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2manyfandoms2count · 3 years

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Alix's rom-com night

The June event of the @mlwritersguild was to create bonus content for one of our fics - I decided to seize the opportunity to finally sit down and write one of the bonus scenes of You can count on me (I will be there for you), and to do draw a bit of fanart to go with it (4 panels, including a Marichat piece)! Let me tell you that the Burrow is a pain to draw, but I'm actually quite proud of the result :)

About YCCOM: It's an aged-up, one-sided reveal with "fake" wedding fic, based on Sallteas' art. The fic is 9 chapters and 20k words long. It was written before season 4, so it's no longer canon compliant in terms of who knows who's identities at the beginning.

Synopsis: Ladybug's identity is compromised, and somebody is after her. After a lot of pondering, she and Chat Noir come to the conclusion that her best bet is for her to marry Adrien Agreste. It breaks her heart that she is not marrying Chat Noir, but she knows that she's buying them time to figure out who is behind the anonymous letters she's been receiving, and hopefully to find Hawkmoth. Whatever the situation might be, her wedding day should provide a moment of respite. And maybe it would have, had Chat Noir refrained from coming to visit her just before the ceremony...

About Alix's rom-com night: it's a one shot that's chronologically set before the main fic, but I recommend reading it after reading the latter since it contains spoilers for it. It follows Alix (obviously), and includes Ladybug revealing her identity to Chat Noir and the set up of their "fake wedding" plan.

Hope you enjoy!

---

Alix opened her door and dropped her keys in the bowl as she kicked off her shoes with a satisfied sigh. Home, sweet home.

Her studio apartment wasn��t very big, but then again, she didn’t need a huge surface when she had a whole extension waiting for her just a transformation phrase away. She’d mentally thanked Marinette more than once for choosing her to wield the Rabbit Miraculous, rather than somebody else, just for the savings she made in rent.

She whistled happily as she made her way to her kitchen area, grabbing a bag of popcorn out of a cupboard and shoving it in her microwave.

She deserved the treat. She’d been running around all week, trying to slide letters to her targets without being spotted, spending hours on end to find the perfect stationary, and then staying up at night to get the wording exactly right, a delicate mix of subtlety and threat to elicit some sort of response from them. It had taken a lot of trial and error, especially for Ladybug. Her friend had always been surprisingly oblivious on many fronts, and it seemed that her honeymoon phase with Chat Noir reinforced her optimistic ability to brush ominous details aside. It had taken three letters for her to start freaking out and to promise Tikki she would talk to her partner about them, whereas Hawkmoth had started the analysis phase upon the first one he’d received.

Alix had only been mildly surprised by the identity of their nemesis when she’d decided it was high time she knew who they were facing; it was all too fitting that the man who leached off Paris’ most intense negative emotions should be the most embittered person she knew, and the one who, in retrospect, had been the cause of many an Akuma (she still shuddered at the what-could-have-been of Chat Noir’s akumatisation).

The microwave dinged, bringing her thoughts back to her timeline. She took the bowl out and called for her Kwami.

“Fluff, clockwise! Burrow!”

A white portal appeared in the middle of her living space and she walked through it, emerging in the ovoid room covered in screens. She made her way to the furthest point, hung her umbrella up on the coathanger she kept in there, and grabbed a folding chair. It was a director’s seat which supposedly had belonged to a rising name in the cinema world before their career had been shot down for obscure reasons, but she didn’t really care about its story; she’d bought it for a very low price at a yard sale, and that was all that mattered to her.

“Right, where are you…” She muttered, scrutinising her surroundings, until she found the screen she was looking for.

She unfolded the chair, zoomed in on the empty (for now) rooftop, propped down in her seat and threw a fistful of popcorn into her mouth, waiting for the show to start.

Unsurprisingly, Ladybug was the first to arrive on the scene. She paced around, mumbling to herself as she wrung her hands together. Alix felt a pang of guilt as she watched her rehearse how she would break the news to her partner, but reassured herself that the ordeal would soon be over.

Finally, Chat Noir landed beside Ladybug, and she flung herself at him, holding him so tight he had to untangle himself from her arms to breathe.

“Well, well, well, my Lady, I know I couldn’t make it to patrol last night, but I didn’t think you’d miss me this much,” he chuckled, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear.

Alix rolled her eyes at just how lovestruck he looked as he did so. How could her friends be so sappy, and yet still be at square one in terms of knowing who the other was?

Some might have said that it was romantic, that they loved each other regardless of who they were; but those people did not have to deal with the constant end of the world threat.

“What was so important that you couldn’t just text me?”

Ladybug took a deep breath. Her fingers slid along his arms as she relaxed her embrace, taking his hands in hers at the end of the line. “Somebody knows my identity,” she said quietly, looking down. “And I don’t know who they are.”

“What?!” Chat’s voice detonated in the previously peaceful quiet of the evening, making a couple of pigeons take off in a loud flutter of wings.

“I’m so sorry, I must have been careless when I got home one night, they must have seen me, I bet it was last week when I was tired and I-”

“My Lady, no offence, but I don’t care about the when and why, just... are you okay?” He tilted her chin up, gently turning her head to each side, checking for any signs of injury.

She placed her hand on his, making him stop, and gave him a soft, sad smile. “Yes, Chaton. Just a little rattled; you know you were the first person I wanted to reveal my identity to. Not including Bunnyx, although technically I never told her who I am.”

“And technically, I’m still the only person who knows who you are,” Bunnyx smugly commented between two handfuls of popcorn. “Now come on, I want to see how you react when you reveal your identities to each other.”

“How do you know somebody knows, though? And do you have any idea what their intentions are?”

Ladybug’s expression darkened. “I received some letters. They’re not signed, but they’ve got enough butterflies on them to make me think that even if they’re not from the biggest pest in Paris, then they’re probably from somebody who’s up to no good.”

Chat Noir swore under his breath, then regained his countenance. “So, what do we do now? Do you think we can hunt down the bugger?”

“We definitely will, but…” Ladybug bit her lip, and Alix leaned forward in her seat. This had to be it. “Chaton, I think the time has come for me to tell you who I am.”

“YES! Finally!” Alix cheered, almost spilling her popcorn bowl.

“Are you sure, my Lady?” Alix didn’t have to be on site to tell that Chat Noir’s heart was beating faster than usual; the corners of his mouth twitched as he repressed a smile, as though his excitement could make her change her mind.

“Yes.” She nodded. “I really want you to know.” In case something happens to me, Alix was pretty sure her friend had left unsaid.

“Okay, okay.” Chat Noir took a deep breath, buzzing with anticipation, so much so that he apparently missed the whole subtext of her previous words. “Do you want to do this now? And how do you want to do it? Do you want me to close my eyes? Are you going to write it on a piece of paper for me to read? Are you going to detransform? Should-”

“I was thinking the latter, and yes, now,” Ladybug said timidly. “Up to you if you want to look or not.”

“For some reason, I feel like I shouldn’t.” He took her hands in his and kissed her knuckles without breaking their eye contact, then took another deep breath and closed his eyes, a blissful smile on his lips. “Ready when you are, my Lady.”

“Ok, here goes.” She let out a shaky breath and called off her transformation. The soft pink glow engulfed her and receded, her suit melting away to reveal her true appearance.

“Wow, Marinette, you actually broke out your favourite dress for this? Glad to see all of this isn’t affecting your ability to think straight.” Alix smirked. If her friend had gone home after a long, stressful work day, and found it in her to change and doll herself up to make a good impression on Chat Noir, things couldn’t be that bad. She had to agree that her dress, simple, white, with little red hearts embroidered on it, was perfect for the occasion, though.

“You can open your eyes now, Chaton.” Marinette gave his hands a squeeze.

Chat Noir obliged, blinking slowly as he took in her appearance, her identity, her. Marinette squirmed under his gaze, his expression not giving away any of his thoughts.

“H-Hi,” she stammered when she couldn’t take it anymore. “I, erm, I guess I should introduce myself? We’ve run into each other before, when we were younger, and even if you actually had lunch with my family that one time, I guess it’s been a while… My name is-”

“Marinette. Marinette Dupain-Cheng.” Chat’s smile finally broke free, spread from ear to ear, almost literally illuminating his face. Alix wondered if anything could ever wipe it off. Love and admiration twinkled in his eyes as he picked her up and started spinning her. Marinette wrapped her arms around his neck, giggling giddily, before Chat Noir closed the gap between their lips.

Bunnyx modestly looked away, allowing them to have their moment. Her eyes landed on a rerun of Plagg putting an end to the dinosaurs’ reign.

“I should have known that it was you, Princess.” Chat panted slightly as he carefully set Marinette back on the roof. “Everything makes so much more sense now, I-”

“Before you finish that thought, I can’t know your identity.” She placed her index finger on his lips. “Yet, of course.”

“What?” Chat froze, and so did Bunnyx, her hand pausing midway between the popcorn bowl and her mouth. “But why?”

“I don’t know what might happen to me, but I don’t want to put you in any danger.” Marinette cupped his cheek. “And I don’t want to lose my memories of you. Of us.”

“Oh for Kwami’s sake.” Alix rolled her eyes. “Boo!” She threw a fistful of popcorn at the screen as her friend continued to list all the reasons Chat couldn’t reveal his identity.

“My Lady, Marinette, if you’re worried about your safety, maybe we should do something about it. I could move in with you, or in a flat nearby, maybe, stay transformed or wear a mask at all times so you don’t know who I am, we can figure it out… Of course I know you can protect yourself, but I could stand guard while you sleep, or...” Chat raked his hand through his hair as he thought.

“You know I love you, Chaton, and that’s why I can’t let you do that! You can’t live like that, I can’t ask that of you. Not to mention how difficult it would be for me, do you really think I could resist having you so close, and not trying to get a glimpse of who you are?” She joked, trying to diffuse the sudden tension.

“Then we need to get you a bodyguard,” he insisted.

“I thought about it, but… Well, I can’t really afford it, and how could I justify suddenly needing personal security? I’m just a designer, and nothing I’ve ever done has been avant-garde enough that I should be worried about my safety.” She shook her head.

“Damn, I knew I should have targeted Chat Noir,” Alix swore under her breath. “He would’ve had to reveal his identity, and she definitely wouldn’t have been a pushover on her kitty’s protection matter. Come on Adrien, do something.”

She could tell that he was up to something just by looking at him. He’d been silent for a little too long for it to be natural. Cogs turned in his head, making him squint. He let go of her completely and paced around the roof, almost pulling his hair out as he did so. Alix sensed that whatever was on his mind was going to be big. She leaned forwards in anticipation.

Finally, Chat Noir came to a halt in front of Marinette, the fever in his eyes and his dishevelled hair making him look slightly unhinged.

“Buguinette, I think I’ve got a solution,” he whispered.

“You do?” Marinette’s voice was full of hope, although she looked slightly concerned about him.

“You’re probably not going to like it,” he warned her, lifting a finger.

“Beggars can’t be choosers.” She shrugged, taking a step forward.

“Right.” He gave her one last look, an opportunity to stop him before the words tumbled out. She nodded encouragingly. “Okay, here’s the thing. I have it on very good authority that Adrien Agreste is being pressured into getting married by his father.”

“I see Gabriel’s just as delightful as always,” Marinette shook her head.

“Unlike good cheese, he definitely doesn’t get better with time.” Chat smiled bitterly, eyes losing focus a little.

“What’s it got to do with us, though?” Marinette prompted, placing a hand on his arm.

“Oh, Agreste, you absolute genius, I think I know where this is going.” Alix took another handful of popcorn.

“Oh, yes, right.” He cleared his throat. “See, Adrien’s not dating anyone at the moment…” Right, Alix snorted. “And he’s not really planning on starting a relationship with his father breathing down his neck, but, well, he happens to owe me a favour, and I’m sure that he’d be more than happy to put his security detail to good use…”

“So you’re suggesting that I marry Adrien.” Marinette deadpanned.

“Well, er, I actually thought you could just date, but thinking about it… It would be less strange for you to request a bodyguard if your relationship was more serious…” He trailed off.

Alix was impressed by how well he concealed his emotions. His poker face was truly exceptional.

“And you think Adrien would be ready to marry me because of a favour he owes you?” Marinette crossed her arms over her chest, pursing her lips and squinting at him as she tried to pick at his lie.

Alix winced for Chat. Maybe he should have waited a bit before blurting out the (as it turned out) probably only sane option in that situation so he could work out all of the details for himself. Marinette was very good at trying to shake plans to see how solid their foundations were.

“Please. Adrien had a crush on you when you were younger, if anything I could probably smuggle it as another favour, given how perfect the fake scenario would be. Although I guess that since you also liked him… It might just cancel out.” He tapped his lip pensively.

“Adrien had a crush on me?” Marinette frowned. “Oh, you must mean Ladybug. I think Nino mentioned it once.”

“Well, yes, but he also had one on you, Marinette.” Chat stepped forward, mischief twinkling in his eyes as he poked her on the nose.

“Really, now,” she muttered to herself.

“The main reason he didn’t act on it was that he thought you loved somebody else.” Chat smiled ironically.

“Wow, what a pair of idiots.” Marinette chuckled.

“You don’t know the half of it.” He kissed her forehead.

“But you know what?” Marinette didn’t pick up on her partner’s comment. “I’m actually glad we didn’t get together. It probably would have delayed us getting together.” She pressed a peck to his lips. “If we’d gotten together at all in that timeline.” She smirked.

Alix snorted. Out of all the timelines she’d watched unfold in an attempt to keep things in check, there wasn’t a single one where Marinette and Adrien, Ladybug and Chat Noir, didn’t end up together, and not just because of her interventions to help them, and the rest of the planet, stay alive.

Marinette’s face fell at Chat Noir’s lack of response. Alix knew her friend didn’t particularly believe in soulmates, but she understood that she would have liked a sappy Chat Noir special comment on how he’d told her he’d grow onto her anyway, and that she would have soon discovered that the Agreste boy had nothing on him. She assumed that he was too busy restraining himself from saying the wrong thing.

“Actually… What about us, then?” Marinette cleared her throat and looked up at him, eyes glistening slightly in the half light.

“My Lady… If you really think that you being a divorcée will spur me away…” Chat Noir looked down at their entwined hands, locks of blond hair falling in front of his eyes, concealing his giddy smile from her. You sneaky cat, Alix thought.

Marinette followed his gaze, letting out a long sigh as she watched their hands sway lightly. Alix knew her brain was probably trying to find all the flaws in the plan. She crossed her fingers, hoping that it would be enough for her friend to accept. It was perfect, whether they got their act together and figured everything out before the event, or not.

“Fine,” Marinette finally said with resolve, making Alix mentally thank whoever was out there. “I’ll do it on two conditions.”

“Anything, my love.” Chat let out a sigh of relief.

“Firstly, we’re honest with Adrien from the get go. No lying about anything.” Chat nodded along. “Secondly, we get cracking on finding Hawkmoth, and after we do and the divorce is settled, if we even get that far with Adrien because obviously if everything is settled before the wedding we won’t be going through the whole plan…” Chat smiled fondly as she took a deep breath. “After all that, we are getting married.” She gestured between the both of them.

“My Lady, are you proposing to me right meow?” Chat Noir all but purred.

“I guess so.” Marinette shrugged, a smile and a blush spreading on her cheeks.

“Wow, then, I’m definitely putting Adrien in charge of the proposal planning,” he replied with a smirk.

“Chaton!” She stomped her foot, her mildly amused smile cancelling out her frown.

“What?” He teased her.

“Will you? Marry me?” She held his gaze.

“Do you even have to ask?” He chuckled. “You know, my Lady, I’m pretty sure that, in my head, we’ve been married since that speech you gave on the Eiffel Tower during our very first fight. Well, I’ve been married to you; you do whatever you please.”

“You’re such a dork,” Marinette laughed, brushing her nose against his and throwing her arms around his neck.

“And yet you still love me.” He pulled her closer.

“Unfortunately, I do,” she sighed dramatically before pressing a kiss to his lips.

Alix dismissed the screen. She’d seen what she wanted, and it seemed like a good place to stop; a happy, sappy ending. Also, she’d finished all of her popcorn.

Everything was on track, her friends would start their Hawkmoth hunt, and soon everybody in Paris would be able to live without fear of their own negative emotions.

(Of course, that was the theory; she’d soon find out that she’d underestimated Adrien’s will to organise the perfect wedding for Marinette, and that, my friends, was no small oversight.)

#miraculous ladybug #the miraculous tales of ladybug and cat noir #ml #mlb #miraculous fanfiction #miraculous fanfic #miraculous fanart #alix kubdel #bunnyx #ladynoir #ladybug #chat noir #half-reveal #one-sided reveal #aged-up characters #elle writes #elle sketches #yccom

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alpacaparkaseok · 3 years

Text

Mine

5. Draw me like one of your French girls

Genre: Min Yoongi x oc

Warnings: none

Word Count: 3.3k

At this point, I’m seriously considering commissioning my own fanart.

It all started the next morning at our first press release. Somebody had the bright idea to show me some fanart that’s been rolling in the past few weeks of a certain k-pop rapper and I. Not gonna lie...we look good together.

Too good.

Then again, everything about Min Yoongi has seemed pretty good since I woke up to a couple more texts from him this morning. I passed out after his late-night/early morning apology, but he sent another text not long after.

4:32 MYG: So does this mean I’m forgiven? Bong-cha made it sound like you enjoy holding grudges.

9:02 MYG: Morning. I hope everything goes well with you today...is it alright if I keep texting you?

9:02 MYG: Just so I can keep tabs on everything. I don’t want this to get too out of hand for you.

Obviously the poor man is just as worried about all of this as I am. I couldn’t help but give a sleepy chuckle when I woke up to his messages.

So far, I’ve done a wonderful job of ignoring how nice it felt to wake up to a good morning text.

I’ve also done a great job at keeping calm and breezing past any weird questions from the current press conference I’m in. That is, until a Korean reporter (I have a hunch they’re from Dispatch) pipes up not only with a question, but with visual aids!

“Cara, do you mind if I ask you a question? Would you like a translator?”

Reminding myself to be gracious and kind, I shake my head. “Go ahead. I should be alright without a translator, thank you.”

The reporter nods, shuffling forward until they pull a paper out of their file in hand. She gives me a sickly smile, passing the paper up to our security guard who does me the honor of bringing it right to my outstretched palm.

“This is one of the newest renderings, I was just wondering how you have been feeling about this entire situation?”

I already guessed what this was going to be about, but the picture in my hand confirms it.

It’s fanart.

To be honest, it’s very well done. It’s a watercolor, the artist placed us walking along a rainy sidewalk. Hand in hand, Yoongi’s gummy smile on full display while I look down at my toes.

Sebastian whistles beside me, clearly as in awe of the artwork as I am. Before me the reporter still wears her smile, waiting for a response. I pass the paper down the line, allowing Rhea to get a chance to admire the fanart.

Maybe it’s the boost of confidence I received upon reading Yoongi’s text this morning that has me grinning back at the reporter with a saccharine smile.

“Did you draw this? It’s very well done.”

Not everyone can understand Korean in this press conference, but the few that do start chuckling. The reporter blanches for a moment, smile faltering.

“N-no, but if you could answer the question-”

I’m sure I look very disappointed as I look down at her. She definitely works for dispatch; she practically reeks of it. Maybe that’s what gives me the boldness I need as I realize that I’m not even her direct target; Yoongi is.

Yoongi’s nice. I don’t think she is.

“Oh, everything is going fine. Honestly, I should get in touch with this artist. They’re very talented.”

The reporter’s eyebrows flick up, sensing a new method of attack. “Were you thinking of commissioning your own?”

“Honestly, I might consider it. Maybe it’ll make my aunts quit hounding me every Thanksgiving about my love life.”

With that, the paper is handed back to the security guard, but the reporter motions for him to keep it. Confused, he hands it back to me. I turn it over so I don’t get caught staring at it during the conference. That’s the last thing Yoongi or I need right now.

As the reporter takes her seat again, I can’t help but feel a little triumphant. Maybe this won’t be so bad after all.

🌙

12:22 ME: I never said you were forgiven, did I?

As soon as we get out of the press conference we are ushered into a van which takes us to another interview. I figure that now is as good a time as any to text Yoongi back, seeing that this morning I woke up late and was too flustered to come up with a response.

“Who are you texting?” Sebastian asks. “Is it your friend that always calls you?”

I consider lying to him for a moment, but realize that it might actually be nice for him to know. He can keep me from being unrealistic when I start to fangirl.

He may also help me to keep that promise I silently made a while ago: to not go so easy on Yoongi. Right now, it’s proving harder than expected to dislike him.

“Nosy.”

Sebastian rolls his eyes. “You’re grinning at your phone like an idiot, that only happens when you get texts from me.”

“Ha! Right. It’s a secret...kind of. Don’t tell anyone.”

“I’ll try my best not to.”

Taking an unnecessarily big breath, I spill my secret that I’ve kept for approximately 12 hours.

“It’s Yoongi.” When there’s no immediate reaction from him, I backpedal. “Also known as Suga?”

Before Sebastian can respond the ping of my phone pulls my attention away.

12:26 MYG: Oh good, you responded. I was getting worried you were actually mad. So is it alright if I keep texting you? I don’t want to mess with your schedule.

“You’re smiling again.”

I look up to see an annoyed Sebastian Stan. He’s not very good at sharing attention, and it would appear that Yoongi is no exception.

“How strange, I didn’t realize.”

12:27 ME: That’s fine.

12:27 ME: But I am mad!!

12:28 MYG: Hahaha sure

“Cara, we’re here.” Sebastian says as he clambers out of the car. I follow after him, pocketing my phone.

There’s a few cameras outside waiting for us, but we’re able to make it inside the building without too much fuss. Once we make it into the room where we’re supposed to have one of our interviews, Sebastian pulls a paper out of his back pocket.

“What’s that?”

He smirks at me, unfolding the paper. It’s the fanart from earlier. I didn’t even realize that he’d pocketed it.

“Tell Suga I say hi, at least.” He poses with the papers just below his chin, giving the best puppy dog eyes he can muster up. It’s rather convincing, if I’m being honest.

“You weirdo,” I mumble as I snap a photo. I’m quick to send it off to Yoongi, captioning it.

12:37 ME: Sebastian says hello.

Our interviewer is just about to come into the room when I receive a response. Not having the self-restraint to put my phone away, I quickly take a look. Sebastian peers over my shoulder, curious as well.

12:40 MYG: Winter Soldier!!!

12:41 MYG: Hi. Did he draw that?

I cackle, quickly translating the message. Sebastian looks appalled. “I have better things to do than draw fanart!”

“Yeah, like write fanfiction, right?”

He grins at me. “Obviously.”

12:42 ME: No, but he says he’s writing fanfiction.

12:42 ME: We’re about to start an interview rn but I’ll tell him to send you his rough draft later. 😏

Interviews pass, and it isn’t until I’m finishing up dinner that my phone pings with another message from Yoongi. I nearly impale Sebastian with my fork as I lunge for my charging phone; he’d come into my hotel room to eat dinner with me.

“Watch it!” Sebastian grunts, shoveling food into his mouth at an alarming rate. We were promised lunch by Rhea earlier but it ended up just being a small snack as she was whisked away by a long-lost friend. The two of us managed to control our hunger for as long as possible, but Sebastian wasted no time calling up some food for us before we even got back to the hotel.

We barely beat the delivery boy here. He wasn’t all that surprised that we were American. Sebastian had tried out some very choppy Cantonese. What did end up surprising him was that he was delivering a meal to the Winter Soldier. I was able to sneak into my room undetected while the boy’s eyes were bugging out as Sebastian signed his hat.

“Sorry,” I mumble around my food.

9:12 MYG: I’m still waiting for the rough draft.

I translate the message to Sebastian, who cackles and promises to get started on it as soon as possible.

9:14 ME: Sorry, Sebastian said he’s still trying to write it. I’ll let you know when it’s ready!

9:15 MYG: That’s alright. I’ll be patient.

9:15 MYG: I saw a clip from your press conference today.

My stomach lurches as I realize what clip it was that he probably saw. Does he think I’m some crazy fangirl now? I mean, I might be. But he doesn’t need to know that.

9:18 ME: I didn’t get you in trouble, did I?

