#i was born only 4 years later. it's insane.

[redaynia]

ANOTHER COUNTRY: THE 1980s AND GAY CINEMA

by Alex Davidson

My Beautiful Laundrette, with its positive representation of a gay relationship, came at a radical time for LGBT rights in the UK and stands in the tradition of queer cinema flourishing in times of homophobic oppression. Victim (1961), Basil Dearden's drama about a lawyer (Dirk Bogarde) who realises his own homosexuality while investigating blackmail attempts against gay men, was made when homosexuality was still completely illegal in the UK. The sympathetic portrayal may have helped pave the way for a partial decriminalisation following the Sexual Offences act in 1967.

Gay Liberation flourished in the late 1970s and gay men on British cinema screens, who conventionally ended up miserable or dead by the end credits, started having fun. While Derek Jarman's Sebastiane (1967), an erotically charged take on the life and execution of St Sebastian, ended in tragedy, there was no doubting the film's gleeful celebration of gay sex. Nighthawks (1978) took British audiences into the gay clubs of Lindon and divided gay audiences, some of whom felt the main character -- sensitively played by Ken Robertson -- was an unappealing and downbeat figure. The film remains, however, an invaluable time capsule of 1970s gay nightlife. Television was more problematic, with TV schedules plagued by tired stereotypes typified by John Inman in Are You Being Served? (1973-1985) and Larry Grayson -- both, however, familiar, beloved faces on the small screen. The Naked Civil Servant (1975) was more provocative, with a Bafta-winning performance by John Hurt as the unashamedly flamboyant Quentin Crisp making a genuinely subversive statement.

With Margaret Thatcher's ascent to power in 1979 came a lurch to the right and a darkening of attitudes towards LGBT people in the 1980s. As the Aids epidemic spread, tabloids became bolder in their homophobia, with The Sun under the editorship of Kelvin MacKenzie calling Aids a 'gay plague'. Groups such as OutRage! and Act Up protested at the government's slow response to tackling the virus, noting how homophobia informed political decision-making. However, some progress was made. During the 1970s, Labour MP Maureen Colquhoun had been deselected after being as outed as gay by the press, and when Peter Tatchell stood as a Labour candidate for Bermondsey in 1983 he face a notoriously homophobic campaign from his Liberal opponents (the seat was won by the Liberals' Simon Hughes, who later came out as bisexual). Yet in 1984, Labour MP Chris Smith was the first minister to come out while in office. More LGBT people became politically active, such as Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM), who inspired the award-winning film Pride (2014).

The most famous instance of the Thatcher administration's homophobic policy-making arrived in 1988, when Section 28 of the Local Government Act was passed. This legislation banned local authorities from publishing 'material with the intention of promoting homosexuality' as well as 'the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship.' The law directly affected The Two of Us (1988), a mild BBC drama about two gay boys who must decide whether to leave their homophobic home town or stay and resort to conformity. The original had the boys continue their relationship but the broadcast version was changed: one headed back to heterosexuality, while the other is left alone. British filmmakers were quick to react to the wave of hostility that dominated the decade. Derek Jarman made unashamedly celebratory films about gay male lives in The Angelic Conversation (1985) -- a queer reading of Shakespeare sonnets addressed to a young man -- and Caravaggio (1986), a queered portrait of the renaissance painter. His 1989 experimental film The Last of England (1989) is a dark, poetic vision of a country in crisis and one of his most explicitly anti-Thatcherite films.

Production company Merchant Ivory has a (misleading) reputation for safe period dramas but its adaptation of EM Forster's Maurice (1987) was daring -- not because it was politically confrontational but because it had that rarest thing in 1980s gay cinema: a happy ending for its lovers. A further key British feature of the era is Another Country (1984), based on the early life of Cambridge spy Guy Burgess and starring Rupert Everett as a gay public schoolboy disgusted by his repressive environment. In both Maurice and Another Country, the protagnists are rich, white and male -- acceptable traits for audiences who had already embraced homoeroticism in the BBC's 1981 adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited. All three works were comfortably set in the past, as was Stephen Frears' follow-up to My Beautiful Laundrette, his admirably bawdy Joe Orton biopic Prick Up Your Ears (1987). This fondness for telling gay stories through the distancing lens of period drama makes the contemporary love story of My Beautiful Laundrette all the more urgent.

Gay British films with interracial relationships were scant. A heavy hint of homosexual attraction followed the titular black and white characters in Two Gentlemen Sharing (1969), while the silly but lovable Girl Stroke Boy (1971) gave audiences a couple, played by Clive Francis and Peter Straker, where the gender of one half of the relation was supposedly ambiguous, but gay love stories featuring black and Asian characters appeared less frequently in the early 1980s. The political significance of an interracial gay relationship in a London blighted by the National Front adds fire to My Beautiful Laundrette and, despite the mildness of the scenes of passion, the film sparked controversy; when it was shown in New York, the Pakistan Action Committee demonstrated against it as 'the product of a vile and perverted mind'. Kureishi explored race and homosexuality again in his TV adaptation of his own novel The Buddha of Suburbia (1993) and interracial love informed some of the most interesting queer stories of the 1990s, in Isaac Julien's Young Soul Rebels (1991) and Neil Jordan's The Crying Game (1992).

While Queer as Folk (1999) may be the most famous LGBT British TV series of past years, a handful of gay non-fiction series from the 1980s paved the way for its success. Gay Life (1980-1981) explored queerness in various contexts, while the delightfully right-on Six of Hearts (1986) offered docudrama profiles of gay men and women, most notable Andy the Furniture Maker, an unlikely star of the art underworld. Channel 4's magazine show Out on Tuesday (1989) gave voices to marginalised queer people -- a highlight was Khush (1991), which celebrated South Asian lesbians and gay men living in Britain, North America and India, and was directed by Pratibha Parmar.

Plenty of documentaries about lesbian lives were made in the 1980s but British fiction films about gay women were few. A rare example is Mai Zetterling's Scrubbers (1982), set in a female borstal, while towards the end of the Thatcher era Oranges are Not the Only Fruit (1990), based on Jeanette Winterson's novel, was a huge hit. More elusive still in 1980s British cinema are depictions of trans lives. While the US has led in interesting depictions of trans people, gentle sitcom Boy Meets Girl (2015-2016) is a rare example of a British take on a transgender protagonist. Throughout British cinema and TV history, lesbian and trans viewers have had to be content with one-off episodes of TV anthology series or supporting roles in heterosexual-focused stories.

The activism of the 1980s, supported by British filmmakers, paved the way for the repeal of Section 28 in 2003 and the passing of the Civil Partnership Act a year later. Same-sex marriage followed in 2013 but writing today the situation for LGBT people is murkier. Following the referendum on Britain's EU membership in 2016, the most divisive recent political event, homophobic attacks rose by 147 per cent, while the 2017 general election resulted in the sitting government opting to rely on an openly homophobic party to achieve a Parliamentary majority and remain in power. At the time of this release, how an uncertain political climate will affect LGBT people remains to be seen but, with equipment and online platforms widely accessible, filmmakers have more opportunity than ever to confront homophobia through their art.

Alex Davidson is the film programmer at JW3 and a former curator at the BFI National Archive. He regularly writes for Sight & Sound and the BFI website. His specialty is LGBT cinema and television.

Article sourced from the booklet included in the BFI's dual format edition of My Beautiful Laundrette (2017).

[ace-no-isha]

genuinely don’t know how i’m supposed to make it to 21 it’s less than 50 days away but i don’t want to get there i don’t want to grow older the weight of the future is too much to bear i’m not made for this

[johnwickb1tsch]

you’re the worst thing (i’m addicted to)

a john wick x Helen'sSister!Reader fic You are Helen's baby sister. When you meet John Wick at Helen's graveside, he invites you to dinner to celebrate her birthday. Set a few years after the first movie, 2-4 never happened. Use of y/n. Warnings: canon typical violence. Future reference to threat of noncon, (not John! because he's our assassin sweetiepie). Mourning. Smut. Grey areas. Questionable decisions. Sweetheart!John, BAMF!John Depressed!John - If you can handle the movie you should be fine here...

Part 1.

“Hey, Hels.”

There is no answer, only the warbling of a bird in a distant tree. The day is bright and blue, spring has come again in all her glory. It doesn’t seem right, somehow, that the sun should still shine, and the birds should still sing.

Because she is gone.

It’s been two years, but you still haven’t really wrapped your head around it.

You still have your last text message thread with her in your phone. It’s as though you could just punch a few buttons and still talk to her. Always, she would answer you, no matter what she was doing. Sometimes you want to type in I miss you and hit send, just to see what might happen.

But then, maybe it is appropriate, that today should be such a beautiful day. On this day, forty-two years ago, your sister was born. Roughly ten years later, you followed. As a direct result, your mother died of complications in childbirth.

Your father still blamed you, but Helen never did.

In a way, Helen was your mother, more than the woman who bore you.

It makes it all hurt so much more.

“Happy birthday, by the way.”

You look down at the stone, this massive granite behemoth. You find it rather ugly, to be honest, but it will certainly stand the test of time, nuclear war notwithstanding. Loving Wife, reads the epitaph below.

You know it was true.

You know that perhaps John Wick is the only person Helen loved more than you. But the inscription still seems too brief. Short changing her, somehow. 

But then, John paid for the stone, so you suppose he got to pick what it said. 

You were ensuring her memory lived on in other ways. 

“I finally did as you asked,” you tell her. “I’ve used the photos you left me in a painting. We're going to be in a show together. I wish you were here to see it.”

There is a mean part of you that suspects your submission was only accepted because it contained work from the late, great, photographer Helen Morgan-Wick, but you shove that down into the seething pit with all the rest of your fears and doubts. You didn't use them for the attention. You did it to feel close to her, and because she asked you to. One final art project, the note had said. She knew you too well, knew that the only thing that kept you from toeing the line of the abyss was a good artistic obsession.

You knew she’d planned to leave a project for John too. A puppy, she’d said. You’d shared a laugh over it, through tears, the last time you’d been together. You never found out how that had gone. John hadn’t attended a family gathering since Helen passed.

Too painful.

You didn’t blame him one bit. 

“I miss you, Hels. I feel so lost without you.”

“Amen.”

The sound of another voice behind you nearly makes you jump out of your skin. You turn to find him, in one of his signature tailored black suits, looking unfairly scrumptious despite the dark circles under his eyes. He hadn't made a sound in his approach. He never did. The man moved like a ghost and looked like a dark dream. You'd always found him insanely attractive.

You'd never done anything about that, of course. But goddamn, you had eyes.

“Hi, John.”

“Hello, y/n.”

You’ve never run into him at the gravesite before, though you have seen the wilted offerings of daisies left by the stone, and you always had assumed they’d come from him. You haven’t seen him since Helen’s funeral. He hasn’t changed much, really, though there is a sharpness to his aspect you’d never noticed when Helen was alive. An edge to his gaze; how can eyes so dark convey so much? Despite yourself, it sends a little thrill down your spine that you absolutely know you should not revel in.  

Maybe you haven’t seen him in person after Helen passed, but you’ve gazed at him plenty through Helen’s lens. There had been so many photographs of him in the collection of prints she’d left you. Nothing risqué, but the way he’d looked at her even through the camera had been nothing less than intimate.

There were times, late at night in your studio, when you’d pretended he’d been looking at you that way.

“How…have you been?” 

He offers a grim shadow of a smile and a shake of his head that you understand all too well. 

“Nice to be with someone you don't have to pretend with.”

“Yeah.”

You both stare down at the grave, meditating on your loss of this woman who touched you both so completely.

“Do you think she can hear us?” you ask, unable to lift your voice above a whisper.

There is a long pause from her widower, the man she left behind.

“Not really.” He lifts his face to the sun, eyes closed, as though maybe he can feel something of her presence. “But you should talk to her anyway. I might be wrong.”

You smile at that.

“Do you ever talk to her?”

“All the time,” he admits with a huff of self-deprecating laughter. “But then, I might just be losing my mind.”

“Ah well. That makes two of us then.”

You gently lay down the bouquet of Gerber daisies you'd brought for her. Helen’s favorite. If you ever have a garden, you will plant some for her. As it is, you have to buy them from the store. You remember the patch of daisies she’d cultivated in the garden of your childhood home. Their cheerful faces and soft petals. They had been your mother’s favorite too. When you were a girl Helen would sing to you and braid them in your thick hair. You couldn’t know at the time, how precious those perfect days had been.

The wave of sorrow hits you like a freight train, the weight of your loss a crushing force. You start to cry, hiding your face in your hands; you would prefer to do this alone, but you cannot stop it.

You feel an arm about your shoulders. It surprises you—John was never a touchy-feely man, never one for hugs, always preferring a wave or a handshake. Only for Helen, did he ever display any sort of affection. They had always been touching, holding hands or sitting hip to hip on the couch, his strong arm slung protectively around her shoulders. You didn’t want to say you’d been envious of that, but…perhaps you’d wondered, what it might be like, to be so cherished.

When he pulls you against him you only manage some token resistance. “I’ll mess up your suit.” You sound pitiful, even to you.

“I have an excellent dry cleaner.”

His dry wit had always amused you. This time, it breaks you, and you give in. He is solid as an oak, and as it turns out, his chest is an excellent place to cry on. Under the shelter of his chin you wring yourself dry, until it feels like you have nothing left inside you. His large hand rests lightly upon the back of your head, shielding you from the world. He is warm, and his cologne is subtle but heavenly. Sandalwood, maybe, and something spiced. Cardamom, perhaps. A hint of pepper.

You don’t particularly want to move, even though you absolutely should. Yet his hold on you has not loosened, and you tell yourself that maybe John Wick needed a hug just as badly as you did.

