge your (Suibian) master (Wei Ying).

never (negative, past-now-future)!

(It wasn’t just superstition. Suibian chirped and Sandu slurred, despite their masters being about equal in natural talent – that was wrong, when they were supposed to be brothers, masters and swords both, but Baxia had scolded them both on the subject in the past to no avail, telling them if the humans weren’t going to straighten themselves out their swords had to do it for them. They didn’t listen to her, so certain that everything was good and that nothing would change, and ignoring the saber-breaking cracks quietly growing underneath.)

Still, the conversation got her thinking. 

Nie Mingjue really was remarkably saber-like, after all, and he had his own doom writ above his head – the Nie family rage, which they��d worsened by tying their souls so closely to their inexorable sabers, and she could already hear Aituan whining leave my (Aituan) human (Nie Huaisang) out of this mess (Nie sect) before he (Nie Huaisang) gets angry – and she didn’t want to give her beloved up to the inexorable demands of fate so easily.

humans (living) are not like us (saberspirit), one of her elders reminded her. they (living) do not (negative) last (future) the way (similar) we (saberspirit) do.

Baxia knew that.

She knew, too, what her own fate would be, when the end came: the elders had been left in a honored tomb to burn with rage until the world’s end or their master’s reincarnation, whichever came first, and in time – sooner rather than later, given her master’s extraordinary strength – Baxia would do the same.

(Aituan occasionally entertained thoughts of being buried alongside his master in a nice quiet grave, rather than in a tomb of his own. Baxia really didn’t know what to do with him.)

But just because she knew her fate didn’t mean she liked it, and perhaps it was the swords’ influence or just her own strength that encouraged her, but she didn’t want to accept things she didn’t like. She wanted to fight fate the way Suibian claimed they would, except unlike Suibian that was all talk, a sword that forgot dings as soon as they were smoothed out, Baxia didn’t make decisions like that lightly.

are you (Baxia) sure (stab) about this (decision)? Aituan asked her, anxious. fate is hard to cut (slice) or even to bend.

Baxia was sure.

She was sure throughout the war, which increased her cultivation and her master’s dramatically – she wished they had had a real fight with Wen Ruohan, rather than a fight with her master shackled and weakened after three days of being beaten and starved, because Wen Ruohan liked to be powerful but didn’t like taking chances – and throughout which her master fiercely kept his principles intact. He paid attention to the innocent, he cared for his soldiers, he maintained order and imposed justice no matter who committed the act, he used all the tactics that were reasonable without ever descending into anything dirty or evil.

She was even more sure later, when the war was over and her master’s so-called friends conspired to steal his good name for their own benefit and began bullying him into agreed to it.

“It’s not such an unreasonable request,” her master said – too soft, as always, when it came to precious things, too soft in dealing with outsiders that did little for him beyond showing him a smile or two, too soft when it ought to just be her and him and Nie Huaisang and, yes, even that plonk Aituan against them all. “Everyone has already started calling us the Venerated Triad; politically, it would be difficult and embarrassing for all of us for me to decline. And as the eldest brother, I would have the right and even the duty to try to help Meng Yao remember how to behave –”

you (Nie Mingjue) cannot (negative) change what (forging) does not wish (positive) to be changed (Meng Yao), she snarled, and wished he could understand her better.

There was a language barrier between the living and the unliving. It was entirely separate from the barrier between living and dead, or different types of being – even plants and animals were more conversant with humans than she, with all their naturally obtained understanding of things like breathing or eating or changing, and ghosts and corpses, although dead, were even easier for humans to interpret. 

Not so her. 

No, the living were so amorphous, the cells within them being reforged every day – melted, quenched, made – and within seven years an average human would be so repaired that the only consistent part of them was their souls and spirits, the reservoirs of memory; whereas she would remain as she was, valiant and true to herself, for centuries without end.

And so Nie Mingjue could understand a ghost well enough to liberate its spirit, he could anticipate an animal’s movements based on its desires, he could even engage in the cut and thrust of sect business with snake-like men who spoke so sweetly they might as well have lotuses on their tongues, but he could only mostly understand what she wanted to convey, getting the feelings and most of the meaning but garbling key parts of the rest. Even that level of understanding was fairly radical for a human, another reason she had in favor of her plan: Nie Mingjue was too straightforward to be a proper human, resulting in him being confused by the complex hypocrisies of most humans just as she was, as all swords and sabers were, and he hated the messy sticky politics of it all.

it (living) isn’t that hard (tough to stab), Aituan mumbled. my (Aituan) human (Nie Huaisang) does it (living) all the time (past-now-future).

maybe if your (Aituan) human (Nie Huaisang) helped him (Nie Mingjue) more, it (living) wouldn’t be so hard (tough to slice).

but we (Aituan, Nie Huaisang) don’t want to (negative)!

then you (Aituan, Nie Huaisang) should stop (negative) whining (scraping rock)!

In the end Nie Mingjue agreed to the sworn brotherhood over Baxia’s objections – it didn’t help that Nie Huaisang was in favor of it, which made Baxia scold Aituan for hours – and naturally it went as badly as could be expected.

he (Lan Xichen) means (motivation) well (positive), Shuoyue said, her voice gentle as a rippling brook. It had once been pleasant to hear. you (Baxia) are too stern (unbending).

we (saberspirits) are unbending by nature (forging), Baxia snapped at her. you (Shuoyue) should (positive) know better (positive)! you (Shuoyue) should have objected (negative)!

i (Shuoyue) do not (negative) have to agree (similar) with you (Baxia), Shuoyue said, a little more peevishly than normal. my (Shuoyue) master (Lan Xichen) likes him (Meng Yao) and your (Baxia) master (Nie Mingjue) both. why should he (Lan Xichen) have to yield (bend) one (Meng Yao) for the other (Nie Mingjue)?

because he (Meng Yao) is (forged) cruel (evil), Baxia said flatly. and even if he (Lan Xichen) does not (negative) see it (evil), you (Shuoyue) can – but (negative) are choosing not (negative) to do so (evil).

i (Shuoyue) do not (negative) accept your (Baxia) judgment (stab), Shuoyue said and she was angry, defensive. She knew she was wrong – she would have denied Baxia’s accusation if she could – but she was choosing her master and his wants over righteousness. my (Shuoyue) master (Lan Xichen) believes that he (Meng Yao) can change (reforge) if he (Meng Yao) is given trust –  

impossible (negative). he (Meng Yao) has not (negative) agreed (reforging).

i (Shuoyue) disagree (negative). regardless (negative) of what you (Baxia) think, i (Shuoyue) will make my (Shuoyue) own judgment (slice)!

Incensed beyond all tolerance, Baxia cursed her with the worst words her kind knew, may your edge (Shuoyue) cut the life of your master (Lan Xichen), and after that they did not speak again.

Nie Mingjue felt her distress and sought to soothe her, with night-hunts and sharpening and everything she liked best, and even Nie Huaisang came to her with buffing cloths and calming oil to coax her back into something more neutral than rage – blinding disappointed rage of the sort Baxia would think was more appropriate against a human than one of her own kind – and for a while they didn’t go to visit the Cloud Recesses at all. 

In the end, mostly in recognition of Nie Mingjue’s confused but unstinting support, no matter how much he missed his friend, she settled for speaking only with Liebing, who wasn’t a sword but who Baxia had noticed went pointedly off-key a few times when Meng Yao was around.

he (Meng Yao) wants too much (evil) from my (Liebing) master (Lan Xichen), she said, distressed. She was younger than the weapons were, having been mastered at a later age – less developed, less attuned to detecting and destroying evil, but she had a good spirit, enthusiastic and true. but (negative) master (Lan Xichen) does not (negative) listen to me (Liebing) – he (Lan Xichen) is more attuned (positive) to swordsmanship (Shuoyue) and she (Shuoyue) does not (negative) agree.

her (Shuoyue) decision (slice) will cost (cut) him (Lan Xichen), Baxia said. Ignoring evil was unworthy of a swordspirit, and very close to evil itself; she herself would not permit such a weakness no matter how much Nie Mingjue pleaded. Indeed, it was her own enmity that kept him at odds and distant from Meng Yao, who he would have rather liked to forgive. the only question (uncertainty) is if it (decision) will cost (cut) the rest of us (general) first.

It did, of course.

Shuoyue refused to yield, Baxia had never known how, and in the end –

In the end, Baxia could only detect the poison that affected her and her master both and seek to expel it, but had no means to identify from where the poison came. Perhaps Liebing would have been able to tell her, if Meng Yao hadn’t hidden his crimes so deeply; or perhaps Aituan, who realized far too late what was the discordant note in Baxia’s whistling song was, could have done more…

By the time her master and her realized that they had been so thoroughly betrayed – that they had anticipated small evils when in fact the evil was thorough and pervasive – it was too late.

But regrets were for those who had not prepared, and Baxia – Baxia had prepared. She might have thought she’d have more time, but once the decision had been made, all those years ago, she had not hesitated to start acting at once. 

She had never been more happy for her straightforward and blunt nature that did not drag and did not hesitate.

The qi deviation came suddenly, Meng Yao unmasking himself at the last for the specific purpose of driving Nie Mingjue past the edge – and he succeeded. It should have worked; it should have killed him.

But Baxia had been stretching herself thin for years now, trading pieces of herself for her master, knowing just as he knew that one day his fragile human mind and body would turn against him, that he would die choking on his own blood – the flame inside of him too hot to tolerate – and that saber-clean spirit she so loved would be lost to the cycle of reincarnation, with Baxia herself left to endlessly wait for him.

She didn’t want to wait.

What happened? he asked blearily, only a few shichen later, and she couldn’t help the surge of joy in her heart when she heard how easily he slipped into awareness, into speech – he really must have been a saber in a past life. Why can’t I see anything? Baxia – is that you?

yes (positive), it is me (Baxia), she said proudly. i (Baxia) saved you (Nie Mingjue).

Thank you, Nie Mingjue said automatically, not even bothering to ask how she’d done it or what it had cost – such a good master, to trust her so. Wait. I can hear you. You’re talking!

i (Baxia) have always (positive, past-now-future) talked, she said. it was you (Nie Mingjue) who could not (negative) hear.

After a moment – she suspected he was processing, or attempting to – she added, you (Nie Mingjue) are a saberspirit now (now-future).

…I’m a what?!

Baxia guided him back to the world so that he could see. His body – what had become of it – was currently chained down on a table in what must be a secret room; it was recognizable as being somewhere in Jinlin Tower, but neither of them had ever seen this room before. The tell-tale marks of Yin Metal poisoning, the signs of turning into a corpse puppet, stretched up his neck and his eyes were blank and full of resentment, his body thrashing and mouth snarling. 

Jin Guangyao was standing beside him and looking down with a frown, asking, “Why is it not working? It worked with the others.”

“The body is too full of resentment,” Xue Yang said – and it was Xue Yang there, standing free and clear and Baxia wanted to murder him, murder them both, they were evil, and she felt Nie Mingjue’s rage right alongside her own; he agreed entirely. “Normally, it takes time for resentment to infiltrate a living body; resentment can affect the physical body faster than it does the souls and spirits…it’s as if his are gone.”

“His spirit is gone? Impossible.”

Xue Yang shrugged. “Perhaps it is only that the qi deviation weakened his ability to resist the resentful energy of the Yin Metal,” he hypothesized. “Either way, there’s nothing more I can do. What do you want to do with him?”

Jin Guangyao scowled – he’d clearly had plans for the corpse puppet he would have made out of Nie Mingjue, and Baxia can feel Nie Mingjue’s betrayal and hurt and rage at the very idea – and then he said, “Kill him.”

Oh no they didn’t.

hey, you (Jiangzai)! she called as Xue Yang moved to draw his sword. tell your (Jiangzai) human (Xue Yang) to use me (Baxia) to do it (slice).

why should I (Jiangzai)? the small-spirited sword asked. Xue Yang’s cultivation wasn’t especially impressive, but it did exist; his sword had managed to develop enough to have a personality. Well, if you called that a personality. what’s in it (benefit) for me (Jiangzai)?

a generous (positive) offer, Baxia declared. i (Baxia) will not (negative) break you (Jiangzai) into pieces.

The other sword had an aura of death, but its master was a coward and so too was it. It yielded at once.

Why do you want to be the one to kill me? Is there some benefit to it? Nie Mingjue asked, sounding curious – curious, and not angry, because he trusted her.

Such a good master. He was worthy of being her beloved. 

a saber (general) should never (negative) cut their human (general), Baxia explained. it is an evil. but that (object) is not (negative) you (Nie Mingjue) because it (object) does not (negative) contain you (Nie Mingjue). they (Jin Guangyao and Xue Yang) have filled it (object) with resentful energy; as soon as it (object) ceases to live, it will be (future) a gui (dead living).

And that means what? That you can cultivate with its energy?

no (negative)! she exclaimed. She would never use anything of Nie Mingjue’s as a tool for her own cultivation like that, treat him like a stepping stone to give herself more power. Hadn’t he faced enough of that? a gui (dead living) is not (negative) restricted by bodily uniformity (singular). it (gui) can be broken (shattered) and remain active (swing); it (gui) can also be reforged.

But what does that matter, since that’s not ‘me’ in there? Is it just so that it will haunt my enemies?

bad (negative) luck, Baxia agreed, because being haunted by a gui was indeed bad luck. but no (negative). the purpose (motivation) is that if I (Baxia) kill it (object), I (Baxia) can capture its vital energy (body) so as to eventually (future) reforge the gui.

Reforge?

remove (negative) the resentful energy (evil), she explained, restore (positive) the vital energy (life), return the souls and spirits (Nie Mingjue).

Are you suggesting that you think you’ll be able to bring me back to life?

Well, that was the goal anyway. Swords could be reforged and given new life, even after they’d been broken, so why couldn’t humans? And anyway, how else was she supposed to save him from an always-fatal qi deviation?