Sebastian notices my change in expression and shoots me a worried look. “Everything alright?” I shrug.

“Yeah...I just hope I didn’t get him in trouble with what I said at the press conference today. I think that reporter was trying to go against him somehow.”

“He’s a big boy. Did he say anything about it?”

I look back down at the messages even though I already know what he said. My stomach lurches again as I see the three little dots at the bottom of the screen.

“No, not really. He just said he saw a clip or something. He’s typing right now, though.”

9:20 MYG: I thought I was the worrier. No, you didn’t. How was the rest of your day?

“What’d he say?” Sebastian grabs our cartons of food, tossing them into the wastebasket.

“He’s just…”

“Are you blushing?!” My friend stares at me from across the room, eyes wide. “No way! You like him!”

“No! No I don’t!”

“Yes you do, don’t lie to me! You’re so into him!” Sebastians hurries back over grinning wide. “Wow, he must be a good texter.”

That really is helping my blush. “Nooo, he’s not. He’s just nice. That’s it. It’s just fun having someone nice to talk to, you know? He feels really bad about everything and - Sebastian quit it - and it’s just sweet of him to care. That’s it.”

Sebastian stops looking at me with his puppy dog eyes and leans back in his chair, a contemplative look overtaking his features. “I thought I was nice to talk to.”

I pause for a second, breath getting caught in my throat. “Y-you are. I didn’t mean it like that.”

He shakes his head, giving me an award-winning smile. “No, I know. Aren’t you going to respond?”

“Oh! Yeah!” I focus on my phone again. There’s an uneasy feeling rising in me at Sebastian’s comment, but I brush it off for now. He’s always been bad at sharing his friends. He’s the same with Anthony Mackey, I’ve seen it up close.

9:25 ME: True, I’ll let you worry. My day was good, just finished up dinner. How was yours?

“There, I-” I look up proudly only to find Sebastian’s chair empty and the door clicking shut. “...I did it.”

MYG: It was great. Got lots of work done.

MYG: Have you decided if you’re going to come to the festival or not? Also, Bong-cha says hi.

ME: Wow, she can’t even tell me herself. No respect. No, I honestly didn’t even think about it today...but I’m pretty sure we’re all going either way.

MYG: Haha she’s not happy with your comment.

MYG: She’s reading over my shoulder, I promise I’m not reading our conversation out loud. Is your director making you go?

I just miss the chance to respond as my phone lights up with an incoming call.

“Bong-cha, quit reading my conversations you little weirdo.”

“Hey, how’s it going with you? I’m great, thanks for asking.”

“Are you still in the room with everyone?”

“No, just left. You should see Yoongi right now, though.”

“Why?”

“He looks like a kid in a candy store every time he gets a text from you. It’s adorable.”

“Yah!”

My friend’s cackle soars through the phone, and I swat at the air as though I could somehow get her to stop.

“Please tell me you guys are coming to the festival.” Bong-cha’s sudden change in tone has me pausing, chewing on my lip.

“We are. Why?”

“Come stay with me!” Bong-cha shouts. I jump up, a grin already working its way onto my face. “It’ll be just like old times. And, I was looking at the schedule you sent me...there’s a couple of nights where you’re done relatively early. We could go do something fun!”

I sigh, rubbing my temples. My phone is buzzing with incoming texts, but I ignore them for now. “Yeah, that’ll be fun. I’m not sure if I can come stay with you-”

“C’mon,” Bong-cha whines. “I never get to see you anymore. We’ll make it work! Oh, I’ve gotta go, Tae brought Yeontan. But let me know!”

With that, Bong-cha cuts the line and leaves me on the other side caught between excitement at seeing my friend and dread at having to come face to face with Yoongi. Texting is one thing; but actually spending time with him?

“Just be his friend,” I mumble to myself. Settling down, I attack my food once more. The space where Sebastian sat before makes me furrow my brows.

What’s going on with him? I mean sure, we’re really good friends. But we still see each other constantly, why would he be so possessive?

It’s probably all just in my head. My phone light up with the texts I received a couple of minutes ago while I was still on the phone, and this time I physically cannot restrain the smile that comes through as I realize Yoongi is still texting me.

MYG: Really no pressure about the festival. I know Bong-cha really wants to see you, but please don’t feel like you have to come and hang out with us.

MYG: We’re not even that cool, anyways.

MYG: Are you just hanging out with Sebastian tonight??

I stare down at my phone for a moment, the smile being wiped from my face. Plopping down heavily on my bed, I close my eyes and power off my phone.

Yoongi is nice. So nice, apparently, that I can’t even tell now if he’s trying to get me to stay away. The fact is simple: he’s a nice man who has a reputation to uphold and is trying to keep everyone happy. That includes me.

He’s nice for texting me and trying to make sure I’m doing alright. Any decent human being would do that. But there’s also the fact that I’m new to this game in the spotlight and I know that I’m not going to be able to keep my feelings out of this.

I take a moment to breathe, forcing myself to push away the impending panic that sets in. This is no way to live, and I know that I’m only setting myself up for heartbreak when someday I don’t wake up to a good morning text from Yoongi.

It’s only been one day of communicating and I can already feel myself getting too attached.

Powering on my phone again, I flinch at the new texts.

9:17 MYG: Bong-cha just told me her evil plan. 😩 Did she tell you about it on the phone?

9:31 MYG: Sorry if you’re busy! Just text me back when you can. Let me know about your plans for the festival, too.

Even though I’m itching to text him back and waste away the rest of the night talking to him, there’s another more pressing matter I have to face. Quickly getting up and leaving my phone there in order to fight the temptation, I grab my room key and head a few rooms down. A quiet knock and a few seconds later and Sebastian is opening up his door.

He looks down at me warily, and I feel almost like we had a fight because of the way he’s looking at me. Emitting a loud sigh, he shakes it off and grins down at me in a way that makes me question if I even saw the previous expression at all.

“Hey,” I mumble out weakly. Moving past him into his room, he follows silently behind me.

“Hey…?”

Without another word I land face first onto his bed, the action pulling a laugh from him. Good. His laugh reminds me that this is real. This friendship is real, and Sebastian for all his annoying teasing, is a true friend.

Bong-cha is miles away and busy. She’s also biased. So Sebastian is the next best thing.

“I’m freaking out,” the pillow muffles my words but I know he hears me loud and clear. The mattress dips on one side as Sebastian settles onto it, and a moment later a hesitant hand begins kneading the flesh at my shoulders. I let out a satisfied sigh.

“What’s going on?” His tone is gentle, and the sound of it nearly tugs some tears out of my eyes.

“I’m pathetic, Sebastian.” I clutch his pillow and bury my face farther into it. “I’m so pathetic! I’ve literally never met the man before in my life, and I’ve spent the last 24 hours sending a few texts back and forth and I already feel like I’d jump off a cliff for him!”

Sebstian’s hands pause in their kneading for a fraction of a second before continuing on. “I told you you liked him.”

I turn to look at him, and again I catch that wary gaze before he drops it. “Really? ‘I told you so’? Rude. I need help, Sebastian. It’s never going to happen, he’s just being nice, and I just need to be cordial and get through this. Right?”

He nods, contemplating a bit. “Sure. He seems like a great guy. But at the end of the day, the two of you are just caught up in a weird media frenzy and that’s it. Is that what you want me to say?”

“I guess.” I huff, flipping onto my back as I stare up at the ceiling. “Why do I like him though? Am I just desperate?”

Sebastian stands up and laughs. “No way. If you were desperate you would be falling for me, not some inconvenient, crazy famous kpop star.”

Somehow his words make me laugh, the feeling easing the panic a bit. “You’re right, I guess.”

🌙

I end up passing out in Sebastian’s room only to wake up at 3 am and find myself a little too close for comfort to my co-star. Gently untangling myself from his mess of arms and legs, I sneak out of his room and back to my own.

Half-asleep and looking the part, I groan at my reflection in the mirror as I try to brush my teeth. Pointing at my reflection with my toothbrush, I give myself a pep talk.

“You are not pathetic,” pause to spit, “you’re not desperate,” rinse out the brush, “you’re just friendly. You’re practicing making new friends, and Yoongi as well as all of BTS are a part of that. That’s it.”

So when I finally settle down into my cold and very empty bed, I don’t feel very guilty sending Yoongi a late-night text. He never texted me again after the last one I saw, and I easily brush off the feeling of disappointment and replace it with relief.

3:13 ME: Yeah, we’re going. No, I have no idea what the evil plan is. Do we need to come up with a counter-plan? And sorry I never responded...I was busy annoying Sebastian and left my phone in my room. Good morning! This is payback for your late texts last night!

I fall asleep easily after that, double checking that my phone is on silent before snuggling deep down into my pillows.

Honestly, what do I even have to worry about? Everything is going great with promotions, the movie is finished and should be well received, and in a couple of days I’ll get to go see Bong-cha and make new friends!

Into the silence, I can’t help but laugh. I’m not dumb enough to believe that everything will go as planned.

Especially not as my dreams take over and the only thing I can dream of is a man in a black suit, turning around to greet me over and over again. I can never quite see his face, but somehow I know him.

Even in my unconscious state, I lie to myself and say that it’s not Min Yoongi.

Previous - Next

Taglist is open! Ready to head to Seoul next time?

taglist: @taylorroe3 @eusticenatalie @agustneeds @oceandeep @prdshobi

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scribblemetae · 3 years

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Idk about you, but every single time when I commented on a fic with "aww I love this fic so much and I especially like the scene where xy... " I never get a replay and it honestly makes me anxious...commenting something in public is already nerve wracking and rebloging is something i don't do anymore since I've spent 2 days regreting it...i was too nervous and I nearly threw up because people can see immediatelly what I read or liked... so commenting is kinda easier since other people have to look into the comment section to find it...idk I'm dumb lmao. I started sending fanart for the authors too, because I want them to see that I appreciate what they do...I still feel bad tho since I'm not THAT great at it and they deserve more and oof...idk I feel like I'm not doing enough...

sorry if there are mistakes in that whole ass text and my little ramble 😶 What are your thoughts on all this? 🥺

sorry for the bother too omg ~ ❄️

Hello!!

Okay so, I love every single comment I get like, I get so excited when somebody leaves me one and it doesn't matter how long, small or nonsensical the comment may be I get butterflies <3 So never, ever feel anxious or worried about leaving any kind of comment.

I find replying to comments a lot harder than asks or reblogs simply because sometimes they get lost, a lot of the time I post before I go to sleep and when I wake up I can have anywhere between 10-50 comments on the post making it really really hard to reply to all of them. I also hate picking and choosing who to reply to because I don’t want people to feel i’m ignoring them and not another. If i’m on when when the comment is there I will always try to reply but I know I don’t always manage to reply no matter how hard I try, but, i’m STILL extremely grateful for the comment like, I promise every comment I’ve had has made me smile so please never question if you should comment, if I didn’t get comments I could promise you I wouldn’t post in all honestly.

The not wanting to reblog does make complete sense. Reblogs are really good for Authors but don’t feel bad if you’re unable to do so you don’t owe us anything, but if you can’t reblog or aren’t comfortable then I do think you should try and comment, but again, not always possible, I know I don’t reblog and/or comment on EVERY fic I read, but I try my best to support. Maybe if you’re not having any luck with them you could try asks on anon? You don’t every have to do that but nothing makes my heart race more than an excited anon.

Its strange for me to say because honestly I don’t tend to get people going into my fics and sending me detailed stuff on what they love about it (I have had a few here and there and they stick out in my mind but they are far in between) and thats 100% fine but I would honestly be so grateful if somebody did that for me <3

Ive also never had anybody ever send me fan art but I would DIE If somebody did that for me, no matter how good or bad the love and effort or somebody actually thinking about me and/or my fics wanting to do something like that honestly my heart would double in size so never ever feel that way baby <3

In short, you don’t have to go to far out to support writers, comments are all you have to do to make us feel good about that work and even if you dont get a reply that doesn’t mean they aren’t appreciated but the fact that you attempt to do fan art and more is actually incredible and you’re already doing a lot more for us than other people.

TL:DR, You don’t actually owe us anything, just like we don’t owe our readers anything, but the more love you give the more you will get out of writers, when people talk about TYB It makes me wanna write more. If you’re doing everything you can and everything you’re comfortable with that’s all I will ever ask out of my readers.

I’m not really good at expressing myself so I really hope this made sense and makde you feel a little bit better, never think you’re a bother and know I adore asks like this, its awsome to be able to talk to you guys slightly deeper.

Ily, and thank you for your support <3

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glup--shitto · 3 years

Note

What AUs with Barriss and Ahsoka have you found?

i found some fanart/ideas for aus in some drawings of @//critter-of-habit, two or three by nibeul on insta ,,,, and in the barrisoka tag there's a lot more+ good fanart but I didn't explore more of the tag cause i fell asleep lmao

I'm currently searching for some fanfics on ao3 !!! I'll be updating this post as i find new ones!

- the sith touch by sunkelles

their interpretation of how it would be in the end of rebels season two. they wrote the story from ahsoka's secret relationship with bariss, to ahsoka feeling betrayed by barriss, to her leaving the jedi order to the rebels S2 finale. uses a study of mythology, jedi legends and angst <33. cried 10 times reading it. the author could explain the emotion so well i ,,,,,

- its the killers who inherit the earth by apricots

the author wrote in four chapters what they imagined that happened to barriss during and after prison. its implied to have barrisoka although its not the primary point. after being arrested, barriss awaits for her execution, but it never happens, instead, all the jedi die. she's set free by darth vader and falsely promises to become an Inquisitor. while during her job, she gets to a planet with crystals and !!suprise suprise!! ahsoka!! this one is also angsty but its pretty cool!!!

- it rains when it pours (when you're out on your own) by WhereverMySITakesMe

! Inquisition! barriss!!!!! the Inquisition mistreats their own agents. barriss ached everyday from some kind of pain she couldn't even comprehend, her nerves touring down and her spine made her suffer and her own head making her feel guilty, unlovable and filled with regret. when she is sent to execute the ex-jedi ahsoka, she realizes how hurt she is and ahsoka offers her a chance to heal

- it's a bad wind that don't blow somebody some good by irhinoceri

barriss was part one inquisitor, the first sister. but after some time she decided to leave, run away and finally find the person she dreamt about. barriss spent weeks, months dreaming about geonosis, about ahsoka, about what she had done , andshe didn't expect forgiveness and patience but it was what she got. after localizing ahsoka, they talk in correlia and finally understand eachother.

- the loser of this bout by AriesOnMars

barriss and ahsoka fight and ahsoka learns once again that barriss is a difficult opponent. in here we have 1: ahsoka with fangs!!! 2: soft ending!!!

- forgiveness by sweven

short 100 word ficlet that just makes me smile lol. its not big of a deal but if u don't have anything to read and is in need of something that probably would make u smile here's the solution!!!

i might add more later because its like 5am rn but if this is what you wanted anon, here is it! OH AND IF You have any other fic/au that u think i might like pls dm or tag <33

goodnight yall!!!

#barrisoka #barriss offee #ahsoka tano #star wars

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almostunadulteratedmiracle · 4 years

Text

Good Omens Celebration, Week of Sharing

I have slithered into this fandom in an acute, unusual angle, rediscovering the book after finding some amazing fanfiction - a couple of stories that resonated with something in my heart or my situation in a way I can still barely grasp. The main thing that drew me in was a spin-off of a reverse AU. The story’s wonderful author, Sister-to-the-Queen, was very kind, and she encouraged every shaky first attempt I made at fanart and fanfic in here (and I’m still eternally grateful to her for that and so much more). So it started out with some wildly depressing, heavily angsty fanart of a fanfic of an AU... and it turned into every random thing my imagination could conjure. I dived into the darkness of Sunday nights every week, waiting for the update and immediately starting to draw something (Monday morning lessons be damned). I lived vicariously through meandering discussions in the comments, and I found a great friend in an unlikely way.

I made up for the lack of experience in drawing by making strange, in-between things, combinations of art forms that I had learned about years ago and filed away as things I would never use. I wrote/drew what I like to think of as an “inverse picture poem”, filling up the page, creating the missing parts of a drawing from winding, rhythmic words:

(Above: The words that guide)

I delved into possibly convoluted symbolism, and looking back on it now, I can’t help but smile a little at the progress I made over the years (because yes, that first story I found still haunted me - it does to this day).

(Triumph)

Blatantly ignoring the fact that I knew exactly nothing about composing music, I kept returning to a keyboard like a bloody-minded comet, and I refused to stop until some of the (still only rarely sweet) feelings the stories left me with turned into music. Possibly not very good music, but music I still like to hear.

Then different, lighter stories came along, and they gave my inner angst-demanding Langolier a start: peppered with softness, silliness and sweetness, my usual brand of “stuck in a dark and serious land” tasted better, too. (You know, finally returning to the spirit of the book.) I made clay figurines - and I still slightly regret I never got to finish that project, but anyway, here’s a Crowley from back when I fell for his cool facade:

At the next story, BAM! I could suddenly ignore my ancient belief that I could not and would never be able to paint something I wouldn’t flinch at in a couple of years’ time. And oh, Somebody, I am so thankful for this fandom teaching me that. Still not a great painting, but it makes me feel so warm - look at these soft, beloved idiots:

(December Dilemmas)

And look, colours! An angel and a demon plotting, and a duck who swam into the picture but has much better things to do:

(Frosty autumn plans)

In the meantime, the fandom and the book taught me to appreciate Death, the character (and sent me tumbling into the Discworld-novels). And the online friends made, and the lessons learned also helped me deal with death in the real world - I’m one of those people who would quite possible be much more lost and clueless if not for Good Omens and everything it brought me.

(You know it now)

Putting even more fun in fandom (and getting me hooked on bad puns), these stories motivated me to attempt the impossible: animation! (Gasp!) And you know what else? Making an actual, fake-old-looking book of some of my favourite stories to send to their author (with tiny surprises included, like the letter one of the characters sent the other in-story):

Additionally, I have to love that Good Omens has been a constant in my life for a long while now. It’s brought all the necessary outlets I needed when I got into it, there is a high chance that it made me a more cheerful person, and there is an absolute certainty that it introduced me to wonderful people and stories.

Lately, I haven’t really had the chance to continute my adventures in hand-made / traditional art, but thanks to not-a-space-alien, memes happened instead:

(Your Own Side meme collection 1 2 3)

And also, an attempt at a comic book format ensued. (Look at it at your own peril, it’s weirdly drawn, but it shows injuries that would be pretty gruesome IRL.)

I might have lied a bit above (hey, if Aziraphale could lie to the Lord, I can fudge the timeline a bit for narrative purposes). One more hand-made thing did see the light of day:

(Inspired by ask-agnes-nutter’s brilliant answer to someone’s ask, also, the most motivational thing I think I’ve ever made.)

I promise I’m coming to the end of this ramble now, but it’s been a decade, and I owe so much to this book and the lovely people who love it just like I do. I’ve intermittently written a bit of fanfic, too, which is what I seem to be shifting towards nowadays - and I can’t wait to discover what else Good Omens will make me do. Dear fans and creators, thank you for being awesome!

#goc2020 #good omens celebration #happy birthday good omens #even if we messed up the dates

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mrslittletall · 4 years

Text

Title: A Storm is coming (Chapter 27) Fandom: Dark Souls Characters: Chosen Undead/Dragon Slayer Ornstein, Lord's Blade Ciaran Word Count: 5.676 AO3-Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16603610/chapters/59304391 Previous chapter: https://mrslittletall.tumblr.com/post/617920779524440064/title-a-storm-is-coming-chapter-26-fandom-dark

Summary: Ornstein needs a moment after Artorias' death, so Tempest leaves him be for the moment, exploring on his own, only for the dragon slayer to appear and tell him some bad news.

(Author's note: I was suddenly super inspired for this fic, so I decided to write the next chapter earlier. Please enjoy!

While not technically fanart for this fic, the wonderful @velvialines drew Ornstein and the little Storm as frogs, which you can find here, so please give them some love.)

“Come on, where is it?!”, Tempest murmured to himself as he was searching through Ornstein's bag, tossing a canteen and several wrapped pieces of jerky on the ground as well as a bag that smelled like it was filled with herbs (was that catmint?!). He only stopped tossing stuff on the ground, when he had a tea cup in the form of a dragon in his hand. Tempest delicately put it on the ground, pulled out a wooden dragon as well as a scarf with a dragon design, briefly wondering if he should use the scarf to bandage Ornstein's wound, when he finally found some bandages stuffed at the very bottom of Ornstein's bag.

Tempest unreeled the bandages, glanced at Ornstein who was currently still sitting near the lifeless body of Artorias and then used his sword to cut the right amount that would be needed to wrap Ornstein's arm. Once the bandages were prepared, Tempest walked over to Ornstein.

“Ornstein.”, he started. “We need to bandage your arm.”

Ornstein had his head lowered, his gaze probably fixed on Artorias, a face that looked peaceful. If not for the grave wounds on the wolf knights body, somebody could have thought he was merely sleeping.

“Leave me alone.”, Ornstein said without raising his head.

“...I know that you need some space.”, Tempest said, shifting from foot to foot, feeling uncomfortable. “But let me at least help you bandage your arm first, you are bleeding.” Tempest proceeded to come closer to Ornstein and attempted to remove the armour covering the dragon slayer's left arm, but before he could strip even one piece of metal, Ornstein was shoving him with his good arm, making Tempest land on the ground with a thud.

“I said, leave me alone, little Storm!”, Ornstein shouted and for the first time since Artorias had drawn his last breath, he looked at Tempest and despite all the rage and grief in his heart, he couldn't help but feel guilty, seeing the little Storm sitting on the ground like that, with his big blue eyes showing a certain disbelief, and, oh no, were these tears welling up in them?

“Please let me help you, Ornstein.”, Tempest said, getting up and slowly walking back to the dragon slayer, fiddling with his armour once again.

“Fine.”, Ornstein said, averting his gaze and looking down at Artorias again. He never had wanted to live through this ever again and now he had, up close and he now also knew just who had been the mysterious nameles Undead who had killed him. Freed him. His mind knew that Tempest had done the right thing, but Ornstein's heart wasn't ready to forgive him yet.

“Oh, ouch.”, Tempest said once he had stripped Ornstein's armour and saw the amount of damage on his arm. The wound was hefty, a deep gash, that surely would need stitches to heal properly. The area around the wound was heavily bruised and Tempest didn't want to know how bad it would look once it started to heal.

All Tempest could do for now was cleaning it, with Ornstein not even flinching, his mind was somewhere completely else and then wrapping the bandages around it tightly to prevent further bleeding. He regretted that he had forgotten almost anything about proper first aid and how to treat wounds, because as an Undead, Estus would heal any wound and if the Estus was failing, a bonfire would and if the Estus was empty and no bonfire in sight, death would await him and he had to take a long, arduous journey again, hoping to retrieve the souls he had lost.

“There.”, Tempest said once the arm was completely covered by bandages. “This should hold you over until we manage to return to Anor Londo and Gw..., the Dark Sun, can have a look on it.”

Ornstein didn't answer and Tempest got the message. Ornstein wanted to be left alone, how he had said earlier, so Tempest quickly put Ornstein's belonging back in his bag and then grabbed for his own.

“I will explore the garden.”, he said. “Don't worry, I won't run off and I won't turn hollow.”, Tempest took a few steps away from Ornstein before turning around another time, adding: “Please, don't turn hollow yourself...”

Tempest then went away with long strides, which still felt puny when compared to Ornstein's and crossed Chester, who looked at him. Tempest wondered if he had heard the fight, but wasn't too keen on talking with him or anyone at the moment, stepping on the elevator and riding it up. On the way, Tempest checked his Estus, it still was generously filled, because Ornstein had done the brunt of the fighting since they had last rested at a bonfire.

Arrived at the top of the garden, Tempest let his gaze wander over it and groaned. Ornstein had taken the shortest route to the coliseum and therefore all the guardians and scarecrows were still present. Tempest could at least spot three of the guardians and each and every one of them was accompanied by at least two scarecrows.

“Focus.”, he said to himself, putting an arrow in his bow and bend it, letting the arrow fly, hitting one of the nearest scarecrows right in the head. “Yes.”, Tempest whispered joyful to himself, his aim really was getting better. Though his joy was short lived, because the other scarecrow and the guardian were on their way.