“People keep telling me that it gets easier, and I just want to punch them in the face,” you sniffle.

A huff of laughter escapes him. You feel it stir your hair on the top of your head. “Yeah. I get that.”

Finally you pull back, though not as far as you should. You’ve never actually been this close to him before, and you look at each other from a foot away. Sometimes proximity can shatter the illusion of someone’s attractiveness—but not this man. The impossible angle of his cheekbones, the soft scruff of his beard…is it just you, or does the edge in his gaze soften a little, when he looks at you? It makes your legs a little weak, and you kind of hate yourself for it.

It has nothing to do with you, stupid, you tell yourself. Where you and Helen weren’t exactly twins, you did resemble each other strongly. In profile, you’d been mistaken for her in public plenty of times before. If anything, it was probably unnerving for this poor man who missed his wife so much, to hold you, a sorry facsimile, in his arms. Out of pity, most likely.  

Helen had been the good sister. The upstanding one, the kind one. You? You can be such a twisted little thing.

“Sorry,” you sigh, noticing the smudge of makeup on his lapel.

He doesn’t even glance down, that intense gaze still fixed upon you. “Don’t be.”

Unbidden heat blooms from your cheeks to your toes, finding yourself the subject of that gaze. You’ve got to go, before you really embarrass yourself.

“I'll leave you alone. It was nice to see you, John.”

You turn to go, hugging yourself against the early spring chill. Why did you have to feel so bereft, without his arms around you? You take a few steps before he calls after you, “Y/n?”

You freeze in your tracks, a thrill jetting down your spine. “Yeah?” you dare, turning to half look over your shoulder.

“I…was thinking about going to Helen’s favorite restaurant tonight. Would you like to join me?”

Your heart beats double time in your chest, as you slowly turn to face him. You should say no. There’s a thousand reasons you should say no. This was your sister’s husband. It doesn’t matter that he’s the most handsome man you’ve ever seen, and that he’s been kind to you, and that he’s looking at you like he might drown if you say no.

“I would like that,” you answer, and your heartbeat thundering in your ears sounds like the hammering of nails into your own coffin.

Part 2

[feralrabidcrow]

How Old I Think The Mercs Are

This is more so just for my own reference, also some bonus characters. These are their ages in 1968.

Scout: 22

"The Naked and the Dead" takes place in 1972. In this issue, Spy reveals that Scout was conceived 27 years ago, making him 26/27. I know a lot of people take this at face value to mean Scout is exactly 27 but it does take 9 months to make a baby. Subtract 4 years, we get 22 in 1968.

Soldier: 47

This would make him about 18 around the start of World War 2, which I feel works well considering what the man is all about. I also imagine he claims to be born on the 4th of July, but it's more than a bit doubtful if he's telling the truth.

Pyro: 32

I don't have any evidence or argument for this one, it's just based on vibes

Demoman: 38

Once again, no real evidence or arguments for this one, based purely on vibes

Heavy: 45 Zhanna: 39 Bronislava: 35 Yana: 31

This is where I get a bit insane. Heavy and his family were sent to the gulag in 1941. Using the photo from "A Cold Day in Hell", I estimate Heavy in this photo to be maybe 18, Zhanna 12, Bronislava 8, and Yana 4. I also don't know how children look like at different ages at all so maybe I'm way off but those are my estimates.

Engineer: 42

It does take a long time to get a PhD, even more time to get 11, but knowing Engineer he could probably grind through them in no time. It's also stated that he spent 10 years in the Texas oilfields, so between that and the PhDs he isn't exactly young anymore, but not super old either.

Medic: 46/47

I know a lot of people headcanon Medic to be in his 50s or later, but this number is based purely on the very elaborate backstory I have for him. Besides, by the time we get to 1972, the time of "The Naked and the Dead", he would be 50.

Sniper: 26

New Zealand sunk 40 years ago in the times of the comics, and 10 years later Sniper's father tries to escape in a rocket, only for baby Sniper to get in the rocket instead and crash land in Australia. This makes Sniper 30 in the comics, and thus, 26 in 1968.

Spy: 48

Spy states he was young and foolish when he dropped a sex bomb on Scout's mother, so I think he was about 25 when Scout was conceived. Leaving him at 48 in 1968.

Miss Pauling: 24

I imagine she's only a bit older than Scout, but she has worked for the Administrator a long time, since she was rather young.

[arikihalloween]

Wakfu art dump because yes

This post is gonna be super long because I will ramble IN DEPTH today

So huh if you like my rambling or my art just read ig, otherwise scroll away idk what to tell ya

Showing some of my art and ramble because wakfu is part of my current big 3 hyperfixations ( along with WH and Trolls )

So huh enjoy my growing insanity ( I compiled it in one post to not annoy people too much :')

Presenting my oc Sharm !

An (very pink) Eliotrope

She's based on my in game character but I kinda gave her lore and a story so

⭐INFODUMP about Wakfu in general ! ⭐

Basic infos for those who don't know anything about Wakfu :

Wakfu is a french animated serie made by the studio Ankama, who also made several mmorpg games ( and way more, like the amount of content and lore is crazy)

Most of the stories will take place on the World of Twelves, populated by 12 main races (with many variation)

And there is a 13th "main race", the Eliatropes, which is the race of the main character of the anime, Yugo

Eliotropes ( with a o instead of a) are a subrace of the Eliatropes ( lore is explained in the serie but I don't wanna spoil, so to boil it down, Eliotropes are unstable pale copies of eliatropes) [ they are playable in the game wakfu]

So, what about Sharm ? Well she was born a pretty regular Eliotrope. She had two "brothers", Chance and Vitali, who unfortunately ended up fading away with time ( mechanically, when an Eliotrope die, his/her essence will go to the nearest Eliotrope to allow them to live longer)

So Sharm was left alone for very long, and stayed in Eliatropes ruins she found. Those were overgrown by stasis ( type of crystals, very bad, generally associated with corruption and destruction)

However, the essence she got from her siblings passing could only last so long

One day, in a desperate attempt to not die, Sharm took stasis and...ate it. Chewed on the mf crystals, and surprisingly, an interesting reaction occured : it stabilised her essence. It also made her basically frozen in development, Sharm cannot grow anymore and her power levels are quite limited in quantity, unless she uses stasis.

So my girl went through the ages, she kept on researching on the remnant of the eliatrope race ( wiped out aside from a few) and became sort of an archeologist

Nowadays, Sharm travels from a country/city to an other, often with mercenaries she hires as bodyguards . The other two ocs in this sketch page are the said mercenaries

And the cat is called Noiraude !

Sharm needs protection because she is stupidly useless in combat

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

And also I have fanarts of Nora !

And also, it's time for the gremlin mode

The worst of the ramble

I kinda just need to scream for a moment

Beware, big spoilers for the serie ahead ! Stop now and go watch Wakfu !! It's all on Netflix ( season 1, season 2, then the 3 oav, THEN season 3 and you will be ready for season 4 :D)

So, this character is Nora (second drawing is a headcanon version of her)

Who is Nora ? She is the sixth eliatrope of the Council ( Eliatropes are rules by the six first borns of the race who can reincarnate along with their dragon twin)

Nora appeared for the first time in a flashback the episode "Quilbi" in season 2

In 2011

And back then she was in a flashback, so presumed dead from the war that wiped out the Eliatropes

BUT

Lately, as clips and trailers of season 4 of Wakfu has been released

It's confirmed that Nora is there

She's alive

She's in season 4

*grabs u*

2011

She has been my favorite character of Wakfu since her one and only appearance, alright ?

And now

12-13 years later

She is real

SHE IS REAL AND ALIVE IN THE SERIE

*maniacal laughter*

I will not shut up about it

Prepare for the fanarts

*retreats to the shadows*

[thebestofoneshots]

WOLFSTAR X READER SERIES

Gilded Constellations | THE INTERLUDE

Series Masterlist | Previous episode

Summary: You meet Sirius and Regulus at a family vacation in the Caribbean, but things don't go as planned and you end up losing contact once the trip is over. Years later your family moves to England and you get accepted at Hogwarts where you finally meet Sirius once again, along with all of his friends. One of them with a mysterious secret, that you'll uncover as you embark on your own Hogwarts adventure. This IS a wolfstar x reader fic, but it's incredibly slow burn. They won't start all dating each other until we're very deep into the story, but I promise the long wait will be worth it.

Hey Lovelies, welcome to “The Interlude” of Gilded Constellations. We’ve basically already gotten to 100 k words in this story and that’s absolutely insane!!! Which is why I thought of doing a little thing where I could interact with my readers. As a thank you for being there and supporting me so much through this journey. 

And so… this little Q&A was born. Those who didn't get to ask their questions, don’t worry my darlings, my ask will be open all week for you to ask whatever you want. It’s a mini event that will last from today ‘till next wednesday. 

But yes, it does mean this week we won’t get a new chapter D: 

Don’t worry, it will definitely be worth it since the next couple of episodes are two that I’ve put absolute extra care on crafting, and I will put just as much care on revising. I’ve been quite literally posting non stop for 15 weeks consecutively. That’s almost 4 months, what?!?! 

I needed my tiny lil break, besides I wanted to dedicate this bit of time to work on my Maraudween Special smutty series that will include some interesting mini AUs, so those that read my other stuff and not just Gilded Constellations will be quite literally treated this Halloween. There will be a lot of posts these next few weeks. Although, I might be releasing some of the Maraudween stories at the beginning of November. Unfortunately, I’m not a machine and I can’t write in seconds like Chat GPT. 

Without further ado, let’s get on with those questions!

Where did you get the inspo for the fic?

Oh my god if I tell you guys about this… It all started when I was in class, sometimes when I’m bored, my little mind starts to wander. I’m a total daydreamer, I can’t deny that, but at that moment in particular I was quite literally thinking of nothing and everything at the same time. And then, out of nowhere, this phrase came to me: 

“You look at them the same way you looked at me when we met…” 

And I was like, “omg that’s so freaking angsty” and “That’s a great freaking line for a poly story” And I quite literally wrote it down with a little tag that said, “-the start of a poly relationship story because I’ve never read enough of those.” 

And then I closed the notebook and went back to class. But I guess the idea had already set in my brain because next thing I know, I’m writing down more things down. And let me tell you, before Gilded Constellations I only wrote Oneshots because a story seemed like too much commitment. So I kid you not, I wrote down: 

“Not a short story, but maybe a 3-5 chapter long fic”. 

Jokes on me though, we’re 15 chapters in, like 20-something written and we’re probably going to end up with longer than 200k words and I’m not even sorry about it. Besides, I'm really pumped to finish it because I want to get it printed in Lulu and have my own little copy as a “Damn you wrote that.” kind of evidence thing. So worry not about being left with an unfinished fic, I’m going to complete this story even if it’s the last thing I do. 

Besides, if I’m being honest, when I’m not writing, I miss my boys, so I’ll definitely miss passing the time with them when I’m done with GC. (Luckily I’ve already got another series planned and spoiler alert: This one will be Poly!Marauders x reader, a lot spicier aaaand, PIRATES.) 

That’s how the fic started, well that and a dream that was basically most of Chapter 3 and I thought it was so cute that I wrote it down and then I was like, “hold up, this could be the start of the Poly story I was talking about…” 

Are there any real-life experiences that influenced your writing?

Well I mean, I’d say that art imitates life and life imitates art, but in regards to real-life romance I don’t really know that much. But there are definitely some things here and there that have been sprinkled from my real life into the fic. Not sure if I could think of a particular one but I can say sometimes Remus gives me the same vibe that a boy I “used to” have a crush on. “Used to” in quotation marks because I kinda still do even if we haven’t seen each other in years. 

So I guess a lot of Remus comes from my crush, but also Remus is his own little boy as well and I love him more for it. Even If I’m torturing him so much with his heartache, I promise it will be worth it Remus, reader and Sirius will take care of you, eventually. 

Other than that, I guess I like to pay attention to things around me, you’ll see me looking at nature, the sky, the way leaves move, the way people interact with each other. Especially at that actually, I like to pay attention to people, how they move, how they interact, and their reactions. Sometimes I do it irl, and sometimes I just watch movies or series, and since my writing process is like seeing a movie in my head and then putting it into words, it’s always useful to pay attention to the world around me. Even if I sometimes struggle to put into words exactly what I’m seeing in my head.  

Did you already have everything planned, or did you just go with the flow? If you have already, how far? all of it? Or just some chapters ahead? 

Well, yes and no. I do have various key points of the story planned, a lot of plot points that are going to happen and that’s kinda what I’m sustaining myself on. I know the big points and then I just have to write what happens in between them. And I’ve got it planned all the way ‘till my babes all start dating. After that, if I’m honest I’m not sure how I’m going to end it. Some parts of me want to go for the saddest ending possible because it would go along with cannon and the other side of me, the one that can’t bear to see my boys being sad, wants to just deviate completely and/or leave an open ending. 

But so far, I really cannot tell what exactly I’m going to do, I just know that time will tell. Because sometimes the characters just do what they want and I love to see where they take me. Which is why the ending is not set in stone just yet. 

Without giving too many spoilers, can you tease upcoming plot twists or surprises we can expect in future chapters?

My sly little foxes have already guessed some of the major plot twists that are upcoming in the story. And there definitely will come some surprises along the way, some you will love, some you won’t so much. But I promise you it will all be worth it! 

Remember in Gilded Constellations, everything happens for a reason. 

THE FANCAST

What's your fancast for the fic? Did you pick the reader too or just leave it be? //  I wanted to know if you have a fancast for everyone…

I did mention that I basically see stuff as a movie in my head right? So yes, I do have a fancast! Although I most definitely see James as Aaron, Sirius as Ben, Remus as Andrew and Peter as Dane, I have also twisted them in my brain. Like it’s them, right? But my version of them. Like my Sirius is so fucking ethereal in my head that sometimes I myself blush with his beauty. And Remus, well, he is probably most similar to Talita Asami’s from instagram. Especially this one. 