Xue Yang picked up Baxia when Jiangzai bit his fingers, resisting, and she allowed him to wield her – to lift her up high into the air, and to come down on the neck of the would-be gui. It all happened exactly as she would have predicted: the body died, and the gui came to life, and the evildoers only had a little bit of time to applaud themselves for their crime before they were struggling against hands that sought to strangle them and feet that kicked them and even teeth that bit them.

A fierce corpse, in defiance of all the soul-calming rituals that Nie Mingjue had mostly slept through as a child.

Now what? Nie Mingjue asked, and Baxia flung herself out the window in response. Well, that works. I refuse to allow myself to be wielded by him of all people.

it is (now) cute (pointy) that you (Nie Mingjue) expect to be (future) the one being wielded.

I meant it metaphorically…

no (negative) you (Nie Mingjue) did not (negative). you (Nie Mingjue) are too much (positive) of a saberspirit to mean anything else (negative). Baxia paused, contemplating. anyway he (Meng Yao) hasn’t even (negative) managed to bring forth (forge) a spirit in his sword (Hensheng); it (Hensheng) is only dead metal. he (Meng Yao) would be (past-now-future) a bad master (evil). 

I can’t say I disagree, Nie Mingjue said with a sigh. I was a fool. I should have listened to you when you resisted me swearing brotherhood with him.

yes (positive) you (Nie Mingjue) should have. now, you (Nie Mingjue) direct (swing) me (Baxia) – we (Nie Mingjue, Baxia) should go (future) home.

Yes. Let’s go home.

It took a while, mostly because Nie Mingjue didn’t want to startle common people by having an apparently masterless saber hurtling through the air and Baxia didn’t want to risk getting close to any cultivators that might try to capture her (them) as a treasure, but on the other hand they didn’t need to sleep or eat or relieve themselves the way humans did.

According to Nie Mingjue, this was extremely weird for him.

Baxia showed him how to dream – it was a purposeful state for sabers, something to let the time when they weren’t being used pass faster – but apparently it was still weird. Living creatures were so tetchy.

They got home long before Nie Huaisang did, but luckily the little brat had left Aituan at home again and he was delighted to see them, the sound of his blade whistling in the wind as it lunged at them (in a friendly way) almost a shriek.

you (Baxia) did it (positive)! he shouted. my (Aituan) human (Nie Huaisang) will be (future) so happy!

Future happiness? Nie Mingjue interjected. He was doing so well at being a saber; it was so nice to be proven right. What’s wrong with him now, in the present? Is he all right?

he (Nie Huaisang) thinks that you (Nie Mingjue) are dead (broken), Aituan explained.

Shit, Nie Mingjue mutters. He must be upset – devastated.

also angry (rage), Aituan said. he (Nie Huaisang) wants to kill (cut) him (Meng Yao).

He knows? I mean – he figured it out?

yes (positive). he (Nie Huaisang) is angry (rage) and wants (future) to destroy evil (Meng Yao).

That may be difficult to accomplish, without proof, Nie Mingjue said. I want to see him as soon as he gets back.

It took some time for that to happen, even after he did return – unfortunately, Nie Huaisang was escorted by Jin Guangyao and Lan Xichen. The three of them were almost never apart, and obviously they couldn’t let Jin Guangyao know about Nie Mingjue’s return.

So they stayed away.

Aituan, abandoned, kept them company, staying away from the dead Hensheng and the living Shuoyue and Liebing.

During Nie Huaisang’s investiture as sect leader, the first time he’d picked up Aituan since everything had happened and even then only because it was self-evident that you couldn’t be sect leader of the Nie sect without a saber by your side, there was at last a brief chance for them to speak.

(Baxia eavesdropped.)

i (Liebing) am so sorry (scratched)! Liebing trilled, sounding honestly despondent. my (Liebing) master (Lan Xichen) is so sad, he (Lan Xichen) misses yours (Nie Mingjue) so much…

is she (Baxia) in the tombs? Shuoyue asked. Her voice was solemn and solid, not nearly as musical as usual. i (Shuoyue) wish to (future) speak with her (Baxia).

may you (Shuoyue) be broken into pieces and reforged into a chair, Aituan said pleasantly, so that you (Shuoyue) may be sat on for all eternity (future).

no need to be rude, she said crossly. i (Shuoyue) want to apologize.

do you (Shuoyue)? Aituan asked. will your (Shuoyue) apology bring him (Nie Mingjue) back? will your (Shuoyue) regret erase your (Shuoyue) complicity (evil)? you (Shuoyue) knew he (Meng Yao) was cruel (evil), and now he (Meng Yao) has destroyed my (Aituan) human (Nie Huaisang) by breaking her (Baxia) human (Nie Mingjue).

do you (Aituan) have proof (solid) that he (Meng Yao) did it (breaking)? Shuoyue demanded. She sounded miserable. you (Aituan) were not (negative) there, you (Aituan) do not (negative) know for sure (solid)…

do you (Shuoyue) still not (negative) admit your (Shuoyue) mistakes?! Liebing shouted. do you (Shuoyue) want (future) to end up like the others (Bichen, Wangji), regretting or pained (cracked), your (Shuoyue) master (Lan Xichen) destroyed (broken) at the hands of evil (Meng Yao)?

i (Shuoyue) just wanted him (Lan Xichen) to be happy…

you (Shuoyue) have made him (Lan Xichen) a breaker of swords, Aituan said. that is bad (negative) fate. how can he (Lan Xichen) be happy in the end?

can it (this) be fixed (positive)? she whispered. is it (this) too late (negative)?

Aituan didn’t respond.

Baxia approved.

After a while, Jin Guangyao left. He had duties, a wife, a small son – he couldn’t remain. Lan Xichen, who was responsible for a sect, agreed to stay a little longer, a few more weeks, but then he, too, would leave.

I’m going, I’m going,” Nie Huaisang complained as Aituan tugged him down into the basement where Baxia and Nie Mingjue had been waiting, killing time practicing their swings, usually while thinking about Jin Guangyao’s head as their target. “What’s gotten into you? You normally like to sit around like a paperweight, just the way we both like it, and I know we’re both raring and eager to go about getting revenge but I don’t see what we’ll find for that in our own basement –”

His voice trailed off.

“Baxia,” he whispered, and there were tears in his eyes. “Oh, Baxia…!”

Oh, Huaisang, Nie Mingjue cried. Huaisang, Huaisang – I’m so sorry for leaving you –

he (Nie Huaisang) cannot (negative) understand you (Nie Mingjue), Baxia said with a sigh. humans (general) are difficult (negative) for us (saberspirits) to speak with (spar).

very annoying (negative), Aituan agreed. do you (Nie Mingjue) have any ideas on how to get him (Nie Huaisang) to stop (negative) crying?

Yes. I need – I need ink, or to scratch something…can we get him out to the garden, maybe? I can write in the ground.

write? Baxia asked. the stupid (negative) thing humans (general) do with sticks and paper (soft)?

It serves a purpose, Nie Mingjue said, long-suffering – Baxia had made her view on his supposed “need” to do paperwork instead of train with her very clear many times. Come on, let’s get him outside. I can’t listen to him cry and apologize for not having done enough to save me anymore.

Whatever writing was, it was very impactful on humans: as soon as Baxia, indulgently following Nie Mingjue’s directions as she always did, started cutting slashes into the ground, Nie Huaisang fell silent, his eyes wide, and then they got wider.

“Da-ge?” he asked, voice tremulous. “How – it’s impossible. You’re in the saber?”

More slashes. Yes, Nie Mingjue said as he wrote. Yes, Huaisang, I’m here. You’re not alone.

Nie Huaisang kept crying for a while after that, but there was also hugging (Nie Mingjue yelled at him for not engaging in proper saber discipline when he nearly cut himself) and lots of very nice buffing with the clothing and the oils and the sharpening stone.

Baxia approved. Both Aituan and his human were handling this change very nicely – much better than she’d expected they would, in all truth.

“What do we do next?” Nie Huaisang asked, wiping his eyes.

we (us) get help, Baxia said. from those we (us) trust.

“That makes sense. But who can we tell?”

do you (Baxia) really mean to allow (positive) her (Shuoyue) to help? Aituan asked her doubtfully. after all (past) that she (Shuoyue) has done?

She has already made her own fate, Nie Mingjue said, his voice solemn. She allowed Lan Xichen to bind himself to Meng Yao, to make himself an accomplice to evil. It will break his heart to learn what Meng Yao has done – and that will be a deeper cut than having kept him away from her at all.

we (saberspirits) should never (negative, past-now-future) have to cut (break) our own humans (general), Baxia agreed. a bad (negative) fate.

deserved, Aituan hissed, vengeful, and when brought in on the discussion Nie Huaisang ended up agreeing with him.

Nie Mingjue was the only one surprised, though he shouldn’t have been. How could Nie Huaisang have deserved to master a saber, any saber, even one like Aituan, if he didn’t have some sharp edges to him?

Those sharp edges had been hidden, once, but that was before the pain of losing everything had melted him into a new shape, reforging him the way she’d once wished he never would be. Him and Aituan both.

They would be able to do what needed to be done now.

“Let her suffer her bad fate,” Nie Huaisang said, his eyes cold. “I supported Meng Yao and I suffered, didn’t I? Why should she be exempt? Let her suffer. Let him suffer. I want Meng Yao to lose everything he’s ever wanted, and then to die alone and with nothing.”

That seems excessive, Nie Mingjue objected. Just kill him and be done with it.

too soft (Nie Mingjue), Baxia scolded.

I said to kill him! How is that soft?!

break him (Meng Yao) in to pieces! shatter him (Meng Yao)! throw him (Meng Yao) into a tomb to wait for a reincarnation that will never (negative) come!

It turned out Baxia had some strong feelings on the subject.

“We can do that,” Nie Huaisang said, his thumb lightly rubbing against Aituan as he planned. “I have an idea.”

[itsnothingofinterest]

I think this fandom needs more villainous Christmas content, and also we really need some light Villain content right now; so since the PLF were formed and Shigaraki was still with them for last Christmas, here’s what I headcanon Shigaraki & the lieutenants got each other during their tense first few days after the merger.

Shigaraki

He get everyone video games. And also personal consoles for each and every one of them. Now Hero Aca is 200 years in the future, but I’m gonna list specific games & series anyway and just say if it still exists, it’s the latest game from that series, if not, it’s something similar to that series. With that said, here’s what he got everyone.

Dabi: Doom

Toga: Assassins’ Creed

Spinner: Grand Theft Auto

Twice: Animal Crossing

Mr. Compress: Mario

Geten: Dark Souls

Skeptic: Professor Layton

Trumpet: Command & Conquer

Redestro: X-COM

Attitude after merger review: Good marks; no noticeable signs of favoring old friends over enemies turned allies. Good job hiding that animosity Tomura!

Dabi

He went to a book store and got everyone books; because they’re good gifts that still allow him the opportunity to knock everyone’s literacy skills by saying they should read more. It’s an important balance for him to strike, getting good gifts without appearing friendly in the slightest. Anyway, here’s the genres he got everyone

Shigaraki Edge action adventure

Toga: Romance

Spinner: Action adventure YA novel

Twice: Slice-of-life comedy

Mr. Compress: murder mystery

Geten: University-level math textbook

Skeptic: Sci-fi navel gazing

Trumpet: Political theory

Redestro: Suspenceful Thriller

Attitude after merger review: Would’ve been fine if not for that dig at Geten’s uneducated status. Try harder next year, please.

Toga

Reminiscent of her pre-quirk Christmases, she decided to make homemade gifts for everyone using whatever she had available. Which was a lot, actually, since she was not afraid to spend Redestro’s money on supplies. In fact she went out of her way to get the most expensive supplies available at every opportunity.

Shigaraki: A grim miniature carnival ground where action figures of All Might & other pros are tortured and mutilated.

Dabi: a miniature statue of him made out of platinum and then crudely painted.

Spinner: An origami model of Stain with a vast arsenal of origami swords.

Twice: a Hand-knitted toque just a bit to big for his head.

Mr. Compress: A collection of new masks in fancy paints.

Geten: A mountaineering pick-ax with a handle in his color scheme.

Skeptic: Just a piece of paper saying “I know about the neck snapping. I look forward to working with you.”

Trumpet: A Trumpet.

Redestro: A bust of his head made of solid gold and smiling his to-wide fake-y smile.

Attitude after merger review: Also docking points for a dig at a former adversary, and what’s worse is it wasn’t even in the form of a proper present. Also losing points for going out or your way to spend Redestro’s money, which granted, everyone else was doing too, but you were a bit upfront with it. Employ more subtlety next time!

Spinner

Spinner also got everyone video games like Shigaraki did; however he looked into indie games. Gotta support the little guys, y’know? That said, indie games 200 years in the future are nearly equivalent to AAA games now in all the ways that matter, so there’s not too much of a difference except it’s all spiritual successors, no franchises. Huge selection though, and there’s successors to everything so Spinner’s set.

Shigaraki: Metroid

Dabi: Mario Kart

Toga: Danganronpa

Twice: Rayman

Mr. Compress: Clunhouse Games: 51 Classics

Geten: Celeste

Skeptic: Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes.

Trumpet: Call of Duty

Redestro: Roller Coater Tycoon

Attitude after merger review: Full marks just like Tomura, as expected of his closest lieutenant. Excellent gifting Spinner!

Twice

Now that he has money, he just went on some Amazon-esque website and got the first thing he saw the reminded him of everyone. As such, his gifts are the most sporadic & random.

Shigaraki: A bottle of Kurogiri’s favorite wine.

Dabi: A quality pack of cigarettes.

Toga: Hairclips with characters from an anime she liked growing up.

Spinner: One of the spinning whetstone things for sharpening blades.

Mr. Compress: A new hat.

Geten: a pair of mittens.

Skeptic: Several Spools or wire + a pair of wire cutters.

Trumpet: A maintenance kit for trumpets.

Redestro: A $1000 donation to a quirkless rights movement in his name. (Can you tell he’s still mad about Giran?)