Tempest switched to his sword and managed to get rid of the scarecrow by cutting off one of its arm as well as driving the sword into its head and then the guardian arrived. Tempest braced himself, his thoughts wandered to the giant sentinels of Anor Londo, foes that he never had quite figured out.

“Damn.”, Tempest said to himself. “Why did it have to be giant stone knights?!”

Tempest managed to dodge out of the way of the first strike, but the second hit him and before he could even get up, he got hit a third time and found himself back at the bonfire.

Tempest sighed and searched for a humanity, but decided against it, he would probably die a few more times while he tried to figure out the guardians, so he shouldered his sword and went back into the garden, dispatching the first two scarecrows that had somehow repaired themselves in the meantime and walking back to the centre, luring out the scarecrows again and grabbing his souls before the guardian came too close.

Three deaths later Tempest had figured out how the guardians worked and was looking at the cleared centre of the garden, littered with the remains of scarecrows and guardians. There was a little pond in the middle. Tempest went near it, but couldn't see anything valuable, so he sat down, removed his boots and dipped his feet into the water. Despite his hollowed out body it was nice to feel how the water cooled his overheated food down and he sighed as he relaxed, getting out the soul of Artorias that had latched onto his darksign after the fight, investigating it and cradling it in his arms. It was fascinating, but also felt kind of sad. The souls of the other beings, especially the lord souls, had been light and full of flames, feeling warm, this soul was tainted with the dark, feeling cold and.. wrong.

“You know, Ornstein always said to me that you would like me.”, Tempest said to the soul, even though he was pretty sure that Artorias wasn't able to hear him. Souls didn't possess any awareness and if, he would feel horrible for all the souls he had crushed to gain a bit more soul power. Still, it felt calming to talk to the soul, especially with Ornstein out of the commission for now.

“I was so excited to get to meet you.”, Tempest said. “I didn't had a clue that it would end like this... Ornstein knew it, but he never told me. I always thought the legend of the Abysswalker that my mom told me was true. The great knight Artorias, who traversed the abyss, fought the Dark Wraiths and slayed the beast that had born the abyss itself and saved the princess abducted by it, but tragically fell shortly after that to his injuries...”

Tempest lightly squeezed the soul which wavered under his touch. “Who would have thought that it was all a lie...?”

Tears started to well up in Tempest's eyes: “And... and Ornstein! He knew about all this! He must have made sure that the false version spread. How must he have felt?! About knowing that you, his friend, failed his mission and he had to tell people a lie? I can't even fathom it. He... he must have been through so much...”

Tempest sniffled and wiped his eyes at his sleeves. “Look at how emotional I get over him. I have to admit, I have fallen for Ornstein. Fallen really hard for him, but... he doesn't like me the same. He wants to reconcile with his old master...”

Tempest looked at the soul in his hands and then continued: “Oh, but I shouldn't bother you with my problems. I need to come to terms with it. I am just a human, even worse, an undead, Ornstein is some kind of demigod, why should he ever fall for me? He only promised to escort me to the flame, after that, our ways will part.”

Still, speaking it out aloud made something sting in Tempest's chest and it wasn't the darksign.

“...I want at least to be a good friend to him as long as we are still travelling together. Did you know that I found your old baking book? Ornstein told me that I can keep it. I still have it with me.” Tempest put the soul in his lap and searched through his bag, producing the book. “There are so many recipes in there and I made the sheep cookies, because Ornstein likes sheep. He loved them. If not for my mission, I would love to stand in the kitchen and bake all of the recipes for him all day.”

Tempest flipped through the book and rambled on: “Here, like the ginger bread cookies or the lemon pie or the dragon fruit cake or...” Tempest stopped as he read a certain note in the beautiful hand writing of the Abysswalker. “The apple pie... Artorias, you cared a lot for him, right? You two must have been best friends... I am... I am so sorry that I ripped you apart.”

Tempest hugged the soul with both of his arms, the book on his lap falling to the ground, thankfully not into the water and he couldn't stop the tears from arising anew. It was all too sad. The fate of Artorias, a fallen and failed knight, how much his death hurt Ornstein, who practically had to live through it the second time and that it in fact had been Tempest who had taken him down, not wanting to lose Ornstein.

“I wish I had never picked up that pendant.”, he choked out. “Then Ornstein wouldn't have gotten so hurt.”

Tempest stayed like this for a few more minutes, until his tears ebbed off and then put Artorias soul back into his darksign, getting up. He felt really hot and sweaty and planned to wash his face a bit deeper in the pond, so he went closer to the middle only to trip and fall face first into the pond.

The good thing was, that he wasn't feeling hot and sweaty anymore, the bad thing was that his clothes were drenched and his foot hurt. As he shot up, gasping and coughing because of the water invading his lungs, he noticed that he had tripped over a chest. Not a mimic or he would have already been eaten.

“Huh, I didn't notice this earlier...”, he said and proceeded to open the chest to reveal a titanite slab, blue in colour. “Hm, these were for the magic weapons...”, Tempest murmured and his thoughts wandered to Griggs and Logan. Griggs had left Fire Link Shrine the last time he had been there and he had last seen Logan in the Duke's Archives. He should check on them once they managed to escape this place. After Ornstein had gotten proper treatment for his arm and be put into a bed and got some proper food.

Tempest waded through the pond back to dry land, pocketing the blue titanite slab, planning to give it to Rickert. The blacksmith had locked himself in, in fear of Lordran and was bored out of his mind. He seemed to excel on making magic weapons, so Tempest planned to gift him some of the weapons he didn't use for him to tinker.

Outside of the pond, Tempest got out a towel and dried himself off as good as he could, at least his armour was made out of leather and would be able to dry easily, not letting too much water to his skin. After Tempest was reasonably dry, he put on his boots and grabbed for his bag, when a shadow loomed over him.

“Oh, hey, Ornstein.”, Tempest said, recognizing the sharp and spiky silhouette of the dragon slayer everywhere. “Are you feeling better?”

“It was you.”, was all that Ornstein had to say as response.

“Excuse me?”

“It was you, little Storm! You are the Undead who fought and killed Artorias and the very same Undead went to take out the beast of the Abyss and even Kalameet! It was you!”

“Huh?”, Tempest said, his eyeholes staring at Ornstein, slowly processing the information, before blurting out: “Wait, what?!”

“I know, it is hard to believe.”, Ornstein said, crossing his arms, but wincing and relaxing his left arm, letting it dangle limply at his side.

“It's not hard to believe, it's downright impossible.”, Tempest said, ruffling his wet hair with both of his hands. “I am a mess, Ornstein! I died a million times! I fought like... a whole week against you and the executioner and even after that, I wanted to give up and you had to come with me so that I had even the hint of a chance! How should I be the one who defeated this powerful foes?!”

“Little Storm, you need to calm down!”, Ornstein said, holding both of Tempest's hand, which only made the Undead blush in return. “Don't forget that I am here with you. I will help you taking them down, but... you certainly need to play a part in it too. Don't be afraid. I know a lot about dragons and the beast of the Abyss has already been weakened by Artorias, you can do it.”

Tempest took a few deep breathes and then nodded. “Y.. yes.. you are right. You are at my side, Ornstein. I can do anything when you are at my side.”

Hearing that made Ornstein's heart sink a bit, remembering just what would happen to Tempest once they had reached the first flame. He shook off the bad feeling and decided to instead motivate Tempest a bit, regardless what happened to him in the future, in the current time he was still there: “Don't forget, little Storm, that you made it all the way to the Lordvessel by yourself. That is quite some achievement.”

Tempest took a deep breath, putting a hand over his heart, or more, his darksign and said: “Y...yes, you are right. Thank you, Ornstein.” Tempest straightened his posture and then looked at Ornstein's arm. “But... Ornstein, you are hurt. Will you be able to fight?”

“Oh, that...”, Ornstein said. “Sure, it hurts, but I can still use my dominant arm. I should just try and don't strain my left arm too much. It least it doesn't appear to be broken, it is more a nasty cut.”

Tempest grimaced, thinking about how deep the gash was and how heavily the arm had bruised already. “Are you sure you alright, Ornstein?”, Tempest asked, referring to the emotional state of the dragon slayer.

“...I have to...”, Ornstein said and Tempest was sure that Ornstein simply was hiding his feelings, that he would like to lay in bed and cry until his tears ran out, but that he was keeping it together for the sake of Tempest.

“A...alright then.”, Tempest said and nodded again. “Then, uh, where should we head first?”

“The dragon.”, Ornstein said. “I saw him flying over to the basin, we should take him out first. Besides, I fear that killing the beast will throw us back into our own time.”

“Good.”, Tempest said, feeling light headed. He had fought dragons before, but one had been a horrible abomination with far too many teeth and the other one had been some mad sorcerer. Fighting a dragon like the black one they had seen made him incredible nervous. He would spit fire, wouldn't he? Would Ornstein be able to stay calm in the fight? Didn't he knew the dragon from earlier? Then why was he still alive? Had Ornstein never slayed him?

“Wait.”, Ornstein said, as Tempest turned around to head to the elevator. “Please regain your human form first.”

“Oh, of course.”, Tempest said and sprinted back to the bonfire.

As he returned, Ornstein waited for him next to the corpses of two scarecrows and started walking without saying a single word. Tempest followed him, also not saying a single word, assuming that Ornstein wasn't up for small talk and also because he was still nervous about having to fight this dragon.

The both of them rode down the elevator to the coliseum and Tempest followed Ornstein as he made a turn to the right, walking past Chester and entering a small chasm, crossing it with steady strides, Tempest running behind him, until Ornstein suddenly froze.

“Ugh, dogs...”, Ornstein said and took a step back.

“Ugh...”, Tempest joined in. “I hate them... They are so hard to hit and so fast and they killed me a few times surely...”

“L.. little Storm...”, Ornstein gasped. “C.. could you take care of them? Me and dogs... don't... work.”

“Um, alright.”, Tempest said, staring at Ornstein whose whole stance was rather stiff. He took this sword in both hands and charged at he first dog he could see. While they were swift and nimble, they weren't able to sustain much damage and so one strike of Tempest's sword was enough to strike it down. Unfortunately, the painful yip of the now dead dog attracted two others and while Tempest fought them off, he managed to get bitten once.

“Ouch, they never want to let go...”, Tempest hissed before he took a sip of Estus to heal the wound. Next to him, Ornstein seemed to relax.

“Thank you, little Storm.”, he said, continuing to walk.

“You and animals really don't get along, huh?”, Tempest said. “Well, besides sheep...”

“...I wasn't me who decided that they should dislike me.”, Ornstein simply grumbled, still making a curve around the corpses. They would come back anyway, the dogs were undead. How in the world an animal managed to get a darksign and turn hollow was out of Tempest's understanding, but he stopped trying to make sense of stuff once he had arrived in Lordran. Especially when he had found a message on the ground that told him to jump and only led to another painful death. Why would another Undead play such a cruel prank? Tempest had marked the messenger as liar once he had came back from the dead.

Ornstein only stopped once they were at the top of a basin, the same one that Tempest had looked down earlier from another angle, he recognized the sound and sight of the massive waterfall. While Tempest was focusing on looking down though, searching for a way to safely descend, Ornstein looked up in the air. Tempest joined him when he heard the flap of wings and saw the black dragon soaring over the basin.

“So what is our plan?”, Tempest asked. “You are the dragon slayer, so you probably know better than I how to tackle the fight.”

“...I think we should go and talk to Gough.”, Ornstein said.

“Huh?”, Tempest looked at Ornstein. “Why? Shouldn't you be able to weaken it with your lightning? Jump on its back and clip its wings? Isn't your whole being a counterpoint for that dragon?”

“It isn't as easy as that, little Storm.”, Ornstein said, shifting from foot to foot, readjusting his grip on his spear. “Why do you think this dragon is still around? Why do you think he is called Kalameet? That dragon managed to beat me. In fact, he is the reason for that scar on my left shoulder and back.”

Tempest's eyes went wide as he stared at Ornstein. There was a dragon that Ornstein hadn't been able to say. The dragon slayer had failed to slay this exact dragon. And now said dragon slayer wanted for Tempest to slay the dragon he couldn't.

“You couldn't slay it and now you expect for me to slay it?!”, Tempest practically screamed at Ornstein.

“It happened. I saw Kalameet's corpse. Gough confirmed to me that it was the same Undead that had slain Artorias.” Tempest didn't miss the bitterness in Ornstein's voice at the last part. “Under normal circumstances, I would be able to get that dragon from the sky and help you preparing him for the finishing blow, but... I am hurt.” Ornstein raised his left arm with quite some effort and then let it hang limp again. “And you are no match for a dragon that isn't grounded. It is luck that Gough is here, because he can shoot Kalameet out of the sky. In fact, he told me that he helped with grounding Kalameet, so we absolutely need to talk to him. Or, you should talk to him. I shouldn't even be here.”

“Oh, alright.”, Tempest said, a bit disappointed that he couldn't see Ornstein, the dragon slayer, in action again, but he had a good point about being hurt. Ornstein hadn't mentioned it, but he wasn't only physically hurt, his emotions were properly all over the place too, even though he tried very hard to stay calm and collected. Tempest wondered if a part of Ornstein resented him, because he had preferred to end Artorias's suffering instead of hoping that he would break out of the corruption.

“Where is Gough?”, Tempest asked, already turning around.

“In a tower watching over the coliseum. That is why he knew all about the fight with Artorias. He had heard everything.”

Heard, not seen? Only a few moments after Ornstein had finished speaking, Tempest rememberd that Gough had apparently fallen blind after the dragon war. If that was the case, Tempest wondered how he should help them. Would he shoot arrows until he landed a lucky shot? Tempest shrugged and followed Ornstein, who already had passed him and was heading back to the coliseum.

Once they arrived at the coliseum and Ornstein entered it, the dragon slayer suddenly snatched Tempest and was holding a hand in front of his mouth, preventing him from the rather important act of breathing.

“Hnngh, Orn...stein..”, he brought out, as he realized that the dragon slayer had trouble with his own breathing, muttering something like “Keep it together.”

“Orn...”, Tempest tried again and Ornstein aggressively shushed him, only to realize a second later how tight he had grabbed Tempest and let him fall to the ground, where the small Undead gasped for air.

“What was that about?!”, Tempest yelled, both hands at his hips.

“Shhhh.”, Ornstein shushed Tempest yet again and then pointed with this thumb into the coliseum. “Ciaran... she's in there...”

“The Lord's Blade?!”, Tempest eyes lit up, not only Gough, but also Ciaran, he was going to meet even the last of the legendary knights, but then his gaze darkened as he realized just why Ornstein was so nervous. “Oh... I am sorry.”, he said, scraping the ground with his foot. Ciaran wasn't there anymore in their own time. Thinking about it, Gough also wasn't there anymore. Tempest wondered how Ornstein was feeling, not only after having to see Artorias die, but then having to see both of his old friend and companion, that had died too, again. He just wondered why Ornstein was so much more nervous about Ciaran than Gough.

“...I can't go in there.”, Ornstein said. “Like I said, I shouldn't be here right now. My... past self stayed behind in Anor Londo. Ciaran went after Artorias on her own free will, but alas, she had been too late.”

“...Do you want me to go talk to her, Ornstein?”, Tempest asked.

The dragon slayer stared at Tempest for a while before slowly nodding and then adding in a quiet voice: “...I am sure she would like to have his soul.”

Tempest nodded and turned around to retrieve the soul from his darksign. Once he had it, cradled in both of his hands, Ornstein nodded ah him. Tempest didn't move from the spot and then slowly spoke: “...Ornstein. Do you want me to say something to her?”

Ornstein stayed silent for a moment, in fact, so long that Tempest almost entered the coliseum, thinking that Ornstein would never speak, but then he heard the dragon slayer's voice, speaking in a feeblish tone: “Please tell her, I am sorry...”

Tempest nodded and entered the coliseum. Hadn't Artorias said a similar thing? Tempest wondered more and more, what Ciaran was for a person and what she meant to both Ornstein and Artorias. Upon looking around, he soon spotted the hornet, looking just as in the tales he had heard and just as on the wooden board Ornstein had drawn her on, with the bluish leather armour and the long braided ponytail. He couldn't see her face, because she was currently kneeling in front of what looked like a make shift grave, but Tempest knew that she was wearing a mask anyway.

Tempest slowly approached her, looking down at the soul. It wasn't like he wanted these things, they just flocked to him, to his darksign and because it was feeling nice when it was filled with souls, he usually left them there. Tempest didn't really had any idea what to do with them other than crushing them, but he felt like he wouldn't respect the foes he had fought if he would do this. It was a lot different as with the souls of the nameless corpses he found littered through Lordran, that ones were just leftovers from a failure, not someone he had beaten in a fight to the death. Even though his death would never be final.

Once Tempest stood behind Ciaran, he cleared his throat and prompted the lord's blade to turn around. Like expected, she had her mask on and it was impossible to see what she felt, just like with Ornstein and his helmet, but when she spoke, Tempest could hear the pain in her voice.

“…You, is that not…”, she spoke. “The soul of the man who fell on this spot?” She hesitated for a second before speaking again. “He was a dear friend. I wish to pay proper respect, with that soul. Would you be willing to part with it?”

For some reason, Tempest was at a loss for words and simply nodded his head, handing the soul to Ciaran.

Ciaran spoke again, this time her voice took on a softer tone: “Thank you. You are very kind. Please take this. I no longer need it. May the Lord guide thee.”

When Tempest looked down at his hands, he saw that Ciaran had shoved both of her blades into his hands, when he remembered, they were called Gold Tracer and Silver Tracer. He frowned at them, why was she giving him her weapons?

“Um...”, he finally spoke. “Are you sure about this? Aren't this your weapons? Can you be a knight without them?”

Ciaran raised her head and looked at him. “There is no need for me anymore to be a knight.”, she said. “Surely you have other business to attend to instead of disturbing me in my grief.”

“Oh, yes...”, Tempest said, looking down, feeling awful for not having considered how she must have felt. She had just lost a dear friend and that after he had seen how Ornstein had reacted to it. He blamed it that he had expected for her to be more talkative. “I should go then...”, he said, but then remembered Ornstein's words: “Oh, just one thing. I shall deliver a message for you.” He took a deep breath and then whispered: “Ornstein and Artorias both apologize to you.”

Ciaran jerked her head around, staring at Tempest, but the small Undead had already running away, returning to Ornstein.

“Well.”, Tempest said. “I could give her the soul and your words, but I don't have the feeling she wanted to talk to me.” Tempest looked down at his hands and remembered that he was still carrying her weapons. “She gave me those. I don't think I could use them. Do you want them, Ornstein?”

“...So she had decided to leave as soon as Artorias had fallen...”, Ornstein said and took the weapons from Tempest's hands. “Her decision shocked me back then... I was expecting for her to come back to Anor Londo with me. I would have needed her, but at the same time, Ciaran would have needed me.” Ornstein traced along the weapons with his thumb, Tempest was glad that he was wearing thick metal gauntlets, because otherwise that probably would have meant death.

“Ornstein?”, Tempest asked, fidgeting with his fingers. “Do you need a moment?”

Ornstein stopped tracing the weapons to look at Tempest and then said: “Yes, little Storm. Let us sit outside of the coliseum for a while.”

The both of them sat down in the room with the elevator and Ornstein leaned against the wall, a deep sigh escaping his throat. “This place is opening all my old wounds.”, he murmured.

“Ornstein, may I ask what happened to Ciaran in our time?”, Tempest asked, knowing that he maybe shouldn't push Ornstein so much, but he was also curious why Ornstein felt the need to apologize to her.

“I haven't seen her sadness.”, Ornstein simply said. “I have been a bad friend to her, but seeing what happened to Artorias, it seems like we can't change the past, we are simply forced to see it all played out like intended. ...We probably have been here the first time it happened. In a sense, all what is happening is happening now and we are a part of it.”

“Ouch, Ornstein, you are making my head hurt.”, Tempest said, leaning against the other wall of the room, deciding to drop the topic about what had happened to Ciaran, clearly Ornstein blamed himself for it. Tempest could ask him when Ornstein wasn't forced working through the wounds of his past.

After a good while, which was spend in silence, well, Ornstein spend it in silence, Tempest tried to convince him to drink some water and eat some jerky, which Ornstein denied, they got up and went back to the coliseum. Upon looking into it, Tempest saw that Ciaran wasn't there anymore and so the both of them entered it. Ornstein straight went to the grave of Artorias and took in a prayer stance. Tempest followed him and also gave his respects, seeing the corpse of Artorias from the corner of his eyes. As his eyes went back to the grave, he saw a white flower and what looked suspiciously like the tassel of Artorias' helmet.

Ornstein rose without saying a word and then went to the other end of the coliseum, climbing a long flight of stairs, which made Tempest pant once they finally were on top, and then stopping in front of an iron door. He took a deep breath and reached for the handle only to see that it was locked.

“Damn.”, Ornstein said. “And no key in sight.”

“Can't you just break it down?”, Tempest asked, but Ornstein shook his head.

“If Gough has let this door locked, it has a reason. I don't want to go against his wishes by destroying the door, so that everyone can come and go as they please. The door was unlocked when I went here back then, after Ciaran had send me a message, so let's move on. The key must be hidden somewhere around here.”

“When I was able to find it, it can't be hidden that badly.”, Tempest grinned and the both of them left the coliseum, stopping at a bonfire which Tempest lighted and then used to strengthen his soul power. Ornstein in the meantime was staring down a warbled mess of what once must have been a town.

“The Oolacile township.”, he said. “It has been so long since I had been here last, but I still remember its dangers and perils. Little Storm, follow my lead this time around. And keep out an eye for that key. Naturally, when my past self got here, the whole place had already been looted.”

Tempest joined Ornstein and nodded, letting his gaze wander across the area that led downwards, trying not to appear to nervous. They were going to fight a dragon and an abyss beast, what could be the worst that could happen? He took his sword in both hands, gave Ornstein another nod and then the both of them stepped into hostile territory. (Author's note: I know this chapter is a bit filler, but when I would have added the township, it would have gotten far too long and crowded, so I decided to put it into the next chapter. Wish me luck, because I will attempt Kalameet with midroll. As always, I want to talk to you guys, so please talk to me in the comments.) Chapter 28

#dark souls #fanfiction #dragon slayer ornstein #chosen undead #oc tempest #orndead #lord's blade ciaran #littlewritesstuff

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sunnylildragun · 5 years

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Let's get some things straight(or not that straight hehe), fandom

This will be a looong post. But please, read it! I don't mean to personally attack anyone or any ships, what I mean with this post is to get y'all to maybe try understanding each other. I will tag this as both Bumbleby and Black Sun, because I need both sides of the fandom to read this. It's important to create an environment of good vibes, because, in the end, we all(or most of us, Idk) want the same things. Our faves to be happy. Salem to be defeated. Faunus and humans living in harmony.

Bumbleby is NOT a toxic relationship. If I had to explain this as an entire analysis, it would take too long and people wouldn't want to read it, so I'll go straight to the generic line of thought. Blake "runs" away. Yang has abandonment issues. So... what now? The right thing to say is: Blake USED to run away. Wouldn't it be easier to go stay with her parents after defending Haven? Wouldn't it be easier to run away when she saw "Adam" on the train? Wouldn't it be easier to avoid Yang? If Blake still had the habit of running away, she would rely on that. But she doesn't. She stays, she promises to stay and she vows to not break that promise. Y'all don't trust Blake's capacity to keep her promise? Well, I do. I know she will. And that's the core of the rebuilding relationship between Blake and Yang. Blake not running anymore. Yang forgiving her and understanding her(Yang's not dumb, when she got to actually fight Adam, she understood Blake).

Not all Bumbleby shippers are bad or toxic people. I won't deny that I have seen some people be toxic, uncool, and everything towards others, even inside our own shipping "community". But it's important to notice that most Bumbleby shippers want to enjoy the show, produce content and enjoy content. If you go through the Bumbleby tag, you'll find mostly shitposts, fanarts, fanfics, ship analysis, and, if you go further, beehaw. There are some people who bash Sun for 0 reason? Yeah, there are. But they are the minority, and it's unfair to judge a whole group of people because of a small vocal part.