There’s something about the way she contrasts his soft features with the scars that’s just perfect. It’s that sexy pirate vibe I cannot get out of my head, if that makes sense.  But also I’ve been toying with AI lately (Talkie) and ended up with these two versions of Remus and Sirius and they have absolutely taken over. 

Sidenote: I made way to many of these, so do tell me if you wanna see them.

The reader: Uhm… well, I kind of just see her as me, hehe. Which is kind of the point, you should all just see the reader as yourselves, if you’re comfortable with that of course. 

The rest of our babies though? Lily Evans, Marlene and Mary, are kind of like the boys as in I see them as their fancast but also not entirely. And Lily especially, she’s just so freaking pretty in my head, there’s no one I know to match her, all thought Sophie Skelton and Kennedy Walsh (@/c4tluvr666 on Tiktok) are super close. 

Now, outside of canon characters, aka all of these OC’s I’ve been creating with time, some of them do have a fancast and some of them don’t. Let’s focus on the ones that do, because some of them I literally had in my head since the very, very beginning of the fic.��

Tom Harrow- This boy actually started as a younger version of Tom Hiddleston in my head, but the more I wrote him, the more he said, “Luv, that’s not what I look like!” And, almost out of nowhere, baby Tom Hiddleston became Rober Sheehan, and let me tell you, it stuck. And it stuck so bad there is no way I could see Tom as anything other than Rob. Especially with his role as Klaus in Umbrella Academy having a rather similar personality in the entire open-minded spectrum that he’s got going on. And, talking about teasers, this boy is actually going to be a key point on the romance between our golden throuple to develop, so keep an eye out for him. I love him so much tbh.  

Then we’ve got Beth Doxon, this girl is my wifey, I freaking love Beth so much and if you’ve been paying attention you may already know who I based her off, at least in looks. It’s Anya Taylor Joy as Beth Harmon in Queen’s Gambit, redhead queen (can you tell I really, really like redheads?) . Also that’s why she has such a strong character, even if my Beth is a lot more of a Party Animal than the original character. 

Alexander Wood in my head is just a carbon copy of his son Oliver, but in Hufflepuff, and the rest of the Quidditch teams, I’ve got a good idea of what they look like in my head, but not really a fan cast for them. Suggestions accepted. 

Well, except for Minho Yun, since his role in the story is going to be as a pretty strong supporting character, in fact, he was meant to be somewhat of an alt love interest that was going to help build Sirius’ jealousy, but in the end, I decided to completely scrap that to further develop him as a character. Some interesting things that you’ll actually learn on the GC Halloween special. Oh, and Minho is actually based on Sang Heon Lee (on looks) and Ki Hong Lee (on character, specifically on his role in Maze Runner). Had I based Minho on the character of Sang Heon Lee who inspired him, we would have way too many slutty boys in the same room, with Tom and Sirius and him, It’d be chaos, which is why he ended up being a little shier. 

Nox, Neil and Todd, literally are just Nox, Neil and Tod from De*d Poets Society. I was rewatching the movie to nail that boy friend group interactions and to get in the Dark Academia Vibes and I wanted to give my boys a happy ending. 

Also Neil just gives me the most massive Prongs vibe I cannot.

And lastly, there’s Nina Blythe. Nina to me is a totally angelic girl, I’ve got a very vivid picture of what she looks like in my head but I don’t really have a fancast for her. Maybe a little bit like Aurora (the singer), in regards to her soft features, but Nina has longer hair and it’s a little wavy. I kind of think of her as a girl from a Renaissance painting, emphasis on girl, since she is supposed to look younger than she is. Any ideas for a fancast? For her and for anyone I missed, I’m completely open to your suggestions. 

THE TEACHERS

Professor Nightshade is definitely Eva Green from Miss Peregrine or Jessica Chastain from Crimson Peak. She’s got that tall,  regal and dark but elegant vibe to her that is just so freaking gorgeous and awe-inspiring. I totally have a crush on Seraphina, can you tell? 

Professor Aurelius Spellman is kind of inspired by Kingsley Shackelbolt. However, if I had to cast someone for the role it would be Djimon Hounsou, he has that attractive and rough vibe to him. Like scary, demanding but also alluring things going on, he’s just got the magician type I suppose. 

This one’s going to be silly, but I can’t imagine Kettleburn as anyone other than Gobber the Belch from HTTYD, like, take away the horned helmet and give him a pointy hat, and boom, Kettleburn ladies and gentlemen. Down to the messy personality, honestly. 

And Donovan Pendragon (the teacher for Magical Theory) I feel like he isn’t mentioned enough, because I literally had no idea what his name was even going to be and I just left a line for it until I was editing the chapter before posting. So he doesn’t really have a cast. He’s caucasian in my head, but that’s about all I’ve got from him. Any ideas? 

Do you have any headcanons for any of the characters and their relationship that you haven’t talked about in the story? 

REMUS: Well I feel like this one has been talked about several times in the story but Remus being a beast in bed? I feel like everyone loves to tease him about it in the castle but to me, he’s also a total soft boy? Like especially the first time, I feel like he’s going to be so overwhelmed by both Sirius and Reader that he will basically just melt in the hands of his lovers. 

SIRIUS: Smitten little puppy of my life. 

SIRIUS AND REMUS: They’ve totally kissed in the past. At least once, and Remus still dreams about it. Sirius, well… maybe he’ll get some memories of it every now and then.

READER: My girl thinks she’s so freaking smart and yet is the most oblivious to her own feelings; she could be considered an idiot. She’s also so selfless it hurts, but like literally. Also, she loves flirting with Sirius way too much. Still, they definitely will need Rem in their relationship because there is no self-preservation sense when her personality is just as chaotic as our Puppy. Side note: Remus will 100% blush when she starts flirting with him in the same way he does with Sirius. And let’s not talk about what a tomato he will be when Sirius does it as well. 

PETER: He kinda disliked the reader at first, especially since he felt like she was taking away his friends, but eventually he warmed up to her, and loves their friendship. 

LILY: She enjoyed the kiss with Reader, and it made her realize she’s totally bi, because she also enjoyed the kiss with James. 

TOM: My boy is clever as hell and he knows a lot more than he lets on. Also, he secretly ships the golden throuple. 

BETH: She’s Tom’s bestie and she knows a lot of things too. She will also ignite chaos with the ultimate goal of being Gryffindor Tower’s own cupid. Do you think what happened at Marlene’s Party was a coincidence? 

REGG: My beautiful Reggie is still sad about the incident. He’s still trying to find a way to reconnect with you and it pains him that you think he’d rat you out. Even then, he values the fact that you are with Sirius and that you’re helping him through everything that’s been going on, especially since he saw how red Sirius’s eyes were when he left the Black’s house with a trunk in hand sobs stuck in his throat. Reg cried like a baby that night, just wishing for time to go by as fast as possible so he could go back to school and see his big brother again. (I’m so sorry for that guys).

MINHO: Has a secret crush and you would not believe me if I told you who it was. 

NINA: Has a secret crush and some of you have probably already guessed who it is. 

DAMOCLES: You don’t know him yet but omg he’s just so clever, thank you Kles for existing.

And let's be honest, I totally have a bunch more of this but I think this is way more than enough, for now…

Out of all the chapters so far, what’s been your favorite?

This is too fucking hard to decide. But If I had to choose my top three, and in no order in particular, I’d say, for the released ones:  

Fooled around and Fell in Love

Because, can we talk about the kiss scene? I feel like this one will come back bite my kiddos in the back so they finally realize what they actually fucking need. 

Do Ya 

I’m a total sucker for Sirius, what can I tell ya? But also the flying scenes were so much fun to write, totally an adventure to go through, still among my favs. 

Maybe I’m amazed 

“Do you like Golf?” 

From the unreleased episodes: 

Tonight’s What It Means To Be Young

The calm before the storm. Or is it the storm before the storm? 

Bad Moon Rising 

The FUCKING storm. But also one of my favorite things I’ve ever written. I think I like action scenes a little too much.

*** On The Run

The storm continues. But also, the calm after the storm.

Do you have a playlist that you always listen to when you're writing? 

Not a specific playlist, but I have been listening to a lot of ‘70s rock. Things like Queen, Bowie, Boston, Foreigner,  Kansas, Fleetwood Mac, Nazareth, The Police and some others. All of them help me get in the mood for writing. At least in the mood of the era, if that makes sense.

Aside from the ’70s classics, I’ve also been listening to a lot of Lord Huron, Hozier, and Aurora (I sort of discovered her recently and I’m obsessed with some of her songs). Also some of The Killers, Dotan and Vian Izak sprinkled here and there. Bastille and Imagine Dragons are always and forever so of course they wouldn’t be missing from my list. 

But when I’m struggling, like really struggling with writing, then I go to this Best Instrumental playlist, where they have everything from the Narnia and Peter Pan 2003 soundtracks to Vivaldi and Ghibli.  It really does help with the concentration. 

How long for the guys to understand that they fancy each other? 

Well, when you say the guys do you mean Sirius and Remus? ‘Cause then it’s not thaaaaaat far away from now. Now from then to them all dating, well…

I know Remus kind of struggles with feelings, and probably even more now that Sirius and the reader are together. But when he's gonna say "hey, can I come in?" 😏 lol I just want them together so baaaad!

Ahahahahahaha, Well that’s not exactly how it’s gonna go, but it’ll happen sometime after Christmas.

After wolfstar and the reader get together, the fic will end? or we're gonna have a lot of them together to compensate for the agony? 🥺

I’m not sure about the ending yet, but I’m definitely going to add so much fluff of the three of them together that you’re all gonna get cavities. Also, I’ve been writing The 5 Senses and the Halloween special (that might be finished until after Halloween) to practice for the spice, so I’m def compensating for the agony. 

Also, I kind of want to explore the social implications of being in a throuple, of making that public in the `70s. Seems like a whole lotta issue bringer that kinda interests me… Sorry, you’re not completely getting rid of the angst even when they’re all together. 

I don’t remember if I already asked you about this, but as a Regulus’ wife, I need to know. He'll come back, right? She will talk with him and he will be able to explain everything to her? I need this, I really need this! I can leave without this closing. THEY NEED TO BE FRIENDS AGAIN!

Your husband is safe with me. I promise. I’m not gonna say it’s gonna be very soon, but he will be safe because I love baby Reggie and I too can’t stand him being mistreated either. 

Not a question. I just want to say that I really love this story. It's one of my favorites, and I just put it on my masterlist for how much I love it.

Aww shut up, I love you so much <3

Will we have some Sirius jealousy? ‘Cause I'm really interested in that. Oooh... will he notice that Reader and Remus are... more than friends before they even know it? I dunno, he's just oblivious about everything around him. 

Funny that you ask, yes we will have a lot of Jealous!Sirius, in fact, it’s a huge part of how the throuple will develop. And you will have it so soon, even if it’s not exactly what you expect it to be. I can’t wait for next week!

And in regards to noticing, well… Sirius is not going to be the most oblivious about his own feelings in this story. I mean… not always.

Are there any particular scenes or moments in your story that were especially fun or challenging to write?

Well, I’m actually finding it a lot harder to write stuff atm, so I’d say the limbo between the Bad Moon Rising Arch and the next big thing that’s going to happen has been the hardest. Especially since I’m already going to get to a key point in which some shit is going to go down and I’m still not sure how bad and angsty I want to make it. Don’t worry, our golden throuple will be alright but…

In regards to fun, I must say the parties are some of my favorites, Potion Pong was incredibly fun to write ‘cause I literally transported myself to it and it was like actually living it, even if it was in my head. Also the flying scenes, they’re always fun to write, the race was incredible tbh. 

I love to write the fun banter and the teasing too, it brings me joy. But I bet you could tell I’m one for the teasing from the very first chapters of Gilded Constellations. 

Nina fancies Reader, right? She does. I just need a yes. I already know that 😌 

( ≖‿  ≖ )

Can you share any behind-the-scenes trivia or Easter eggs that readers might not have noticed in your story?

I feel like there’s a lot of behind-scenes I shared so far but I guess I could share a few pics of my organization systems. Things like…

Your schedule: 

The cover:

Some of you have already been theorizing about it too, you can look at some of those theories over here, and here, and also here.

Alt Covers I designed but weren't chosen:

Something you might not know:

GC is also available on Wattpad and AO3. The AO3 chapters usually drop like 30 minutes or an hour before Tumblr because it's easier to post there. And the Wattpad releases are actually way behind in comparison (there isn't much engagement over there).

Some Shots of my Plot notebook (0 spoilers): 

And also, have you noticed the special little thing in the names of the chapters? 10 housepoints to whoever notices

I just thought of this, but what if we make a little housepont system and from things that you guys guess of the story you get housepoints and then we have a houseprice in the end? OMG I'd love to do this, if you're on tell me your house in the comments. So far Sytherin would have like 40 points just beacuse of dear @cometsghost and I'm not sure what is @blacksgarden house but they would also have like 40 pts.

How do you stay motivated and inspired to keep writing, especially in moments when you might experience writer's block?

It may or may not be healthy, but I just force myself to type? I never really have writer’s block, rather I’d call it writer’s overload. It’s when I’m running through so many possibilities in my head and I can’t pick which is the one I want to go through with. So I keep thinking about it and I don’t type. Which is why I just force myself to type, more often than not I’ll end up writing something I really like. 

And as for the motivation, honestly just getting to see my boys again. To be able to submerge back into Hogwarts, that’s enough motivation. I seriously get an urge to go back because I miss them. It's kinda crazy. Like I might be chilling at home and suddenly the thought “I wish I was at Hogwarts” crosses my mind, not even joking. 