Attitude after merger review: Once more, major marks docked for taking a dig at an enemy-turned-ally that you can hardly even pretend is a proper gift. Once again; if you can’t do anything nice, be more sublet when acting mean.

Mr. Compress

He frankly wanted to see if he could get anyone into his hobbies, or at least get them something to remind them of him, so he robbed a magic store for magic trick-based toys & performance tools.

Shigaraki: One of those things where you saw your assistant in half (complete with saw).

Dabi: Those weird orb things that slid around your hand.

Toga: One of those boxes you have your assistant stand in and then stab them (complete with knives).

Spinner: Fancy deck of cards

Twice: Yo-yo collection.

Geten: Hula hoop

Skeptic: Semi-transparent Mirror

Trumpet: Bracelet things where you put one inside the other.

Redestro: Fog Machine

Attitude after merger review: Nearly full marks, but it is rather noticeable how League members got, on average, much larger presents than the MLA alumni. Still, the plausible deniability is worth something here. 

Geten

He just went to a store to get whatever he could find. He did not try very hard for the League. Or Skeptic & Trumpet for that matter.

Shigaraki: Santa hat

Dabi: Snow globe

Toga: Chocolate Bar

Spinner: Elf hat.

Twice: Bag of candy

Mr. Compress: a $20 gift card.

Skeptic: New tie.

Trumpet: A wallet.

Redestro: A Blue-Ray collection of a movie series he’d been meaning to see.

Attitude after merger review: Absolute lowest marks; the fact that he got bad gifts for fellow MLA members does not hide this fact as well as he may think it does.

Skeptic

Not really knowing enough about any of these guys enough to really think about what they want, but still wanting to show off; he hacked into the personal bank accounts of several heroes & famous figures and, using each one, got a ¥ 1 million gift card from this store franchise that doesn’t allow any kind of refunds.  Here are the corresponding accounts used to make each person’s gift (he did at least put thought into who each recipient might like to rob).

Shigaraki: All Might

Dabi: Endeavor

Toga: Best Jeanist

Spinner: Wash

Twice: Yoroi Musha

Mr. Compress: Edgeshot

Geten: Mirko

Trumpet: Some political opponent

Redestro: The HPSC president

Attitude after merger review: Both thoughtful and balanced between old & new partners, full marks for one of the last people you might’ve expected. Way to use that pride, Skeptic!

Trumpet

A rather materialistic fellow, he got everyone some new tech or item of convenience.

Shigaraki: An expensive watch.

Dabi: A temperature-controlled water bottle

Toga: A big make-up kit

Spinner: A nice suit

Twice: An Ipod.

Mr. Compress: A nice suitcase.

Geten: A mini-fridge.

Skeptic: A new laptop.

Redestro: A new phone.

Attitude after merger review: Full marks, I suppose, if only because he equally half-arsed it for everyone. Not even out of malice either, he just didn’t try all that hard for anyone.

Redestro

The richest of the lot: he also just got everyone some piece of technology/luxury rich person thing, with the difference that his presents were really big & expensive. He was rather invested in endearing himself to the new team.

Shigaraki: A kind of really big yacht, one with windows around the deck to keep people from seeing him. Imagine a cross between a yacht & a limo, actually.

Dabi: A stupidly big TV with like 10 different streaming services pre-paid on it. 

Toga: A self-driving car.

Spinner: One of those 4-wheeled dirt bikes

Twice: His very own mountain lodge.

Mr. Compress: His very own hot tub.

Geten: His own private jet, complete with a walk-in freezer installed in the back.

Skeptic: A warehouse & collection of those big data storage units; enough to back-up all the data his company had ever collected.

Trumpet: A new van

Attitude after merger review: Full marks and well earned; because even if they weren’t always the most personalized, they were too high quality for it to matter. And for once the expense wasn’t a mark against him because he was spending his own money!

Final review: Toga got everyone the best gifts, with Twice taking 2nd place, because theirs were both thoughtful and unique. Even the non-gift to Skeptic & Redestro couldn't bring them below anyone else’s score. Everyone else sucks at this. 3rd place goes to Redestro though, because “money can’t by happiness” is a phrase that doesn’t apply to poor people.

[byakuyasdarling]

Ah yes, Pokémon rivals; my favourite topic

Warning: this list is massively biased. I (kinda jokingly) rag on every ‘Awful’ tier rival, so if you don’t want to here that, feel free to skip that explanation. I am pretty harsh with Marnie, I know a lot of people like her, so if you do like her PLEASE don’t read her section because I do not want to upset anyone. 

Also, I do ramble a bit how I like SWSH but they are my personal least favourite games (which is a hot take, I know), so if that would upset you please skip. Take care of yourselves <33

I created the politically correct ranking of Pokémon rivals (/j)

Anyway, epic explanation under the cut:

*if N was on this list he would fall under “Amazing”. Breath-taking story, breath-taking development, great theme songs, awesome character, fantastic team.

Why Blue is in S rank (very long explanation compared to the rest)

You cannot tell me Blue (or Green, or Gary, whatever you want to call the main Kanto rival) isn’t THE BEST RIVAL EVER. They got it SO RIGHT. He inspires hatred, AND sympathy. Literally, his grandad, the only living relative aside from his sister we even know about, loves you (the player) more than him and it’s kind of sad. 

Blue is great, he has a crappy pronunciation of ‘Bonjour’ (see Pokémon Masters), he says ‘smell ya later!’ he has class, swag, and is by no doubt the most challenging rival character. He is the only rival I never swept on a normal run. He is always demeaning you; he is always one step ahead all the way up until the champion battle where you finally beat him. AND HIS CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT OMG.

He still is arrogant and prideful, but respects people and wants to guide people to be better at Pokémon battling and thrives when he sees others succeeding - he doesn’t mind being ‘a former champion’. HECK HE’S SO COOL AND AMAZING. 

Also he has the best champion theme and encounter theme ever. Yes, he was a previous F/O so I am super biased; but so were 3 others on this list. 

Silver and Gladion

These two were my F/Os when I was much younger (around 12). They are great rivals with great development and story arcs. Plus, they have bopper encounter themes and battle themes. Gladion was my real introduction to the oc x canon community and inspired me to take drawing on as a hobby (as well as Lillie but I did not end up drawing her as much). 

Brendan, Cheren, Hugh, and Barry

When I was 10 playing Omega Ruby, I liked Brendan a lot (so... another past F/O... he’s the final one though). I dunno, he genuinely had a good friendship with that extra spice of rivalry with our character, May. I do not like friendly rivals (if my listing wasn’t obvious), but Brendan did it right. There was a lot of touching scenes with him and May *cough*cough* Delta Chapter *cough*cough* which really made me connect with him when I was 10. Now, Brendan and May are interchangeable depending on which one of them you pick to play as, so why have I ranked Bredan far above May? Better encounter and battle theme (yes, they have different instrumentation) and he gets the childhood crush pass.

Cheren is cool, I just really like his character and his attempts to create a good strategy. He is really dedicated to what he loves and becomes a gym leader (like BLUE DID. Blue has it all, really). Plus, glasses are cute :) (he is the same age as me, I can legally say that even though that was an obvious nod to Byakuya but you never know what people will take out of context). 

Hugh is cool becomes he somewhat feels like an asshole rival, but at the same time, has a really soft side. Like, his whole motivation to be a good trainer is to save his sister’s Purrloin that was stolen by Team Plasma. He is a hero y’all. Also GREAT encounter and battle theme; huge thumbs up. 

Barry! My man! Overall, cool rival with a great team. He is the second hardest rival to me (but Blue is harder than him by a landslide still). He is really funny in both the games and the anime and despite being a bit more friendly, he still sparks a lot of rivalry with you. Plus, his dad is battle frontier brain Palmer! How awesome! He was also my first rival, so that’s something special to me too. 

Average Tier

I like Hau as a character, he feels like a genuine friend and how he develops with the main character and Lillie is really wholesome. It’s just - I dislike him as a rival, a lot. Easy fights, not the best encounter theme... just kind of there. I get why people consider Gladion as ‘the true rival’ of S and M because he really is. Hau is also a rival that chooses the starter WEAK to your starter like the gen 6 rivals (who I hate with my entire being). 

Wally had a bad-ass final battle theme song and moment. That’s literally the only reason he makes the average tier. If this was a ranking disregarding ORAS he is easily down in the ‘Awful’ tier. 

I like Pokémon Sword and Shield... except I just don’t like them as much as every other game (yes. I did play Pokémon Yellow and enjoyed it more, thank you). I know you all HATE that, but that is just my opinion - I think I have earned the right to say that after my almost 12 years of playing these games and being a VGC player for a few years. It has good characters and some cool Pokémon and yeah... gameplay? Lacklustre. I really do not know what went wrong outside of story. Somehow the competitive battle scene is not the fun it used to be. Dynamax bugs me, the lack of megas bugs me, the dex cut REALLY bugs me. I know I am not the only one who thought this game lacked the charm other Pokemon games have. Graphically though, it’s very nice for the most part.

I have gone way off-topic, but anyway, yeah. SWSH rivals make average because I like their characters (especially Hop’s development). Outside of that, not the best rivals.

May is cool for a lot of the reasons I discussed with Brendan.

Lacking Tier

I like Bianca’s whole deal with her dad and how Elesa has a nice moment to shine too - and that’s it. I know the whole theme of her team is friendship but I die inside every time I watch a Chandelure uses RETURN. It was cool she returned in BW2 I guess? I like how her battle theme matches her personality, but it isn’t anything to write home about. 

I like Calem a bit more than Serena but I do not want to pull another Brendan and May (even though I had some good reason to do that) and I’m going to put them here. Bad teams and not memorable in the slightest, Calem and Serena belong in this tier. 

Awful Tier

X and Y rivals amirite??? They just suck. They are annoying and they suck. They have 3 Pokémon in all final fights, really? At least Shauna is likeable in the anime. 

I hate Trace. But, he has one funny memory I have with my dad that makes him slightly better. We both named him ‘Blue’ since Blue is the actual Kanto rival, but then Blue showed up in LGPE... And then the two ‘Blues’ talked to each other and it was mildly amusing at the time. Anyway, he didn’t deserve Blue’s champion theme (which is even used for Blue in later games outside of his champion battle (BW2), THAT IS NOT TRACE’S THEME. Anyway, he is the gross friendly rival that attempted to fulfil the best rival’s shoes. Sorry Trace, bad luck my dude. 

I just never attached to Marnie I suppose, but I can understand that she is important to those who are invested in her. I am about to fully rag on Marnie, so please skip if that makes you upset. 

 I am going to hurt a lot of people when I said I never liked Marnie. She was always just... like why do people like her so much?? I feel like most people like her because she is ‘funny haha goth gf’ which, fair I suppose. I just think she is super lacking as a rival, she makes no real impression as an actual character, and I think if you removed her from the game it wouldn’t make a difference. Don’t want to be that guy, but I AM that guy right now. I suppose she has a cute design?? and that’s it. Again, I am really biased when it comes to SWSH and rivals, so I suppose she really got the short end of the stick with me.

[thenamesblurrito]

ladies and gentlemen this is ask dump no. 5

aw scrap here we go again!

answered asks include body modification as the opposite of empurata, Mutacons making bandages out of kibble, kibble used as furniture, numbers of Sweeps, a DILF alligator, RID15 Tidal Wave, a BIG infodump on dealing with the circus that is Iacon’s media, Cybertronian muppets, a WIP of Elita Infin1te (or rather her sword), and the many secret sufferings of Alpha Trion.

yea, sorta! body modification in SNAP is more limited than in canon. you can’t simply switch out your body like the total frame reformats of IDW or TFP, and losing a limb can be permanent if not healed in time. for the most part, the frame you have is the frame you’re stuck with, and those frames fall within specific parameters.

HOWEVER-

some modification and upgrades do exist! the most prominent here would be a prosthetic helm like Lugnut. if the processor is left intact and attached after a helm injury, a new helm can be sculpted, with extra optics to make up for the lower quality of artificial optics, and as visibly different as possible to differentiate from empurata. other replacements and prosthetics are common after debilitating injury where the original body part cannot be saved. whether or not the prosthetic is as good as the original depends on the individual and the specific injury. there are also functional medical upgrades, like thicker armor attachments, alt mode additions, etc. almost every upgrade is for the express purpose of improving one’s frame for their function, and there’s definitely a limit to them. you can’t give yourself new limbs if you only had four to begin with. a grounder cannot become a flier. the spark can only power so much mass in the frame, and some people have adverse reactions that mean the upgrades don’t take and must be removed.

this sort of relates to the next point here-

yes, with some caveats.

Cybertronians are a segmentary species, so they can detach some body parts for a bit without negative consequences, as long as that body part is reattached for revitalization and repair. many folks can do this without any medical assistance for the less integral kibble. for instance, Kup uses his tow arm as a walking stick, but he has to reattach it whenever he wants to go into alt mode, and if he doesn’t transform he still needs to reattach it for a couple hours every day at minimum. so if a Mutacon were to create a makeshift splint out of kibble and detach it, it would likely be fine, as long as they got that kibble back. otherwise, they’ve lost a whole chunk of their body that they can’t just regenerate.

for shifting armor to cover a wound without detaching it, that depends on the nature of the wound. if it’s ragged, large, or in areas with a lot of joints or movement, it might be difficult to shuffle around plating to cover it. a more superficial injury in a less delicate area would be easier

sort of! it’ll depend on the individual’s kibble, of course! double checking SNAP Bulkhead, i don’t think he could, because his kibble isn’t large enough. but Scylla could probably use her alt mode arms as a chair, Wreck-Gar has a built in backpack and belly bag, and of course the Necrobot uses his wingcloak as hands. different kibble with different bonus uses

the ideal number of Sweeps is seven, since less than that means they don’t have enough collective processing power to function optimally. more than seven, however, puts a strain on that collective processing power to smoothly operate so many at once. so there’s usually packs of as close to seven as they can get.

as to how many can just exist at the same time, it’s limited only by how many Scourge is willing to forge. he first invents them in s1e06 A Use for Army-building! An Upgrade to Sweeps. by the next episode they figure out that having dozens of them running around is... well it’s about as chaotic as having dozens of flying puppies with hands and weapons would be. in large numbers they’re very difficult to control. good thing Galvatron is excellent at commanding his new army!