Not liking Bumbleby DOES NOT make people homophobic. It just means that the person doesn't feel a connection to the ship, and that's okay. I, for example, think some ships are cute, but I don't see them happening, bc I simply don't feel a connection to them. And I'm a bisexual girl who is supportive of the LGBTQ+ community!

Bashing Sun for absolutely no reason is unnecessary. I get some people were mad at him for following Blake the way he did, I was too. But as volume 4 developed, and volume 5 came in, Sun showed himself as a very supportive friend. Ship Black Sun or not, we can't deny that he helped Blake. And we can't deny that they care about each other. So, yeah, getting all the steps the guy makes, and every breath he takes, and turning it into some sort of atrocity that should be used against him/against his relationship with Blake is annoying.

Shipping Black Sun DOES NOT make people homophobic. It just means people like their dynamic and enjoy the idea of them together. Although I don't ship it, and lately have been seeing the two of them as very close friends, people have all the right to ship whatever they want. Don't take away others' right to ship. It's that old lesson everyone(I guess) is taught: your freedom ends when somebody's freedom begins.

It's okay to enjoy Adam's character construction, design, etc. I personally really like the work CRWBY did with him. They made him real. They made him someone who hides more than his eyes. And his design was, undeniably, one of the coolest of the show! So... stop bashing people when they say they liked Adam as a character. It does not mean they enjoyed him "as a person", which leads to the next topic.

It is NOT okay is to excuse Adam Taurus' actions and treat him as some sort of "poor boy". He was a victim of humanity's ways, yes, and that's undeniable. But let's not forget that he also killed innocents for the pleasure of it, hurt someone badly just to make another suffer, was involved in mass murders and such, even when the high leader didn't approve of some actions(Sienna clearly disapproved the Fall of Beacon). Adam was also abusive towards Blake, and it started as manipulation and psychological abuse. Pre-Beacon, we don't see him hit her, but psychological abuse is as bad as physical abuse. You see, Blake's self deprecation, the thought that she is better off alone... it all came from her time with him. So it is not okay to make Adam some sort of hero. He cannot- and should not- be lionized.

Someone having a different opinion than yours DOES NOT mean they didn't watch the show, it just means they watched it under a different pov. Not comprehending that makes the environment of the fandom a toxic place. That's toxic behavior, and it's something really sad to see. Each person is their own universe, and we have to respect that.

If you reached the end of the post, thanks for reading! I really wanted to get all of this out of my chest, it all has been bothering me since the hiatus began. A little before, actually. So... let's all enjoy RWBY peacefully! Love y'all and a good whatever time it is where you are ^-^

#rwby #yang xiao long #blake belladonna #sun wukong #adam taurus #bumbleby #black sun

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phylumhearts · 5 years

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Ienzo, Larxene, and Xion for the character asks?

under a cut bc this got looong

Ienzo:Favourite thing: the infodumping. love my beautiful autistic sonLeast favourite thing: filling up all the room in the kh3 script with his infodumping and leaving no lines for dilan and aeleus. I forgive him thoughFavourite line: this is a little arbitrary but I will never be over him calling vexen a “devious researcher”. you little shit that’s your dad you’re talking aboutbrOTP: I am desperate to see him interact directly with chip and dale. he talks about working with them! he instagumms pictures of them! the most adorable science team in history!OTP: ienzo is kind of hard to ship bc of his conflicting/ambiguous chronological and emotional ages but with certain character interpretations I can get really into ienzo/riku!nOTP: aeleus, for reasons I hope should be obviousRandom headcanon: after kh3 he’s a big proponent of rejecting the world order. he wants to supply as many worlds as possible with communication and travel tech, reconnecting the worlds in a new way that doesn’t require a universe reset. he’s pretty outspoken on this matter.Unpopular opinion: uhhhhhhhh idk I’m drawing a blank on this oneSong:

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Favourite picture:

I’m sorry ienzo I do love you I promise

Larxene:Favourite thing: she’s SO unapologetic. she’s here for the drama and doesn’t give a fuckLeast favourite thing: how she’s always shown as a little bit subordinate to marluxia... let them be equal co-conspiratorsFavourite line: I don’t remember the exact wording but the bit where she’s like “oh no sora the bad guys have locked up namine :( you’d better go save her :( :( shame I’M a bad guy though BITCH” is excellentbrOTP: marluxia and larxene are mlm wlw solidarity (I do ship them romantically but only when marluxia is a trans woman)OTP: larxene and darkqua should kissnOTP: I’m pretty sure I saw a larxene/demyx fic one time and. uh. no thank you.Random headcanon: even if strelitzia turned out not to be her sister she still has big older sibling energy and she definitely had some number of younger siblings she pretended to not care about but absolutely did care about. also she’s transUnpopular opinion: I hope the romanisation of her somebody name is Erlena, not Elrena Song:

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Favourite picture: this fanart (mildly nsfw, very tame lingerie)

Xion:Favourite thing: she’s CANON TRANS babeyLeast favourite thing: I do like her but I wish she could have been introduced in a way where she didn’t have to be erased from reality for the rest of the games to make sense. it doesn’t really feel like it does justice to either her or roxas...Favourite line: “Hmm... When in doubt...give it a good smack?“ is an underappreciated gembrOTP: roxasOTP: namine but olette is extremely close behind and xion can and should have two girlfriendsnOTP: no boys allowed xion is lesbeanRandom headcanon: when she tries flavours of icecream other than sea-salt she’s like “oh, what? this slaps”. sea-salt is important to her for nostalgia reasons but she will only eat it with roxas and lea bc there’s so many other good flavours out there to tryUnpopular opinion: lea (and doubly isa) isn’t an acceptable guardian for her and she should not live with him after kh3 unless they’re both in the care of someone else more responsible. he’s not necessarily a bad person or unforgivable but there’s a LOT of space between “redeemable” and “appropriate parental figure” y’knowSong:

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Favourite picture: hard to say but this one is up there

#sons son #evil wife #soft son #rambles #thanks for the ask!!#wizards1977

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mindareadsoots · 6 years

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Why it was important that Rose DIDN’T own Pearl.

(I promise that there will be a positive note at the end of all this, but there’s going to be a lot of tearing down of Rose, Pearl, and Rosepearl before we get there.)

From the beginning, Pearl’s relationship with Rose was always a little troubling. Even before we learned that pearls were designed to be a slave race, and LONG before we learned Rose’s true identity as a Diamond, it was clear that there was a heavy imbalance in their relationship. The first time the show seriously examined the pairing was Rose’s Scabbard, in which Pearl learned to her shock and dismay that Rose had not been as open with her as she had believed. Not only was it heartbreaking to watch Pearl go through that experience, it was also one of the earliest signs that Rose was not the perfect figure of love and goodness that she seemed to be at first glance.

And while I do believe that Rose legitimately loved Pearl - just listen to the way she says Pearl’s name in A Single Pale Rose - it’s clear that she didn’t love her exclusively. There were more lovers in her life than just Greg. As we saw in Your Mother and Mine, she had a string of affairs with humanity dating back 6000 years. Pearl however did have romantic feelings exclusively for Rose, and that dynamic was always going to be a stressor on their relationship.

The extent of that power imbalance was significantly amplified when we learned that pearls aren’t just servants on Homeworld, they are slaves. They are things to be owned. That raised a lot of REALLY troubling questions about Pearl, her relationship to Rose, and indeed how much free will she had for herself up until the moment Steven was born. Was Pearl really a rebel, or did she just follow her master? Were her feelings for Rose even real, or just something she’d been programmed to have?

Initially, I - and I think most people - dismissed the idea that Rose had been Pearl’s owner before they rebelled. Not only was the idea nearly unthinkable, but the much more compelling theory was that Pearl belonged to one of the Diamonds instead.

Oh the irony.

So for as much as Rose’s absence was clearly painful for Pearl, it was reasonable to believe that her presence in Pearl’s life had been a net positive. Pearl’s devotion to Rose may have been colored by her nature as a Pearl, but it was still HER choice to make. For all of it’s flaws, her love for Rose was it’s own act of rebellion, a sign that Pearl truly - as she defiantly exclaimed to both Bismuth and Peridot - belonged to nobody.

...

So... yeah. Here we are now.

I really can’t undersell just how profoundly fucked up it was to see Pink Diamond - the woman Pearl loved and devoted her entire life to - sentence her to silence. Pearl has been struggling against her inability to talk about Pink Diamond for the past two seasons of the show, and possibly longer than that. It has been the primary obstacle standing between her and Steven. And it has been a perverse declaration that no matter how much Pearl grew or rebelled, some part of her will always be the same pearl Homeworld created her to be.

And that is the ultimate reason why this moment is so sickening. It’s not bad because it makes Rose and Pearl’s relationship more complicated. It’s bad because it proves that Pearl’s detractors were right.

Jasper was right when she dismissed her as “a lost defective pearl.”

Peridot was right to ask who Pearl belonged to. It was a relevant question about how she ended up on earth.

The scene is trying to harken back to an old trope where the noblewoman issues one final command before forsaking her right to rule and running off to live happily with their lover of low birth. Such a scene is inherently an act of trust on the part of the noblewoman because the recipient of the order will soon have no reason to obey it. The unspoken understanding is that it is for love of the woman and not her title that such an order will be followed. But that doesn’t work here because Pearl literally and physically had not choice but to obey. There is no trust there. If Pink Diamond had TRUSTED Pearl with her secret, then she would have asked for its safekeeping, not ordered it with an unbreakable command.

Rose hurting Pearl is nothing new (see again Rose’s Scabbard) but previous examples had always been inadvertent - failures to communicate or difficult decisions made. This is the first time we’ve seen Rose directly inflict such a terrible wound upon Pearl. If one wanted to feel charitable (I don’t) one could say that Pink Diamond simply didn’t anticipate that this command would be a source of conflict for Pearl but that doesn’t make it better. The fact that Pink Diamond said “please” does not make it better. The fact that she thought this was an okay thing to do to someone she loved AT ALL is still a massively hard pill to swallow. There’s a reason why all of the fanart of Pearl struggling with her silence depicts it as coming from an inherently villainous source. It’s the clearest demonstration to date that despite all of Rose’s high minded ideals and the lengths she went to to keep the earth safe from Homeworld, she suffered from a critical lack of basic empathy that allowed her to make some truly ghastly decisions.

Anyway, I promised some positivity and here it is: we still don’t know the whole story.

Joe Johnston has been answering questions about this moment on tumblr since I’m far from the only one who was disturbed by this scene.

We still don’t know how Pink Diamond and Pearl’s feelings for each other came to develop. My personal hope, which has always been my preferred headcanon, is that Pearl was the first one to rebel against homeworld, and Pink Diamond followed her. Such a backstory would give Pearl back some initiative in their relationship.

Joe’s answers also confirm that Pearl really did belong to Pink Diamond which... seems like something that shouldn’t have been confirmed this early. It was plausible that not everything was what it seemed in that palanquin and Pearl was just somebody Pink Diamond had come to admire rather than her personal servant. I still find it suspicious that Pearl’s gem and general appearance point towards White Diamond instead of Pink. That addendum alone - allowing Pearl and Pink Diamond to meet as anything other than master and slave - would go a long way towards alleviating concerns about what Pearl got herself into when she fell in love with Pink Diamond.

And as for present day, since Pink Diamond was the one who had control over Pearl, that raises the possibility that Steven is able to cancel her orders, thus allowing Pearl to finally be well and truly free.

There are still paths open for Pearl to have a brighter future. Here’s hoping we get to see them.

#pink diamond #rose quartz #pearl #rosepearl #steven universe #minda watches steven universe #minda reads #in between #asks

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9lph9tr0n5s · 6 years

Text

Meet Rohan and Valkyrie (aka my take a stand au)

So, everyone in the zootopia fandom has seen all sorts of OC’s, fanships, stories, fanarts and other stuff that would be too much to remember. But, i’ve never seen someone create a fusion OC (even though they exist in other fandoms). So, without further addo, may I present you zootopia’s FIRST fusion character…

ROHAN WILDESAVAGE!!!

This beauty is the merged character of Robyn and Hannah by @crewefox . After eight months of wait i’m finally glad and proud to introduce you all to my OC. what follows will be a bio of her charachter. Then I’ll put a link to her backstory and the whole series of events that led to her birth. Beware that the read more option may not work, both in the app and in the computer

BIO:

Full name: Rohan Marheather Wildesavage

Species: fusion, fox/rabbit hybrid

Fusion components: Robyn Heather Wilde and Hannah Marian Savage

Date of first fusion: 28th of june 20344, Canary Islands

Jobs:

-Robyn: mechanic

-Hannah: radio host and ballet dancer

-Rohan: fitness and MMA trainer

-common jobs: superhero leader, dimensional traveller and peacekeeper

Physical description

-Age: same as Robyn and Hannah

-sex: female

-gender: bisexual with more intrest in females due to Hannah being lesbian

-height: 8.2 feet (around 2.5 meters)

-fur density: soft and smoother than silk, can get winter coats

-fur color: overall ginger with darker spots on the fingertips and the eartips, black eyebrows and tail tip and black and white stripes following hannah’s pattern. Rohan can change her fur color in any possible color scheme: from plain tan, to cream with red spots or patches, to black with yellow stripes (as a chevron) to even purple or shining blue silver

-paws: all have paw pads like a fox, the feet are as long as a rabbit and can stand up digitigrade and both hands and feet posses retractable, sharp claws

-tail: long, wavy, poofy, soft and capable of moving as a third arm thanks to more muscles in it. Rohan usually likes to smack unsuspecting targets to prank them

-Body shape: slender like Hannah with wider hips and strong muscles taken from Robyn

-eyes: right one teal and left one turquoise normally, can be changed in any color like the fur in any combination possible: red, green, pitch black, blue with orange shard… the eyes can also assume a plain colorization

-ears: longer than Robyn’s, slighty wider and capable of hearing further than any other mammal.

-muzzle and mouth: the muzzle lenght is between Robyn and Hannah’s and the nose has a very sharp smell range. The mouth is composed by sharp teeth and a razor buck tooth

-other peculiarities: Rohan can assume a feral form, standing on four legs, or just with her hind paws digitigrade; unlike most hybrids she’s fertile and this fertility has been transmitted to the components; her body is very flexible, but it can’t stretch like plastic

Character

-personality:

Robyn’s side:

-rash: Rohan can trip into dangerous situations without thinking twice, but always manages to get out alright, mostly

-crass: when Rohan is angry or really pissed, she can swear as instant reaction to an insult or a bad comment

-loyal and trustworthy: like Robyn, Rohan is loyal to her friends and, in no case, she can be corrupted or turn with the bad guys. She’s also extremely careful in respecting a promise or keeping a secret

-respectful: despite having the habit to center herself in rare situations, Rohan knows who’s in charge or is the most experienced on something. Many times, she asks for constructive criticism or honest thoughts about a certain subject and acknoweldges when she’s wrong

-hot tempered: strictly related to having a coarse tongue, Rohan has robyn’s short fuse when being pestered, mocked or scolded. This can occasionally lead to a fight when it happens and the one who insulted her heavily won’t go back home without a bruise… or a broken bone

-gold heart: deep inside, she cares about who she loves and is always willing to help for any problem

-energetic: Rohan as a carefree and upbeat personality just like robyn

Hannah’s side:

-empathetic: Rohan, like Hannah, instantly recognizes what somebody else feels and either joins someone in their happy moments or comfort sad mammals

-polite: from Hannah, Rohan has inherited her calm and collected demeanor, which strangely enough, doesn’t clash with Robyn’s short fuse

-focused: Hannah’s focused mind is another trait that distinguishes rohan: she can elaborate a good startegy, study someone from the outside and guessing the inside and never lose track of an individual or lose control of the situation

-clingy: when Rohan gets attached to someone, it’s hard to take said attachment away, and this can lead to rohan putting first him/her than her team if he/she’s in danger, just like Hannah with Robyn

-emotional: while this is mostly a trait taken from Hannah, Robyn has also a tender side: when sad, Rohan can easily burst into tears while trying to keep herself collected and this leads many people to believe she’s a crybaby

-romantic: Hannah’s romantic side shows up in Rohan when being courted by someone; this unfortunately has led to episodes of boys and girls chasing her for a date because they found Rohan “lovable as hell”

Common traits:

-dorky: both Robyn and Hannah are dorky af, so it’s normal to see Rohan being silly in a playful way

-adaptive: wheter the situation is a long wedding or a hard strike againts a crime lord gone wrong, Rohan quickly adapts to the situation and keeps up, just like Robyn and Hannah

-smart: although many see Robyn as a normal C student and Hannah as a top A mammal, both girls are extremely intelligent. Just don’t overestimate her

-loving: is there much to say about this? Rohan deeply cares about anyone and is always available for comforting or cuddling someone

Unique traits:

-tricking: Rohan seems dumb from shallow and small-minded individuals, but 75% of the time she’s just faking; she’s a cunning mammal and this shows in her ability to pull of tricks or turn the tide of a situation in a way neither robyn or hannah are capable of. This seems to be a recessive trait taken from Robyn’s father Nick.

-charismatic: this charismatic side the wildesavage couple has doesn’t show up very often; things change when rohan is in the game: thanks to her charisma, Rohan is a natural born leader, and everybody follows her or ask for her advice; this trait seems taken by both Nick and hannah’s father Jack

Favorite things in groups

-Favorite foods and drinks: everything KFC cooks, turkey meatballs, spaghetti with tomato sauce, masala cod, fried ginger crickets, pepperoni pizza, crispy mcbacon, oven pasta

-favorite movies and TV shows: Enter the dragon, the princess bride, Star Wars: the last jedi, black panther, karate kid, the big bang theory, steven universe, every disney princess movie, fantasia, the incredibles

-favorite games: the uncharted series, the last of us, overwatch, call of duty black ops 3, rise of the tomb raider, destiny 1, Star Wars battlefront 2 (the old and the new one), titanfall 2, horizon zero dawn, GTA 5, team fortress 2, god of war (the 2018 version)

-fandoms: disney princesses, Star Wars (the sequels side mostly), MCU, love stories, Overwatch (not the porn, nor the toxic side)

-favorite music: punk rock music, dancable music, Green Day, Ed Sheeran, Queen, the Pirates of The Caribbean, Star Wars, star trek, back to the future and the incredibles themes, Cole Rolland, Imagine Dragons

General Likes and dislikes:

likes:

-being petted, cuddled or having her fur stroked

-crude humor

-dancing

-being a dork

-topping herself

-being nurturing and kind to everyone

-friends and family

-protecting zootopia for good

-dancing

-comfortable clothes

-travelling

Dislikes:

-bullies

-being pressured

-having a fight with a loved one

-hypocrites

-being harassed just because of who she is

-small minded mammals

-corrupt people

-whoever threatens her city

-heavy junk food

-strobo lights

-nudity in public

-toxic mammals and fans

Family:

Robyn’s side:

-father: Nick Wilde

Occupation: mayor of zootopia

Status: alive

-mother: Judy Hopps

Occupation: police chief of the first precinct

Status: alive

-grandmother: Marian Wilde;

Occupation: former vigilante known as “the maid”, now hero trainer and supporter, mostly for hacking and I.T. professor at the zootopia university

Status: formerly dead, currently reanimated and alive

-grandfather: Robin Loxley Wilde

Occupation: former vigilante known as “hood”, now hero trainer and couple advisor

Status: formerly dead, currently reanimated and alive too

-Grandparents (Judy’s side): Bonnie and Stu Hopps

Occupation: carrot farmers

Status: alive

siblings:

-Ryan, Ronan and Reginald (reggie) Wilde: Robyn’s triplet brothers; Ryan is a laid-back lover of yoga, Ronan is a pro gamer and Reggie is a panmusical mammal

Status: stillborn at the beginning, now brought back to life

-Luna Wilde (Robyn’s half sister)

Occupation: surgeon at the zootopia hospital by day and patroling zootopia by night as the vigilante Andraste

Status: alive

Hannah’s side:

-father: Jack Savage

Occupation: MCB agent (major crimes bureau)

Status: alive

-mother: Skye Winter

Occupation: MCB agent, works with Jack

Status: alive

-known grandparents:

Hannah Savage

occupation: pensionate

Status: deceased then brought back to life

-siblings: none

Others:

-Victoria Todd (luna’s mother)

status: dead, then reanimated

-Alice Kirabito-Wilde (Robyn’s sister in law)

Occupation: videogame and anime reactions youtuber, superhero, quartermaster and weapons assistant

Status: alive

CHILDREN:

After a year Robyn and Hannah adopted their first son Aaron, he wished to have siblings like her moms (who also wanted biological kids on thier own); this was possible through a pregnancy pen: a device invented by olivia dawson and crafted by her and luna which allows two blood drops and a drop of seed of each couple member (gay or hetero) to mix and create full embryoes and literaly plant them into the one who wants to be pregnant, but the “carrier” has to be female; from this union, five kits were concieved and born from robyn as aaron’s birthday gift, who decided to carry on the pregnancy and aaron welcomed to the family his new siblings. Also, after a foster home was shut down due to cruel personnel and heavy mistreating of the orphans, robyn and hannah decided also to adopt two mammals who were unwanted and left without a family. Needless to say: all those children made judy go on cloud nine… and it gave nick a heart attack.