The other motivation is finishing my book so I can get a printed version to place in my bookshelf and show it off. Not that anyone would know what it is, but I’d know, which is enough, hehe. And also to be a better writer, they say you should write every single day, which is kind of what I’m attempting to do with GC. By writing a chapter every week, I literally force myself to write every single day, even if just a couple of words. 

Can we have cute moments with Remus? uuuh, Will he be cute when she notices that she really likes him?

Yes! We can have all the cute moments with Remus. Even before they all notice they’re into each other, we’re gonna have so many cute moments because even if Reader is dating Sirius I can’t leave my beautiful boy on the sidelines. Besides, how can I torture him if he doesn’t get a taste of how good it would be to be with them? 

What can readers look forward to in the next chapters, and do you have any long-term plans or goals for GCs development?

Angst. Don’t hate me for this. But also comfort, and some fun little adventures and then a bit more angst, hehe…

Well, that’s the end of the questions I got sent ahead. Hope you enjoyed this rollercoaster of a Q&A. If you have any more, or if my answers have provoked further questions, then by all means, share them with me, I’d love to be able to interact with you a bit more. 

Love ya, Lily xx

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[grapejuicestyless]

Harry Styles x Fem!reader

HSLOT opener Instagram Blurb pt.4

Faceclaim: Gracie Abrams

🟢🔵🟡liked by harrystyles and 1,007,021 others

yourusername Good Riddance. My first born and my baby!!! I’m so shocked that it’s actually out for all of you to hear. I hope you love her as much as I do! 🥹🥹

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harrystyles PROUD PROUD PROUD!

taylorswift my child! I’m so proud of you. You’ve gotten so big I’m so mad you’re not my little secret anymore 🥺💕

|yourusername I love you sm. Don’t even.

harrystyles favorite track is obviously full machine.

|goodfineline safe choice.

taylorandyn what’s your fav track @yourusername?

|yourusername right now. Definitely.

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🟢🟡🔵liked by yourusername and 3,400,102 others

harrystyles From opener to #1 debut album in the US in just a few months!!! I’d like to take credit but I can’t. I’m proud of you, I love you!

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yourusername I LOVE YOU BOO.

phoebebridgers69 album of the year(not sorry)

|yourusername I agree.

honeymoon 💕💕

finelinecherry DID HE JUST CONFESS HIS LOVE. ON. INSTA????

ynandharry I LOVEEE THEM.

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yourusername As I promised…the good riddance tour will start up later this year! 🤯 Dates for the cities will be announced on the YNHQ account. I can’t wait to see all of you. 🥹

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harrystyles so this is the scheduling stuff that made you leave me…

|yourusername hehe…

taylorswift AHHHHHHHH IS ANYONE ELSE SCREAMING??

|oliviarodrigo I AMMMMM!!

yourusername As much as I absolutely adore opening for the people I have looked up to all my life, finally having my own tour again after two years of only headlining for others feels like an absolute dream. I’m so so so excited to see all of you!

|goodriddancefineline IM SO READY.

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dailymail Sources report that after only five months together, as it was singer, Harry Styles and his girlfriend, Y/n y/l/n, have gone through an amicable breakup.

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harryloveryn @yourusername IS THIS TRUE???

finelineriddance WHAT. NO.

celebloves we were all rooting for them.

ynlovedharry THIS HURTS.

|ynsmygf do I change my username now or later?

harrysking01 I cannot believe she broke his heart. Amicable my ass. I heard that she broke up with him for her tour.

|harryscherries And Im the Pope. Leave her alone! People break up.

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yourusername Happy opening night to the tour of my dreams! 🥹 I love all of you!!

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harrystyles proud of you.

oliviarodrigo 💕

|yourusername ily.

harrystyles 🙏

honeymoon ✨✨✨

finelineriddance they didn’t break up. No way.

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harrystyles I feel like myself(your insanely proud boyfriend) right now. I love you @yourusername

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yourusername My boyfriend is so sex c.

|harrystyles I agree.

gemmastyles good riddance✨

lizzo MY FAVORITES!!!

cherrybabies MOM AND DAD LIVE ANOTHER BREAKUP SCANDAL!!

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[greenerteacups]

I absolutely adore your characterizations in Lionheart. Who has been the ‘easiest’ or most natural character to write, and conversely which character have you struggled the most with?

ooh, a fun one. so the answer's actually changed! right now, the most natural character to write is easily Draco (thank GOD, right?) i've developed the kind of intimacy with his brain in that special way that only spending 500,000 words and five years with someone can. it's at the point where I can basically just go, "what would Draco do here?" and have an immediate gut-check answer, which is great, and really speeds up the writing process. but in the beginning, he was much harder! I knew I had to sell people on this version of him that was already very far removed from canon, but couldn't be too OOC, or he'd just feel like some random pureblood Gryffindor OC. specifically, he needed to be bratty, cowardly and cruel, and yet also the kind of person the Golden Trio would conceivably befriend. all this had to happen while also being an eleven-year-old boy.

Hermione, in contrast, came much easier when she was younger. Baby Granger is nothing more or less than the world's nerdiest, bossiest, try-harding-est twelve-year-old, which i found fairly easy to write because i happen to have held that title myself. in later books, inversely, she's been much harder, because i have to convey more with less. Hermione hates talking about her emotions, for one, and even though draco knows her well, there's a lot about her he doesn't and can't understand, so i as the author am limited in my toolset for expressing what she's thinking. like, one of my biggest frustrations in book 4 was that hermione is almost assuredly having insanely complicated feelings At All Times about the Ministry of Magic and her muggle-born identity, but because draco's main coping mechanism for the situation is Don't Think About It. while we get some of it — get as much as I can cram in, frankly, without just dumping hermione in a therapist's chair and forcing her to digress — we don't get nearly as much as I would like. but hey, you know, at some point you have to throw in the towel and admit your story can't do everything. gotta leave something for the other writers, greedy.

the hardest character to write is and ever was Narcissa Malfoy, because she walks this fine line of sophistication and brutality, domesticity and professionalism, meticulous control and helpless madness. she's a woman of contradictions, and trying to weave that all together without losing sight of her, or making her flat, is a pretty draining exercise. i find myself procrastinating scenes with Narcissa, even though i love writing her, just because i know she's going to make me work for it.

[iowriteswords]

Lex Learns Batman's Identity - Preview Snippet from Flightless Birds Part 4

Lex has known Bruce Wayne for most of his life. They used to get dragged to the same boring parties, until Bruce’s parents died. (He’d disappeared for several years after that—he was too young to attend social events alone, and no one wanted to invite his guardian, who was a butler.)

Neither of them had fit in with the other kids, who’d thought that Lex was mean and Bruce was weird. This could have made them friends if they hadn’t shared their peers’ opinions of each other; as it was, they disliked each other more than the other kids disliked either of them.

He remembers one gala he’d been dragged to, the boys had been trying to set up some kind of game. One kid, he didn’t remember who, had decided, “And Lex and Bruce will be the bad guys.”

Lex hadn’t cared what his role was—he’d play the game to make the night go a little quicker, and when it was over he’d spend the rest of the summer with his mom. But Bruce had turned red and stomped his feet and insisted, “I’m not a bad guy.”

They were at an impasse. Eventually, Oliver Queen intervened. He often did, then, for obnoxious child Bruce, and later, for a very different but equally obnoxious teen Brucie, when he was old enough to come to parties without the uninvited butler. (When Bruce was six, Lex had watched him bite a man for calling him Brucie. At sixteen, it was how he introduced himself.)

“We don’t need two bad guys,” Oliver had said. “Bruce can be on my team.”

The game went on. It was a night like many others. But Lex is picturing that Bruce, tiny, red faced, indignant, insisting, “I’m not a bad guy,” when the epiphany hits.

He looks across the room at his son. His son, who now trusts him enough to do homework in his office, instead of meeting in public. His son, who’s dating, of all people, Bruce Wayne’s son.

“Kon?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you dating Batman’s son?”

Kon stares at him. There’s that split second pause that Lex knows means he’s about to lie. “No,” he says, speaking very slowly, like he thinks Lex is stupid, “I’m dating Tim. You know that.” He pauses. “Does Batman even have kids?”

“I suspect he has seven of them. Named Tim, Jason, Dick, Cassa—”

Kon bolts out of the room at superspeed.

Well. He left his homework—he’ll be back.

-

It takes Kon two hours to come back. When he does, he knocks on the front door instead of the office window, and he has Tim with him.

“You forgot your homework,” Lex says. He walks back toward the office, confident the kids will follow him. He’s not about to have some sort of confrontation with a teenager in the front hallway.

Kon sits down. “Tim’ll talk to you when he’s ready,” he says, then resumes his homework.

Tim stares at Lex for a long moment, leaning against the back of Kon’s armchair. Lex waits. He’s had enough encounters with Tim by now to realize pushing him is utterly impossible.

“I was born in a different world,” he says, finally. “Six of the seven of us were. That’s why all my paperwork is fake.”

“Batman brought you here?”

“Yeah. In my world—in my world you paid a psychopath to torture me for three weeks. I was fourteen.”

Kon’s hand snakes around the side of the armchair to grab Tim’s. Otherwise, he seems occupied with his homework.

“At the end of those three weeks, my kidnapper and my world’s Batman were both dead, I was insane, and you were the president of the United States.”

“You killed him,” Lex says.

“Yeah.”

Kon’s hand squeezes Tim’s; Tim squeezes back.

“Batman’s my dad. You aren’t going to ruin another world for me. Because you love Kon. And Kon loves me.”

“I’m not going to ruin anything for you, Tim,” Lex says. He’s trying to picture an even younger version of the very young man in front of him killing Batman. It’s an unpleasant image.

“I knew Bruce flunked gym on purpose,” he says, hoping to lighten the mood.

All the tension goes out of Tim, and he smiles. “He only did it to upset you.”

Kon comes around the chair to stand pressed close to Tim. “Okay?” he asks.

“Okay,” Tim says.

Kon smiles at Lex. “Congrats on being the second smartest person in the room. Tim figured it out when he was nine.”

“Well, accounting for universal variants—”

“Oh, this world’s version of me beat you to it, too.”

Lex decides to ignore that. He checks his watch. “We have dinner reservations. Tim, you’re welcome to join us.” He’d rather have a tag-along than wait for Kon to fly him back to Gotham. And they’d probably miss the reservation. Kon doesn’t fly as quickly as Superman—Lex’s contribution to his genetics, unfortunately.

[pastelavender88]

Sinbound- Chapter 11

Summary: It’s been a month since the events of the last chapter: Eddie and Buck are on the outs and Buck’s family is back in town; Something major happens to Y/n.

Warning: Talks of miscarriage.