(the post this is referring to) @oldboyjensenhinglemeier​ thanks Dilf Waitress, i can always rely on you

(the post this is referring to) i think that’s fantastic, i’d love to see a Cybertronian whale. imagine the size of the holding cell you’d have to have for him!

oooohohoho what a sticky subject. here’s a quick rundown on faction ideology to give you some context for how they operate and thus deal with the media. the heroes aren’t referred to as heroes, but rather as vigilantes at best and violent gangs in a turf war at worst. Froid has remotely diagnosed them with pathological dissent. at the same time, some folks have jumped on the market to make hero merch, and it becomes a very lucrative business for some. public opinion is constantly torn between fear and anger at how they do whatever they’d like and gratitude and admiration for how they throw themselves in harms way to prevent disaster and save people. it’s really a giant mess all the time that changes by the day.

there is of course the whole snafu surrounding the media’s portrayal of the Elite Guard as a backup team for the Autobots, and Elita 1 as Optimus’ sidekick. and Elita 1 is Not Happy about that. Elita 2 is startlingly good at winding the reporters around her little finger and always seems to know just what to say, whereas Elita 3 just grumbles at the cameras, even sometimes demanding they respect boundaries or be locked in the nearest building with the use of her powers. Elita 4 barely notices them unless she’s in the mood to prank someone, and Elita 5 just avoids them, as they tend to dramatize her size and thus her danger. given their excellent teamwork and how they’re (mostly) in favor of reform instead of anarchy, the Elite Guard would actually have a good shot at getting along with the news, except they bow to precisely no one, including the people wanting to interview them, so instead they come across as a standoffish and self-serving clique with dangerous habits

the Decepticons are in the bad-boy limelight and they love it. well, at least Galvatron, Hellscream, and Thunderblast do. Galvatron takes advantage of every opportunity to pontificate on the evils of society and the right to rise up for freedom. broadcasters have learned to cut the cameras as soon as he starts speaking so his ideas don’t get the chance to spread too far. Hellscream cares less about principles and more about scaring the living daylights out of every reporter he sees, often leaving them with cracked equipment and ringing audials from the sheer destructive power of his voice. Thunderblast just wants to preen in all the attention and boy does she get it. Cyclonus actively avoids most gawkers, Scourge talks too long and complicated to make good news, Drift either ignores them or sends them away with some lofty spiritual advice, and Triptych is dangerously unpredictable so most reporters have learned to stay away from him.

the Predacons came into existence in a negative light, and they were grimly prepared for it. after all, Sixshot used to be a Decepticon, and their falling-out and defection caused quite a stir. when Abominus first appeared, the fearful reaction of the public to such an ‘abomination’ is actually how he chose his name in the first place. Airachnid loves tormenting reporters with nuclear-grade sarcasm and subtle threats, but if anyone makes her truly mad she’ll string them up in her web cabling and leave them hanging. she also flaunts that cabling by using her darts to knit nets, shawls, and other decorations, despite the fact that getting cabling tangled up in seams and joints can lead to something called entrapment protocols, mentioned in the seventh ask here. Enforcers use capture equipment designed to trigger entrapment protocols, so her mimicry of that as nothing more than a casual accessory is a big ‘frag you’.

Soundwave.... is a category of his own. he only comes into being in the fourth season, but the media soon learns to quake at the thought of encountering Soundwave, and his minicons are little better. there’s at least one instance where he Rosanna-rolls the entirety of Iacon.

the Autobots keep wavering between ‘the only true good ones of all these vigilantes’ and ‘the worst possible people in the world, hide the children, lock the doors’ in the eyes of the media. Optimus does his best to treat everyone fairly, and the Mistress usually has something encouraging to share. much like Galvatron but for completely opposite reasons, broadcasters have learned to cut cameras when Ultra Magnus starts talking, because his encyclopedic knowledge of law means he regularly lists every instance of malpractice, abuse, illegality, and disrespect that he sees in the average reporter, Enforcer, or politician, which is not the kind of upbraiding that would serve the propaganda machine. however, it does get him the attention of Tyrest, who leverages legality and public opinion to try and draw Ultra Magnus into an agreement during s3e03- A Councilmember’s Boon! An Upgrade to Legality. Rodimus is a chaos beast who has been known to snatch cameras for selfies. it’s kind of a tossup as to whether Cheetor will be going slow enough to show up in the footage or not.

now, i can’t talk about the media without mentioning the feral force of nature that is Rewind. the best of the best, he’s the only one willing to brave the battlefields for an up-close look, constantly endangering himself in order to get the freshest scoop. he might not always hold opinions in line with the mandated propaganda about these vigilantes, but the media lets him get away with it, since he’s the most successful at getting them more news. this has caused him to be targeted at least once, unfortunately.

love this question. love it. you know those lil remote controlled robot dogs, or things to that effect? i’m imagining that’s what Cybertronian muppets are like, since they can create robotics and animatronics with a lot more finesse and ease than we can. in fact, making fabric is probably harder for them than robotics, since they don’t have the same materials as we do to work with. but anyway, these muppets wouldn’t be limited by what a hand can do to puppet them around, being instead remote controlled from off stage, so i don’t know if they’d have that kind of visual gag. maybe instead there would be fourth-wall breaking where one muppet snatches the remote of another?

the painful thing about this answer is that i have a design i’m happy with EXCEPT FOR THE HELM i have sketched and resketched a dozen different ideas ugh. the body looks fine, all five of them combined in a way that makes sense to me, but i just CANNOT get the helm right i’m so angry. anyway here’s the Cyber Caliber, all of their swords combined into one massive weapon

the more accurate question is, what hasn’t happened to him. he’s been through a lot, the poor mech. but i’ll list some things for you:

that one time he had a sibling be erased from reality

that one time he had to murder another sibling because they decided evil was fun

that one time a fragging beachball stole his work

the fact he doesn’t know if his twin is alive or not

that one time he was a junker running for his life

that one time he was too late to save the Terminus Blade, and it was stolen

that one time his pride and joy, the Athenaum Sanctorum, was destroyed, and everything archived there was lost

that other time the same fragging beachball stole his work

that other time he was a junker hiding for his life

the fact that the theft of his diary started a whole new branch of religion and he has to read his own words as if they’re sacred

the fact that the title of Trion was in fact derived from his diary, and the sheer painful irony of being given the title of Trion.

that one time he had to rip off some fingers to fit in

that one time Trypticon showed up, awhile before the JAAT was founded, and he had to take it on alone

that other time Trypticon showed up when the JAAT opened and he had to hand out some precious relics to children to protect the school

aaaaand his current reason for drinking! the fact that of all twenty-something heroes running around, he only knows who THREE of them are because he only gave out THREE RELICS! and relics just keep disappearing from the collection he’s guarding

someone help him he is not having a good time. and it’s only going to get worse...

[thickenmyblood]

It’s interesting because, like, Laurent being conventionally attractive is a pretty integral part of his character? Just because he’s got people fawning over him and being creepy all the time and it’s interesting to think about how it would affect his defensiveness and stuff if he was just, like… average? And tbh if he wasn’t blond and gorgeous I feel like Nik at least would like him a lot better just bc he wouldn’t be like… Damen’s making bad decisions bc he’s horny

Also in terms of Damen only respecting jocks I literally cannot get over the fact that he spends a good half of book one shitting on Ancel and the other pets for being pretty and useless and then straight up gets raped by him and then two scenes later sees him fire dancing and thinks “huh, this guy has a useful skill after all” and smiles on-screen for the first time because he’s genuinely happy the guy got the interest of the regent like seriously Damen I love you but wtf

I'm sorry. I have thoughts. Again.

I was talking to a friend yesterday about this and she told me, basically, that if Laurent wasn't pretty and/or didn't know how to fight, Capri wouldn't be Capri. It'd be a completely different story (although we all agree that it's not just Laurent's skill with a sword that draws Damen in. It's the fact that he starts to see Laurent as someone who's committed to his people, his men, etc.)

I think "being pretty but singed" is an actual trope, as in, many people enjoy writing/reading about someone who is beautiful on the outside but has dark secrets, an ugly past, whatever. Which is interesting to think about. It's also interesting how sometimes we will take a character who is explicitly described as undesirable and ugly and turn them into a hotter version of themselves. I do that with Govart, especially when I'm reading.

Sadly, I disagree a bit on the Nik part. I think Nik's character sometimes is read and interpreted as some sort of comedic relief, much like Nicaise (the fork scene in Book 1, for example). By this point, we all know there is a difference between canon and fanon, and so some characters become caricatures that can be quite the opposite of what they were meant to signify in the original text. I believe—once again, my opinion, just a way to interpret things, nothing else—that Nik's dislike for Laurent runs deeper than the fact that he thinks Damen is being a horny idiot.

Nikandros is a slave owner. He's the Kyros of Delpha, which we all know used to be Delfeur and belonged to Vere. He underestimates Laurent's abilities again and again, and when Laurent proves himself he has to do so in the Akielon way (so, fool Akielon guards, win the Okton—which I'm not even going to try and explain because I don't even get it myself. I really don't). Nikandros doesn't share Damen's journey as a slave, doesn't know what it's like to be at the mercy of another man simply by a twist of fate, doesn't know that slavery is not as fancy and nice as Damen described it in Book 1. Nikandros is Damen pre-journey, unchanged except for the grief of losing his friend. Not that I think Damen has turned into the Virgin Mary towards the end, but whatever.

My biggest issue with Nikandros as a character is that his whole development and "arch" happens in the third book, which is to me the worst book in the trilogy, full of things that make 0 sense, full of contradictions that not even fandom can "fix" without starting a headcanon war of epic proportions. All I can say is that I think Nikandros hates Veretians (dislikes them strongly? considers them militarily inferior? also, morally dubious?) and I refuse to believe after KR he was suddenly okay with slavery being abolished, became best pals with Laurent, and never had a shitty thing to say about Vere again.

Not only does Nikandros have all this prejudice against Veretians (which we can say he sort of overlooked that one time he was plotting with Laurent), but he's also the only person in the trilogy besides Jord that tells Damen things exactly how they are. I think Nikandros' concerns are very, very valid. You can't just build a cute palace on the border, get married without heirs, and unite two countries that have hated each other for many years. . . and not expect any sort of retaliation, uprising, mutiny, etc. It's simply stupid. But then, Pacat writes that that's exactly what happened. So. . . I don't even know where I was going with this.

Also, Nikandros probably doesn't give a fuck about helping Laurent get his kingdom back. Nikandros wants Kastor's head on a spike and for things to go back to how they were, so he can go back to Delpha and eat olives with bread while a hot slave fans him.

Damen only respecting jocks + the thoughts he has on pets and people, in general, are the two reasons why he's a good character when he's depicted as flawed. He has flaws. He judges people harshly and wrongly. He makes assumptions. He lies to himself. Giving him flaws isn't making him OOC. In canon, Damen is deeply flawed, just like Laurent is. I don't know when Lamen became the symbol for all that is good and pure, when really they're both. . . fucked up. Every couple in Captive Prince is fucked up. Jord and Aimeric? Jord is one creepy fuck. Aimeric is basically raping himself (at least in the very beginning, we can debate the rest). Anyone and Erasmus? Fucked. Up. Like, every version of Erasmus with someone ends horribly. Erasmus and Torveld are gross (objectively, because Erasmus is a SLAVE even though Pacat really tried to say 'Torveld is not like the rest of the slave owners, he's different'). Erasmus and Damen are gross because again, power imbalance, also Erasmus' feelings towards Prince Damianos are worthy of a good old therapy session. Erasmus and Kallias? I have thoughts but this is way too long. Erasmus and Govart? Rapey rape. I think the least fucked up couple is Berencel, BUT it can be argued that they're not part of the trilogy. We only meet Ancel in the short stories, so I don't know. Plenty of people haven't read Pet.

My final thoughts on this are that had Laurent been ugly as fuck, it would have taken Damen 400k words to fall in love with him. And if he was ugly AND not blonde. . . 650k.

[deltaengineering]

that was the winter anime 2021 that was

Still not quite ready for a dozen posts about how terrible the likes of Combatants Will Be Dispatched are, sorry. Watch Vivy though, it owns. Here’s some more things that are (mostly) good. As always, worst to best.