Biological:

-Ash, Sarah, Iris, Dylan and Mitchel Wildesavage (respectively M,F,F,M,M)

Species: fox/ rabbit hybrids

Date of birth: 8th of december 2039

Adopted:

-Aaron Wildesavage (this character is also by crewefox, he was so adorable i decided to keep him in my AU too)

Species: male koala

Date of birth: 31st of december 2033

Adoption date: 21st of december 2038

-Skylar Wildesavage

Species: non-binary otter

Date of birth: 24th of august 2033

-Penny Wildesavage

Species: female black labrador

Date of birth: 15th of february 2032

Both skylar and penny were adopted the 27th of october 2040

Side notes:

-i know dogs shouldn’t exist in the zootopia universe, but in mine they do

-Robyn and Hannah originally wanted one or two kits, but Robyn’s bunny genes let her have five kits in the end

Since Robyn and Hannah are both superheroes, there had to be Rohan’s superheroine alter ego so, i present you VALKYRIE

Now it’s time for the superhero part

SUPERHERO SHEET

Alias name: Valkyrie

Alligned to: team Ceartais, ZPD, MCB, Camelot

Role: leader

Hero suit: red carbon fiber jumpsuit with white parts, a dark red hood and cape made for gliding and flying when necessary, a dark turquoise chestplate, blue and white shin and forearm guards, a blue and white checked mask and a gem storage in the middle of the chest for the infinity fragments protected by a small sheild. The suit itself has tron-like lines as an attire choice. The suit, the cape, the armor plates, tthe mask, the lines and the weapons can change colors into everything and every pattern. The suit itself is resistant to fire, shocks, electricity, cuts and explosives; the problem is that some parts are left exposed and rohan has to be careful to those weak spots

Power level: supermammalian to god-like

Steel blood powers: Robyn and Hannah’s originary power both originate from some nanomachines called “steel blood” which helped them survive a severe case of sepsis and other damages occured during a tsunami that nearly killed them

Robyn:

-healing factor: Robyn’s primary power consists in a powerful healing factor which repairs and wound or damage instantly. This also renders her, and by proxy Rohan, immune to poisoning of any kind, by simple alchol and cigarettes to vast amounts of cyanide in her body. Unfortunately, the more poison enters her body, the more it takes to rohan to process it. Also, the healing process takes more time if Robyn or Rohan are shot to the head. Another good side though is that Robyn and Rohan can survive being grinded, having their head chopped off, being squashed by two walls and being liquefied

-super strength: the steel blood also strengthened Robyn’s muscles, giving rohan an immense physical force, at the point of being five times stronger than robyn normally is

-high jumping: strong muscles and an energic, athletic attitude is the perfect match to jump high. Rohan can jump about

-high stamina: the nanites powered up her whole skeleton and inner system, which means that rohan, and robyn in the first place, can fight for a long time, running over 100 miles, training in a gym for 24 hours straight without getting tired if put under pressure. Eventually in the aftermath of one of those things, Robyn (or Rohan’s) body feel and become more tired than usual and require more amount of sleep to return in shape

hannah:

-faster reflexes and speed: since hannah was blind when she received the steel blood nanites, those should have supposedly healed her sight; instead they went on powering up her reflexes and speed. This makes rohan agile and fast on the battlefield

-ability to become blind and go back to full sight on command: this power was mastered during a time when Robyn and Hannah were left stranded. Hannah managed to get her sight back, but also practiced between shifting in full sight and blind. While seemingly useless, this power can come very handy if someone generates a strong light and rohan can still fight without necessarily closing her eyes, especially if she doesn’t have a protection

-super senses: when Hannah or Rohan go blind, all the other reflexes (hearing, taste, contact and smell) heighten up to compensate the lack of sight. Those senses can become handful depending on the situation

-pulse field generation: Hannah’s trademark power consists in “seeing” while blind. While tecnically what hannah sees is a blank world with no writings or images but just the primitive shapes of her surroundings, the nanomachines allow her heart to generate a pulse everytime it beats that detects all surfaces and objects in five miles. Rohan’s area is wider and can arrive up to 20 miles

-healing factor: Hannah also has a healing factor, but it works slower than Robyn’s. Rohan partially compensates this with a faster regeneration in case of sight or hearing loss

common:

-memory link: Rohan’s memory is made up of all memories from robyn and hannah and her own, which are all stored into a neural, indestructible cloud. If one member loses all memories, just one tap on the body or fusing can make the lost memories come back. By proxy, the wildesavages share rohan’s memories and their own, this means no secrets between the couple in normal life

-feral state: if robyn is shot to the head, all her strenght and speed multiply by nine, but, as the name suggests, the nanomachines while healing the damage awaken her feral instincts, making her a savage beast. If this should happen to rohan, she would turn savage for a shorter time than robyn. Only few mammals and beings know how to tame while savage

infinity gems powers (they’re much more than the listed ones and some must be discovered): after being found out by Robyn and Hannah, six fragments of the infinity gems linked with them and grant more powers. while these powers are mostly used by rohah, robyn and hannah also use them separatly, abeit with less efficiency than their fusion. The fragments after rohan unlocked the infinity state, transformed into full gems

power (red):

-energy control and manipulation: the power gem allows rohan to manipulate all sorts of energy in any form, from kinetic to nuclear, and any way: force fields, power sharing, recharge, power overload…

-laser, maser wave or pulse energy blast: most importantly, rohan can use that enery to mimic and use a certain energy primarly for a laser blast; said power can manifest in a powerful shockwave or a presence that burns and slowls incapacitates everyone near her. Rohan could kill someone with her powers, but she chooses not to unless there’s no other choice, or her foe is unpowered and defenceless. In that case, she uses the power for knockback

-energy and power share: Rohan can gift some of her power to anybody else who needs it to strenghent him or her. This also applies to electronic devices

-maximum power state: when rohan unleashes the full power of the power fragment her body becomes glowing red in color and physically a pure manifestation of energy. In this form rohan is surrounded by energy vamps like a sun and is totally invincible. This form consumes a tremendous amout of energy, leaving her helpless when she stops, so rohan must use this as a last resort

Time (orange):

-time manipulation and travel: thanks to the time gem, Rohan can control time around her and with others. She can freeze a single moment, create a loop, rewind her own time or a recent situation and even age or de-age every living being. With the right amount of focus rohan can also travel through time

-time mastress state: at full strenght, the time fragment turns Rohan’s body orange and magical gears appear. In this form rohan’s time powers are amped up to ridiculous heights at the point rohan BECOMES time itself and is able of creating or erasing some events or a complete timeline. In the aftermath Rohan dissociates temporarly for three hours before her molecules line up

Reality (yellow):

-reality manipulation: the reality gem allows Rohan to bend the primary shape of everything around her at her will, always turning the situation to herself, like a wizard using magic. But if the power is used without limits, rohan could alter reality for a long time before fixing it, thus she has to be very careful when using the reality related powers

-creation of everything: this superpower allows Rohan to do everything she imagines: she can materialize a toy in front of her, turn water to fire of give herself new powers; the only things she can’t do are: copying powers related to the other gems (unless she temporarely gives new powers to other beings) and bring people back from the dead

-illusion and hologram control: rohan can create multiple copies of herself or turn temporarily a place in what she wants to with hard light

-reality bender state: this state renders rohan yellow and the surroundings in an area of 10 meters constantly shape. All the afromentioned powers are strengthened at the point rohan can create multiple universes at once. This state doesn’t consume much energy and it’s currnetly rohan’s most used super form

Soul (green):

-soul dislocation: with the power of the soul gem Rohan can either exit her body becoming a green ghost or force the enemy’s soul to exit the body, leaving both, rohan or the foe, numb and defenseless

-control and power over life: the soul power can also heal wounds, physical and broken morales, temporarely take back the dead as zombies or trap other souls into the fragment

-soul detector: Rohan can discover and make visible all ghosts (souls of dead beings), talk to the and even command them if necessary

-ability to travel to the soul realm: the soul gem hosts a pocket dimension called soul world; here all the souls of the dead live a neverending life of joy. Rohan can enter this world and take whoever she wants without turning them into ghosts and her soul powers within the world increase even more

-soul guardian state: in this state Rohan gets engulfed by green light and has total control over the spirits: she can evoke hordes of ghosts againts her foes, catch easily all souls within a certain range and gradually weaken everbody. The aftermath leaves Rohan internally weakened and unable to move, though she still can see everything happening around her with the same perception as someone in a dream

Mind (blue):

-mind control and other abilities: Rohan’s most basic abilities with the mind gem include: controlling the mind of the weak, shutting their mind down leaving them open for attacks, creating false memories, breaking brainwash and telepathic control on others and reading memories. Rohan is also immune to all mind-based powers; for example, she can’t be brainwashed

-mind link: Rohan can connect minds withan ally and see through its eyes. She can also talk to them in their mind by giving them advices and makes them immune to mind control. Usually though, Rohan uses this tecnique to calm down scared mammals since she can also alter emotions

-memory share: just by touching on the head somebody, Rohan can share her memories to other mammals

-brainstormer state: Rohan becomes all blue by entering this form and becomes able to access all the minds of a single planet she can go into. The aftermath isn’t as bad as the other, but it does leave her with a huge headache that lasts for five minutes after she exits this form

Space (purple):

-teleportation: Rohan can teleport herself in any place she wants. Where she goes depends on her memories of the place, or where she looks at. She can also teleport enemies or teammates away or where she wants too

-ability to control space and movements around: the space gem also allows Rohan to speed up, slow down or stop movements in a maximum area of three miles, usually by bloking foes in mid air or speeding her time up becoming faster from the eyes of the spectators. Rohan has also total control over gravity: she can increase it or decrease it to the point of nullification in a certain spot

-molecular dislocation: Rohan can phase out her molecules becoming intangible; while dislocated phisically, she can’t be hit or touched and can pass through any solid object. She can also phase out her opponents and stick them into solid objects, but she doesn’t use that power very often on normal, powerless criminals since she finds it brutal

-traveller state: Rohan’s last normal final state covers her body in purple light and nullifies gravity in an area of 50 miles. Rohan’s space powers heighten up exponetially at the point of teleporting an entire population on another planet or move planets herself. Rohan can also create gravity wells or black holes and dislocate entire armies. The aftermath leaves rohan intangible for one hour

common:

-immortality: since the infinity gems are part of the universe itself, Rohan and by proxy Robyn and Hannah can’t die in any way. If they should be disintegrated, their bodies would simply regenerate and their aging becomes stuck at the age of 25

-self awareness: this doesn’t mean rohan has total control over her senses, instead, rohan is fully aware she is an original invented fusion character by me, that their components were born from the mind of an irish, bisexual assistant surgeon and that their parents come from a very beloved disney classic movie. In few words, she can break the fourth wall

-SECR (acronysm for supreme energy coalescence ray): rohan can channel the power of the six fragments into a powerful, multi colored beam which can totally erase existance where it hits; she swore to use this power only if the enemy outranks her or in apocalyptic, near failure scenarios as her goal isn’t to cancel life. Rohan doesn’t need to enter the infinity state to use the SECR

-the snap: Rohan’s most powerful move definitively constist into the snap, where rohan uses all six gems and snaps her fingers to make every wish of hers come true. This time the aftermath is a mix of all the other aftermaths of the singular powered state of the fragments: namely, rohan becomes intangible, dislocated in time and soul, physicaly and mentally weakened for eight hours. The only way to carry her to safety is trapping her into an electrostatic box. When the “hangover” effects vanish, rohan wakes up with a giant headache. The snap has a cooldown of a year

-infinity state: even if the snap is indeed powerful, Rohan can enter the ultimate state by unlocking all the ultimate power states of the fragments and combing them. In this form, Rohan becomes totally white in color with gold shades. her powers heighten up to god-like levels and she’s able to use any power, steel blood or infinity based, heightened up, while accessing to every mind in the universe, bending all matter and reality at her own will, moving entire galaxies, controlling time while also having vision of future and past events and powering up every ally, no matter where they are or which species they are, temporarely gifting her powers to them. The aftermath effects are the same of the snap, but the time for the relocation lowers to two hours, and there’s no headache

weaponry, gadgets and arsenal:

-mega nightstick: Robyn uses a titanuim telescopic baton 1 meter long in combat, formed by two nightsticks and two handles which can simply split in two or also form two tonfas with the two handles. When Rohan plays the baton (which becomes 2 meters long with her) and it’s subweapons become harder than diamond. Each stick also has a hidden blade made out damascus steel with a diamond tip in case of tougher opponents

-constructo guns: Hannah’s primary weapons are two guns which can combine into other weapons after their upgrade: for example, a simple machine gun, a shotgun, a grenade launcher, a minigun and a small crossbow. They can also fire traquilizing pellets, laser shots or normal bullets

thanks to the realty fragment both weapons can combine into five other weapons, which also have powered up forms

- a baton with guns on each end; this doesn’t have a powered form, but it can still split and form two tonfa guns

- a javelin with a ninjato-like blade and a double barrel gun where the blade is placed. When powered, the guns spin in a circle and fire faster than a minigun while the blade knocks back enemies up to three miles

-a double sword with the central handle curved, a blade with an axe tip (like megatron’s sword on TF5) and a long barrel for sniping as long as the blade on each sword; normally it can also split up into two blades with curved handles, turn into a hi-tech bow or a giant boomerang. Powered up the guns shoot bullets and laser that pierce through everything, the blades cut even more (but not everything), the bow shoots further, its arrows strike harder and the boomerang locks onto the enemies until it gets them

-a halberd with a giant blade and a grenade barrel on top; this could be considered as a more brute version of the javelin since Rohan uses it for larger opponents. The powered form grants two additionals grenade launcher barrels and allows every strike to cut enemies or generate slices of pure red energy

-a baton that turns into a whip with a flick of the wrist and a double gun separated from the melee weapon unlike the previous four; the baton can let the tip and the rings of it’s whip form exit and let a yellow energy blade come out of the handle while the rings and the tip form a small shield. Powered up, the whip can generate small quakes where it lands, the shield assumes the aspect of a circual saw and the energy blade becomes able to slice through everything

(if you are confused and don’t know what the weapons look like, i can say that for some i got inspired from the weapons the praetorian guard from The Last Jedi wields)

volcano comet: while the nightstick, the guns and their combo forms are more than a match for any enemy, rohan wields a red, double bowed crossbow which can shoot tranq darts, arrows and laser beams at ligthspeed, for sniping attacks

concussion grenades: these grenades developed by Robyn and Hannah’s friend Olivia Dawson, create a shockwave that pushes everyone meters away from the explosion point

hacker spine: in honour of Marian Wilde “the Maid”, Robyn asked to graft into her suit a short-range hacking device which activates only whey she and hannah fuse and allows her to enter the enemies’ computers and devices, thus controlling them or shutting everything down

hyper goggles: Rohan’s domino mask contains many options into her lenses: x-rays, heat vision and ray beams

-fighting styles: boxing, MMA (mixed martial arts), blood ballet (a style invented by hannah which mixes dance styles and MMA), cloak and dagger strikes, teräs-kasi, shien, djem so and yuvo

small side notes:

-when dressed in civilian clothes, rohan sports her gems combined into a single rainbow gem embedded into a jade bracelet

As for her backstory, the link is here

And there she is; after months of working on her bio i’m finally proud to welcome the first zootopian fusion to the fandom. I hope you like her and if you wish to use her for a story or a fanart, message me first. I may add extra info later.

And to finish, here are the credits:

thanks to @crewefox for allowing me to use robyn, hannah, scarlet, bullet, aaron and other characters (too many to name) and helping me with the correction of the post

thanks to @jafethortiz who made the arts and the coloring

special thanks to @chickwithdreads and this post for giving me inspiration about the charater sheet

And last but not least, thanks to the whole zootopia fandom, who dedicate a bit of their time to admire the first zootopian fusion character

thank you and see you soon

the infinity gems, iron man, namor, mister fantastic, black bolt, doctor strange, professor x, the skrulls, the super skrull, the kree and ronan belong to Marvel®

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blazehedgehog · 6 years

Link

A few weeks before SAGE, I was interviewed by Corentin Lamy of french newspaper Le Monde. I answered questions about why I started SAGE, what I think makes Sonic unique, the origin of fan games, and various community history stuff. It was a lot of fun! You can click above to read the full article, which was published in french (translated, its title is something like "When There's No Good Sonic Games, Fans Develop Their Own"). Corentin also interviewed folks like Rlan for the article, too!

But, well, you know me: I’m long winded as heck. I ended up writing nearly TEN PAGES of text in response to my interview questions. I went on some kind of deep dives. So, with permission, I have been told it’s okay to publish my responses in full here on my blog. Just follow me behind the “read more” tag...

Corentin: Could you tell me more about the fangame scene? Is it as active nowadays than it was 5, 10 or 20 years ago?

Back in the day, SFGHQ was a huge resource hub. It hosted things used to make games, like graphics and sounds, as well as games themselves. When Rlan (Ryan) moved on, SFGHQ slowly fell into disrepair for a long time. Maintaining the database of files was more work than most people wanted to deal with. The forum community was always active, but people were gradually starting to move on. Maybe not even move on, but spread out a little more. Back in the day, it was difficult to host large files by yourself, so submitting your game to SFGHQ was the only way to put your work out there. That was a big draw. As services like Dropbox grew in popularity, hosting your game on SFGHQ began to matter less, and you started seeing more fangame projects show up in other corners of the Sonic fan community.

As SFGHQ's forums began to slow down, some of the people in charge wanted to revive it by merging with other Sonic fan communities. At one point, SFGHQ merged with another forum called Sonic United, and there were also suggestions being floated about trying to make SFGHQ a part of Sonicretro.org (one of the largest, oldest Sonic fan sites). Eventually the Sonic United merger was undone after Sonic United itself was bleeding users and shut down due to a lack of activity, and Sonic Retro opened their own fan gaming subforum in partnership with SFGHQ, which kinda-sorta meant SFGHQ as a stand-alone entity ceased to exist. SAGE went on like normal, and even grew, actually. Big names started making guest appearances, like a Q&A sessions with Naoto Ohshima (original character designer for Sonic and Dr. Eggman) and Mike Pollock (the current English voice of Dr. Eggman).

SFGHQ itself laid dormant, with years worth of promises about relaunching the site. Last year, as part of SAGE 2017, SFGHQ finally, actually relaunched. Instead of having an administrator manually add content to the site, users are now free to publish and maintain their own files. Unfortunately, it's a forum in the year 2018, so it's been kind of quiet. Most of the discussion tends to happen in the SFGHQ Discord, which is almost always active.

Of course, this is just the Sonic side of things. SFGHQ had a knock-on effect and others tried to make their own fan gaming websites for other gaming franchises. I think the only one that's still around is MFGG (Mario Fangame Galaxy), which even today still remains very reminiscent of what SFGHQ used to be like back in its golden age.

Overall, I'd probably say the fangame scene is more active than ever, though. SFGHQ's rise to fame was helped by the availability of easy-creation tools like Clickteam Fusion and Game Maker. Now, there's even more options for first-time developers getting in to game development, what with Unity, Construct, and even stuff like Twine. Everybody makes games nowadays it feels like, and you can draw a lot of parallels between how a lot of professional creators got their start drawing fanart or writing fanfiction. The more tools there are to make games with, the more likely somebody's first game development project will be a fangame. These people may not all be centralized at SFGHQ anymore, but they're still out there.

Corentin: How big is it? Do most developers know each other? Help each other? Sometimes are jealous of each other?

Back in the day, when everyone was centralized in SFGHQ, everybody knew each other, yeah. We were like one big family (in both good ways and bad). Nowadays, with everyone so spread out, it's almost impossible to keep track of it all. There's always a bunch of games at SAGE I've never heard of before, because they come from Gamejolt or some other fringe community I don't frequent. As a result, I imagine the fan gaming community is fairly large.

People don't usually help each other very much. Not for any kind of rude or territorial reasons, but generally because fangames tend to be a very personal, focused thing, and most people have tunnel vision regarding what they want. Everyone's trying to fulfill their dreams and that usually means going it alone, as everyone else is doing the same thing, with their own dreams. There are always exceptions, though. For a long time, Sonic Epoch, a fangame that continued the 1993 Sonic Saturday Morning Cartoon, was a team of three or four people writing the game's script and two or three musicians. Sonic Robo-Blast 2, one of the oldest fangames still in active development, has probably had dozens of people work on it over the years (I personally worked as a texture artist for them briefly). I also helped out on Sonic Time Attacked, one of the most famous classic fangames. Its developer, Jamie Bailey, was nearing completion on the game, but was struggling to produce the small handful of cutscenes he planned to have. I was kind of known for having nice cutscenes in my games, so I helped him out. Also, nowadays, with the advent of Unity making 3D games more viable, teaming up with multiple people is starting to become increasingly necessary. Sonic Utopia is being developed by at least four or five people, I think. Sonic World, a fangame written in Blitz3D, has probably had a dozen contributors by now. You can't really be a solo developer on those kinds of games, they take too much work.

Jealousy is definitely a problem. It's unsurprisingly difficult to draw the line on what's okay when you're making games that are 99% made from content borrowed from official games. If we're borrowing sprites from Sega without asking, why can't we borrow sprites from each other? The answer was always because that person was a member of the community, and they went to great lengths to custom-make something for their game, so obviously they weren't going to let anyone else use it. But, then, nobody had ever asked Sega if it was okay, so why should any of it be okay? That was occasionally a debate, and never with clear answers. Regardless, there were always accusations flying about who was stealing what from where. In particular, I remember a huge war breaking out over the usage of sprites created by a user with the handle "N8Dawg." He had custom-made a set of sprites all by himself, practically professional quality, and after abandoning his own project, decided to turn his artwork over to the community. But he did not do so publicly; he selected a few individuals that he thought would benefit from his sprites, and very quickly, access to these graphics turned in to sort of status symbol in the community. It was a nightmare. There was a lot of arguing over who got to use those sprites, and who had obtained them officially and who had stolen them from another fangame. Eventually, I think N8Dawg agreed to just release them publicly to stop all the arguing. I still have the files.

Corentin: How do you explain than the Sonic fangame scene is so active? What make Sonic so special? Is that because of the characters? Of the mechanics?

Generally speaking, I think fans make content to fulfill a need they aren't getting from the source material in question. This is why you get fanfiction that is so centered around romantic pairings. If nobody is giving it to them, people will always make what they want to see. Fans started making their own Sonic games after the franchise was more or less put on pause for five years in the mid-1990's. Sonic Team stepped away from Sonic games after making Sonic & Knuckles to try and let things rest, but there were a lot of people out there that were clearly hungry for more. So, they simply started making it themselves. You saw the same thing more recently with AM2R (Another Metroid 2 Remake). By the time that project finished, it had been something like 12 or 13 years since the last 2D Metroid game. Fans just made their own, because that's what they wanted to see.

The funny thing about Sonic is that Sega hasn't really kept the franchise under control. There are many, many different versions of the character, each one unique to itself. The Sonic from the Saturday morning cartoon is a different character from the Sonic in the classic games, which is a different character from the Sonic in the Archie comics, which is a different character from the Sonic in the Fleetway comics, so on and so forth. What this ultimately means is that you have tons people who come to Sonic the Hedgehog for wildly different things. Even narrowing it down just to the games, the Sonic franchise has had enough variance that there's a lot of debate over which games are "the good ones." When you consider what I said earlier about people making things that they want to see, there are a lot of Sonic fans out there who feel as though they aren't being served. Fangames end up a very good way to work out those frustrations.

Unfortunately what this means is that everyone has a different answer for what makes Sonic special. For some, it definitely is the characters. A lot of people were upset when Sonic Adventure 2 was first announced, because early media implied Tails wouldn't be making an appearance in that game. There are people upset right now because characters from the canceled Archie Comics haven't made it over to the new IDW Sonic comics. Other people are more about the game mechanics. The biggest splits there are between people who like the Classic 2D Sonic games, people who like the Sonic Adventure games, and people who like the super fast modern games like Sonic Generations.

Sonic faces some very interest design challenges, I think. The controls in those classic 2D games are still very unique, even among today's games. I think that also contributed to the sense that some fans were being under-served, because for the longest time, through games like Sonic 4, Sega was quite clearly trying to replicate those old games, but they weren't getting it right. Because it's not an easy thing to get right, really. Sometimes, it can almost feel like Sonic is successful by accident, like the stars and the planets align in just the right way at just the right time to produce something that could never exist at any other point in time. That'd certainly explain some things.

Corentin: According to you, Sonic fan games are popular because it's been a while since the last decent old school Sonic game. That's probably a big part of the explanation, but that can be the only one : Metroid fan games aren't as popular, F-Zero fan games aren't as popular, etc. How do you explain than Sonic resonate so much with his fans?

Not to dodge the question more, but I think that’s the riddle a lot of people have tried and failed to solve, even Sega themselves. As I said earlier, Sonic almost seems to be successful by accident. There’s a long story to be told here about Sega in the 90’s, some of which was told in Blake Harris’ “Console Wars” book. The gist is that Sega of America and Sega of Japan didn’t get along. Information I’ve read suggests that Sega of Japan saw themselves as genius artists and Sega of America pushed back against their esoteric ideas because they weren’t seen as financially viable. The two sides were constantly disappointed by each other’s demands, and Sonic was born out of this clash of ideals.

The entire reason it’s been so difficult to nail down what makes Sonic special is because Sonic was not the product of a single person, a single art style, or a single anything. It was more like an inexperienced chef haphazardly adding ingredients to a meal and accidentally making something amazing, but never being able to replicate the recipe.

In Sonic’s case, by the time anyone asked what the recipe for Sonic the Hedgehog was, the whole thing had gained too much momentum to be stopped. When something gets popular enough for a long enough period of time, it ends up taking on a life of its own. Once enough fans embrace it, it cannot be killed or destroyed. Think about Transformers, and how sometimes there were many years between movies or TV shows, but were still Transformers fans out there on message boards or at conventions. There will always be Transformers now, in some form or another, until the eventual extinction of the human race. The same is likely true for Sonic the Hedgehog. I mean, the Sonic franchise has already weathered some pretty dark times, but it’s still here. You couldn’t destroy it if you tried.

If you really want me to define what I think makes Sonic special, I think it’s because there’s never been anything like it. Not in 1991, not in 1999, and not even now. It really comes down to two things:

One, Sonic was one of the first true “characters” in gaming. You had guys like Mario, or Mega Man, that were duty-bound to be heroes. They didn't have much personality beyond that, if they had any personality at all. Sonic had that smirk, he was always waving his finger at the player, or getting visibly impatient if you made him wait around. Sonic brought the next level of characterization to games. That continued through games like Sonic Adventure; having that many playable characters, each with their own narrative threads that wove together in to a larger story was unprecedented in 1999.

Two would be how Sonic plays. We've had games like F-Zero, or Burnout, games that are really really fast, but never anything like the way Sonic does it. Sonic gives you the ways to interact with the world that most fast games shy away from. The best Sonic games make you feel like you're driving a rollercoaster, combined with the controlled chaos of a pinball table. You're supposed to be bouncing off stuff, getting thrown into the air, and feeling a little overwhelmed at first. The danger of losing control is part of the fun, but it's a difficult line to walk, and it has to be in balance with the other elements like platforming or enemy combat. It’s a unique blend of high-speed action with a sharp personality that you can’t get anywhere else.