Series Masterlist

It’s been a month since Eddie and I broke up. It was touch and go for a while. The night of the breakup I asked for 2 hours. It doesn’t take 2 hours to basically pick up your whole life. Alex and I took all our clothes and toiletries but we still had to come back and get the rest of our things. I decided it would be best to leave all the baby’s stuff there, but excluding that I still had a ton of things. Bobby and Athena served as the buffer between Eddie and I. Athena would text me to tell me that Bobby told her Eddie and Christopher would be out of the house from 12-4 pm and stuff like that. Eddie and I still haven’t spoken since that night even though he tried. He gave me a good 2 days before he was blowing up my cell and trying to talk and work things out, but I was serious when I meant Eddie and I were done. The betrayal still keeps me awake at night if I let my mind wander enough and the events starting on the night in question and the big blow up play in my head like a movie. Alex and I moved in with Buck for the time being while I figured out the next step in our lives. Buck was more than happy to welcome us and he’s been accommodating in any way he can. He’s been going with me to my doctor appointments, driving me around a lot since I’ve gotten a little bigger and lazier to do it myself, and even taking a parenting class with me. Even though I had Alex already a lot of things have changed in the last 12 years.  Speaking of all the things Buck is doing for me, Eddie is quite pissed at him because of it. Also, the fact that Buck is the one that told me about Eddie’s infidelity. So everything has been quite an adjustment. It was morning and Buck was off today so that meant family breakfast. Which was really more me cooking whatever I was craving and everyone being too lazy to complain or make anything else. Today was chicken, waffles, spicy syrup, bacon, eggs, and french toast. (Don’t judge but I craved this my whole pregnancy.) Buck came down from the room and sat at the table. The reason I call it the room is because technically it’s both Buck and I’s room. See Buck only has two rooms in his loft but the other room is Alex’s and it’s not exactly big enough to share. So Buck and I share the room in the sense that both of our things are there like clothes, shoes, jewelry, little things like that. Buck did buy a couch though, so that way he has something to sleep on. Right now Buck was trying to convince me to go with him and Alex to pick up his parents later. “They would love to see you. I mean it’s been over a year since they last saw you.” “Yeah and since then I got knocked up and then left a single mom. Again.” “True, but you look really cute pregnant and they haven’t seen this glow.” He said, as he pointed his fork at me. “That may be the case but seriously I’m not up for that yet.” Buck could tell my mood was becoming somber, so he let it go. “Alright. Did I tell you guys what happened yesterday at work? Some guy’s kids buried him in the sand and splashed water on him when a freak flash of lightning hit and turned the sand into glass. It was insane.” “Buck I’m trying to eat.” “Mom, that's actually really cool and mother nature at work. What did that guy say in that really old dinosaur movie ‘life always finds a way’. Life is science.” “Did she just call Jurassic Park a really old movie?” I asked Buck. I turned to Alex. “That movie came out the year I was born for your info.” “How do you think I feel? I’m older than you by two years.” Buck joked. The conversation kept flowing from there and eventually it was time to clean up and start the day. Since the break up with Eddie I haven’t really been writing much so my day usually centers around Buck and Alex. I felt like a 50’s housewife. After making sure everyone had everything they needed for their day I would tidy the house, wash dishes, do laundry. It was a feminist nightmare but I was so numb I didn’t really care. I’ve been seeing a therapist but it didn’t help as much as I thought it would. Most people describe therapy as this life-altering interaction but for me it felt like when you were called to the guidance counselor in school about bullying or something. Like I was put on the spot. Don’t get me wrong there was improvement but I just didn’t feel satisfied or “fixed” in a sense. We dived into my relationship issues a lot and I understand what Eddie was saying. The “relationship” that Buck and I had while Eddie and I were still together was emotional cheating, which proved my point. We were bad for each other. Eddie and I both rushed into this relationship after commitment issues on both sides, so we were destined for doom. Either way the pain inside of me from his affair with Ana wasn’t going away because I know that what I did didn’t warrant that. Instead of breaking it off or establishing clear boundaries, Eddie decided that cheating was the best route. So here I am feeling like less than a person over a toxic relationship we both should have some coming to an end. Buck’s POV Since Y/n didn’t want to come with me I was forced to suffer with my parents alone. It was worth it since Albert was there. “Uh, Albert, hey, check this out.” I showed Albert Y/n’s ultrasound picture. It was so cool to be a part of this process and I couldn’t help but show it off. “You brought more than takeout.” Albert replied, “Well, uh, Chimney didn't tell you?” “Yeah, that I've been gone less than a year and you're a father again? No.” God I hope my parents didn’t hear that. “Uh, no, not-not exactly.” “But that's a…” Albert started. “Baby. Buck...?” My mom was suddenly standing behind me. “Is there something you need to tell us? You're gonna be an uncle again!” My mom shouted as she jumped to conclusions. “Phillip! Maddie and Howard are gonna have another baby!” My mom yelled as she went to hug Chimney. “What?” Chim asked, confused. “That's fantastic! I had a feeling when you bought this house.” My dad replied. “I mean, it's a little soon to be pregnant again, but... Why not?!” Mom said. “This is very good news, Howard. Why didn't you tell us sooner? “ Chimney’s stepmom asked. “Uh, guys... Guys, we're... not pregnant.” He said. “You're not?” Mom asked. “No.” “Then who is?” Mom asked as she turned to me. “That’s what I was trying to say. Y/n is pregnant again. It’s a girl.” “You and Y/n are having another baby?” My dad asked. “No, mom is having a baby with Eddie.” Throughout all the confusion, everyone forgot Alex was sitting at the table on her tablet. “But, they're not together anymore so we're living with dad.” “Okay, let’s not deepdive into it. Give your mom some privacy.” When we got home it was time for a talk about privacy. “So Y/n and living with you while she’s pregnant with another man’s baby?” My dad asked. “And you’re going to help raise the baby?” “It's not like that. We’re not together, I’m just helping her while she figures a few things out. Also, if she wants of course I’ll help raise the baby but we haven’t thought that far ahead. We’re taking things day-by-day.” The way everyone except Maddie, Chimney, and Alex were looking at me I could tell they had a lot to say. “I think it's…” My mom started. “Here we go. “ I knew I was about to get an earful. “Great.” She finished. That shocked me. “Uh, yeah?” “You’re a wonderful father to Alex and I know if you need to be you’ll be a wonderful father to this little girl as well.” Dad replied. “Not only are you a good father but you’re a good man.” My mom said as she stepped towards me for a hug. I wrapped my arms around her. “Here. Dad, you want to see?” I said showing him the sonogram “Oh, absolutely.”  He said as he took the phone from me. “Phillip. You are going to allow this?” Howie’s dad asked. “It's not really for me to allow.” Dad replied. “A man cannot raise a child fathered by another man, it's unnatural.” Howie’s father reiterated. “Says the expert in child-rearing, huh? I would think you would relate to Buck's decision. Father them and let someone else raise them.” “Howie.” Albert explained. “Whoa, Chim. It's-it's okay.” I said. “A man who cannot control his family is not a man.” Howie’s dad added to already building tension. “Maybe a man who's too controlling forces his sons to hide from him in another country.” My dad fired back. “Okay, easy. Come on, Dad.” I said. “Children need to learn that actions have consequences.” “I'm sorry, but how is any of this your business?” my mom asked Howie’s dad. “He did announce it to everyone.” Albert’s mom said. ‘Well, that wasn't exactly my choice.” I said, making it clear. “It was a bad choice.” “My dad helping out my mom wasn’t a bad choice, you’re just mean.” Alex called out. “Alex. Honey, you can not talk to adults like that.” “See this is exactly what I am talking about. Your child has no manners and you plan to raise another?” “Oh, that's rich.” My dad replied yet again, kicking everything off. Everyone started to argue until due to a storm the lights went out.   “Buck, grab some candles, we got the doors”. Howie called me. As mom played with Jee and Alex, Maddie and I talked. “I think maybe Albert was right.” I said to Maddie. “Oh, I wouldn't say that out loud.” “Ever think about what it might've been like...?” “What?” “If Daniel had lived.” I asked her. “Yeah, sometimes.” “You?” Just then the lights came back on and everyone was relieved. “I think it would've been just like this.” Y/n’s POV (Think of this happening at the same time as Buck’s) I was sitting on the couch after cleaning when I heard a knock on the door. “Did you forget your key or something Buck?” I swung open the door and there stood Eddie. I crossed my arms and clenched my fists tight. The nerve he had to show up here. “What are you doing here Eddie?” “I’m here to talk to you. You haven’t spoken to me in a month. At least not without a third party being involved. I haven’t gone to any of your appointments since then.” “You barely went before so what’s the difference?” “Y/n, how long are we going to do this? Huh? Are we gonna be those parents that drag their kids through hell?” “Don’t do that. I can’t do this right now.” “So when are we going to do this? Talk things out?” “I don’t know Eddie. It’s only been a month.” “We need to talk about this.” “No. I need time. Time away from you. I’ll tell you when I’m ready to talk to you.” I went to shut the door on Eddie but he put his hand there to stop it. “I miss you Y/n. Christopher missed you.” “I miss Christopher too. He’s more than welcome over here, because you’re pissed with Buck you won’t let him over here.” Eddie was quiet. “Eddie, I want to move forward but I need to do it at my own pace. The way you’re behaving isn’t helping.  I mean I feel like you aren’t even sorry.” “I am sorry. I will always be sorry for what I did. Not only because I hurt you but because I destroyed everything we built when I did it. I’m so sorry Y/n.” “I hear you Eddie I do, but I still need time. Okay?” “Alright. I’ll go. I love you y/n.” I still loved Eddie but I didn’t know if I was in love with him anymore. “Goodbye, Eddie.” Time went on and eventually Buck came home. “Hey, where’s Alex?” “She’s spending the night at Maddie and Chim’s house.” “I thought the house wasn’t done and what clothes is she going to wear?” “Our daughter is a sneaky one. She put her clothes in my truck along with a sleeping bag. How am I supposed to say no to that?” “I’m sure it’s really easy but she’s got you wrapped around her finger.” “Yeah, she does.” Buck came and sat down beside me on the couch. “So it’s just the two of us tonight, what are we doing? “I was thinking of doing something a little risky…” “Oh really?” “Oh yeah.” “How risky we talking?” “Oh you know, I’m gonna change and slip into something a little more comfortable, and then…” “Then what?” “We’re gonna eat so much ice cream our guts explode and watch trashy reality tv.” “Now that’s what I’m talking about.” Buck said. We’d always had that joking relationship that could be borderline sexual but now that we actually live together the sexual part was definitely a no-no. “I’ll be back.” I went upstairs to change. “What kind of ice cream we doing tonight, Rocky road or fudge?” “Ooh, let’s do a rocky road tonight.” I started to change when I felt a warm sensation in my pants. I looked down at my now ruined pants and noticed blood. I carefully rushed down the stairs. Buck was facing away from me but heard me come down the stairs. “You changed already, that was fast.” He turned around and saw my expression. “What’s the matter?” “I’m bleeding.” I could tell Buck wasn’t catching on to what I was saying. “Like down there.” Buck became a panicked nervous mess. “Oh my god! Okay. Let me grab my shoes and my keys and we’ll throw you in the car.” Before I could say anything he darted off. He looked around the front door and then made his way into the living room. “Where are my shoes? Where are my keys?” “Buck calm down. Your keys are on the hook and your shoes are in the room. I’m gonna put on a pad and change, while I’m doing that, call Dr.Manning.” “Alright.” I went into the room changed and put on a pad in case of more bleeding. When I came back down, Buck was waiting on me. “Dr.Manning is going to meet us at the hospital.” “Okay.” We made our way downstairs and got into the car when I realized I forgot to call Eddie. I went to reach my phone and couldn’t find it. “Buck, can you call Eddie? I left my phone inside the loft.” “Yeah of course.” Buck called Eddie but it went straight to voicemail. “Hey Eddie, I’m taking Y/n to the hospital to see Dr.Manning. Call me back when you get this,” He hung up and turned towards me. “Are you okay? Are you in pain?” “No, I'm doing okay, just the bleeding.” I was trying to keep a leveled head but my mind was racing. It was going to places I didn’t want it to go. “You know when I was pregnant with Alex I had a scare kind of like this. I was in the hospital for 2 days. They said her heart rate was low and there was a chance I could lose her. What if I lose this baby Buck?” My tears were threatening to spill from my eyes. Buck grabbed my hand and caressed it.“Don’t think like that. We’re going to see Dr.Manning and she’s going to tell us that that beautiful baby girl of yours is okay and whatever is happening is probably normal, okay?” “Okay. Thanks Buck.” “Of course.” He said as he kissed my hand. Buck and I arrived at the hospital where Dr.Manning was waiting. She ushered us into the ultrasound room and began to take a sonogram. “Okay, let’s take a look.” She moved the wand around and I saw how she squinted at the screen. “Here’s the baby right here. Let’s hear this heartbeat.” She moved over and I heard her heartbeat. It sounded good or at least I think. “That’s a strong and healthy heart beat right there.” I let out a relieved breath. She moved the wand around more until she stopped at this big blob. “Okay, here’s the problem. You’re suffering from Placenta previa. It’s when the placenta completely or partially covers the opening of the uterus. How bad was the bleeding?” “If I was on my period I would say it’s a light flow.” “And are you still bleeding now.” “No, I don't feel anything.” “I’m gonna keep you here for the rest of the night and monitor everything. In the morning I’ll let you know whether or not you’ll be discharged. Let me just say since it’s your second child it’s more than likely gonna resolve itself. What’s your birthing plan?” “I planned on doing a vaginal birth.” “Okay. We’re going to do more appointments than usual and if this resolves itself we can go ahead with that plan. If not we’re going to have to do a c-section delivery. Okay?” “Alright.” “Dad is more than welcome to stay if he would like. I’m going to make sure a room is prepared and ready for you. Let me know if you need anything.” I didn’t feel like correcting her about Buck in any way. “Okay.” She departed the room and Buck and I sat there almost as if we were waiting on the other person to say something first.” “Do you want me to stay with you?” Buck said, breaking the silence. “Only if you’d like to.” “Of course I would. Do you want me to go home and get anything?” “No I’m okay. It’s just for the night right?” “Right.” Soon a nurse came and brought us to the room we would be staying in for the night and we got comfortable. Sometime throughout the night the anxiety left me and before I knew it I was asleep. I was awoken by a nurse and Dr. Manning coming in. Buck was already awake. “Good morning. How are you feeling?” “I’m fine. Just nervous to be honest.” “Well I have good news, we found nothing concerning while monitoring you over night so that means you can go home. We’ll be having more frequent visits but I’m sure you have nothing to worry about.” “That’s great thanks doc.” Buck replied. “Just doing my job, but this does mean a few things. No moderate or strenuous exercise, heavy lifting, standing for long periods of time and sadly no sexual intercourse or sexual activity that could lead to orgasm. At least until the baby is born.” I wanted to dig a hole so deep and crawl in it. “Any followup questions?” “Nope, I’m good. You got any, Y/n?” Buck replied with a grin. “She’s covered everything. Thanks, we’ll be out of your hair now.” Dr. Manning said her goodbyes to us, leaving alone to brew in the awkwardness. “No sex until the baby gets here. Well I guess there’s no point in you living with me anymore.” I believe that was Buck’s bad attempt at a joke. “Haha, so funny. Besides it’s mostly if the issue doesn’t resolve itself I think.” I don’t know why I answered like it was a serious possibility. “Let’s go. I’m hungry.” I quickly made my way out of the room in order to avoid talking about this any further.

[just-in-case-iloveyou]

get to know me tag 🌻

@sugarcoated-lame my darling🧡 thank you so much for the tag 🥰

1. were you named after anyone?

i'm pretty sure y'all can guess my real name, but yeah, i was. my name means "she who will rise again," which was neat, because my parents read about an American Indian woman who worked closely with an ethnologist to record hundreds of hours tapes cataloging her tribe's language. a language that no one spoke, until a cardboard box containing those tapes was found in the Smithsonian Institution the year before i was born. my parents loved the name and were blown away by the story.

2. when was the last time you cried?

two days ago, it's been a rough month

3. do you have kids?

no kids, but i do have a fur baby 🥹 ditto, Kricket

4. what sports do you play/have you played?

i did dance and gymnastics a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. 🩰 after that, i played basketball and softball in middle school, and volleyball from middle to high school. 🏀🥎🏐

5. do you use sarcasm?

at this point, i'm pretty sure it's a coping mechanism for me.

6. what’s the first thing you notice about people?

smile first, then eyes (mostly because i'm nearsighted, so eyes are a little harder)

7. what’s your eye color?

hazel, i guess. they're green on the outside and brown on the inside.