Yatogame-chan Kansatsu Nikki S3

Yatogame has long run out of hot Nagoya facts and its ensemble comedy never amounted to much, so now it seems mostly content to just spam more and more wacky character designs. About the only thing that it has left going for it is that 3 minutes a week are more effort to drop than to watch, so I expect them to make a movie next. 4/10

Go-toubun no Hanayome S2

Quints is a weird one. S1 was a barely good enough (i.e., well above average) implementation of the ages old harem chestnut. S2 is actually better at the core of its appeal, since it gives all the characters a sharper profile (things like taking Nino from joke to badass and making Ichika a villain are no mean feat), but it does pay a steep price for it. You see, to deliver a steady drip feed of meaningful character moments it apparently has to rush through the source material at a breakneck pace, which completely wrecks the "story" part of this story and makes every episode seem like a recap. And it still keeps wasting precious time on vestigial nonsense like its framing device and the Kyoto flashback scenario that was already the worst part of S1. But by far the most annoying aspect is its insistence on keeping all the options valid, since it prevents any real progress and makes everything seem arbitrary and pointless. So sure enough, after a season of much ado we still don't end up anywhere — you can't really raise the stakes if all at stake was "who wins" to begin with. It's watchable and even enjoyable scene-for-scene but it's getting harder and harder to call it a solid show overall. 5/10

Skate Leading Stars

I was watching this primarily because I didn't like Yuri on Ice much and wanted to see if something that is a blatant attempt to cash in on it would be better — because while YoI delivers on one aspect (being hella gay), it really is an absolute shambles of a sports show. And sure enough, Skate Leading has none of the auteur appeal of YoI, but it just works much better. In particular I appreciate how it managed to make me care even a little about a cast of assholes, which is a nice contrast to the nauseatingly ingratiating way YoI tries to make you love its characters. Also, Skate Leading is just generally cheap and unambitious, so not susceptible to trying hard and painfully flaming out on the presentation side like YoI is. But at some point you gotta let go of these comparisons and on its own Skate Leading is... just fine, I guess? Competent, mildly engaging, not very memorable. And that's probably where it loses to Yuri on Ice in the end after all, even if I think it's "better". 6/10

Idoly Pride

Idoly Pride sold itself on me with a really good (and hilarious/tragic) first episode that was just too bizarre to ignore — I mean, how can you ignore GHOST IDOL MANAGERS. Well, the majority of the show isn't like that. It's a competent and solid version of the idol franchise show, yes, but it really had more potential than that. Especially midseason, it gets lost in these dozens of characters, and while they're all likeable, it does seem like a waste of a good story just centered on Mana/Kotona/Sakura. By the end it comes back around to the heart of the matter with a Maeda-style sob story, which could be a disaster but seasoned veteran Jukki Hanada makes it work anyway. Overall, there's quite a bit of ridiculous hacky melodrama in this, but quite honestly that's the best part and I wish it would concentrate more on it. The rest is just okay. 6/10

Yuru Camp S2

Yuru Camp is still likely the best pure iyashikei show when it gets down to business. Compared to S1 though, this seems to happen less and less. At its peaks (i.e., basically any quiet moment with Rin) it's at least as good as ever, and there's some good cast additions like Mini-Inuko, but it appears that Yuru Camp simply has run out of things you can do with camping and it fills up the time with other... stuff. This stuff includes the generic school club shenanigans it was never particularly good at, and a gigantic helping of crass consumerism. Yeah, I would say the majority of Yuru Camp is just a straight up infomercial at this point, which itself ranges from the perfectly acceptable (which cute anime isn't about food constantly), to the sketchy (I don't know whether the Izu tourism board cut this production a fat check, but if they didn't, Yuru Camp still gives its best effort to make it seem that way) to the highly irritating – I am aware that camping requires gear and you can't just ignore that, but you most definitely do not require whole arcs dedicated to talking about raising funds for the purposes of acquiring the Lamp of Comfy Happiness at your friendly local Caribou™ either. Not to mention an arc where the aforementioned lame school club does the same, for double irritation. Make no mistake, this show is so riddled with scenes that beg for a solution to embed affiliate links in video files that it makes me wish I was watching something as anticapitalist and underground as Love Live. And irritating really is the last thing a show with this core concept, as stellar as it is at that, can afford to be. Bummer. 6/10

SKOO the Infinity

Skoo has one really huge asset: ADAM, its magnificent villain. It also has one really huge liability: Reki, its not magnificent protagonist. To be more specific, it's very good at anything outrageous, physics-defying and silly, such as most scenes ADAM is in, and quite bad at anything serious, dramatic (in a serious way) and down to earth, such as most scenes Reki is in. So, what's the verdict? Well, the rest of the cast is more ADAM-like, and Reki's co-protagonist Langa is fine as the straight (yeah, right) man. The tedious buddy drama is a comparatively small part of this show, and at least it pays off quite well in the end. Seriously, I was ready to give this a 6, but the final episode is probably the best one of the show, in all of its aspects. That's really not something you see often. Skoo's a great time. Except when it's not. 7/10

Non Non Biyori Nonstop

Speaking of the rare good ending, what about we gave one of those to a slim and inconsequential slice-of-life show? NNB has always been solid, comfy and amusing quality with a couple of standout moments (usually something with Renge), and Nonstop has that plus an ending as conclusive as any show of this type is ever going to have. Besides, it does a lot of things right by focusing on more characters than the central 4 (especially Konomi has great material in S3), it expands the universe just enough to not get stale, and it moves things forward — It's definitely a lot better than the movie, is what I'm saying. Apart from that, well, we're three seasons in, if you have any interest in this you probably don't need me to explain what's good about NNB at this point. Bonus points for being nothing but an ad for the manga. 7/10

Wonder Egg Priority

Oh boy, so here's the big one. Wonder Egg is the rare Meaningful Arthouse Show About Real Issues You Guys, as you might have heard. And well, the long and short of it is that it's a very good show with quite a few glaring problems (besides not actually being finished due to production issues, but what we have is enough of an ending to be able to meaningfully talk about it). In particular, one problem: WEP is, at its core, one of these metaphorical Magical Girl-ish series that are just a thin layer of abstraction over coming-of-age or societal problems. The issue is that "metaphorical" in this case means "literal" and "thin" means "basically nonexistent". This show is not subtle regarding what it's about, at all. This is a double-edged sword — on the positive side, some things really should just be said aloud, and I'm really, really fucking tired of the Ikuhara style of "here's some wacky things, maybe a blog post will eventually tell you how it's actually about the most important thing ever" obfuscation — if it's really so important, just spell it out. On the other hand, there are limits to this and when a second, different Ai appears I don't really need a voiceover line telling me that yep, this show is about parallel universes now. WEP spells out many important things, but it also spells out many things that are implicitly clear or better left vague. Not to mention that with being so obvious up front, the show's tendency to leave figuring out what it's actually saying about it up to the viewer can leave the wrong impression. Again, I settled on the opinion that it's subtle after all where it counts the most, but you might easily get the impression that it pulls its punches (Ikuhara does this the exact other way around — once you figure out what the fuck he's talking about it's abundantly clear what he's saying about it).

In fact, this show is so good at subtle, quiet character moments that it calls into question the need for big huge fighting fantasy layer in the first place, especially since I'm not a fan of the fantasy designs and the fights aren't great. Sure, they look impressive on a technical level (this show is very good looking in general), but the lack of actual impact or rhythm makes me think this is not made by people who are very familiar with action and maybe they should have asked some seasoned shounen veterans for this — or just, you know, not do it. They can (and do) impress with character acting in quiet scenes just the same. And while Ai's character story actually does pay off quite nicely by the end we got, and Momoe and Rika are also handled well, Neiru's backstory is significantly less good, not to mention the whole Frill subplot regarding the show's mythology that they introduced just before (and that's the part to be resolved at a later date), which is a huge can of worms. We'll see how well they handle that, I suppose, but as it is it's a weird and vestigial detour that doesn't add much besides thematic headaches.

But yeah, apart from all that — I like it, a lot. Great character writing in the details, cool looks for the most part, tons of ambition, and a message that I consider to be appropriately handled — for the most part, and for now. Not quite ambitious arthouse anime at its finest, but also not a pretentious disaster like Sarazanmai, Monogatari et al. 8/10

[corpsentry]

ao3 link

fandom: botw pairing: zelda/link rating: g notes: established relationship, post-canon, (pensive) holidays

Zelda stares at him. “What are you, a poet?”

“No,” Link leans against the table like a portrait of god splattered against an average household surface. “I’m Link.”

Hope runs a sharp course in a village like this.            

He tries to eat the icing before they’ve started decorating the cookies like a dog jumping into a pile of leaves before there are leaves to jump into.

“It looked sweet,” he explains when Zelda asks him what in the name of Hylia he’s doing. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, leaving a blue streak the size of a scar on his face. Zelda frowns.

“Sorry.” He looks up at her from under his lashes, blinking innocently.

She contemplates pouring the entire bowl of icing on his head, then decides that it’s too much effort and returns to her berries. “It’s not my hand that’s dirty.”

The clock on the wall says it’s fifteen minutes past four. There’s a poisonous spider attached to the ceiling lamp. The berries she purchased from a passing merchant (one of the donkey variety, not the horse; the donkey merchants offer better prices and funnier jokes) are not the freshest, which says less about the merchant and more about the distance between Hebra and Hateno, but they’re sweet. Sour-ish, tangy, with bite. Zelda is very big on the culinary arts. Restoration is a holistic effort, after all.

Link seems to have finished having a long and very serious conversation with himself in his head. He emerges from his wintry stupor with a stupid look on his face while she continues to grind the berries into a pulp.

“But my hands are your hands?” he says, honest as the day he was born. The second time.

“What are you, a poet?”

He takes offense at this. “No,” Link leans against the table like a portrait of god splattered against an average household surface. “I’m Link.”

Zelda stops grinding the berries for long enough to realize she has outdone herself. The berries are not a pulp. They are not a paste. They are not the perfect texture for combining with three times the amount of white icing so that one can make a perfect batch of cookies dripping in blood-red sugar. They are a liquid.

She licks the mortar thoughtfully. Link makes an expression at the oven that suggests he wants to climb inside of it and see what it does. Zelda walks him into the table until he’s leaning back over the bowls and the berries and she’s staring at the underside of his chin.

“Yes,” she confirms, more for herself than the vaguely human-shaped disaster trapped in front of her. “You’re Link.”

::

Christmas in Hyrule is not a celebration of anything in particular. It probably was, at the beginning, but in the years since their ancestors’ civilizations rose and fell and rose and fell and then gave up on the rising and decided to stay in the earth until they sprouted into new trees with new names, the meaning has been lost. This seems like a fair thing to give up in exchange for the festivities themselves, which are silly and full of minor contrivances like turkeys filled with smaller turkeys and children running in blood-red clothing to the highest point in their village.

Christmas in Hyrule is not a celebration of anything in particular, but when Link wanders over to the table with a kitchen knife in one hand and asks her what she’s going to do to all these cookies, Zelda feels abruptly and inexplicably like it should be. It’ll be the harvest season again soon, but that’s not for a few months. No one’s birthday happens to be on the twenty-fifth, though her father’s is close. She stares at the table and tries to come up with a prophecy on the fly, something that will impress the boy with the sky stuck under his eyelids, but draws a blank.

“I’m going to eat them,” she says stupidly, feeling stupid, feeling suddenly like she might cry.

He puts down the knife and picks up a rolling pin. She loves him more than all the horses in the world combined.

“Sounds good. Can I help?”

::

Here’s what Link remembers. First of all, he remembers waking up in a blue box as the blue slowly drained out of the box and the ceiling wilted into view. He remembers meeting her dead father and thinking he was a hoot and stealing all of his shit regardless of whether it was useful shit or not-useful shit. He remembers having his own death narrated to him, atop the ruins of a temple that someone erected to time, while the land whose name he had forgotten reached towards the heavens (him) (he was heaven, at least for a while).

“Wasn’t that traumatizing?” Zelda asked him when he described it to her the first time.

Link thought about this. As he did so his hands in her hair stilled, her braids still half-done, his fingers clasped loosely around a few strands of gold. “It was,” he finally said. “But so was everything else.”

Second of all, he remembers the events of the calamity in thirteen fucked-up pieces. Twelve of these were given to him by Zelda, who had gone out of her way to document their demise in the hopes that one day someone might take notice and pull the shivering ghost out of the water. The last one was a gift from Impa, who had gone out of her way to make sure that he would be suitably guilted into wanting to save the world, and therefore, at the end of the times and in spite of all of his personal wants and needs, do so.

“That one was traumatizing.” She didn’t have to ask this time. He had figured out by this point that she cared very much about his mental health despite him not knowing the first thing about self care (he had a tendency to launch himself from high places, which was perfectly fine until he realized he had left the paraglider at home) and was going to unpack all the dirty dishes in his head even if he was fairly content with letting them pile up.

This made her sad. Both Link’s response and the fact that his survival mechanism for the first three months had been to pretend he was not, in fact, sleeping in a burning building.

“I’m sorry,” she said, touching the side of his face. He turned into the palm of her hand, his eyes closed.

Conversely, here’s what Link doesn’t remember. He doesn’t remember the first time he swam in the lake near Hateno (not the one with the frogs, the one with long reeds growing at the bottom that tickle your feet when you swim past), though he swears it must have happened. He doesn’t remember what his worst childhood fear is (his list of things to be constantly terrified of was overwritten when he woke up in the blue box; they’re still working on overwriting that new list now). He doesn’t remember how Hyrule celebrates Christmas, how they stuff the turkeys full of smaller turkeys and the children go diving from high places, and he doesn’t remember that they do all this for no reason other than that their ancestors did it, and their ancestors’ ancestors did it, and that their ancestors’ ancestors worshiped a legend, not a god.

“I’d like to deliver a batch to Kakariko,” Zelda sighs, looking out the window at the long shadow of the sun on the fields.

Link shuts off the water in the sink. “And I’d like to kiss you,” he says simply. “Is gift-giving part of tradition too?”

Zelda blinks at him. “Yes, but, how do you know that?”

He shrugs. “Magic.” He gestures at the poisonous spider in the ceiling who they’ve named Bartholomew. “A mistake.” She walks over to the kitchen sink and wipes her dirty hands on his shirt and then pulls him closer, smelling the cinnamon in his hair. “A miracle.”

::

They hold the annual Christmas dinner under Uma’s tree, between the bridge above the stream cutting perpendicularly through the village and the house that used to stand occupied, but now houses a respectable flower arrangement and several candles. It’s an intensely traditional affair, with the turkey emerging from the butcher’s at eight o’clock sharp to enormous fanfare and the children running up the hill a little after that to harass Purah and ask her for spare machine parts that they can use to build water guns. There’s dancing, because Hyrule has not and likely never will shake off the habit of celebrating anything it is given the chance to celebrate (mourning is a habit they will not let themselves sink into), but it’s slow and syrupy, the apple cider warm, the lights shimmering.

Zelda talks to everyone she can talk to. She never got the chance to do so a hundred years ago between the empty cycles of prayer and the long-standing never-quite-resolved feud she had with her father, and now the war is over and the Hateno of a hundred years ago is gone. It’s a name on a long list of regrets she can do nothing about, except this.