Corentin: What are the biggest difficulties of developing a Sonic fangame?

Specifically regarding Sonic games, the biggest hurdle is probably control. It's such a big problem that a lot of fans have banded together to write programming guides and even create collections of code to make it easier for newbies to wrap their heads around how it all works. The physics and momentum of how Sonic moves are so tricky to properly implement that not even Sega really does it right, for example with Sonic 4, and they're the ones that invented those physics in the first place.

In general, I also think a lot of people underestimate how much work it takes to finish a game, even when most of the coding is already done for you. A lot of fangames get started, but never finished, because people lose interest before they cross the finish line. Staying focused and keeping perspective are probably the two most important things when it comes to developing any sort of game. You have to know and respect your own limits. You aren't going to make a game in a weekend. Depending on how ambitious you are, you won't even finish making game over a single summer vacation. You have to be ready to commit for the long haul. The best fangames take years and years of work.

Understanding criticism would be another difficulty. Over the years as I've reviewed games at SAGE, I occasionally find someone who gets really upset when I criticize their game. If somebody doesn't like your game, you have to learn to not take it personally. Criticism is valuable data that can be used to make better games in the future, so pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and use that information to improve. There can always be a next time, so don't get discouraged.

Corentin: Few fan games come to fruitition. Do all developers of fan games hope they will finish their game, or are they aware that's very unlikely?

Yes, I think nearly all fangames are started with the intention they’ll be finished some day. I can only speak from my experience, but it really seems like everyone, including me and all my friends, initially gravitated towards fangames when we were young. Especially in that youthful innocence, you never really think about how much effort goes in to something. I remember sending letters to Sega in the Saturn era, 1996 or so, regarding the cancelation of Sonic X-Treme. I tried to give them reasons to keep working on the game, and the things I was suggesting were so incorrect it was beyond the point of comedy and was actually a little bit sad. How movies, or video games, or whatever actually get made seems like a kind of magic until you’re faced with the reality of it all. It’s easy to see how somebody might decide to make and finish a video game without fully realizing how long that’s going to take.

It also depends on your definition of what “finished” means, I guess. I’ve created fangames that are not complete, full games, but I consider the project done, because I finished what I set out to accomplish. Even if that was only a couple of levels and a boss fight.

Corentin: Is Sega ok with fangames?

They seem to be, at least for right now. A few years ago, there was an Unreal Engine fangame, "Green Hill Paradise", and the official Sonic the Hedgehog Twitch account left a comment in their stream chat congratulating them on a job well done and encouraging others to keep making fangames. Sega operates that account, so while it was not a legally binding document, it was at least some kind of official statement of approval.

But I say "at least for right now." Fangames are, according to copyright law, illegal. Technically speaking, so is fanart and fanfiction, because any unauthorized use of copyrighted content is illegal. Fair Use mostly covers educational or academic purposes, which don't apply here. So the only reason fangames, fanart, and fanfiction are okay is if the company in question turns a blind eye to the law. Sega is turning a blind eye to the law right now, but that might not always be the case. Obviously we've had decades worth of fangames at this point, but it only just recently lead to something like Sonic Mania. Hypothetically speaking, a few years from now, maybe somebody changes jobs and now there's a different person overseeing how Sega handles protecting their copyright. Then, this hypothetical person decides fangames are no longer okay and shuts the whole thing down. That could happen, and the law would support it.

Something like that actually happened very recently. Sega opened an online shop where they sell t-shirts and other merchandise, which triggered a wave of cease & desist notices directed at fans who were selling their fanart on shirts through sites like Teespring and Redbubble. Fans have been doing this kind of thing for years, even bringing their custom-made shirts to conventions and selling them there. Again, the law says this is illegal, but Sega never seemed to care before. They turned a blind eye to it. But now Sega is selling their own official shirts, they have manufacturing partnerships they want to protect, and the circumstances changed. They stopped turning a blind eye to it and shut the fans down. So, really, who knows what the future holds.

Corentin: In your Sonic Mania review video, you regret that Sonic Team relies too much on nostalgia. But doesn't nostalgia what drive you as a developer of fangames?

Not always. The very first fangame project I started back in high school was called "Sonic Infinity," which imagined a future where Sonic was brought back to life with cybernetic implants in a world that resembled Mega Man X. I just wanted my games to be popular, so I figured by merging Sonic and Mega Man together, I could be popular in two places at the same time. That was around 1998 or so. I ended up getting bored of that pretty quickly, and a new project caught my attention: a fangame called "Sonic: The Fated Hour" which was to be a Metroid-style Sonic game where you'd explore an open world and find gear upgrades. I started that project around the year 2000. Everyone else was still making fangames that continued the story of Sonic 3 & Knuckles, but I wanted something that felt closer in tone to the Sonic Adventure games, which were current at the time. So it had a lot of story and cinematic sequences with artwork I drew myself.

I spent nine and a half years on The Fated Hour trying to figure out the best way for Sonic to work as a Metroid game before I gave up. When you work on something for that long you start to forget why you even started the project in the first place, so I decided it would be best if I just moved on. I still think about that game from time to time, about ways I could do certain things, but I refuse to let myself get trapped in that cycle again.

Along the way there was also a fangame I was working on called "Shadow of Chaos" that would have parodied how self-serious Sonic games are sometimes. That game didn't even really play like a Sonic game at all. You controlled Shadow, who could shoot guns and drove a Vespa scooter. It was intentionally ridiculous. I ended up getting a lot of friends to help me make levels for that one, but I lost a lot of the files to a hard drive crash. Many years later I ended up finding a backup of those files, but by then, the moment had passed.

And those are just my games. In my Sonic Mania review I had footage of other projects from my friends. There was “Thirdscape”, which was part of a trilogy of fangames about an alien invasion. The game took place many years after Sonic Adventure, and featured a grown-up Tails that was taller than Sonic. After Sonic Adventure 2, a lot of fangames were Sonic and Shadow working together, like Aytaç Aksu’s “Chaomega” and Showoffboy’s “Sonic Ki”. Then you had truly weird games, like TLSPRWR’s “Sonic Bible Adventure”, which fittingly takes Sonic through the events of the bible, or RC’s “Crazy Cabbie Sonic” where Sonic must deliver pedestrians to their destination before time runs out, like in Crazy Taxi.

Then you even have games like “Freedom Planet”, which originally started out as a Sonic fangame starring “Lilac the Hedgehog” as she traversed Dragon Valley collecting gold rings. Now, Freedom Planet is an original game starring Lilac the Dragon, available to purchase on Steam, Wii U, Playstation 4, and soon, Nintendo Switch, with a sequel in active development.

The connecting thread is that these were all side-scrolling games, but that was more about the limitations of the tools than any real desire to focus on nostalgia. The fangaming boom happened because of easy-to-use game creation software, but that software was universally limited to making 2D games only. Making 3D games often meant knowing real programming languages. The only 3D fangame for the longest time was “Sonic Robo-Blast 2”, which itself mainly started as a mod for Doom 2. In the big picture, Unity is a fairly recent invention, and we’re only just now starting to see a larger number of fangames using it.

If there was a focus on nostalgia, it was largely because those old Genesis games are the most universally beloved. It’s like I said earlier, fans tend to create the things they want to see. So you had a lot of fangames over the years about returning to Green Hill Zone. I think it was that fact by itself that probably pushed Sega to invest so much more heavily in nostalgia with Sonic 4, which in turn sparked even more nostalgia-focused fangames from fans determined to right Sonic 4’s wrongs. In a sense, that’s sort of why we have Sonic Mania now.

Corentin: What are the 3 or 4 best fan games people should absolutely give a try?

Sonic Robo-Blast 2 is unique to fangames insofar as it’s big enough to support its own community. It’s worth looking in to just to see how far the development team has taken the Doom engine; they converted a first person game in to a fairly decent 3D platformer. There’s also a huge modding community for the game, and an active multiplayer scene. Though it’s not ready yet, the next big update to SRB2, version 2.2, will finally overhaul the entire game to add proper support for sloped surfaces, something Doom didn’t originally support. It’ll probably be the most significant update the game’s ever had in its 20 year development. (trailer for 2.2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cfK3EWnn2E)

I don’t want to be negative, but a lot of people would probably say Sonic: Before the Sequel or Sonic: After the Sequel. Those are two games by LakeFepard, who managed to crank them out in record time. Something like a year each, maybe less. They’re very creative games with incredible soundtracks that rival even official Sonic games. But something about them has always felt a little “off” to me in a way that’s hard to describe, and recently Lake has apparently had a falling out with SFGHQ. I’m not really in the loop on the drama, though, which is probably for the best.

I’d recommend Hez’s “Sonic Classic.” It’s a massive fangame that was inspired by Sonic 4. It can feel a little messy, but its heart is in the right place, and there’s tons of stuff in it. It was almost like having Sonic Mania before Sonic Mania even existed.

That’s already four, but gosh, there’s more. Petit Hedgehog is just a demo, but it’s a cute Sonic-Advance-inspired game with 100% original graphics. I’d also recommend OzcrashSonic’s Sonic World, which I mentioned earlier, because it’s so big and complex; it has something like 30 playable characters and 50 levels, it’s nuts. Sonic vs. Darkness is also just a demo, but it’s a fantastic game in the style of Sonic Rush. There’s probably more, but those are the games I think about a lot.

Corentin: Could you tell me more about SAGE? Why did you start it? You're not responsible of it anymore, right?

No, I’m no longer responsible for organizing SAGE. The people handling SAGE now still check in with me from time to time when they want my opinion on big decisions, but I mostly just cover the event by writing reviews for the games available. It’s been long enough that I my memory is a little fuzzy, but I think I did the first four events, two every year, until I gave it up. I was going through some difficult emotional things in my life at that time, and the additional stress of putting together something like that was having a negative impact on my life. Since then, it’s grown to become much bigger than something I could have accomplished on my own.

The first SAGE was on September 9th, 2000, one year after the launch of the Sega Dreamcast in North America. I was still in high school at the time.

I started it because it was hard to talk about my fangame projects with anyone who wasn’t already in SFGHQ. There was a long-running stigma fangames faced; many people thought they were a form of piracy. They were put in to the same category as pirated bootleg games you’d see on the black market. So it was impossible to have a conversation or get much coverage on gaming-oriented sites.

I think it was around this time I started reading a website called Insert Credit and learning of what Japan called their “doujin gaming” scene. Doujin is a Japanese word often used to describe fan-created content, and in Japan, you can sometimes find doujin manga sold on shelves right next to the official thing. Now there were doujin games -- Japanese fangames -- that were gaining traction on the internet. That kind of acceptance was fascinating to me.

So I started SAGE to try and bring that kind of acceptance over to what my friends and I were doing. I wanted to dispel the stigma that fangames were a type of piracy. Or, at least, not any closer to piracy than fanart or fanfiction.

It didn’t really work. We got a couple smaller sites to post a small blurb about the very first year SAGE launched, but nobody bigger than that would touch it. The stigma remained.

SAGE ended up being successful as a secondary function, as it gave the community milestones to orbit around. Instead of just making games and releasing them whenever, now people were working to get things ready to show at SAGE. Milestones like that are something professional studios use throughout game development to measure progress, and SAGE gave the fangaming community something similar to strive towards. It created a healthier structure for making fangames, and to be honest, it had done so kind of by accident. It wasn’t until many years after I stopped doing SAGE that I realized the entire reason it’s still around is because it became that anchor for development.

And, in the long run, I think SAGE lasting for 18 years did end up helping fight back against that stigma, even if it wasn’t immediately apparent back when I first started. The stigma still exists, you still get comments from people who don’t understand why someone would risk spending all of that time on a fangame that might get shut down, but at least the conversation is more open now than it ever has been.

Capcom sponsored a fangame a few years ago called “Street Fighter x Mega Man”. Microsoft has openly stated they’re fine with fan-content of their original properties, which has lead to things like the “Red vs. Blue” Youtube series and Halo fangames like “Installation 01.” Valve has been increasingly open with its fan community, even co-publishing a fan-remake of the original Half-Life, called “Black Mesa.”

And, of course, we now have Sonic Mania, whose team is made up almost entirely of old SFGHQ users.

Somewhere along the line, SAGE may have helped bridge some of those gaps. That’s pretty cool.

#sage #sonic amateur games expo #le monde #corentin lamy #fan game #sonic the hedgehog #sega #sonic team #sonic mania #interview

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skia-oura · 6 years

Text

Orange Lilies, 8/12?

A/N: I wrote 11k in 48 hours. Please be prepared to read this in several sittings or not move for an hour or two. I apologize for its length.

Prologue // Previous // Next

Ao3 ff.net-->refuses to accept my copy and paste as non-coded text.

Enjoy!

Chapter 7: Lloyd Remnit is the Victim of a Break and Enter and Subsequent Theft

It takes several days of ever-heightening tensions to find Lloyd Remnit. In the interim, Torako shouts at Dipper twice to quit hovering (she wants to shout more), Dipper stubbornly refuses to answer any summons (the third time one comes through, he makes a disgruntled expression and mumbles something about an answering machine, whatever that is), and they have a harrowing experience at a Twin Souls convention in South-Central Canada because of a thief. Torako might have enjoyed Dipper’s shock and subsequent revulsion at a graphic Mizcor fanfic reading in room D27, but she was a little busy. Not only was she trying to hunt down the little shit that stole her phone and all the evidence on it, but her period was also square on day two. Yes, she had a MagixTampon in. Yes, she had extras. Also yes, stress fucked her period pain up to astronomical levels, and the cramping was making everything ten times worse than usual.

Honestly, there were only a few things that saved the convention from being razed to the ground between Torako’s pain-enhanced irritation and Dipper’s Twin Souls related disgust. They were that one, Torako managed to corner the thief between a rarepair merch stall and somebody selling fanart just safe enough to be shown to the public and just raunchy enough to make Dipper squirm, two, Dipper remained stubbornly attached to her hip and was therefore unable to wreak havoc on the convention-goers, and three, the thief apologized in a small, tremulous voice before offering Torako all his money, please, just don’t hurt me I didn’t realize you were this intense. Torako showed mercy. Torako only took half—and she only took it because the thief had wasted time that she could have spent finding Bentley. Even half wasn’t an insignificant amount of cash.

In the end, however, Dipper managed to find Lloyd Remnit’s residence, and they blipped just outside the walls before continuing on.

“I still think you should have taken all that dude’s cash,” Dipper said in a (recently) rare display of emotion beyond guilt, protectiveness, or rage. His footsteps were purposefully heavy as they walked up the long gravel drive to Windfall Manor proper. There hadn’t even been a gate, but even with Dipper running interference the hum of the wards they passed through had set Torako’s teeth to vibrating. Rich people, Torako thought.

“Does this guy even need this much land? This much grass?” Torako said instead of answering Dipper’s question. It was moot point anyways. Torako looked out at the wide, hilly lawn surrounding them, exquisitely cultivated ornamental gardens dotting the landscape here and there. She hadn’t seen so much useless grass in one place in her life. The gardens didn’t even look like they had any fruit- or vegetable-bearing plants in them. It was, quite frankly, insane.

Dipper did his shrug thing. “Grass was pretty normal a millennia or so ago.”

“Weird,” Torako mumbled. She stared at a bush shaped like a narwhal as they passed. She half-suspected that it wasn’t even real. “This is a really weird dude.”

Dipper hummed. They then walked in relative silence, the crunch and rasping squeal of stone against stone the only sound. There was no birdsong, no rustling grass, just clear skies up above and a suspiciously perfect hill just ahead. When Torako took a deep breath in through her nose, she could only just smell wet earth and crisp grass, like a ghost of the real thing. Except, you know, less belligerent and murderous than a ghost. She hoped. Murderous grass was uncommon but not impossible, and she’d already had the dubious pleasure of such an encounter. She wasn’t exactly looking for another one.

At the crest of the hill, Torako hefted her bag up on her back. It was heavier, after a pit-stop at the grocery store for a bunch of goodies. She’d even picked up a box of Moffios before putting it back. She wanted Bentley to yell at her about sufficient nutrients and the folly of eating something literally made of sugar. And there, on that hill, Torako stared at the mansion for the first time, and felt her heart swell with hope.

And also vague disbelief. Windfall Manor was located down the other side of the hill and a few meters out from the bottom of the slope. It was one of the most ostentatious buildings she’d ever seen. Bits and pieces of what had to be rooms but weren’t shaped in any way like rooms were floating above the main structure, all elegant curves and impossible spires. There were no stairs, anywhere. So either the floaty bits were yet more ornamentation, or the entire house was connected by a localized teleportation system, which would be completely and utterly ridiculous. It would also be in line with what Torako had seen so far, and so she steeled herself for more extravagance. The walls were a beautiful creamy color that faded in and out of opalescence, and the edges and corners were gilded, shining—gorgeous, but enough that Torako could cry in frustration. The moment the thought struck her, Torako had a bad feeling about the situation.

“What a piece of work,” Torako said into the still air. Beside her, Dipper was forgetting to breathe convincingly. Oh well, it probably wouldn’t matter much longer.

“Bentley hasn’t pissed off any rich people, has he?” Dipper asked. Torako raised her eyebrows in his direction and told herself that Mr. Self-Laceration wouldn’t blame Bentley.

“Sure it’s not you?”

“Me?” Dipper gestured at the house. “I’m not the owner of that thing, as glorious as the spellwork and as handsome as the mathematical precision is.”

“No, idiot,” Torako said, frowning. “I mean, have you made any rich enemies that would target Ben in order to hurt you, seeing as you’re kind of hard to hurt yourself?”

Dipper tilted his head and looked up at the sky. “Not that I remember. You?”

Torako scowled. They were still standing up on top of the damn hill, having a stupid conversation about inconsequential things and her uterus was set on trying to mimic the pain of being torn apart. She was, perhaps, a little sharper than she meant to be. “Geez, I dunno, targeting him and then citing you as one of the reasons for kidnapping seems like a pretty good indicator that I’m at fault here. Clearly.”

Dipper drew in on himself, shoulders up and arms in. He turned away slightly. Torako felt both guilt and a kind of ugly triumph burn through her. She put her hand on his shoulder. She took a deep breath, and tried to focus on what was important.

“Let’s just…get Bentley.” Torako squinted at Windfall Manor. “I think this place looks promising. Enough money to have enough space to hold somebody, and definitely enough money to do whatever it is to dampen your connection to Ben.”

“Maybe,” Dipper said. He waited for her to step forward, her hand trailing down and off his arm, before he followed. Torako didn’t know if she felt more like a mob boss or an unwitting mother duck.

“Do we have a plan for this, anyways?” She asked a couple minutes later, just an arm’s length from the front door. The glass set into the front was frosted, but was also animated to swirl in aesthetically pleasing patterns at random. The door jam was adorned with gilded scrollwork, which in turn were inset with tiny runes and wards. Some of them were actually augmented with literal gemstones, which explained the thrum tugging on the edges of her ears, settling into her fingerbones. Torako whistled. She was looking forward to smashing this dude’s face in and then dragging Bentley out before suing the rich shit for all the money she could give to charity. And also invest in therapy for Bentley, because she’d be damned if a cent of his money went to fix things that he wasn’t even remotely responsible for.

“A plan?” Dipper came in closer and peered at the runes and wards. He didn’t touch her, didn’t drape all over her like she was his and he was hers. “I was just thinking find Ben and crush this place into dust.”

Torako tilted her head and grinned a little. It felt plastic on her face. Her eyes ached. “Sounds good to me. Want a pack of gunny bears in exchange for shutting down the Manor defenses?”

“It’s a deal,” Dipper said. They shook hands. A moment later, there was a harsh crack, the smell of burned ozone, and the gild had melted over splintered gemstones into a mess of dripping gold. It was somehow still elegant. Torako hated it.

The door, now unshackled by layers of what had to be intricate spellwork, drifted open. Torako reached out, pushed it in, and she and Dipper stepped into Windfall Manor. When she held out her hand, Mizar’s Cultbasher was deposited in it, heavy and comfortable in her grasp. It slid down until the end of it, the hilt of it, pressed into the edge of her palm and pinky finger, grounding her.

The door closed behind them. Dipper kept his feet on the ground, but that was probably because he liked how his steps echoed in the large reception room around them. Torako looked up and around; the ceiling was like that of a giant greenhouse’s, glass set against glass impossibly smooth. The floor was tile, patterned in giant floral swirls of color. It was cracked, in places, runes and wards and deployment circles cut into unsalvageable bits. Torako swung the bat up to rest against her shoulder.

It was quiet.

“Any sign of Ben?” she asked, surveying the empty room around them. It looked like on the end of the far room there was a chair like a throne, but it was empty. There were walls all around, walls of glass. No hallways. No way out except for the way they came in, and they weren’t leaving empty-handed.

“No,” Dipper said, a tightness in his voice. It sounded like he was on the verge of trembling, but from what Torako couldn’t guess.

“What about the other one? Lloyd?”

Dipper didn’t answer immediately. The silence had a cant of unsureness, a measure of disbelief and a dash of exhaustion.

“Dipper?” Torako turned to look at him. He had risen up, shedding the remains of his human form until he couldn’t be taken for anything but supernatural.

He avoided her gaze. “I’ll take you to him,” he said, and held out his hand.

Torako narrowed her eyes, swung the bat off her shoulder. “What price?”

“Just a small candy bar.” Dipper was quiet. The hair rose up on the back of her neck. Something was wrong, this wasn’t guilt-quiet, this was a dread-quiet.

“Dipper,” Torako asked, “what’s wrong?”

“Nothing—” Dipper glanced at her and met her eyes for a second before looking away like she was the one who inspired instinctual fear. “Bentley’s gone, that’s all. Let’s—just get me the candy bar, and I’ll take you to—to Lloyd. Remnit. Him.”

Torako didn’t want to give the candy bar up until she found out what was wrong with Dipper. The room seemed to yawn around them, the space wide enough to swallow, wide enough to take the mere half-meter between them and twist it into an abyss. The false sunlight peering through was almost oppressive, the sparkling of the split tiles below vicious, like teeth, and Torako was hit with the sudden realization that they needed to fix whatever was between them, without Bentley there to cover up the divide and make it all better. But that was the thing, she thought to herself. Bentley wasn’t there. Bentley had been taken from them.

Torako stuck out her hand. “Deal,” she said.

Dipper shook it without ceremony. There was no flash of blue flames. He didn’t smile, roughish and dangerous in the corners or between the press of his teeth. Instead, there was the familiar sensation of being tugged somewhere, and suddenly they were in a bedroom.

It was dark. The curtains, heavy and thick and embroidered with giant moths, were drawn over one entire wall. She could just barely see the outside light hemmed in on the floor below what had to be windows. Torako walked over to them, traced the exquisite workmanship, the painstakingly stitched forms soft ridges under her fingertips. She looked back at Dipper, who was staring at the bed and the figure under the covers. They were snoring, just slightly. Dipper’s shoulders were slumped, but she couldn’t quite make out his features in the dimness, just the golden glow of his eyes.

She set the nailbat down, clenched the heavy curtain in her fists, got a feel for the fabric and the heft. “Dipper,” she said, quiet. The relative smallness of the room, the darkness, dampened the sound into something comfortable. Dipper turned his head to look at her.

She tilted her head, held her swathes of curtain up a little. Light billowed stronger onto the ground below, carpeted, spotted with burned magic.

“Okay,” Dipper said.

Torako took a deep breath. She closed her eyes, centered herself. Bentley, she told herself, and then she pulled the curtains back as hard as she could.

Sunlight shone in like a sound, like the sudden blare of a trumpet or the screech of bow against strings, harsh against the preceding silence. The curtains slid, silent, across an invisible track of magical technology. Torako squinted her eyes a little against the invading light, and looked out the window, across the land surrounding them.

It all seemed so small, from so far up.

A few moments later, Torako heard the man in the bed groan a little. She turned around, bent down, picked up her nailbat and stood, back to the window. It would disconcert, possibly even frighten, Mr. Remnit. Dipper made no such move, but he was a demon, which was kind of intimidating enough.