8. scary movies or happy endings?

happy endings, for sure. i'm too chicken for scary movies 🐔 and i like to feel happy 💖

9. any talents?

Kicket, babe, i feel like we're kind of the same person.

i can sing, and if i'm comfortable enough with you, i'll sing along to things in your presence. i used to take voice lessons and do musical theater, but since my anxiety developed later, that's a big no-go nowadays. i'm also a solid advice-giver (but i can't take my own), and i used to stress-bake a TON in university. i suppose i'm pretty good at random trivia! and i'm okay at painting, but i only really do it at those paint and sip places lol.

10. where were you born?

Orange County, California 🍊

11. what are your hobbies?

again, same person, different font

PUZZLES!!! reading, watching movies, singing, baking, thrifting, playing video games (i'm a sucker for the Nancy Drew mystery games). i'm trying to get better at cooking. i used to do creative writing and write poems, but i haven't in a very long time. i feel like i should try to get back into that. and like i said, paint and sip is also fun lol

12. do you have any pets?

at the moment, my sister has a pittie mix named Moose, we've got a lovebird named Peach, and a tortoise (African desert maybe?) named Shelley (we didn't name him). we lost my sweet girl Bell and my baby boy Percy not too long ago 💔💔

13. how tall are you?

5'2" i'm almost pocket-sized!

14. favorite subject in school?

English and Social Studies (history, geography, psych, etc.)

15. dream job?

this is gonna sound insane, but ever since i was 11, i've always wanted to work for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS). it sounds squirrely, but long story short, i started watching NCIS and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation around that age, and i just got SO interested in criminology and forensics.

no pressure tags: @lewmagoo @laracrofted @seresinhangmanjake @withahappyrefrain @roosterforme @ohtobeleah @mamachasesmayhem @bobgasm @bobfloydsbabe @attaboylew @attapullman @mjskeletons661 @lostinthefandoms11 @pinkdaisies1106 @mandylove1000 I’m a little late to this so sorry if you’ve already done it 🧡

[iustitians]

ooc; headcanons - on Neuvillette's age, early life and relationship with humans, aka Neffi going insane for 4 Google Doc pages straight

Look, sometimes you just have a lot of feelings. This is something I've been thinking about for a few weeks now, and in a way, also a topic that I've wanted to properly sort out and organize for myself.

Spoilers below for Fontaine Archon Quest (in particular 4.1 and 4.2) as well as Neuvillette's character quest. Also warning because this is long and I just kinda went unhinged.

Neuvillette’s age & early life

So while we know - more or less anyway - how long Neuvillette has been living at the Court of Fontaine, we have precious little information on what he was up to before that. I say “more or less” because the descriptions of his term as the Iudex are frustratingly inconsistent, ranging from “(a little) more than four hundred years” (in his own words), through “almost five hundred years” (in Wriothesley’s words), to “five hundred years” (in Focalors’ words). Personally I lean more towards the 500 year mark - Neuvillette’s story quest implies that his perception on the passage of time and its consequences is somewhat skewed, so frankly his words I find least trustworthy on the matter. In addition there is difference between the length of his tenure as the Chief Justice and the events from his character quest. More on that in just a second.

We don’t have a lot of concrete info, but we have some hints:

Neuvillette states he never personally met Egeria, who died during the cataclysm. The invitation to become the Iudex came to him from Focalors, Egeria’s successor.

Neuvillette is close to the Melusines, but there is no implication of him ever interacting with Elynas, who also died during the cataclysm. He was there to deal with the Narzissenkreuz Ordo, however, which wasn’t much later.

And connected to that:

Neuvillette’s official introduction states that “the Melusines actually appeared much later than when Neuvillette took up his post”. Of course the definition of “much later” is up for interpretation, but we’re talking about what a human would perceive as such.

In his story quest, Carole states the Melusines stayed in their village “for almost twenty years” before Neuvillette brought them to the Court.

Egeria and Elynas both died during the cataclysm roughly 500 years ago. Some time after that, The Ordo and the Marechaussee Phantom clashed within the remains of Elynas, resulting in a violent explosion. Given the appearance of Alain Guillotin in Neuvillette’s flashback, and his words (“They're planning to reanimate the monster… We have to report this to the Chief Justice”), Neuvillette was already the Iudex by then. It was only after that explosion that the Melusines were born, and then according to Carole, some 20 years passed again before Neuvillette brought them to the Court.

So to sum up:

The cataclysm (~500 years ago) → Neuvillette becomes Iudex → battle against Narzissenkreuz Ordo within Elynas → Melusines are born → ~20 years pass → Neuvillette brings Melusines to the Court of Fontaine → institutional reforms that put society’s trust in him to the test → the Carole & Vautrin tragedy

Something that's interesting is that Neuvillette seemed to instantly know what he was doing as soon as he arrived at the Court. The guy didn't comprehend feelings or human customs, but he sure did know his way around both the work of a judge and administration, eventually rising to the position of Fontaine's top political figure. My theories and explanations for that are as follows:

As the Hydro Dragon, Neuvillette possessed innate knowledge and ability for these things from the moment he was born. Basically he's the "Dragon of Justice" in a similar way as how the Hydro Archon is the "God of Justice". This might be also supported by the game pointing out a few times how "the Iudex is the real him" and not just "a role he plays". Focalors also seemed to know from the start she could entrust this position to him.

Or more mundane: the Archon simply threw Fontaine’s legal code at him and he learned everything he needed quickly because he's just that smart. We do know he has an excellent memory.

It could also be a combination of both. 

With that said, it’s worth noting that - unlike what his story quest kind of implies - the political reforms he introduced that resulted in the Carole tragedy weren’t something he did right away. As I mentioned before, this would have happened at least 20 years after the Narzissenkreuz Ordo had been dealt with, with him already as the Chief Justice at that point. It’s not that he appeared at the Court, instantly introduced a new species to the people and turned the Fontaine system upside down - more that his introduction of Melusines and the subsequent uprooting of the old regime were the biggest tests for him and Fontaine’s trust in him at the time.

OK, cool. How long had he been around before becoming the Iudex, and what had he been up to? In all honesty I think the answer is “not much”. He came to the Court to search for the meaning of his existence, after all - before becoming the Iudex, there likely wasn’t one as far as he was concerned. There is next to no info about what he could have been doing before he was invited to the Court. That said, considering the Heavenly Principles’ treatment of the Seven Sovereigns, that may have been a good thing.

The way I see it, the hints I listed point towards Neuvillette being born either during or not long after the cataclysm. It’s not impossible that the Dragon of Water had reincarnated earlier, but if that is the case, I feel like he wasn’t active - for all we know, Neuvillette may have spent a period of time in slumber or something. He never mentions any kind of “awakening” for himself, but also he never really talks to anyone in game about his earliest years, not even the Traveler. At any rate, his beginnings would have been spent in seclusion; there probably exists some kind of underwater sanctuary that served as both his birthplace and possibly also the grave of the previous Hydro Sovereign, lost to time and history. 

And yes, that means he was quite young when he came to the Court of Fontaine. I personally believe that he literally didn't have a childhood - I don't think it's out of the ordinary for the Dragon Sovereign to reincarnate as an adult right away. He's not a new being, but a continuation of an old one.

As for what he would have been doing… again, probably not much. There wasn’t really anything of note for him to do, after all, when he didn’t understand the point of his existence. He probably simply lingered there. I imagine, however, that through the water, the whirlpool of emotions of Fontaine’s human residents would have reached him, causing him a lot of confusion. Upon realizing that these came from the ones who share his physical form, as well as how he found himself able to resonate with these emotions, he would have grown at least a little curious, and considered that maybe the meaning of his existence could be discovered there… which is how the letter from Focalors would have found him.

Neuvillette & humans

Which lets me segue into the next thing I want to talk about, namely how Neuvillette feels about humans vs how he used to feel, and just how huge a gamble Focalors had to take with this guy in order to try and save the people of Fontaine.

So here’s the first and main issue she would have run into: Neuvillette is a reborn Dragon Sovereign of Water. While he lost a large chunk of his memory, he did know from the start that his predecessor, alongside the other Sovereigns, was defeated by the Heavenly Principles, who then destroyed their world order and replaced it with their own, with humans as the species in control. He also knew that the Sovereigns’ power was forcibly seized from them and given to the Archons to maintain the Heavenly Principles’ control over the land. Neuvillette is in direct opposition to both the Heavenly Principles and the Seven - regardless of their stance on Celestia, they too are usurpers in his eyes. He had no reason whatsoever to think anything positive of either Focalors or the Fontainians. Several of his bios and voice lines that talk about this part of history are worded in a way that portrays these events and their perpetrators in a clearly negative light. Dainsleif also suggests how Neuvillette might feel about humans and the world order in his Collected Miscellany:

“From Neuvillette’s position, every conflict on Teyvat must seem like a comedy acted upon a stage. Fighting for territory that doesn’t belong to them, singing the praises of overlords who imprison them, and committing sins that will long outlive them…”

Neuvillette himself says something interesting on the matter at the end of Act II, while talking to Navia in front of Callas’ grave.

“There was once a time when I didn't want to believe that there could be anything more important to humans than life itself. No, rather than that, it's probably more truthful to say I didn't believe humans were capable of resisting the most basic instinct of living things. That they could rebel against their own nature, or consider certain things to be more important than their own lives. Which is also why I didn't stop your father from beginning that fateful duel… I believed that a truly innocent man would never throw away his life like that. That there was nothing… should have been nothing more important than one's own continued survival.”

What this tells us is that Neuvillette believed humans to be selfish. Which makes sense. They’re the creations of someone who stole his ancestors’ power and used it for their own ends, why wouldn’t they be as selfish as the one who destroyed the dragons’ world to make one for them? The quote above also suggests that Neuvillette considered humans to be… rather basic creatures, governed by instincts. He begins to wonder about that for the first time a little earlier, when Marcel begs to be taken to the fountain and claims the request is more important than his own life (“Humans… will they betray the instinct to live just to satisfy spiritual needs…?”). This is before Neuvillette’s story quest is unlocked, and as such, before he can discover just how much Vautrin sacrificed for him - but still, at this point the guy has been Iudex for around 500 years, and while his opinion on humans has grown better over time, he continues to hold such views of them. It does however also make sense when we remember that, as a judge presiding over trials and distancing himself from the public eye otherwise, most of his interaction with humans involves criminals, prosecutors and attorneys - people who come to the opera house, try to prove that they’re in the right and frequently have to be disciplined by him.

So why did he even accept the position among humans? We ask him that during his story quest, and he explains in detail - he became the Iudex to seek out answers regarding the meaning of his own existence. Trying to understand why he was born as a human, who he was and what he was supposed to do, by interacting with those whose physical form he shared and whose emotions he found himself able to resonate with even if he didn’t understand them. He, too, had rather selfish reasons for accepting this job - and right before Focalors’ execution he confirms that, at first, there wasn’t much else to it.

“In the beginning, I was uninterested in human existence, but these five centuries of living alongside them have gradually brought about mutual understanding between us, and I have even attempted to feel as they feel…”

He didn’t care. He accepted the position of the Iudex to see what was in it for him - hopefully, the answers he sought. The work he did, the position he held, everything else - at least at first and at least to some degree, it was something of an afterthought. He was told “while you’re at it, try to make Fontaine a good place to live” and said “ok”; and near the end of his story quest, he does explain that from his perspective, he just did what his job entailed and as far as he was concerned it was nothing special. If he actually started trying, it happened later, possibly without him even truly knowing; it’s not until he gets the speech from Wriothesley that he realizes just who he ended up becoming for Fontaine, and in all honesty, I believe that even post-Act V, he is still in the process of letting that sink in. He had been thinking of himself as an outsider for some 500 years, this stuff takes time.

This is the guy that Focalors needed to grow to care for the people of Fontaine so much that he would absolve them of the sin of being created from the power of the Primordial Sea. And the best part is that she did it. She placed an ancient dragon who had no non-selfish reason to care in the center of the country, gave him the chance to become part of the human society - of the audience, if you will - and created circumstances where the line between him and humans has become blurred over the centuries, and where he appreciates them and recognizes their strengths even as he continues to struggle to understand them.

She successfully got Neuvillette to care enough that he did what she needed him to do in order to save the Fontainians, while understanding and acknowledging that he was deceived by an Archon, something he would be fully within his right to be mad about even in spite of the fact that she did it to oppose the Heavenly Principles. She got him to value humans enough that he has begun to hand out Hydro Visions - something he is not obligated to do, but he wants to do.

God damn, Focalors. Good job.

[canmom]

Animation Night 178: Alberto Vázquez

Hiii everyone! Animation night is back. And I've a treat for you tonight...

So. One of the best things about running Animation Night is that doing this (almost) every week gives me a motivation to go roving out looking for stuff I'd probably never watch otherwise. And sometimes the stuff you discover ends up being just insanely good.

This was the case way back on Animation Night 25, the very first Halloween Animation Night. On that night, we took a chance on a film by Spanish director Alberto Vasquez called Psiconautas, los niños olvidados - known in English as Birdboy: The Forgotten Children. I'll tell you a little about that movie in a minute, but it completely blew us all away: emotionally overwhelming, deft in its handling of the heavy shit, and gorgeously animated. (4C were involved).

So. Psiconautas is set on an island inhabited by anthropomorphic animals. It is a land in a state of general decline - its industry collapsed, the land choked with gigantic rubbish dumps, and the people in spirals of futility. Birdboy is a kind of spirit of the land; his father, Birdman, was shot down by police on suspicion of drug trafficking and he now struggles to keep a monster contained inside him and protect the one tiny shred of nature and life. His friends, who steal the pills he needs to keep it in check, are dealing variously with intrusive violent thoughts, uncaring fundamentalist parents, and a parent's addiction manifesting physically in the form of a huge spider. They want out of this hellish island - and they have a plan: with a bit of money, they might be able to buy passage to the city.