“I love your hair,” she says.

“Thanks.” Nebb sucks audaciously on a leg. “I hate it.”

Pruce, who runs the general store, is sitting in the grass with his guitar the way he was the last time Zelda distracted a trio of musicians and disrupted the flow of the universe. He’s playing a song which he says, when asked, was passed down to him from his great-great-grandparents, who in turn received it from their parents, who lived before the calamity. The notes are soft and melancholy, but it’s the kind of song you can dance to if you try hard enough. The residents of Hateno have been trying all their lives. Through the aftermath of the calamity, when the boy fell but the fort stayed standing and soldiers came limping up through the hills to ask for water; through the winter years, when the harvests were bad and they had to bury happiness in an unmarked grave; through an era of hope, when the boy woke up on the plateau, and wandered back to them with a sword in his hand and a legend on his tongue. The residents of Hateno know resilience like most people know to wash their face when they wake up. Give us this day our daily bread. Give us strength, and water, and miracles. Give us what it takes to keep going.

Merry Christmas, says Sophie from the clothing boutique, and Zelda is trying very hard to remember who is who and mostly succeeding but she wants to ask Sophie if she celebrates Christmas for a reason. Has she had a slice of turkey yet, does she like turkey? Has she ever been in love? The questions prick her skin like needles. Her grip on the stem of her wine glass tightens.

She says Merry Christmas back. The average Hylian does not live long enough to see a hundred. It is a blessing, then, that someone was willing to wait that long for her.

“I haven’t seen, uh, Link around,” Sophie continues, her hands knotted behind her back. “Is he okay?”

“Oh no, I mean, yes, I mean probably—”

Which is when it dawns on Zelda like a horse emerging from the brown earth that most of her anxieties have a name: his.

::

She checks the roof of the house in Hateno first because it seems like the obvious answer. When it turns out the obvious answer is wrong she checks the pond in the backyard, and then the pond slightly further away, outside of the village but close enough to be a scenic spot for sad people who need a place to go on Sundays. After walking around in circles for a while it occurs to her that she hasn’t looked inside the house, only around and above it, as if Link were a bird that can only be found in high, fast, free places. Strange. That doesn’t seem right.

She finds him on the second floor, with his knees drawn up to his chest and his face hidden. He might appear to be sleeping if not for the fact that his shoulders are too close to his ears and the interior of the house is shining. Someone went on a cleaning spree. Someone had something they wanted to hide.

Zelda feels her stomach turn sharply.

“Link.”

He looks up.

“Is it over already?” He turns to peer out the window above his head. “That was fast.” He looks back towards her, arranging his limbs so he looks less tense, so the tension bleeds into the floor and stays there. “I thought it’d take longer.”

“Link.”

Link blinks at her in the warm syrupy darkness like a stray cat in a town full of ghosts, tail upright, poised to run. Good, Zelda thinks. Be on edge. Think about things. She sets the wine glass she hadn’t realized she had brought with her on the bedside table. She sits down in front of him.

“You didn’t want to be there, did you?”

Silence unfurls between them. There’s not much space for it to move around. He’s close enough that she can track the precise trajectory guilt takes across his face. It starts in his eyes and slides down his cheeks and ends in the way he brings his hands together and begins to fiddle absently with his gauntlets. He bites his lip.

“I wanted you to be happy.”

Zelda groans and hides her face in her hands and then curls up on the floor and dies. Just kidding! She doesn’t do any of these things. She’s too busy staring at heaven’s imprint on his face.

There are a lot of things Link remembers. He has told her about a large number of them, in part because she always asks and in part because he seems to have a lot more to say now that everyone who placed the sky on his shoulders is dead. He remembers the important things, like how to swing a sword and how to defeat evil. He remembers the awful things, like dying.

Link’s head is a balloon with an infinite number of hallways. The inside is reliable and steady and whatever lives in there stays in there, but the exterior is frightening in the way that watching a child heave a snowman over the edge of a cliff is. What happens when the inside of the balloon and the outside of the balloon meet? What strange chemical reactions; what magic?

There are a lot of things Link remembers. To the detriment of Zelda and the world that she represents, he remembers how to die for people. Since the calamity ended he has had less cause to do this, which is a good thing, which is the only reason she can sleep at night, but the habit is a ghost on his left shoulder. He turns down things people give him in exchange for a higher purpose.

She sighs.

“Look.”

You wake up in a room full of strange blue light. Someone is speaking to you for the first time in your life. In that singular emerging moment in this new world, they have defined beauty for you.

She reaches for his hands. “You see, right, Link.”

You wake up and there is a voice in your head. She calls you Link. That must be your name. You must be real.

He doesn’t want her to touch him, not in this moment, not with Christmas hanging over their heads like a big bad moon which is going to crash into the earth, killing everyone instantly. He’s on edge and he doesn’t know why. He’s walked back into the burning building and he doesn’t know why. Maybe solitude contains fewer reminders of happiness. Maybe he’ll never get used to waking up beside the sun.

You wake up and you are afraid of everything. You wake up and you are everything. You wake up and everything is yours to save, or abandon, or leave to ruin.

Zelda holds his hands with gently herculean force. She leans into him, her eyes shining with bitterness and frustration and anger. “You can’t just decide what’ll make me happy, Link.” Glitter, stars, the voices of angels in his ears. “Your hands are my hands. Get it?”

He clears his throat. “That doesn’t seem like a very healthy relationship.”

Zelda doesn’t flinch. “I waited a hundred years for you to come back from the dead.”

“That’s true.”

When do they get to the part where the war is over and it starts to feel like it? When does the transition end and the aftermath become its own story, separate from the hundred-year-corpse of conflict, from the misery it birthed in its absence? She’s said all that there is to say. The rest has to be done, has to be acted out with blood and bone, rebuilt like the castle they rode away from on that second first day of her life as Hyrule stepped shakily off of the cold balcony of twilight. Zelda doesn’t know what it’s like to cry anymore, but she can tell you a thousand stories about sadness. She’s lived in it for so much of her life. For so much of the time since, she’s kept it pinned up on the kitchen wall.

“You’re a mess,” she says miserably. “Merry Christmas. There is no Christ. We made him up a long time ago to feel better about ourselves.”

He laughs.

“I figured.”

Figured what? Figured I couldn’t make up a prophecy about Santa? Figured the kids were all joking about the cliff? Figured I wanted you to like this country despite everything it’s taken from you, despite everything it made you give up?

Zelda exhales.

“Can I kiss you?”

“Have I ever said no?”

She frames his face with her hands. Idiot sandwich. Idiot boy. Idiot miracle. “Have you ever said yes?”

“Yes?” He looks confused for a moment and she has never wanted happiness for him more. “I think so?” He frowns nicely and she considers carving his heart out and hanging it on the wall. “Yes.”

She kisses him. Merry Christmas. Dress up in red and climb a cliff near the house you grew up in. Take a boy home and build him an altar. Go to a party and leave early and spend the rest of the night talking about how you’ll never get over the body in the attic, and then point at it and laugh. There will always be a body in the attic. There will always be wisdom, courage, and grief. But the first time he sees a pile of leaves and jumps headfirst into it with his eyes squeezed shut and his knees tucked to his chest, you will forget for a moment that you watched the world end from a tower in the sky, you will forget that hurt is the least dignified part of history, and you will think, instead, of the weightlessness of angels.

[mfingenius]

The 'sweet bookish youth' laurent would've been if auguste hadn't died and the regent had?

1. I love both of these

2. This is mixed with an AU @baegoalsandcreamcheese and I were talking about bc I really wanted to write it

—

“I speak your language better than you speak mine, sweetheart.” Damen says, and he can feel all of the eyes in the room turn to him.

It’s late afternoon, and he’s in the library waiting for Auguste; it’s a big place, and nearly empty, except for a blonde pet sitting by the window. He’s blonde, and gorgeous, and curled up reading a thick book on Akielon culture; Damen’s surprised, he assumed pets weren’t able to wonder around freely. He must be Auguste’s pet, surely, if he’s able to go where he wants, four guards with him.

“Excuse me?” The blonde’s cheeks are flushed now, and Damen doesn’t understand why he’s angry. It’s not bad, it’s merely an observation. And it’s not like he doesn’t speak Akielon well, he does, Damen just speaks better Veretian.

“Ah, Damen.” Auguste walks into the room, and a grin enters his face when he sees the blonde; definitely his pet then. “I see you’ve met Laurent. Laurent, this is Damen. Damen, this is my brother.”

“Your brother,” Damen repeats, both realization and dread filling his stomach; he just told the second prince of Vere he speaks better than him. He just called the second prince of Vere sweetheart.

“Yes,” Laurent says, cheeks still flushed but eyebrow arched high. The guards are all looking somewhere between disbelieving and highly amused. Damen feels his cheeks beginning to burn, and thanks all gods that it won’t be visible on his dark skin. “Prince Laurent.”

“Of course,” Damen says, bowing nervously. He’s never bowed to Auguste, but they’re friends, and Damen doesn’t know Laurent from anything. “I - Auguste had said you wouldn’t be here.”

“Plans changed,” Auguste says, frowning lightly at Damen. He looks between them. “Is there a problem?”

Damen doesn’t know how to answer, and is saved when Laurent answers for him.

“No, of course not.” Laurent says, and Damen doesn’t know if the prince of Vere isn’t telling his brother because he’d rather kill him himself, later. Painfully. “Everything’s alright.”

And he stands and stretches, signaling his guards. 

“I’m going for a ride.” He says. “You can entertain your… guest.”

And he leaves the library.

* * *

It seems that Laurent is always with a book. Damen has seen him during meals and conversations alike with his nose buried, politely entertaining courtiers when he must, but otherwise avoiding speaking to anyone.

Still, somehow, he seems to have half the courtiers, all of the foreign nobility, and the entirety of the guard charmed; Damen hears no less than fifteen drunken marriage proposals to Laurent and a dozen ‘joking’ marital propositions to Auguste; each time, the person highlighting what they could give Auguste in exchange for letting them marrying Laurent, and then laughing to badly disguise their seriousness. 

“You should be here during his birthday feast,” Auguste says, when Damen mentions it. “There’s twice the proposals and at least three hundred gifts.”

Damen doesn’t say it, but he doesn’t understand why. Sure, the prince is gorgeous - honestly, entirely breathtaking in a way that makes Damen want to cry - but he thinks he’s… well, boring. He spends all day reading and barely speaks. He doesn’t get it.

* * *

Three days later, he gets it.

Oh, he gets it. Auguste is stuck in meetings all day, so he tells Damen to go to Laurent, that he’ll entertain him, and Damen goes because he doesn’t want to insult his friend.

“Alright,” Laurent says, voice like molten honey when Damen tells him that Auguste is too busy for him. “I’ll show you Arles.”

Damen is shocked by how well Laurent knows Arles. As a crown prince, Damen spends as much time as he can with his people, but it is, regrettably, not enough to know his city in the way Laurent seems to know Vere.

“I make sure to get out regularly,” Laurent shrugs, when Damen asks, a little awed. “Auguste can’t, often enough.”

He watches, breathless, as Laurent talks to the people of Arles and they know him, trust him, watches him show little girls magic tricks, watches him play with the children and speak to the adults about the things they’re concerned about.

He introduces Damen, and, when they don’t trust him - he’s much taller than an average Veretian, and has at least a head and a half on Laurent - he reassures them, and understands them, and cares about it.

They meet up with a cloth merchant named Charls, who speaks only of good things about Laurent, but, in contrast to the courtiers and the guard, doesn’t look starry eyed in-love, simply highly respectful and just a little bit adoring. 

“He doesn’t use this much cloth,” Charls tells Damen, like a secret, when Laurent is surveying the cloth samples on the other side of the room. “He gives it away.”

And it’s true; Laurent pays Charls handsomely, and then gives cloth away to the citizens. By the time they get to the palace, all of it is gone, even though Laurent had bought more than plenty.

Damen is just a little bit in love.

“Oh no.” Auguste says, when Damen goes to his rooms to tell him about how he spent the day. “I know that look. Not you, too.”

Damen says, “I didn’t know he was… like that. Can you blame me?”

“No, I guess not.” Auguste sighs, resigned. Then he groans. “Gods, I love Laurent, but he’s going to start a war one day.”

Damen wouldn’t mind going to war for Laurent.

Auguste clearly knows what he’s thinking, because he shoots Damen a look and says, “Don’t.” 

* * *

Damen’s growing feelings for Laurent are cemented further when Laurent puts him on his ass in the dirt.

“I’d heard you were better than this,” Laurent remarks mildly, extending Damen a hand. Damen takes it and stands, picking up his sword.

“I am,” He admits. He is, really, he’s just - distracted. Very distracted.

“Don’t hold back on me,” Laurent says, and he’s frowning. “I don’t want you to do that.”

“Alright,” Damen says. He concentrates, and, this time, he knocks Laurent’s sword out of his hand and has his back pressed against the sawdust; Laurent is an excellent swordfighter, and he does put up a fight. It makes Damen admire him even more. “Was that what you wanted?”

Some people - nobility in particular - don’t take well to losing; Damen hopes Laurent is not one of them, but he wouldn’t exactly be surprised if he stomped away angrily. Instead, Laurent gets a furrow between his brows, and looks at the tip of Damen’s sword against his neck.

“Teach me,” he says, and Damen grins.

—————————————

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[im-a-space-gay]

Some Notes for the Mix-Matched AU (aka the slow burn Analogical AU where Logan’s the school punk and Virgil’s the school nerd)

Logan Croft-

Resident punk

Tol boi, and I mean real tol with the muscles

He wears contacts because he’s found some people don’t take him serious when he wears glasses

When he was younger, he was very smart and wanted to learn everything, but he found out it wasn’t smarts that would help him survive, but being intimidating, and most people didn’t find it intimidating when he kept correcting them. Therefore, he stopped trying to learn and just went with the flow

Somehow hasn’t been kicked out of a single school despite allegedly “starting” fights and always being disruptive

Anger issues for daaaaaayyyyss

He has ear piercings, nose piercings tongue piercings, you name it, he’s got it.