“What the…” the man groaned. He waved a hand at the light coming in. “Wals, I gave you the day off so I could sleep as much as I wanted all day, goddammit.”

Torako glanced at Dipper. Dipper was still staring at the man, at Lloyd, like he’d broken his favorite toy and then kicked a puppy or two. Alright, then, no help coming from that corner, so Torako opened her mouth and said, “Well, that explains why the place was so gosh darned empty! And why you’re still asleep at four in the afternoon. You’re wasting daylight!”

God, she was turning into her dad.

The figure on the bed didn’t move for a long moment. Then he snuggled back down into the blankets and pillows, grumbling something about awful dreams.

Torako closed her eyes. Then, she opened them and looked up like the ceiling held answers, but no, there were just—lots of images of coquettish, nearly-naked people of all species and gender. One of them winked at her. She felt herself flush, and looked back at the bed. Torako was hit with the sudden thought that maybe, possibly, this man was naked under the covers.

Torako steeled herself. She had endured horrors few others had, had seen dismembered corpses that still gave her nightmares, had come home to an empty apartment and evidence of kidnapping. She could handle one naked man.

“Sorry, buddy,” she said. “This isn’t a dream. Isn’t even a nightmare. Out of luck there. Yo, Dip, do you mind making our friend here a bit more aware of the situation he’s in?”

Dipper stared at her. She pantomimed pulling the sheets off. He stared at her longer, then looked back at the sheets, at the figure stubbornly underneath them, and then lifted his eyebrows in what was clearly a, he might be naked under there, do you really actually want me to do that? gesture.

She pressed her lips together and nodded once, short. It was her best attempt at a nonverbal no, I really don’t, but this is probably the best.

Dipper slowly reached his hand out and curled his fingers into the folds of the sheets. He looked back at her, almost pleading. She tilted her head at him and held up a free hand, because what else could they do?

Wide-eyed, Dipper pressed his lips together. He tugged the sheet once, sharp, but not hard enough to dislodge it. Before Torako could do more than wonder why exactly he was being so weird about it, he opened his mouth and spoke. “I don’t think you want to know what we’re going to do if you don’t get up.”

Lloyd Remnit shifted in bed, turning around enough to get a glimpse of Dipper. He blinked, then rubbed his eyes, and sat up. He definitely wasn’t wearing a shirt. Torako looked just enough to get an idea of physique; arms a little toned, but mostly old muscle and normal levels of fat for his age. He was a bit aged, Torako thought, but more like uncle than grandfather. Then he leaned back against the headboard, all casual, and smirked down at Dipper.

“Well, aren’t you a treat?” Lloyd Remnit said. He looked Dipper up and down. Dipper stepped back a little, clearly unnerved by this turn of events. Torako felt a well of anger at Remnit and stepped forward to put herself between Dipper—who clearly knew something she didn’t and was made uncomfortable by it—and the man they’d come to interrogate. That was working well.

The moment she did that, though, Remnit burst into action, slapping a hand against the closest bedpost. It lit up for a split second before cracking further, green sparks flying out to die, harmless, mid-air. Remnit stared at the bedpost. Torako smiled as she finished blocking Remnit’s view of Dipper.

“Yeah, we took care of that,” she said, affecting nonchalance and confidence. Even though the room was small, everything in here was clearly quality that would take a decent chunk out of her parents’ paychecks, even before donating a great deal of it to charity. “Any more questions?”

Remnit squinted at her. “Could you get out of the way? I’d at least like some eye candy to look at.”

Torako’s smile thinned. She made sure to heft her bat up again, so that Remnit clearly saw what exactly was in store for him if he didn’t stop with his shit. “I’m not eye candy enough for you?” she asked.

“He’s more my taste,” Remnit said.

Dipper put a hand on her shoulder. She raised her eyebrows at Remnit, even though she was really raising them at Dipper. There was a moment of silence from him, and then Dipper said, “It’s okay, Ra. If he wants eye candy, I’ll give him eye candy.”

Torako obliged, and stepped out of the way. Dipper strode past her, got closer to Remnit, and sat on the bed. Remnit seemed a bit taken aback by this gesture.

Then Dipper held up a hand, and Remnit recoiled, screaming. Sweets poured onto the bed. Torako connected the dots and had to swallow hard at the mental image that came forward.

“What the fuck!” Remnit screamed, on the other side of the bed. “What the fuck??”

“You don’t have to eat it,” Dipper said, quiet. “You just said you wanted to look, right? So here it is.”

“What the fuck are you?? Why are you here, holy fuck!”

Torako shifted so that she could tackle Remnit if need be. He might try to run. They weren’t going to let him. She would break his arm before letting him go. There was a wardrobe half in the way, but it would slow him down just enough to help her catch him easier.

“We’re here for an important friend of ours,” Dipper said. There was an undercurrent to his voice that had Remnit paling. “And last thing we found pointed to you.”

“In case you need reminding,” Torako said, an easy smile back on her face, “it has to do with a fridge you commissioned. Could transport live bodies?”

Remnit’s dark eyes, somewhat familiar, flickered between the two of them. “I have…hypothetical knowledge of that,” he whispered, then wet his lips. “What’s…in it for me?”

Torako laughed a little. “What do you think is in it for you?”

“You should probably answer wisely,” Dipper said, eyes clear, still on the bed. Anyone who didn’t know him wouldn’t see how wrong he was arranging himself into something casual, unaffected.

“I…” Remnit said. “I…didn’t get to where I am now by settling.”

Torako smirked, but she was watching Remnit’s hands. They were twitching in a way that seemed half-controlled. She thought about the level of magic set into the house, how much everything relied on it.

“Dipdop,” she said.

“I know,” he said. “He won’t do anything.”

Remnit’s movements faltered. “What?”

“He won’t want to tell us anything either,” Dipper said. He shifted. “If he’s anything like the man I once knew…is this about family, Lloyd?”

“I haven’t met you before,” Remnit said. He took a step back, back against the tall, ornate wardrobe Torako had noticed earlier. It was very clean, light glinting off it like the wood was alive. Torako’s smile felt frozen to her face.

“Not that you remember,” Dipper said. “And I guess that makes all the difference, doesn’t it? I’m not family, somebody else is. The somebody who has Bentley.”

“What are you even on about?” Remnit snapped. He slapped his hand against the wardrobe, transferred whatever spell he’d been crafting between his fingers into the wood. It crackled, distorted, then shot at both Torako and Dipper. Torako tucked into a smooth roll and slammed the nailbat into the wood hard enough to punch holes, the enchantments on the bat combating with the enchanted wardrobe.

Dipper had tessered right up against Remnit, who sucked in a quick breath and stilled. Torako stood, watched.

“Bentley,” Dipper said, “is my family. You were once, Stan. But that was lifetimes ago, so I can’t blame you for not being now, right?”

“Dipdop,” Torako said.

“What the fuck?” Remnit whispered.

“Except I will blame you,” Dipper said. He set his hand against Remnit’s forehead. “Your loyalty has been given to the wr̢ò͏n͏̢g̨҉ person this time, Stan. Tell me where m̘ͦͥ͆ͯ̀y̳̩̘͉̑̉̄̀̇ͨͦ ̡̈͊̚s̬̹̗͎̲͂̈́ì̥̩ͅst͇̙͙̝͓e̝̹̟̹̮̯͒̒ͧ̇̈́r̴̗̝̖̭̫͌̒̚ ̧͓͈̠̯ͦ̅́ͤ̑̆ͦi͓̞͕̮͉̳̫͡s̡̩̪̰̋̌ͧ̏.”

Torako’s smile slid off her face. She stepped forward.

“I don’t know,” Remnit said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Who did you commission the stasis fridge for?” Dipper crooned. “I will give you what you desire most if you just tell me who you commissioned that stasis fridge for.”

Torako took another step. “Dipper, stop. You’re getting out of hand. Dipper, stop.”

Remnit paused. Then, he laughed, hard and long, startling Dipper enough that he pulled away just a little, just enough for something in the air to loosen and for Torako to breathe a little easier.

“Nothing,” Remnit said, “is more important than family.”

Dipper didn’t even breathe. He canted his head back towards Torako. “I agree,” he said. Torako read the question in the quirk of his pointed ear, in the set of his hand on his hip. She pursed her lips.

“There’s no other way?” she asked.

“Stan is stubborn,” Dipper said. “I admired that, once.”

Torako readjusted the grip on her nailbat. “A bag of Octopods and a bag of Chocolate Chicken Waffle Chips?”

“And a lock of hair,” Dipper said.

Remnit had lost some of the courage he’d pulled together only moments before. It had, Torako thought, evidently fled in the pieces he’d finally put together. “No,” he said. “My wards, they’re too strong.”

“And a lock of my hair,” Torako said, “in return for the knowledge of who took Bentley, and where they live.”

“Who are you?” Remnit hissed. He held up a hand, desperate energy crackling in it, and shoved it into Dipper. Dipper looked down at it, then grinned at Remnit.

“Ḓ̸̥̯̈ͣ͌ͪ̇̏̎͢e̸̥͕̼̎̂͂ͤa̶̡̼̰͉͓ͭ̽̉ͤ̊ͭͅl̀̈̍̋͡͏̥̙͖̤̻̬͍̠ͅ,” he said, blue flaring high, and set his hands on Remnit’s head like he was going to pluck the strings of a harp, delicate but firm.

Remnit didn’t scream. He let out a hitched sob. Dipper withdrew something from Remnit’s mind, and then flung it out. A heartbeat, two, and then Torako knew.

Torako stared at Remnit. He was collapsed on the ground, a puppet with cut strings, a man whose base morals had been violated. Torako remembered Bentley, kneeling at his father’s funeral, accepting orange lilies with shaking hands. She remembered dark, flat eyes. Something dark and horrible and scared welled up in the pit of her chest, nearly choking her. She wanted to scream. She wanted to cry. She wanted to kill Remnit.

“How dare you,” Torako told Remnit, voice shaking. “How fucking dare you hide behind family to justify their actions. You fucking supported them! What the actual fuck?”

“You took it from me,” Remnit whispered to his hands. “You took it from me.”

“And your nibling took my partner from me!” Torako screamed.

“Torako?” Dipper asked.

Torako lifted the nailbat. Her hand hurt from how tight she was gripping it. She wanted to drive Mizar’s Cultbasher into Remnit’s skull, over and over. How dare he. How dare he.

Bentley was more important.

“Dipper,” Torako said. She dropped the bat, stared at Remnit, heartbeat roaring in her ears. “I will give you another bag of candy, one in my bag, to make sure he can’t warn anybody about what’s coming for them. He can’t tell anybody we were here. He can’t tell anybody we’re coming. He can’t tell anybody what was done to him. He can’t let anybody know that they’re in danger.”

“I mean, okay, but Torako?”

“Do we have a deal or not, Alcor?” Torako snarled. Remnit flinched at Alcor’s name, started crying.

Dipper was silent for several rapid heartbeats, then he said, “Deal.” Torako’s backpack lightened again, and Dipper put his hand on Remnit’s head again. Blue flames flared, then died, and Remnit curled over, hiding his face in his hands.

“Let’s get out of here,” Torako said, after a long moment. She felt vindicated, and terrible, and angry and scared because Bentley had told them he was Mizar.

“Torako, who was it?” Dipper caught her arm, talons digging in just a little. Torako looked into his eyes. Her body was light, carried on a wave of turbulent emotion.

“Once we get out,” Torako said, and no sooner had she spoken were they on the lawn by the wardstones, right at the beginning of the gravel path. The sky was still, there was no birdsong, and the grass under their feet was artificial at best. Everything was wide and open and wrong.

“Tell me,” Dipper said. She couldn’t stall any longer.

“Dr. Fantino,” Torako said. “Their name is Vallian. They gave Bentley orange lilies at Philip’s funeral.”

Dipper froze, eyes wide in horror. The air was suddenly like syrup, pressing down on her shoulders and leaving her slow, heavy. “The one that Bentley…”

“Cursed.” Torako gripped Dipper’s hand with everything she had. She laughed a little at a sudden thought, high and on the hysterical side. “Bentley really did piss off somebody rich, I guess.”

Dipper snarled. The air around him turned dark, almost misty. Everything around them seemed like it was moving, but Torako felt nothing. His wings curled and grew into a shroud around them, at once shielding and suffocating. “I̢̛͉̳̓̓ͯ̔ ̵̶̷͙͉͔͈̱̫͚̑̀̏̐̌ͫ͒ͅw̷̝̜̜͙̯̻ͧ̇̑̍͌ͅi̶̸̗̲̿͆l̵̖̻͈͈̙͙̱͉͑ͤ̽ͤ͑̇̔͢l̹̤̥̼̼ͦͦ̾̉͜ ̞̬͇̥̖̻̖̓̊̾̓͌̑̿̃͝d̸̶̮͍̠͇̂ͥe̛̝̻̖̰̥͕̓͌̍ͤs̛͕̭̟̔͗ť̬͔͍̍̽ͩ̌́̚͜r͋͂̀̊͏͏͙͈̥o͔̪̥̲̠̎͛ͧ͢ȳ͍ ̯͇͇̗̱̘̭͈̻́ͮ̊̌̊̇̒́͝ḩ̤̠̘̮̳̠̞̐ͭͩͤ͡i̴̼ͯͩ̈́͐ͣ̋m̪̫̠͑̓ͩ͊́͆ͥͩ̇͘͟,” Dipper said. “I̤̣̭̹̻̾̽̓͊͋̍̏̈́’̺͈̪̲̪̖̘͂̿̈̔͞l̞͇͈͔̩̩̙͙̗̊̋ͧ̚͘l̢̧̰̾̀ͩ̓ͭͭ͋͘—̛̬͕̗͍͇̲̜̫ͬͪ̇̐̾͘ͅ”

Torako’s phone chimed, the chime from Lata’s parents. It cut through the syrup around her; the last she’d heard from Lata’s parents hadn’t exactly been positive news. Her heart in her throat, she pulled it out, navigated to messages. She choked, her fear rising above her anger. Bentley was important, but Lata was—Lata was a baby.

“Dipper,” she said. “Lata’s missing. Lata’s—we have to find Lata.”

Dipper let out a noise that was more squealing tires and thunder than human, tugged her close, and they left Windfall Manor more abruptly than they’d arrived.

Bentley had lost track of time.

He also lost track of what it’s like to actually chew or ingest food orally; all of the nutrients his body requires have been supplied to him so far by a NutriPatch, even though those are really only supposed to be used short term. He should know, he visited Torako in the hospital and got that lecture from the nurse on Torako’s behalf. That had been a little uncomfortable. Maybe not as uncomfortable as the saline drip embedded in his arm—that was sure to leave a scar and he was high-key avoiding those thoughts—but certainly not fun.

Bentley had also lost track of what it’s like to move more than five steps at a time. He was always strapped down to the bed when people come in to check his vitals, take DNA samples for some awful reason that he would freak out over if he thought about it, so he didn’t. He also was reduced to dragging around his IV drip with him, because there was some sort of non-tamper seal on the drip and he hadn’t managed to get his hands on anything that would allow him to sigil it off. He wanted to save the last-resort of using his own blood as a medium until he had a clearer chance to escape.

What Bentley had gained, had slowly been gaining, was energy.

Not quickly. No, residual, fragmented nightmares kept him from actually getting the sleep he needed to make a decent recovery. At the same time, he also wasn’t being actively sucked of energy in order to fuel his own nightmares and keep him locked in a mirror hellscape funland of his own imagining, so, the pros were outweighing the cons at the moment. Bentley was going to take whatever the fuck he could get.

Which, he thought as he sat in a corner in the dark, pale hospital gown pooling around him, wasn’t exactly a lot.

He pressed his chin to the valley between his knees, looked out to where he knew the vase of orange lilies sat in a protective alcove. For somebody who professed not to ascribe to acting based on illogical emotion, Bentley thought, Dr. Fantino was really, almost hilariously petty. It made him really angry.

Even after what felt like at least a week of knowing the lilies were there, they made Bentley want to cry. The slight against his father had been turned into something worse, something to taunt and goad Bentley with rather than an honest, if despicable, act. Dr. Fantino, Bentley knew, was using Philip to get under Bentley’s skin, and it was working. When he wasn’t too exhausted to feel, or too stressed and sad to think, Bentley was constantly furious. Dr. Fantino being absent whenever Bentley was awake only fanned the flames higher; they had the gall to kidnap him, subject him to torture that was sure to set him back years’ worth of therapy, and then? They didn’t even? Interact? With him?

Bentley hugged himself tight, digging his hands into his legs. He was losing weight. His hair was uncomfortably long. His nails were kept trimmed and soft, but they would be longer than he was used to if they hadn’t been. Bentley was losing time.

He closed his eyes, started to doze in the corner. He woke an indeterminable amount of time later, feeling space closing in around him, crushing him, welding his throat shut and unable to make a single sound.

Bentley yelled at the walls to make himself feel better until nothing came out but a raspy, whistley noise. Then he couldn’t make noise with his throat, and it was awful, but drumming his fingers on the floor helped, standing and moving just because he could helped. When he was able to think again, Bentley set his forehead against the wall and closed his eyes.

He lifted his hand, one finger outstretched, and began to trace the shape of sigils into the wall. “Fire,” he said in a whisper, tracing fire and then breaking it. “Water. Earth. Lightning. Air. Connection,” and so on, creating and detonating in his mind’s eye. Every so often, he traced Alcor’s circle into the wall. Said please. Waited long moments in which he knew nothing would happen, but hoped anyways, before moving on to more complicated, more powerful, more theoretically dangerous things. Bentley wondered, absently, why Dipper hadn’t come yet.

Then, the lights came on and they gassed the room to knock him out. He drooped down the side of the wall, throat sore, and watched the blurry images of the nurses come in to bundle him back into bed. He was harmless. His limbs didn’t move. They showed no fear.

Bentley was losing time, but there was nothing he could do but bide it.

Lata was in Australia. Lata was safe. Lata was happily playing with a very tired woman Torako’s never met, who Lata apparently has and who Lata had also successfully conned into letting her visit. The woman did not yet know this. Lata had whispered it gleefully in Torako’s ear because Torako was the Fun One, right before Dipper had pulled Torako abruptly aside to demand they destroy everything Fantino held dear.

Torako had to convince Dipper that that did not mean it was time to lambast Fantino’s house, under her breath and doing her best not to let the woman whose house they were in know that, you know, she had let a demon inside.

“It’s home,” Torako hissed to Dipper. “Yeah it’s where he lives too, but you’ll go overboard and cause another international incident, beyond the mysterious glass found in the middle of the desert. Yes, I saw that article, you didn’t hide it nearly well enough.”

“Bentley could be there,” Dipper hissed back, his face inhuman because he wasn’t looking at the Australian woman—Torako thought her name was Tom, or Tam, or something. “We need to get Bentley and make that man pay.”

“We don’t even know if Ben’s in the house,” Torako said.

“We don’t even know that he isn’t,” Dipper retorted. Their faces were close in order to facilitate better hearing at lower decibels, and also in order to increase the intensity of their glaring at each other.

“Whatchu doing?” Lata asked, flopping over Torako’s back. Torako tipped forward at the unexpected weight. Her face smooshed into Dipper’s, her nose almost jamming into his eye.

“This is a private conversation,” Dipper said, tense but trying not to make Lata cry. Torako braced her hands on his shoulders and pushed herself back upright. Lata giggled.

“This’s private property, and it’s seven fucking thirty in the fucking morning,” the Australian Woman Tom Slash Tam said. “You got something to say, say it loud’n clear.”

Dipper and Torako exchanged a look. Torako turned to face Tom Slash Tam, and said in the flattest tone she could manage, “Lata did not tell you that their parents had no idea they were going to Australia.”

Tom Slash Tam stared. “What.”

“I got a text, just earlier today—” which was not a lie, just a very misleading turn of phrase “—in a panic about where Lata had disappeared off to. I need to let them know where they are. Dipper thinks we should return immediately. I think you need to be told what’s up.” That was a lie. They hadn’t even discussed it.

Tom Slash Tam gaze shifted to the limpet on Torako’s back. They had their face pressed into the back of Torako’s neck. “Lata,” Tom Slash Tam said.

Lata whined and squeezed Torako’s neck tighter. Torako choked a little and tapped Lata’s crossed arms furiously.

Tom Slash Tam crouched down lower. “Lata,” she said, voice low. “Did you lie to me?”

Lata whined again and kicked their feet against Torako’s butt. Torako pried their arms from around her neck and breathed a little easier, but didn’t move to make Lata face the other woman.

“Lata,” Dipper said. Torako glanced at him. His eyes were white and brown again, which was disconcerting every time she saw them like that. “Answer Tommy, please.”

Lata said something into Torako’s neck.

“Speak up, please,” Torako said.

“I said I don’t feel they right now, I feel she,” Lata said, directly into Torako’s ear.

Tommy nodded. “That’s fine, thank you for telling us. But Lata, did you lie to me about coming over?”

Lata paused. “No,” she said in a bald-faced lie.

Torako raised her eyebrows at Tommy. Tommy raised hers right back. They shared the look that adults do when kids decide to be more difficult than the situation calls for, and then Tommy pressed on.

“Then did…Torako, was it? Right, Torako. Then did Torako lie?”

Lata paused again. Torako knew that she was going to be thrown under the bus as last-minute sacrifice when Lata said, “Yes.”

“So,” Tommy drawled, “you didn’t actually try to pull the wool over my eyes by fabricating—making up—several messages saying that yes, they’d be glad to let you come see me, yes they were happy to’ve meet me and make sure I wasn’t some sort of creep after their kid and I made a real good impression, can you take our kid in a couple days?”

Torako did not point out that the whole situation was unrealistic. She honestly didn’t understand how Tommy could have been fooled by a five year old.

“Yes,” Lata said. She dug her hands into Torako’s shoulders, and Torako hissed in discomfort. “I’m only five.”

Tommy narrowed her eyes at Torako. Torako sighed, pulled out her phone, and navigated to the message in question. Tommy took the phone, read the message, and sighed back at Torako. “I’m a fuckwit,” Tommy said, before pulling out her own phone to call Lata’s parents and walking a few steps away.

Lata leaned into Torako and whispered, loudly, “You sold me out!”

Torako looked, unimpressed, at Dipper. At the look on his face, her expression faltered. “Dipper?” she asked.

“Are you done?” Dipper asked. He’d sunk his fingers into the floor, curved and rigid in ways human hands were never meant to be. Torako’s heart sunk, and she felt Lata scrunch down more behind Torako’s back. “Lata is fine. Lata is safe. We should be finding Bentley.”

Torako narrowed her eyes. “We’re not going to the CalFed.”

“It’s our only clue,” Dipper hissed.

“And they will know you’re there,” Torako said, straightening up. Lata slid off her. “Because you will have no chill while you’re there, and then they’ll find out that I’m involved, and we’ll never be let back into the country.”

Dipper snarled. His eyes flashed black and gold before they turned back to brown and white. “You’re worried about being let back in to the country?”

“My family lives there,” Torako snarled right back, nastiness blooming in her. “We are not putting them in danger.”

“They won’t be in danger.”

“Tell that to the glass in the Sahara Desert,” Torako said. She leaned forward and bared her teeth. Dipper bared his right back, sharp like sharks’ and wide enough to clamp around her throat. Torako didn’t back down.

“Do you even lo̕v̡e Bentley?” Dipper sneered, and it was like he’d stabbed her in the heart. “You’re messing around here and he’s in the hands of an egotistical shit who knows who he is and if you l̸o̸v͠ed̢ ̡ him, you’d go s̛͝͡av̵͡è̀͘ ̵h̵̵̡im͢.”

Torako moved through shock, to hurt, to grief and then back to anger fast enough that if it had been turns on a roller coaster, she’d have suffered whiplash. She surged forward, pushing her face up into Dipper’s and grabbing a fistful of his shirt. “Who was the fuckhead who ran off and wasn’t there for Bentley in the first fucking place?” she said, voice low, deep like it was coming from her chest.

Dipper’s face twisted in guilt and fury. His eyes flicked from her eyes down to just below her chin. She lifted it, exuding as much I’d like to see you try as she could. Deep down, underneath her hurt and anger, something was screaming at her to back down, to get away and to stop threat-posturing in front of something that could crush her without a second thought.