But it isn't that easy. Their money goes only so far as a tiny inflatable raft. And in the vast rubbish dump they encounter the Forgotten Children, abandoned by this society and left feral. Birdboy is forced to let his rage manifest. I won't spoil how it ends but - it's not an easy one.

Born 1980, Vázquez got his start in book and magazine illustration, with a style of distorted proportions and watercolours, or murky black, textured shapes as in these illustrations of Lovecraft. He turned to comics in the mid 2000s - which is where Psiconautas was born, along with other works like El evangelio de Judas (Judas the Catholic Squirrel) (2007) and Alter Ego (2008). In comics his style is very heavy, with big blocks of dark hatching. Within a few years he got the animation bug, working together with Pedro Rivero.

At the time, my knowledge of Vázquez's style was limited to short films such as Decorado, which should give you a pretty strong sense of his style.

At first it seems like a series of brief joke vignettes - but soon of course the threads start weaving together, characters from one skit come back in another, the threads of causality start to break down as the main character goes to pieces. It's clever and striking, but of course the deliberate artificiality which is the point means it is all wrapped in a layer of irony, which blunts the impact a bit.

The short films were made with a tiny team, with Vázquez hmself filling in just about every role from writing through layout to cleanup, with only a few other people on board. His later works became much larger projects, pulling in artists from as far afield as the great Studio 4°C in Japan, though I believe the bulk of the animation is still done in Spain.

The result is something great. Psiconautas has its share of black humour, but it's more willing to go for real drama, taking the vibe from 'unsettling' to full on 'fooooof'. I'm so excited to see it again.

But the main reason to return to Vázquez tonight is... he's gone and made another movie!

Just as with Birdboy, Unicorn Wars takes a short film and expands it. This is actually one of Vázquez's earliest animated works, Unicorn Blood (2013) - a work with a rougher cutout animation style, depicting teddy bears who hunt unicorns to try to fuel their cuteness. In the short we see a condescending teddy bear Moffy lecturing and fatshaming his brother Gregorio, as they hunt a unicorn, with abruptly segues into montages of violent religious imagery as a voice sermonises on the necessity of slaughtering the unicorns. They encounter a unicorn, but Gregorio can't shoot before the unicorn throws itself off a cliff - and as Moffy rounds on him, he gets motivation to, well, do a murder. It's a highly stylish work as with anything Vázquez touches, with gorgeous music textures and great use of watercolour.

Unicorn Wars returns to these themes about a decade later. Now the teddy bears are fully in a Vietnam-style war against the unicorns. A troop of teddy bairs are recruited to the war, and we are introduced to the conflicts between brothers Gordi and Azulín and top recruit Coco. Naturally the deployment goes south fast, and these three bears are the only ones left alive. Things get very violent and occult very quickly. There's more than a little cannibalism.

I've been excited to watch this movie for like three years now. It dropped last year, and became available on BD this year, so I've finally been able to get my hands on a copy. Together with that, we'll revisit some of Vázquez's older works. I'm really excited, I've been wanting to run this one for aaaaaages. Now's our chance!

Now, I need to get some food before the shops shut, so the plan is to start in about an hour, at 10pm UK time - in the usual place, https://twitch.tv/canmom. Hope to see you there!

[phoenix-is-the-hottest-thing]

Hi i heard you are the resident ER lore expert?

I just finished ch3 of the story and i have absolutely not chronological concept of what happened, how everyone is connected, who died when n still confused abt sim!mobius and what she did with irl mobius 50k years ago from all the way in ch2. Also about Elysia becoming a herrscher. Vould u do like a quick timeline or smth to explain whats happening cos the data in the game isnt really arranged in chronological order?

That’s a pretty big undertaking but I can try to sum it up!

PE had 14 herrscher impacts over what seems to be a bit over a couple decades at most. Then they went into cryopods for 50k years. Then another 5000 or so years happened until the present.

and now, a readmore, because trust me, it's a LOT.

For a spreadsheet summary of who does what when, try @adorabledestruction's sheet.

Impact 1: Not much is known about it. It is defeated in secret. Many people try to study this Herrscher but go insane. May have happened during Mobius’s lifetime or earlier.

Mobius is born fully cognizant and able to speak. She receives her name and her earring from her dying mother. On her ninth birthday, growing cynical to the child abuse she is victim of, she swears that she won't let Humanity be humiliated.

An unknown amount of time later, Mobius and others found the Moth That Chases The Flames, AKA MOTH.

Impact 2: Huge mess, Humanity is losing. Mobius is locked up in her lab by MOTH for her safety. Elysia joins MOTH, seemingly by stealing Mobius’s badge to pretend she’s already a member. Elysia defeats this Herrscher. Mobius starts to investigate the Herrscher’s corpse, and Elysia reveals she can’t quite read what she’s thinking, prompting Mobius to admit she wants to surpass the gods.

Because the Honkai is not public, MOTH covers up the incident. Vill-V, a brilliant, bored student who just finished her homework, finds them suspicious and tries to find more about them, assuming MOTH caused the impact, and harasses them. One single day after revealing her identity in a declaration of war against MOTH, Elysia finds and captures her mid-spying on Mobius.

It’s noted that Vill escaped from MOTH’s prisons numerous times before being officially recruited. We do not know when her recruitment happens however, only when she was first captured.

Impact 3: Most of East Asia gets wrecked. Dr.MEI, Kevin and Hua get caught up and subsequently recruited by MOTH. Kevin quickly rises to being the top soldier of MOTH somehow. Hua is in HIMEKO’s squad, seemingly at the age of 15, but the timeline is whacky so don’t get too hung up on her age later.

Impact 4: Kosma meets Kevin for the first time while trying to do something about the disaster. He is recruited some time later into MOTH, seemingly having lied about his age. It’s not very clear. He admires Kevin a lot and joins the same squad as him and Ato, Griseo’s dad.

Impact 5: Kalpas’s “hometown” is destroyed. MOTH sends Ato and Kosma’s squad on a suicide mission to distract the Herrscher. Ato tells everyone to desert to stay alive, but Kosma argues with him that they’re more noble than that. He is initially triumphant when he sees soldiers (including Kevin) come back, but it turns out that it’s because the Herrscher is already dead.

Kalpas obliterated this Herrscher, sustaining grave frostbite. He recovers without external help and is found by Aponia near Sundown Alley, which is where Felis also comes from. He joins the Sanatorium she works in as a fellow employee, getting called “Mr.Mask” by the children. He like, carries boxes. Aponia teaches him more about how to human but he kind of hates her endlessly chill and forgiving attitude.

Kalpas may have fallen from the sky. Mobius also calls him an alien (but official said smth like “the one who’s out of place” instead, kudos on missing the point again)

Impact 6: The Herrscher of Death destroys a city. She had kept some human emotion, which made Kevin hesitate, and he blames himself for the Herrscher’s victims. Elysia tells him this guilt keeps him human, and asks whether he would kill the minority to save the majority.

Sometime before this point, Sakura tried to assassinate Dr.MEI. She fails but injures Kevin. MEI recruits Sakura, intending to form her own private force to consolidate and stabilize her position. Sakura joins Cocoon, whose job is to assassinate humans that interfere with MOTH’s mission.

Impact 7: HIMEKO becomes the Herrscher of Flame, murdering her entire squad except Hua. Eden’s concert is interrupted by a fire, but Hua saves her life. After they chat, Hua leaves to confront the Herrscher, but Kevin kills her before she can ask her why HIMEKO spared her. Broken up by grief, Eden joins MOTH, though her job is mainly to cheer people up at that point.

The MANTIS, Honkai augmented soldiers, are now a thing. It’s a surgery for now and has strong side effects. The first four are Kevin, Elysia(?), Mobius, and Sakura. The success/survival rate is extremely low, and only 13 soldiers will successfully be made before they develop the ICHOR method (injection) which will make Hua a MANTIS later.

The Sundown Alley incident happens— Aponia, who cannot yet see fate clearly but already has mild persuasion powers, has been hiding Honkai infected patients. Sakura, who was sent to the town to kill some traitors, finds out and starts an impromptu clean-up to stop the spread of the disease, murdering among others 73 children. She fails to kill Kalpas, who fights her on equal grounds. Kalpas and Aponia are captured. Aponia is blamed as a mastermind, but she doesn’t know anything. Aponia is forced to take the MANTIS surgery in hopes of being helpful to MOTH in the future, but she gains immense power and cannot be restrained anymore. Aponia can now use Discipline and see the future, and therefore that Humanity is doomed. She’s going to cause some problems on accident.

Kevin’s birthday party happens. Dystopia, Kosma’s friend and the only psychokinesis MANTIS, is present. Sorry I need to mention her before she dies. It’s cute.

Blanca, Griseo’s mother, quits the lab and recommends Klein to replace her. Mobius now has a new assistant.

Impact 8: The Herrscher of Sentience happens and people start falling into a dream and dying. Su, Kevin’s childhood bestie, became a doctor. He’s been trying to cure Honkai sickness but keeps failing (see Second Key manga for details). Kevin ghosted him for years but they meet again during a Honkai attack, and Su is recruited by MOTH. Su takes the MANTIS surgery from Mobius in a hurry, becoming a psychic. He, Dystopia, and Aponia try to team up against the Herrscher of Sentience, to pinpoint her location. Dystopia is killed. Su’s mentor in MOTH is killed by a traitor, his dying act to save Su from getting stuck in the psychic link pod thing. Aponia helps Su not succumb to revenge and he more or less becomes enlightened.

It seems Aponia has already settled in the Deep End around this time, but details are unclear.

Aponia gives Kevin a Discipline to resist the dreams, which renders him immune to Fenghuang Down later, but the counterattack against HoS happens before he can do much of anything.

Elysia comes to find Kalpas and makes a deal with him. She convinces MOTH to let him join as a soldier in exchange for giving him an endless war. She asks him to become a "KO Threat" someday, but she will die before cashing in. Aponia places a Discipline on him.

Gray Serpent is born some time after this, as Mobius's accidental first sapient creation. She tells him he is free. Once he leaves the lab, he starts experimenting with human behavior, creating numerous organisations in order to understand the "freedom" his creator spoke of. Sakura stops him eleven times over the years.

Impact 9: Ato is killed by Kevin’s inaction as the 9th Herrscher is neutralized. Kosma gets so angry he undergoes an Active Honkai Reaction and turns into a monster to eat Kevin. Kosma flees, sane but monstrous.

Mu is destroyed by the Herrscher, which is the final nail in the coffin of MOTH’s coverup. The Honkai is now a public matter and public unrest is at an all-time high. It won’t get better.

Exact details are unclear but it seems Eden undergoes her surgery around this time. Her conversation with Mobius about beauty happens shortly after.

Griseo, now orphaned, got caught up in an accident than mortally wounded her. In order to save her life, Mobius gives her the MANTIS surgery. Griseo lives, but her personality gets easily affected by others and her paintings are cognitohazards. Her Kalpas painting almost causes a civil war. An unknown amount of time later, Dr.MEI throws Griseo in the Deep End due to the danger she poses. (She’s not happy about it.) Aponia finds and adopts Griseo.

An unknown amount of time later, Mobius finds Kosma. She offers to turn him back into a human form. Kosma is either Disciplined to help this process, or he was way back during his surgery, it’s not completely clear. Kosma rejoins the MOTH as a footsoldier.

Impact 10: The 10th Herrscher keeps causing chaos by randomly turning people into Herrschers to mess with MOTH. Emile, Kalpas’s adjudant, is captured and eventually killed. Klein kills Mobius but is absorbed by her resurrection, which Su blames himself for. Dr.MEI uses the Key of Blankness, an armor that can interface humans and Herrscher cores, in order to destroy the Herrscher. She is severely weakened as a result.

Felis tries to rob MOTH by impersonating a volunteer and gets turned into a MANTIS instead. Since she was a rare success, they let her stay. Vill-V gets turned into a Mantis around the same time.

Roughly a thousand 10th keys are made. Hua is turned into a MANTIS during a suicide mission, the first successful ICHOR MANTIS (no surgery required).

After breaking numerous divine keys trying to make ICHOR work out for him, Kalpas makes a deal with Mobius. She takes something from him, which turns him into a MANTIS. As a side effect, he starts suffering from progressive cognitive disorientation.

MOTH experiments with 3 people teams. Kalpas Sakura Su is a disaster. They try to make Aponia fight alongside Eden and Su, hoping that they'd be stable enough to handle being near her at all. The only successful team is Hua, Kosma, and Felis. Yeah they really suck at working together.

Aponia awakens Fenghuang Down's first power for Hua, to give her a chance to survive. She uses this same memory as a demonstration and forgets she tried to help her.

Impact 11: A Herrscher that's essentially a MANTIS killer appears, as it snuffs out Honkai energy. Klein shuts down because of it and Mobius takes her chances against the Herrscher to rescue her. Vill-V is gravely wounded after trying to fight the Herrscher with technology, including a Key of Blankness replica. On her way home, Mobius rescues her as well, but Vill-V seems to have suffered some memory loss.

Kalpas, still angrily grieving Emile, tries to attack Hua but instantly gets taken down by the Herrscher's anti-Honkai field. Hua brings him to Mobius. Su controls his body with his consent in order to fight, but accidentally undoes Aponia's Discipline on him.

Thanks to Aponia's gift, Hua creates an opportunity for Kevin to kill the Herrscher. Elysia's crystal protects her from Kevin's attack last second. She loses almost all her memory as a result and sinks into a coma for several days.

Kevin digs out Kalpas from the debris with his sword.