Also has a couple tattoos which are awesome

He has somehow got in a group with people from different teenage cultures and will gladly die for them. He even brings lil babey nerd into the group and yay they’re all happier!!

Can and will debate about anything and everything, which is really fun

Virgil Storm-

The embodiment of not only all knowledge in the world, but the panicked thoughts of swear words repeating

He didn’t really care if he wore glasses or contacts, but found glasses more manageable and has a giant pair he pushes up constantly

See tol boi Logan? Well I present smol boi Virgil. He was just barely the average height, and literally had noodle arms

As a kid, he once almost failed a class because he thought learning would be boring, and therefore didn’t try. When he realized he was about to flunk, he studied hard and found the stuff he was learning... interesting?? And he remembered it?? Then he started doing the same for all his classes and wow learning was incredible!! There was so much to learn and see and do and mark his words he was going to learn it all!

After he started getting bullied for being smart and weak, he wore makeup so nobody saw the bruises. If nobody knew, nobody would bother him, so he could read for longer!

Not really used to people caring about him, so it was a big shock when this big punk came out of nowhere to help him out, and then let him hang out with his ragtag group, filled with more caring people.

He also didn’t really talk a lot at first, because he has a really bad habit of info-dumping or ranting, and nobody wanted to hear what he knew. Then one day at lunch, Patton asked him why the periodic table of elements was arranged the way it was, and what was supposed to be a small answer became an info-dumping session, and when he snapped out of it, he realized how everyone at the table was staring at him in shock. Apparently they didn’t know he could talk so much, so they’ve made it their mission to try and trigger sessions like that because Virgil seemed really happy when he did it

Also when he reads, he has a habit of either not hearing what’s happening around him at all, or having a conversation without realizing. (Not only have the others found this as a good way to trigger a rant, but also Roman quotes musicals and plays and sees if Virgil finishes it so he knows how many Virgil knows of)

Janus Smith-

Snek emo boyo

Wears an unholy amount of makeup and black clothes

Suicide jokes baaaaaabyyyy

He sometimes wears a symbol of a two headed snake, and when asked about it, gives an answer completely unrelated to it

Sometimes, he wears colorful clothes to trigger other emos or to throw everybody off

Beneath all the emo-ness, sarcasm, suicidal tendencies and black, he was a gentle, kind soul

And even further beneath that was a giant asshole

Patton Hart-

Skirts and dresses? Yes. Pastel colors? Yes. Floral print? THOSE WERE TO DIE FOR!!

A fashionista inside and out

Tried to wear boy clothing once. That is a day that shall not be named nor referenced, as it was traumatizing for all involved

Big round glasses, because those go with everything! (He even has versions of his glasses with colored lenses because those were so pretty!!)

Freckles on his nose, and as cute as they were, he will not hesitate to cover them in makeup if they didn’t fit with the outfit for the day

No, he is not a girl, and would appreciate if guys stopped mistaking him for one

Sweet and lovable, but he can and will kill a bitch with his heels if you insult or hurt anyone in his crew, including himself because he mattered

Speaking of his crew, he tries real hard not to help them with their horrible fashion tastes. Logan? Did everything need to be ripped and have bold statements on them? Janus? Beautiful face even with heterochromia and virtilago, but he keeps covering it up with tacky, horribly applied makeup that was ONLY BLACK. And don’t even get him started on when he wore colors!! What is this, a Disney Channel movie? Roman sometimes wore old costumes from school productions he did, which no. Remus was relatively fine, EXCEPT HE WORE THE SAME THING EVERYDAY AND DIDN’T TAKE IT OFF UNTIL THE WEEKEND, WHICH SMELLED HORRIBLE, MIND YOU. Virgil only wore jackets and jeans, and by far drove Patton the least insane with fashion, but the jacket he wore was black, torn up, oversized, and the worst thing, PLAID (he was planning on replacing it, secretly)

Does he cry?? No one knows

Roman Royal-

DISNEY AND THEATER KID, LET’S GO

Quotes from many different things, and bursts out into song randomly

“Not to be gay, but...”

Does many things in theater from playing a part to running around on backstage. He is theater god.

Sometimes he wears costumes from old productions (the ones in a more modern setting though. He’s not gay enough to walk around the halls in a prince outfit. He only does that at home)

Can’t fight for the life of him, but he can sure gossip

Way too loud, but can you blame him?

Remus Royal-

“I am but a mere jock, making fun of my fellow jocks and basically beating them up, being a delinquent but seen as a hero.” “I only asked what your favorite color was.” “Oh. Green.”

Acts as childish as you’d expect

Signs up for any and all sports no matter what

As much as he loves being an idiot with his fellow sports players, he much rather prefers hanging out with the group of misfits purely because they can all be themselves without judgement (he stands corrected. Apparently it was weird when he triggered Virgil into explaining the sex of unicorns and penguins)

Weird ass nicknames for his friendos on his phone. Roman was Ronbow, Janus was Kill or be Killed, Patton was Stabby-Feet, Logan was Propagayda, and Virgil was Answerkey

Dabs

THE HOUSE IS ON FIRE, WHY DID WE LEAVE REMUS TO COOK OH GOD OH NO HE TRIED COOKING ONE OF ROMAN’S PROPS WITH PATTON’S MINI PINK SKIRT AND OH SHIT OH FUCK VIRGIL’S ON FIRE SOMEONE CALL THE FIRE DEPARTMENT (this was an actual event, and Remus got the fury of Roman for charring his favorite sword, Patton for ruining his skirt, Logan for somehow setting the nerd on fire, had to deal with Virgil being nonverbal for three weeks thanks to the trauma, and a Janus who recorded the entire event without showing a single emotion)

[robininthelabyrinth]

Thank you "Worthwhile Trade". The idea of Baxia turning into an guai is so interesting. I liked imagining the part where she hit NMJ for his idiocy. My brain is projecting "married couple" vibes, omg. I admit despite how weird WWX spoke about the events, the time travel part flew over my head until the tags spelled it out for me. (TBC)

(Cont'd) Also... did NMJ mean it in THAT dual-thing way when talking WRH's prefs? And the last part, where WWX used resentful energy to sub NMJ's qi. I assume he can still cultivate since his core's still there, if emptied? But I wonder what'll happen to his energy once restored Can't help but think his renewed qi will inevitably be affected by the traces of the previous energy that once circulated. He's not going to become a walking stygian tiger or something, is he? Off the wall guess, sorry!

----

sequel to Worthwhile Trade (ao3), also on tumblr

Wei Wuxian didn’t understand Nie Mingjue.

He didn’t understand the way he thought, the way he acted – the way he smiled when he woke up, the way he opened his arms when Nie Huaisang threw himself into them with a wail and said, “It was worth it for you, didi; it always is if it’s for you. Don’t you know that?” the way Wei Wuxian had always shamefully thought of saying, as if something like that could just be said like that, out in the open.

The way Nie Mingjue shrugged when the doctors said his cultivation would likely never recover, that he should have died, that they didn’t understand why he hadn’t; the way he said, seeming even satisfied, that it was a worthwhile trade.

It’s not a trade, Wei Wuxian wanted to scream at him. It’s a sacrifice! It hurts and you’re sad, no, worse, you’re resentful about it and you shouldn’t be because it was your choice, your decision, but you see someone else with everything that you worked so hard for and you’re angry when you shouldn’t be angry and you feel bad and you turn away; it hurts them when you do and you’re glad, you miserable thing, you’re happy that they’re hurt because why should you be the only one whose hurt –

Perhaps the problem wasn’t that he didn’t understand Nie Mingjue.

Perhaps it was only that he saw in Nie Mingjue his own faults, his own deficiencies, the ones he’d tried so hard to hide in the sea of his poor memory.

“You’ll die if you don’t find a way to cultivate,” he said instead, hovering by the door. He’d say that he didn’t mean to ruin the mood, but he kind of did, and Baxia’s eyes on him were cold as if she knew.

As if she knew everything.

How he’d gone back to the past, how he’d changed things, how it was his fault that Nie Mingjue – who’d never done a single thing to hurt him, who’d been upright and righteous and good and whose brother loved him enough to –

Wei Wuxian had made a point of avoiding Baxia.

Not that she was that easy to avoid. She was tall for a woman – not as tall as Nie Mingjue, but proportionate to him in the sense that she was as much taller than the average woman as he was taller than the average man – and she walked as though people should flee before her, a tread that only felt heavy because of the almost visceral rage that surrounded her like a cloud.

Nie Huaisang had found robes for her, somehow, and they were the least feminine robes Wei Wuxian had ever seen a woman wear, though he supposed he still hadn’t seen that given that Baxia wasn’t exactly a woman.  Cut in a martial style, a dark shimmering grey that seemed in some lights to be almost red – she had been born as a human in a mantle of blood and she would not let anyone forget it.

“I should have died already,” Nie Mingjue said, as if the world’s scariest guai didn’t have her hand on his shoulder right next to his vulnerable neck. “You came up with a solution, Wei-gongzi, and for that I thank you. Even if we are not able to solve the next stage, being able to see my loved ones is worthwhile.”

Wei Wuxian could learn to hate that word.

“I have a solution, of a sort,” he said, irritated and not entirely because his reveal had been preempted. He’d hoped to sort of ease into it, somehow. “You lack the capacity for regular cultivation, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use demonic cultivation.”

“What? No, we can’t do that,” Nie Huaisang said, biting his fingers anxiously. “Anyway, doesn’t demonic cultivation harm the temperament?”

“You mean my temperament can get worse?” Nie Mingjue teased, and Nie Huaisang smacked him so lightly that it didn’t even displace his clothing. “I don’t know any means of demonic cultivation, Wei-gongzi –”

“Call me Wei Wuxian,” Wei Wuxian said. “Please.”

“Wei Wuxian, then,” Nie Mingjue said. “All the methods I’ve ever heard of were forbidden for very good reasons – but perhaps those conditions are not the same in the method you know.”

Wei Wuxian tensed. “How do you know that I know one?”

“You saved me, didn’t you?” Nie Mingjue said practically, and well, yes, Wei Wuxian supposed he had a point – “And anyway, Baxia can tell.”

Wei Wuxian shivered. “I don’t use it,” he argued. “How can she tell?”

At Nie Huaisang’s instigation, Baxia had recently started experimenting with smiles. She put one on her face now.

It was terrifying.

“Tell me about it,” Nie Mingjue requested. “The powers and the price, all of it.”

“You’re actually considering this?” Nie Huaisang exclaimed. “But da-ge…!”

“Wei Wuxian was not wrong when he said that I would die if I didn’t find a way to cultivate despite having given up what I have,” Nie Mingjue said. “If I die, what will you do?”

Oh, not much, just become a mastermind capable of puppeting the entire cultivation world to enact revenge for your death. Nothing big.

“But – da-ge has always put such a priority on remaining on the righteous path…”

“That’s why I asked about the costs,” Nie Mingjue said patiently. “I will not abandon righteousness simply because I adopt a new method of cultivating.”

“Everyone will revile you even if you are righteous,” Wei Wuxian warned him.

Nie Mingjue shrugged. “Who is everyone? What do I care for them? You do the right thing because it is right, not for the sake of fame.”

Wei Wuxian had once thought the same.

“If everyone in the cultivation world thinks you are evil, they will paint you as evil no matter what you do,” he insisted. “No matter how righteous your motives –”

“Let them think he’s evil, then!” Nie Huaisang exclaimed. “He could be the most black-hearted cultivator in the land, but he’s still my da-ge; my Nie sect and I will protect him!”

“Huaisang! No! That is not how righteousness works – if I ever truly become evil, you are to cut me off at once, kill me if necessary –”

“No way!”

“Huaisang – Baxia, tell him; evil cannot be endured –”

Baxia was looking at her fingernails. She’d picked that gesture up from Sect Leader Ouyang, when he was trying to be pointed about ignoring someone; it was extremely irritating to absolutely everyone who wanted to know who she was and what she was doing here and Nie Huaisang and Wei Wuxian had teamed up to convince her to keep doing it.

Possibly a mistake, in retrospect.

“Baxia. I know you agree with me on this. Evil is evil, and must be eradicated no matter who it may be.”

She gave him an unimpressed look.

“I know I’m not evil yet,” Nie Mingjue argued, apparently understanding her without any difficulty whatsoever. He’d just woken up from a month-long coma and he could already speak fluent human-saber, it was really unfair. And this man had succumbed to Jin Guangyao’s wiles? Lan Xichen had more to answer for than he knew. “But if I ever become evil – what? No, we will not burn that bridge when we come to it, that’s not even the right idiom, who is teaching you these things –”

Nie Huaisang coughed and hid his face behind a fan.

Wei Wuxian was not going to laugh.

Nie Mingjue growled at them all and turned back to Wei Wuxian. “Explain,” he demanded. “The rest of you, out.”

“But –”

“Out. One of us has to cultivate the righteous path, and if it can’t be me, it has to be you. Baxia?”

She picked Nie Huaisang up by his collar, for all the world like a mother dog picking up her pup by the scruff of its neck, and walked out.

Nie Mingjue picked up demonic cultivation faster than anyone else Wei Wuxian had ever met or even heard of. He wasn’t sure if that demonstrated an unnerving aptitude or if it was simply that Nie Mingjue was surpassingly talented – Wei Wuxian had never met anyone like himself before, someone for whom all things came easy, and it was an unexpected delight to meet a kindred soul somewhere where he’d long ago given up hope. He’d never planned to unveil demonic cultivation in this life unless he truly needed it – he didn’t want to hurt his Lan Zhan the way he had in his first life, and anyway Jiang Cheng and Uncle Jiang and Madame Yu were all alive, with hundreds of Jiang sect members to boot, there was no need for his sacrifice – but the part of him that was more researcher and inventor than cultivator luxuriated in their discussions.