“What the fuck is going on here?”

Torako blinked. She remembered, suddenly, where they were, who they were with. She realized, a split second after remembering, that Dipper’s face was sporting some decidedly unhuman features, and she tugged Dipper in closer so that Tommy couldn’t see. Torako looked up at Tommy.

“We’re…fighting,” she said.

Lata was standing next to Tommy. Her eyes looked suspiciously shiny, and Torako watched as she tugged on Tommy’s well-worn shirt. “They said Uncle Ben is gone, and they gotta find him.”

Tommy crossed her arms. “I think you need to explain what batshit fuckery is going on. Not on the floor. We paid for the fucking couches, and so you’re going to use them and be civilized about it, not like a couple of pixies fighting over a scrap of magic in the local tarot reader’s dumpbin. “

Dipper stood. Torako knew that he hadn’t put his human guise back on by how Tommy inhaled sharply and took a step back, herding Lata behind herself.

“We don’t have time,” Dipper said. There was a buzz against Torako’s skin, like a cacophony of cicadas pressing into her. She took a deep breath. “Bentley isn’t safe, he is o͘u҉rs, he is m̧i̸͟n͏e̵̴, and he n͢͏̸e̷̴̕e̴͟͢ḑ̸͏s͟͞͠ ͜t̶҉o͜͠ ́b͝ȩ ͝s̛̛͜av͡͏ȩ͢͞d̡̛͟.”

Tommy looked between the two of them, eyes narrowed. Torako stood up, angling herself between Tommy and Dipper. She didn’t know which one of them she was supposed to end up stopping, if it came to blows.

“Dipper,” Torako said. “I told you, going to Fantino’s house isn’t going to help anything.”

Dipper dug his hand into her arm (again, what was with him and her arm lately) and spun her around. Something inside her strained at the manhandling. “Y̴̡o̶̵̢u͜ ́k̨ņow̢͘ ̷͡no͜t͡h́͝i̶n͞g of where he is,” he said, static peppering his voice and burrowing beneath her skin. The tone, the words, made that strained something snap, and Torako stood tall. “You are m̢͟͟͠͠o̡̡͜r̷̴̶̀͟ţa҉́͏̛ĺ̵̶͢ ̢̢̀͢͞ and you can’t b̴́e̵̢gin͠͠ t͠͞҉o͢ ̕u̢̕n̶d̡̢͢e̡r҉̴s̢t̴̢͞a̴n͏͟d͡ ̷͏w̶h̀͡a̢̕t̡ ͞it’̴̧͟s̡ l̴í̵͝k̕é—”

“I love him too,” Torako said, pushing right back, grabbing his arm right back and squeezing tight, curling her fingers as much into claws as she could. He had melted back into his suit, void-black and snow-white and intimidating as all fuck to people who didn’t know him, which was most of the planet and more. She knew him, though. She wasn’t fucking intimidated by his fancy-ass suit or his impossible fabric or even his goddamn teeth. Torako stared him down, using her height to her advantage. If he wanted to float and be taller that way, he’d have to shove her face out of the way. “I love him, I told you I love him more than I love myself—”

“Ć̷ĺ̴ęa̵̸͜r̡͢͞l̸y ỳo̧̕͘u͢ ͜d̴̛o҉̧n’̷͘t̛̕͟,̷͘͠ ̢b̡̛ȩc̷̡a̶̡u͝s̶͠e ̀y̷͡ou̸̕ ҉a̵r̵͟e̵ǹ̵̡’̷̧t̢͜͢ ̴͡ w̴͡í̴̡͝l̶͡ĺ̵͜͡҉i̕҉n̕g̢̀͡҉ t̸͠ơ̴͠—͟͞”

“I do, you absolute fuckface, and you also don’t know where he is, that’s the whole fucking reason he’s still not safe—”

Somebody was crying, but Torako didn’t care because Dipper needed to be shut down and also kicked a little, probably.

“I kn̶ow͏ m̸ore t́han y̧ou, y̵ou̧ w͝oul̸d ̶kn̡o͢w ͢nothi͠ng ҉i̷f̸ it ̵w̵eren’t̢—͝”

“And neither would you, because you left, you left and went off to have a fucking pity party instead of being with us—”

“HEY!”

Torako, without looking, snapped over her shoulder, “Shut up and stay out of it.”

Dipper hiss-snarled from around her shoulder. His wings had come out, sharp and wicked and shadow. Torako drew herself up even further and pushed down on his arm.

“Stop l̛̀͠ò̡̧͝o̷̷̧͘͞m̴̴i҉̨̛n̸̢͠͞͏g͠҉̵̕,” Dipper growled.

“Stop hurting me,” Torako growled right back.

“Jus̶t̡ ͟imagi͡ne wh̴at͞ Bȩntl̵ȩy’s ́g̛oinģ thro̷ug̴h͘,̡” Dipper said, “bec͞au̷se y͏o̢u ̧woưl̷d͞n’͠t ͘l̷e͠t̢ m͏e̛ ͏ t͏e̴a̛r ̢͞t̸͞h͏̸a҉t̶̷̨ p͢e͘r҉s̷̷on͠’̧̀s̴ ҉h̸͜o̢m͟e̡͠͠ ̷͝͡a̕͜p̸á̢͏r̸̡͡t̴҉ ̵̧t̕͞ǫ͝ ̵́́fín̨͟d̀ ͟͝hìm̕͠͏.̧”

“Just imagine what Bentley would feel,” Torako said right back, “when he found out you decimated the place he grew up because you weren’t thinking straight.”

“J̛́u͜s͜t̡ i̴͝m͢a҉g̸͝i͢͢ńe͏̧,” Dipper started, but never finished because suddenly there was a deluge of icy water being splashed on them. Torako shrieked. Dipper jumped up in the air and stayed there, blinking the water out of his eyes. Torako wiped soaking hair from out of her face and tried to process what had just happened.

“You get to clean that up, by the way,” Tommy said. Torako looked over, finally, and Tommy was holding Lata in one arm so that Lata could press her face into Tommy’s chest. There was a bucket in her other hand. “Towels’re in the bathroom. Get your arses dry and mop the floor up and then come sit on the damned couch. Stop making the kid cry.”

Torako, dripping water, exchanged a guilty glance with Dipper. Dipper caught her eye, and looked away.

Yeah. Torako nodded, fight gone, and turned around to go get some towels. If she took a while coming back, and if her eyes were a little red when she finally emerged, then nobody would say anything.

Dipper curled up on one end of the couch. Torako was curled up on the other, a towel around her shoulders. There was as much space as possible between them.

Dipper hated and needed it all at once.

Across from them, on a ratty armchair that looked as though it was held up only by layers and layers of threadbare spells, Tommy nursed something slightly alcoholic and stared them down. Crackles of amber irritation lanced through her aura. She’d sent Lata to another room to play with their dog. Dipper hadn’t even noticed the dog, coming in, too caught up in Fantino, and Bentley, and the all-encompassing need to save and fix.

“So,” Tommy said, finally. “I’ve got a fuckin demon in my house.”

Dipper scrunched his shoulders and crossed his arms. He looked away at the bookshelf, which held an eclectic collection of physical books, datapads, storage drives and also various animal skulls.

“Which one is he?” Tommy asked. Dipper hunched over more and noted one book was about astrophysics. More specifically, he realized, the mingling of magic with astrophysics, and postulation as to whether or not there was a limit to how far magic extended from Earth, and if it was an Earth-only phenomenon or one that extended throughout the entire universe, or something inbetween.

“Alcor,” Torako said, quiet and not quite like herself. Dipper wondered if she’d ever been herself, since Bentley had been taken. He’d been too wrapped up in himself to notice.

“Of course,” Tommy drawled. “Of fucking course. I threw water on one of the most powerful known entities in the universe.”

Dipper thought of the glimpses of his future, aching loneliness and power enough to burn whatever he touched. He didn’t like thinking about that, so he started thinking about magic and astrophysics again, while half-paying attention to the conversation going on in the same room.

“It happens,” Torako said.

“And you!” Tommy said, louder. “You were going nose to nose with that overpowered soulsucker, what the fuck are you?”

“His…friend? Partner?” Torako paused. “I’m human, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Dipper switched his attention to the couch under his hand. He started to trace the weave with his claws, dulling their edges so that he didn’t snap the threads on accident.

“You arse-tipped dick-waffling crazy shit,” Tommy said. “And there’s…another one of you, right? The one that’s missing?”

Guilt and grief and anger gripped Dipper so tight he forgot himself, punching a hole into the couch. Seized by terror, he checked that connection between himself and Mizar again—still dampened, still there, butterfly-wingbeat-weak against his senses.

“My couch,” Tommy said.

“Sorry,” Dipper said. He glanced over at Tommy, aura a confusing mix of colors, and then away. “Sorry.”

“Yeah,” Torako said. “Bentley. Um. It’s a long story.”

“That’s fine,” Tommy said. “Give me the important shit.”

“Um. I guess. Bentley got kidnapped, about five days ago? I can’t remember exactly. I was useless the first day, and after that things have gone so—so fast. We finally found out who took him, today, and we know why, but we don’t—we don’t agree on what to do next.”

“Shit,” Tommy said. “And you’ve only had each other for company for five days?”

Torako laughed. Dipper concentrated on curling in on himself as much as he could at the bitterness there. “Yeah. We—we’re kind of a mess, aren’t we?”

“Fuckin understandable, though,” Tommy said. She paused. “Is it normal for him, to, uh, do that?”

Torako shifted. She huffed a little, but when she spoke there was a bit of a smile in her voice. “Dipper, your tween is showing.”

Dipper looked back at her. She seemed a little larger than before, and with an aura dulled with emotional exhaustion it meant that he’d shrunk again. Dipper put his face in his hands.

“I take that as a yes.” Tommy was sitting with one leg crossed over the other, drink held loosely in one hand. “Not the weirdest thing I’ve seen, though.”

The front door opened. A voice floated in, strong and upbeat. “Darling, you called just a bit ago? Is everything all right?”

Dipper stared at Tommy over the tips of his claws. Tommy took a long, languid sip of her drink before answering. “In the living room, Filara! We’ve got some…disastrously interesting guests. Lata’s in the bedroom with Fuzzles.”

“That’s right,” Torako said, a little faintly. “You have a wife.”

“I do,” Tommy said, a kind of proud, self-satisfied grin on her face.

“She…going to be okay with this?”

“Well, she might be able to help you. She knows a bit of everything. Smart woman, my Filz.” Tommy’s grin took on a shit-eating cant. “Also the reaction’ll be balls hilarious.”

Dipper groaned. Pathetic. All-powerful demon and Acacia’s troublemaking nature always made him quail.

“What’s that about your balls?” Filara asked. Dipper looked at Filara, and then kept looking, because that was Lionel and what was Lionel doing married to Acacia?

“Our guests might have a couple of questions for you,” Tommy said. She gestured to the both of them, sad and huddled on the couch, like she was unveiling some great and wonderful monument to the world.

“Oh, I’m happy to answer…” Filara looked from Torako to Dipper and trailed off. She stared. Dipper stared back, still lost in the mental gymnastics of but this is my dad but that is my niece but this is my dad and my niece married???? and only distantly aware of the fact that he looked like a prepubescent non-human in an impossible suit.

There was a beat of silence born of mutual surprise.

“Uh,” Filara said. “Darling?”

Tommy took another sip of her drink. Out of the corner of his eye, Dipper could see smug pinpricks of orange-lilac in her aura. “Yes, Filz?”

“Ignoring the gorgeous woman on our couch,” Filara said, “there’s…a thirteen-year-old on our couch?”

Torako made a gurgling noise. Dipper was almost impressed. Most people pegged him for ten or eleven. Nobody overshot his age (even if it was just barely) in this form.

“Kind of,” Tommy said.

“And he’s…they’re…she’s…not…human?”

“That’s speciesist. Wow Filz. I expected better of you.”

Torako kind of half-raised her hand. “He’s a demon.”

“Yes, a demon. Thank you, gorgeous woman whose name I don’t know.” Filara took a half step forward as Torako gurgled again, and shifted her corrective lenses. He almost hadn’t seen them. “Darling, why is there a demon on our couch?”

Tommy hummed. “Ask him.”

Filara took a deep breath, then turned to face Dipper more squarely. “Why are you on our couch?”

Dipper gestured at Tommy, and every answer except for, “She told me to” escaped his mind in that moment.

Torako supplemented the information. “I got a text from Lata’s parents. They didn’t know she’d come here, though I think they know now, and they know where the bill for the ticket to get here came from.”

“Ah.” Filara said. She waved her hand, and a rocking chair appeared from nowhere to settle in next to Tommy’s threadbare monstrosity. Dipper recognized the echo of Lionel’s taste in furniture in the cushions, firm but not flat. “That explains a little more, but not enough. Start from the beginning?”

Dipper opened his mouth.

“Not you,” Filara said, and proceeded to point at Torako. Tommy took another smug sip of her alcohol. There was lemon in it. Dipper bet that it was something Torako would like. “You. Mr. Demon seems a little useless information-wise, and no offense but I’m not sure I would trust him. Also,” she said, glancing back at Dipper, “can I get a name so I don’t call you Mr. Demon? It seems a little odd to, especially when you’re being so quiet and polite and not actively bartering for my soul or my left arm.”

“I’m Tyrone,” said Dipper.

“He’s Alcor,” said Tommy a heartbeat later.

Filara settled back in her chair with an air of confusion and also mistrust. She looked at Torako.

“He’s both,” Torako said. “I call him by a nickname. You’d know him as Alcor.”

“Cool,” Filara said. “Cool cool cool, I’m just going to ignore that he’s Alcor in my sitting room. Please tell me why you’re here and what’s on your mind, Ms. Gorgeous.”

Torako gurgled again. Then she obliged.

“…and then we got into a big fight in front of Lata and your wife,” Torako said before taking a sip of the drink that Filara had insisted on getting for her. Lata had come out at some point, and was clinging to the Hangars’ beagle mix between Torako and Dipper. She was also asleep, so everybody was trying to be as calm as possible. Aside from a couple of tense moments, mostly because Dipper said something snide and Torako said something snide back, they had succeeded.

“She threw water on us,” Dipper said. “It was effective.”

Filara hummed. She seemed less concerned with the fact that Dipper was in the room and more preoccupied with what Torako had said. “And you said that Alcor said that he couldn’t feel Bentley very well?”

Torako nodded. “He can explain it better than I can, obviously.”

“Explain, please.” Filara pulled a stylus and pad out of what seemed to be thin air. Tommy had long since gone to the kitchen to make food. It was lunchtime. They had been in this house for hours. Torako was very, very hungry.

“So, it’s like he’s in another dimension,” Dipper said. “Except nobody should be able to do that? So it has to be a pocket dimension, but it doesn’t feel like a pocket dimension. It’s like, there’s more layers between us, muffling everything. I should be able to feel how he feels, but instead it’s hard enough to tell that he’s still alive.”

“A little creepy, but all right.” Filara jotted down notes, appraised them. “And you said the kidnapper has access to significant funds?”

“Yes,” Torako said.

“And also used cutting-edge technology to use a sophisticated but also very traceable way to transport Bentley while in forced stasis slash nightmares?”

“Also yes.” Torako took a swig of alcohol, closed her eyes at the sharp burn of liquor and citrus. It grounded her. Torako did not necessarily want to become an alcoholic, but by everything good was it helping. She had needed this.

She also, desperately, needed some of whatever was cooking in the kitchen, because it smelled absolutely wonderful.

“Interesting.” Filara continued taking notes, switching from her right to her left in order to gesture at the bookcase Dipper had been staring at earlier in sullen silence. A couple books and a datapad floated over to her. One title was in a language Torako couldn’t read, and the other was made up of such outdated terminology that Torako could barely understand it was about warding theory.

“Is it okay to be here, though?” Torako asked. “You came back from somewhere really early in the morning.”

Filara flapped her hand at Torako. “It’s fine, that contract was paying me pennies for the work they wanted anyways. I only took it because I was bored. I’ll find another short-term job soon enough.”

“Isn’t the Australian job market kind of bad right now?” Dipper asked. He was leaning back, a little more gangly and teenager than he had been earlier.

“That’s why I can’t find anything not short-term,” Filara said. “Also why I decided I’d throw my net wide instead of deep, so to speak. More variety of possible jobs. I let Tommy specialize.”

“Park management?”

“With endorsements in both mundane and supernatural creature handling,” Filara muttered. She flipped the warding book open to the back, indexed whatever she was looking to find, and then started turning back to the relevant page. “Specifications which are archaic and vestigial leftovers of an age shocked by the sudden appearance of unprecedented species, both sentient and not, but whatever they want, I guess.”

Torako saw Dipper perk up at the nerdspeak. “I agree,” Dipper said. “It’s literally been over two thousand years since the Transcendence. Why, with the evolution of language, do such—currently—arbitrary classifications exist? It would make far more sense to align everything on a scale of sentience alone. The laws of science have changed so much, and possibilities have altered to an extent that nullifies the importance of separating non-sentient and originally non-magical creatures from non-sentient and originally magical creatures.”

“True,” Filara said. “Okapi were once seen as utterly mundane until scientists observed the emergence of magical traits conducive to predator and sustenance detection…”

Torako tuned them out, looked down at the drink in her shaking hand. She swirled it a little, then watched the tumbler continue to tremble, ever so slightly. Torako admitted to herself, under the safe umbrella of being momentarily ignored, that she was tired. She was stressed, and scared. And she had begun taking it out on Dipper. And maybe, just maybe, Dipper was the same, and he’d started taking it out on her.

He was unstable without Bentley, even though they kept stressing to him that he had to be stable without Ben. Though, Torako thought, a wry smile on her lips, maybe she wasn’t so different. She felt pretty unstable herself.

They were going to be lucky to get out of it all in one piece. They were all definitely going to need therapy, group and individual. Torako wanted to laugh and cry, but there was a dull edge to her emotions that pressed the urge down into something less overwhelming. Where were they going to find a therapist that would take them seriously and not report things like Bentley being a reincarnation of Mizar, or Dipper being Alcor, or Torako breaking and entering and bartering for demonic force as a tool to suppress and punish people outside the court of law? Dipper and she had discussed it, back when Bentley had first been taken. Dipper had promised that he’d take care of it, but…somehow, that seemed like a really bad idea. Would it be better than no therapy? Worse?

Torako didn’t know. She swirled her drink again, then took another swig of it.

“Torako?”

She looked up. Filara had a manic gleam in her eyes, which shone a faint purple. Probably from magic exposure. “We figured something out, maybe.”

“It seems pretty possible,” Dipper said.

“Lay it on me,” Torako said, and leaned forward.

“So, this is highly theoretical stuff, and I’m definitely not a specialist in any practical sense so I don’t know how possible it is,” Filara said, drumming her manicured fingers on her knees in excitement. “But because extradimensional travel, like to legitimate other dimensions, is impossible by human means and, Alcor assures me, highly improbable even by demonic means, there’s only an infinitesimally, insignificantly small chance that Bentley has been spirited away to another dimension. Which means that to fit the parameters of ‘not being in this world proper,’ Bentley has to be in a pocket dimension. Which, in and of itself, is not sufficient, because Alcor can sense Mizar through those, right?”

Dipper nodded vigorously.

“Have to wonder how your kidnapper knew how to counteract that, but no matter. Might just be plain paranoia, which is healthy to have when kidnapping a Mizar attached to a very very powerful demon. Anyways!” Filara flicked up a screen and began to draw a quick sketch. It wasn’t very artistic. “so you have the pocket dimension, with Bentley in it, with Alcor here, and there’s extra stuff inbetween. It has to stop demons from entering. More than that, it has to stop a very strong, the strongest, demon from even sensing through it. Which is hard. It’s like, you have a window, so you can’t pass through the window, but you can see through it and sometimes even hear through it, right?”

“I get that,” Torako said. She set her drink on her left knee. “So something that would stop that would be, like…sigils, right?”

Filara blinked, stopped mid-drawing of a window with a person looking out of it. “Actually, yes, maybe? But there aren’t too many people who use sigils to that kind of degree, and they might be a little too finicky to mesh with a pocket dimension the way this kind of near-airtight technology requires. As it is, the pocket dimension is probably a bit destabilized by this. The theory is old, but incredibly difficult to actually execute. So if you’re looking for something reliable…”

Torako snapped her fingers as she connected the dots. She grinned. “Wards.”

“Right. Runes don’t pack enough punch and can get a little frisky, but wards are solid. They’re dependable. Reliable. They’re like a middle-aged rottweiler.” Filara drew a stick dog on the screen between them, then put a smiley face on it. “Loyal, and forgiving, but also capable of turning nasty if you poke it enough with the right stick, which is why this is still theory. Maybe. It might be real if Alcor’s unable to sense Bentley.”

Torako’s stomach turned and her good mood evaporated nearly as quickly as it had come on. Dipper was quiet, which could mean several things. She hoped he wasn’t going to sink into a brooding spiral again. “Which means Bentley’s stuck in something potentially unstable.”

“Unfortunately, yes.” Filara pinched the screen back into nonexistence. “And because Alcor is as powerful as he is, even the ward alone might not be enough. There’s possibly another element, which would destabilize it even further. Bentley could be younger when he comes out. He could have grown extra limbs. Maybe he knows more languages than he knew going in. Maybe he loses the ability to write, but gains the ability to telepathically communicate. Everything we know about unstable pocket dimensions comes from a long time ago when they were new and unrefined, and when you add magic to magic, weird things happen.”

Torako closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Okay. Okay. So we need—we need a good wardist. Who knows their stuff, and is connected to the warding professional world, and it can’t be Meung-soo because I hate her and also I don’t trust her to know enough after being kept in the dark about her own nephew. Fuck.”

Next to her, Lata slept on, curled around Fuzzles the beagle. Torako wished she was five and the world was uncomplicated again. She’d also settle for a long nap, at this point.

“I’m sorry,” Filara said, quietly. “The downside of casting your net wide, is, well, you don’t really know the super serious pros very well. Especially ones who don’t thinktank, and do stuff instead. I can’t help you there.”

Dipper straightened up. He looked solidly in the realm of his 20s now. That was both a promising and frankly miraculous sign, considering the situation was ‘Bentley trapped in an unstable affront against the laws of dimensional boundaries’ and his reaction to Bentley’s situation before this particular calamity. Torako was unable to wrap her head around how his brain worked, sometimes. “I do.”

Torako couldn’t even muster the energy to raise her eyebrows at him. “You do.”

“Yes.” He nodded, and stood. “Soos’s reincarnation’s mom is a wardist. She told me.”

“Who?” Torako asked. She couldn’t remember a Soos. Then she registered the word ‘reincarnation’ attached to Soos, and not knowing made more sense. Except, “When did you meet Soos’s reincarnation?”

“Last week,” Dipper said. “She gave me ice cream in exchange for homework. It was a nice deal. But, Soos’s reincarnation’s mom. She can help us. Definitely.”

Torako narrowed her eyes in confusion. “But…does she know you’re you?”

Dipper reached over Lata and grabbed Torako’s hand. She swore as she fought to keep her alcohol right-way up. “If she doesn’t now, then she absolutely will in about five seconds!”

“Wait, wait, where are they, Dipper?” Torako asked, but it was too late—she felt the tug across her body, and they were elsewhere.

Filara stared at the place Torako and Alcor had once been.

“Darling,” she called, after a few moments.

“Yes?” Tommy yelled back.

“Our guests left with a towel and a tumbler of your lemon cocktail,” she said. She tilted her head at Lata and Fuzzles, and added, “Also, they left sans child.”

There was a clang. Tommy appeared moments later at the entrance to the sitting room, staring at the empty spots on the couch, then at the backpack still on the floor.

“Dipshits,” Tommy said. She sighed. “I’ll call Lata’s parents and update them on the situation, then.”

“Thank you, darling,” Filara said. She stood, and stretched, and then stepped over to give Tommy a kiss on the cheek. “I appreciate it.”

Tommy grinned, kissed her back on the cheek. “Always, dear heart.”

On the couch, Lata shifted next to Fuzzles, but kept sleeping.

#orange lilies #my fic #fic #tau fic #dipper #torako #bentley #ensemble cast #transcendence au

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