Nie Mingjue was a lot more concerned than Wei Wuxian had ever been with consequences, and how to mitigate them, but he supposed that made sense: losing his cultivation hadn’t impacted that Nie temper one bit, and demonic cultivation was likely to make things worse. Moreover, Nie Mingjue was simply who he was, stiff and unbending, as much steel in his spine as in Baxia’s; he could almost be described as being rigid in his thinking except for the fact that he was in fact seriously considering becoming a demonic cultivator.

“We’re saber cultivators,” Nie Mingjue said when Wei Wuxian tentatively brought it up. “Like a saber, our nature is to be firm and unyielding, not flexible like the sword, but we cannot allow ourselves to become too rigid – a too-rigid saber will break upon encountering an obstacle. It’s a difficult balance to keep, and one made more difficult by our cultivation style.”

“The demonic cultivation aspects, you mean? Using yao to refine your saber spirit?”

“One day, though not today, I’m going to ask you how you know about that,” Nie Mingjue remarked, and although his tone was causal Wei Wuxian’s back went cold. “And I’ll expect you to tell me the truth when I do. But not today. Anyway, yes, that’s what I mean. Do you know what they mean when they say that demonic cultivation harms the temperament?”

Wei Wuxian hesitated. “I assume you’re going to tell me something other than ‘it drives you crazy and makes you kill people’?”

Nie Mingjue snorted. “Sometimes I wonder how someone as smart as you got sent home before you finished your lessons at the Cloud Recesses, but other times it’s fairly obvious.”

Wei Wuxian shrugged, embarrassed.

“Do you really not know?”

“No one taught this to me,” Wei Wuxian said, stung. “I came up with it on my own. How would I know?”

“All demonic cultivation has the same root,” Nie Mingjue said. “Obsession.”

“With killing, yeah, I know, I’ve heard it a million times –”

“Shut up and listen, you impertinent brat. The killing comes later. It starts with obsession. Obsession with righteousness, obsession with love, obsession with the pleasures of this world, with power – a human becomes a demon when they cannot overcome the obsessions within their heart, and the obsession consumes them. In time, a demonic cultivator who is obsessed with power will do whatever it takes to obtain that power, and not mind the blood shed to do it; a demonic cultivator who is obsessed with love will kill everyone who they perceive stands between them and their love, a demonic cultivator who is obsessed with righteousness will turn to murder when in their judgment something that ought to be condemned goes unpunished…”

“What about one who only wants what’s best for his family?” Wei Wuxian said, and he did not know if the challenge in his voice was about Nie Mingjue’s future or his own past.

Nie Mingjue shrugged. “Two roads that I can see: first, their family turns away from them for what they have become and they become vicious with the abandonment, becoming quick to lash out against the world and eventually doing something that causes the world to turn against them.  Second, their family stands by them, and eventually the world causes some harm to them – and the demonic cultivator turns to madness in revenge.”

“Not exactly an optimistic outlook.”

“Not especially, no.”

“You don’t seem as concerned by that as I would have thought.”

Nie Mingjue’s lips twitched. “I have a solution.”

“Would you like to share?”

“Using resentful energy to cultivate our sabers makes them prone to obsession, driving them ceaselessly to fight evil, destroy it, without discrimination. It makes them stronger, but also more dangerous – and that is why they must be carefully controlled.”

Wei Wuxian frowned. “So, what? You’re going to be the saber now? Under whose control?”

“Huaisang’s, of course,” Nie Mingjue said, as if it were obvious. “For better or for worse, he is sect leader now. Who else would it be?”

“But – what if you disagree? What if he wants to do things one way, and you another –”

“Then I argue and probably yell a lot, and if in the end he still insists on doing things his way, I listen,” Nie Mingjue said dryly. “That’s how hierarchy works. Isn’t it the same for you? When your shidi, Jiang Cheng, becomes sect leader, you’ll need to listen to him – or leave the sect. There’s no middle ground.”

Wei Wuxian scowled.

“A sect leader that can’t control his disciples is worse than a demonic cultivator,” Nie Mingjue said. “He’s weak. A target, ripe to be ripped apart and devoured by other sects – resources raided, disciples poached, responsibilities taken away...It’s not a fate I would wish on anyone. If you can’t commit to obeying, commit to leaving so that you don’t end up promising more than you can give.”

Ouch.

Just – ouch.

Great advice, fantastic advice, world-class advice, and totally useless because Jiang Cheng had travelled back in time with him and was therefore convinced that Wei Wuxian was just looking for the first way out of the Jiang sect he could find, no matter what Wei Wuxian said or did about it.

(Even Madame Yu was concerned by the new coldness in their relationship and had tried to talk to him about it, which – Wei Wuxian didn’t know what to do with that. It didn’t match any of what he had thought he’d understood.)

He decided to focus back in on the demonic cultivation lessons, shifting from theoretical discussions to the practical, and that, unfortunately, was when they encountered an issue.

“What do you mean you can’t play an instrument?” Wei Wuxian demanded, appalled. “It’s one of the Six Arts! Everyone can play some sort of instrument – even Nie Huaisang plays an instrument!”

“Everyone agreed it was better that I stop learning,” Nie Mingjue said defensively. “It’s all just plucking on strings or blowing air in pipes, and yet no matter that I did exactly what the teacher said to do, it never worked, that’s all.”

“Didn’t Zewu-jun offer to teach you…?”

“He did. And then he said it would be better if we stopped, too.”

The reason, Wei Wuxian soon learned, was that Nie Mingjue was almost completely tone deaf, and the only reason it was almost was that he was still capable of differentiating speech.

“I agree with the majority,” he said after an extremely frustrating day. “Stop. Never pick up an instrument ever again. And don’t let anyone but Zewu-jun play something especially for you, either, okay? Even if they’re highly recommended.”

“An interesting request,” Nie Mingjue said, eyebrows arched skeptically. “May I ask why?”

“Because you’ll have no idea if they’ve changed the music on you,” Wei Wuxian said bluntly. A great deal about the man’s murder in a different life made sense now, and Jin Guangyao’s brilliance in hiding the score of Turmoil inside of Clarity was a little less impressive when played to a man who thought all music, without exception, was just plucking strings or blowing air. “Musical cultivation is deadly in the right hands, especially if you lower your defenses against it. Just consider it a precaution.”

Nie Mingjue’s eyebrows remained arched, but he hummed in agreement.

“I guess we’ll have to think of a new way for you to cultivate demonic cultivation,” Wei Wuxian said, rubbing his face. He had not been planning on having to invent demonic cultivation at all in this life, and now he needed to not only ‘invent’ the original but actually come up with something new. Why was his life so hard? “How did you previously manipulate external energy?”

“With Baxia.”

“Well, that’s not helpful, is it? You can’t wield a human being. Perhaps another saber…?”

That didn’t work, primarily because it turned out that Baxia had strong feelings about Nie Mingjue even thinking about using another saber and well, as far as Wei Wuxian was concerned, whatever Baxia wanted, Baxia got.

(Nie Huaisang had had to go to Heijan once, with Wei Wuxian and Baxia accompanying him since Nie Mingjue wasn’t ready yet, and some unlucky Wen captain had tried to ambush them. That captain, and his squad, were not granted the courtesy of an intact corpse, and Baxia hadn’t even gotten a speck of blood on her nice new robes – no, Wei Wuxian would not be crossing Baxia any time soon.)

“There’s got to be something,” Wei Wuxian said, and Nie Mingjue agreed, and in the end they found something.

Nie Mingjue had been absent-mindedly playing around with one of Nie Huaisang’s fans when one of the fierce corpses Wei Wuxian had raised as practice targets had gotten loose; instinct had taken over and Nie Mingjue had lashed out with the weapon at hand as if it were a saber, and the resentful energy had surged in response –

Baxia was apparently not threatened by the notion of her master using a fan as a weapon, not even one inlaid with steel and heavy cloth with enough layers to catch a sword in.

(If Wei Wuxian needed to go have some time to himself at the sight of Nie Huaisang, dressed as a sect leader with his saber always at his side, standing next to Nie Mingjue holding a fan – well, that was his problem, and also one he intended to show to Jiang Cheng at the next possible opportunity. Someone else deserved to have their mind wrecked by the incongruity as much as he had.)

Even without the weirdness of Nie Mingjue, it was more than a little odd to see Nie Huaisang in the robes of a sect leader without him acting like the Head-shaker. The shock of having to become sect leader had fallen heavily on him: he had become a little more serious, a little more earnest (though still a bit frivolous); he was more inclined to listen and think things over, less inclined to run away.

“If da-ge is going to become a demonic cultivator, someone needs to stand behind him,” Nie Huaisang said simply when Wei Wuxian had tried probing. “He’s always held the world up for me – it’s the least I can do for him. I may not be able to do much, I might be terrible at it, but I owe it to him to at least try.”

Wei Wuxian wondered, sometimes, if Jiang Cheng would have stood up for him if only he had trusted in him, believed in him, the way Nie Mingjue believed in his notoriously useless little brother.

Maybe he’d ask, when he went back to the Jiang sect.

Maybe he’d –

“What the fuck is wrong with you,” Jiang Cheng said as a greeting, and for once Uncle Jiang didn’t disagree. “All those letters and you never once mentioned the terrors?”

“The what,” Wei Wuxian said, and that was how he learned that while he was on his way back to Yunmeng neither Baxia nor Nie Mingjue had wasted any time utilizing their newfound skills out on the battlefield.

Nie Huaisang was never going to be a particularly respected sect leader, especially by those that had met him beforehand, but evidently that wasn’t really important given that he was constantly flanked by what was being called the two terrors of Qinghe.

Nie Mingjue preferred darker colors now that he was no longer sect leader, the same dark grey shading towards black that Baxia had selected for herself, and the selection somehow made him seem even taller, verging on inhuman, and Baxia standing beside him, her human features patterned roughly after his, made the two of them appear a matched set. Nie Mingjue wielded the fan that Wei Wuxian had helped him design, which he had forged with his own hands out of the metal from the Xuanwu’s cave that Wei Wuxian had foolishly figured someone ought to get some use out of, painted over with a cinnabar array in Nie Huaisang’s careful brushstrokes, and in his hands it was both weapon and conduit for the raising of armies of corpses. Baxia, for her part, held nothing but required nothing, a sweeping gesture of her hand more devastating than a dozen blows with the saber.

They were terrifying, a nightmare writ large and unmistakably dangerous, undeniably demonic cultivators in a way that was entirely different from Wei Wuxian’s own dramatics, and it unnerved the rest of the cultivation world the way Wei Wuxian had feared it would.

“It won’t be a problem,” Jiang Cheng said impatiently. “The Nie sect are ascending in strength, and this only adds to their mystique – who would challenge them?”

“Uh, Jin Guangshan,” Wei Wuxian said. “Like last time?”

Jiang Cheng huffed. “At this rate, I don’t even think Jin Guangyao will bother defecting to the Jin sect,” he said. “Not if he knows how to play his cards right. The Nie sect’s strength in the original version was never about Chifeng-zun’s skill with the blade alone. It was the whole sect’s strength, with Chifeng-zun’s ability to wield them as skillfully as he did his saber; he’s an outstanding general. And now they have him as a general, him as a demonic cultivator, and whatever the fuck is going on with Lady Baxia –”

“I already told you. She’s a guai.”

“Like I already told you, it doesn’t matter how many times you say that, I will immediately expel the knowledge from my mind and you should too. ‘Immortal cultivator cousin that my brother named his saber after’, like what Nie Huaisang has been putting about, is a perfectly acceptable cover story.”

“And the fact that his saber disappeared at the same time?”

“Coincidence,” Jiang Cheng said firmly. “And we’re sticking with that. Anyway, the point is that if you’re an ambitious man, the Nie sect is the place to be right now and probably will continue to be in the future. This is going to be evident to both Jin Guangshan and the future Jin Guangyao, and we’ll need to deal with that.”

“I’ll keep an eye out,” Wei Wuxian promised. “After rescuing Chifeng-zun and helping with the demonic cultivation, I’ve gotten pretty close to them.”

“Mm. And how about your other mission?”

Wei Wuxian scowled at the smirk on Jiang Cheng’s face. “You know perfectly well that I haven’t had any time to seduce Lan Wangji, what with how busy I’ve been. I don’t even know for sure if he likes me yet -!”

“You’re an idiot, he does, and you’re not allowed to keep us all in suspense for two decades this time. Figure it out.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that I’m sticking you with the job of being an information courier and you leave for the Lan sect front line tomorrow.”

“You are the best shidi ever,” Wei Wuxian said, and meant it.

Jiang Cheng huffed. “Yeah, well,” he said as if his cheeks weren’t red. “Remember that in the future. In this life we’re the Twin Heroes, you hear me? No take-backs.”

Nie Mingjue was right: Wei Wuxian would need to either learn to obey or tell Jiang Cheng early on that he was leaving, and walking a path in the middle would only cause heartbreak all over again.

“Okay,” he said, deciding to ask Lan Wangji for advice on obedience. Surely that was something that could be learned? “Deal. You do know that that means Lan Wangji’s going to have to marry in, right?”

“Oh no,” Jiang Cheng said, voice entirely flat. “How terrible. I’ll find a way to manage dealing with that ice block somehow…listen, I don’t care if you end up calling him Wei Sizhui in this life, but don’t ruin his character. He was perfectly nice.”

“I don’t know if he’s even been born yet,” Wei Wuxian said glumly. “I’ve been looking, but…”

“I’ve asked some of Mother’s spies to keep track of Wen Ning and Wen Qing,” Jiang Cheng said. “Collecting evidence we’ll need for their inevitable post-war trial, assuming we want them to live better lives than just refugees. Give it time, we’ll find him.”

“Now I just need to see if Lan Wangji will want to raise children with me…”

“Wei Wuxian. I don’t care. Go.”