The Tragedy of Binding has happened. All but thirteen MANTIS have died. Felis, who was sick in the hospital during the battle, wakes up to an empty building. She seeks out her companions and finds nobody. When she finally finds people, they are like soulless, having witnessed the horror of the Tragedy.

After that, Elysia tries to create the 13 Flame-Chasers.

Kevin drags Aponia out of the Deep End.

(ch29 detail: MOTH is opposed to it. The 13 are never an official thing, though they try to compromise with 5 people instead (Elysia, Kevin, Hua, Su, and Vill-V), which Elysia never acknowledges. It's her WHOLE ragtag band of disasters or nothing)

With Eden's financial help and against MOTH's wishes, the Elysian Realm is created. Can, Felis's sim cat, is born. Only three cities are left in the entire world.

Impact 12: RIN, Sakura's little sister, becomes a Herrscher. Elysia warns Sakura while asking her to become one of the Thirteen, implying that these events were extremely close together. RIN is captured by MOTH and held prisoner.

Sakura attempts to break RIN out, but finds her corpse instead.

Due to Aponia's Discipline of "never losing hope against the Honkai", a group of 54 MOTH soldiers arrange to kill RIN, traumatizing her and starting the eruption proper. RIN turns people into flesh-eating zombies and takes control of the base's computers. RIN launches the nukes created by Vill-V onto the last three cities. Sakura dies. Dr.MEI traps RIN into the black box, ending the incident.

The Flame-Chasers mourn Sakura, incredibly broken up by her death. Kevin swears upon her grave that they will defeat the Honkai. Felis leaves her Sakura Mochi, which nobody knows how to make anymore. Gray Serpent's fifty bodies simultaneously bow in her honor as he also mourns a lost friend.

After executing the 54 culprits, Kalpas threatens to kill Aponia for her role in Sakura's death. He at least lets her put her "do not kill innocents" Discipline back on him. He does not kill her.

While not, strictly speaking ,the final humans left on Earth, MOTHs are now acutely aware that humanity is doomed. Dr.MEI starts cooking up plans for the next era to survive. Under the cover of therapy, Vill-V beats up Su for the fifth divine key, to turn it from a deadly weapon to the cryopods.

Mobius experiments with the black box, using Hua as a test subject, as she plans to save the survivors by turning them all into sapient viruses. Hua goes into a coma. As they operate on her to save her, Fuxi fights with Mobius over this and leaves, taking Nuwa with her and joining Project EMBER instead.

An unknown amount of time later, Eden passes on EMBER to Hua despite the twins' doubts. Eden passes on the Elysian Realm to Mobius.

Vill-V acknowledges Griseo's request to take Kosma's place in the single seat ARK, and they start working on that together.

Su receives project VALUKA, while Kevin takes his place to handle project STIGMA. It is unknown why Mobius didn't receive a project, or if she got a different one. Most likely she wasn't trusted.

Vill-V is kept out of Jizo Mitama's development. She tries to stop Void Archives' development, for which her own body and mind was initially the vessel due to her fragmentation ability. Why try to stop it? She finds taming the Herrscher of Reason's core would only kill her and create a will with infinite knowledge and no interest for Humanity's survival, a description which sounds suspiciously similar to the Will of the Honkai present in CE. (And considering her visual motifs... well... think of that what you will...)

Considering current events, it seems that this was partially fixed by giving what we currently known as the Void Archives an AI ("a fragment of the AI Prometheus"?), but details are still unknown.

Tensions are extremely high.

Dr.MEI holds a meeting to investigate Elysia's sussy past, but nothing turns up. Elysia chats with Dr.MEI's AI, Prometheus, in the meantime, revealing that she plans to play the villain to give Humanity a chance to unite. After the meeting, Eden uses her Active Honkai Reaction for the first time and turns into a giant marine animal, flying a tipsy Elysia up into the sky to watch the moon together.

The next day, Elysia tells Aponia that she will die in ten days.

Impact 13: Exactly 10 days later. Not much is known. Elysia reveals herself as the 13th Herrscher, wearing makeup for the first and last time. Kevin kills her while at least Mobius and Eden are present. Mobius is forced to face her fear of death, and syncs up her sim for the last time. Sim!Mobius allegedly plants a seed in her mind so she may kill herself.

The day after Elysia dies, Aponia is shown contemplating the disappearance of the threads of Fate. Elysia rearranged the stars.

Final Impact: After Elysia's death, the surviving MANTIS decide to unite and fight the final herrscher together on the moon.

Felis, weak but crushed by survivor's guilt, decides to go. Aponia, seeking out a way to die well, asks Vill-V to fuse her with the Elysian Realm, which Vill considers suicide but seemingly agrees to. Kalpas fights a ravenous Kosma as a parting gift with an unknown outcome. Kosma refuses to leave on the ARK at the last minute. Eden leads seven Mantises beside herself to the Moon in her Honkai Beast form. Su fights the Herrscher from Earth thanks to his psychic powers. Aponia stays behind on Earth, to brainwash the weak humans who are doomed to die, so that they may die happy according to their own wishes.

Two MANTIS soldiers die within five minutes. Presumably they are Felis and either Kalpas or Kosma, most likely Kosma, but it's not yet possible to say for sure. Dr.MEI overloads the Selene and robs her of 30% of her Honkai energy, but it's not enough for them to win, so Kevin freezes hits the Herrscher REALLY HARD with Shamash. They have twelve hours to go home and hide in the Cryopods before all remaining life on earth is destroyed, ten of which are taken up by the trip.

Hua enters the cryopods. Su seals himself in the 2nd key to observe other universes. Mobius tries to talk Eden out of committing suicide, but fails as she had already taken her decision long ago. Kevin enters the cryopods. Mobius leaves her suicide note hologram message with Klein and waits out the cryopods' sinking, extremely weakened through an unknown method. Mobius greets Prometheus with an unknown purpose in mind.

AND IM DONE. That took. So long. I've skipped over some details but it should be a good summary.

[mythicalmagical-monkeyman]

I hunger for more AU what happens to the antagonists in the Reincarnation AU

Ooh, good question :)

(Note I has Edited this)

So pretty much all the villains in the show got reincarnated via the spell and I guess this is going to explain what their reincarnated selves are like:

Jin and Yin became con artists though they somehow got their hands on some pretty useful mythical artifacts

PIF became an infamous thief known as Ironfan and she steals priceless and ancient artifacts from all over the world

DBK became Wukong's landlord and he's less of a villain this time around because his brother plays a much more antagonist role (for reasons I'll explain later)

Red Son isn't an antagonist in this au because Mei and MK befriended him when they were younger. They were more of a skating rival.

Spider Queen is an alchemist and due to her being born with six arms (she's half spider demon) she got treated rather harshly as a child and so now she's hellbent on turning everyone into spider demons like herself and ruling over them. She's also tricked the other spiders into working for her promising them each something that she'll give them once she rules the city.

Syntax wants someone to fund his research and tech and Spider Queen promised him that so he joined her.

Spindrax is just in it for the chaos and to watch her brother's back (her brother is Syntax)

Huntsman is a creepy dude (like horror movie villain creepy) and he is also an assassin. He joined Spider Queen for the money.

Strong Spider joined Spider Queen because he thinks that she'll make the city a better place. He's also a select mute in this au. He's also the only one in the spider gang that started out as a full Spider demon.

Scorpion Queen is still a Scorpion demon but she looks different now. She really just wants a good friend as she was always betrayed by her friends in the past which caused her to go a little mad in her search for the perfect friend aka she's a bit insane not going to lie

LBD and the Mayor are mafia members.

The Mayor is Bai He (LBD's hostess) dad and he was an okay dude but when his wife divorced him he got angry and LBD manipulated that anger and got him to join her and her mafia family.

LBD grew up in the bad parts of the city and vowed to make the city a better place so she became a politician but when that didn't work she sought out a future seer and asked them if she could ever change the city. The seer pointed her towards a life of crime and so LBD started her own mafia family. (She's also meant to be a mirror of Wukong in this as a way to contrast how Wukong could have turned out or how LBD could have turned out so they have similar childhoods).

However, LBD didn't get a chance to complete her mission as a young cop named Ba (See the reincarnation of General Ba from JTTW) shot and killed her in a cop vs mafia family shootout. This of course crushed the (not) Mayor and so he spent the next several years trying to find a way to bring her back, which he does eventually, but in the process, he ended up distancing himself from his daughter.

The camel ridge trio technically never got released from the scroll because everyone died before the events of season 4 could happen but they actually do show up because a mystery villain shows up and uses them like pawns to knock some sense into the celestial realm.

(Bonus) Macaque isn't really a villain in this au as he's more of a lancer for Wukong but, but he does get antagonistic moments as he keeps getting fucking possessed or his powers go out of control. Macaque's whole deal is that before he died against the possessed Monkey King he sent out Rumble and Savage to find him once he was reincarnated and give him back his powers (which they did) but while also giving him back his powers he got his memories back as well. Anyways by wizard rules in this universe, Macaque becomes a wizard. However, fun fact, he's wanted for grand theft auto (Ba hates him for this but hey, cars are cool).

(woah so long) But yeah this is what happens to all the villains in the Reincarnation au however I do add plenty more villains to the plot to keep it moving forward.

[mermaidsirennikita]

I saw your ranking of Kresley Cole's IAD women. Do you have a favorite male character?

Yeah, I have a few. I mean, it's cliche to say this because he's like... an obvious fan favorite... But if I was really being honest, Lothaire is likely my favorite. I mean, I think he's the most developed character in the series (and once Nix gets her book, God willing, maybe she'll junior or exceed him). But he's also just so funny, and so insane, and unfortunately, very hot. How can I not love a dude who, when his pseudo-girlfriend (at the time) gets mad at him for mercilessly beheading a bunch of shifters, says it's "not like I'm going around cockslapping gnomes"? How can you expect me to not love someone who describes skull-fucking randoms as his "mischievous youth"???

And while I do think his romance is INCREDIBLE and part of why I love Lothaire is that he loves Ellie so much and I also love Ellie so much... I mean. He's one of the best parts of Dreams of a Dark Warrior, an UNDERRATED CLASSIC. He gets tortured by Declan Chase and talks about how long it took someone to cut his dick off with whip lashes once, because it's sooooo big (and since regenerated). He kicks Thad off a cliff and then Thad becomes HIS ONLY FRIEND LMAO. He wears a Panama hat??? Like Stede in that episode of Our Flag Means Death??? He blackmails Declan Chase, a man who hates all monsters, into letting him tap his blood on demand and GETS A BONER WHILE DOING IT (bi Lothaire confirmed). Regin screams to Declan about how Lothaire drinking Declan's blood means he now has Declan's memories of Declan and Regin fucking, and he walks up like "Oh nO WORRIES, I have already WATCHED YOU TWO FUCK A MILLION TIMES IN REAL LIFE LIKE A CREEP". The entire WEIRD boy's club scene where Lothaire gives Declan advice about negging Regin into forgiving him and everyone goes "Oh shit, that's great advice actually" and iT WORKS.

(And then later he gives Trehan advice about Bettina... and it works. And he gives Munro advice about Kereny... and it works. The point is that Lothaire can not do his own relationship to save his life which is why he literally lets his lungs explode in order to win Ellie's favor back, he doesn't even know how to get Ellie to forgive him without near-death.)

But I mean. There are so many heroes I love in that series, just like I love so many heroines. Like I said, I haven't given an IAD book less than 4 stars. They really work for me.

Other standout heroes for me would be like... Garreth MacRieve who I think is probably one of the best boyfriends? Of the series? Like, does he hunt Lucia across the world for a year while she's desperately trying to evade him? Sure. Does he sorta try to seduce her into breaking her supernatural vow of chastity? Yes, he does. Does e not care about her god-given mission at all because women shouldn't have to have jobs? Yeah, and maybe HE WAS RIGHT. But he's also soooo sexy, and sooooo wolfy and sooooo loyal and sooooo romantic. The butterfly he named after her! Garreth SMELLING Lucia masturbating and having a freakout because he's in a cage and she's upstairs and SHE SHOULD NOT HAVE TO GET HERSELF OFF NO SHE IS PRINCESS! Him holding his werewolfitude back as long as possible until he's like "fuck it I can't deal" and runs howling through the jungle for her??? The ENTIRE VALKYRIE PLOT OF "OH WE'LL JUST HAVE LUCIA FEEL PAIN ON PURPOSE SO THE WOLF GUY COMES TO SAVE HER"??? "She was born to be found by me"??? "Werewolves are natural investigators" lOL I CAN'T. Child-free by choice, but would have Garreth MacRieve's 7 werewolf children.

Conrad Wroth, who I think is just like.... a ragged open wound of insanity and romantic longing and pent up sexual energy... Like, Conrad has one of theeee hottest biting scenes in the series, imo. And also, just the sad hilarity of him swearing his chastity to a cult of vampire hunters, then getting forcibly turned into a vampire by his brothers and doomed to centuries of virginity??? And then he does meet his Bride and she's a GHOST??? *Curb Your Enthusiasm theme plays*

Rydstrom Woede is.... really hot... I love a morally upright man driven to horrible crimes. The minute Rydstrom THE GOOD BROTHER showed up in Cade's book, shirtless, tired, scratches all over his chest, with a woman screaming in the background like "HELP!!!" while he goes "don't. ask." I was gone. Then he turned out to be a legit DADDY who's into spanking and punishing Sabine and he feels gross and weird about it? Please. Theeeeen his first real smile in his own book is when she flips him off? PLEEEEEEEASE.

And of course, Uilleam "Will" MacRieve, "MacRieve", The MacRieve, of the novel titled MacRieve. I mean, listen, he's hot. He has such rough animalistic sex CONSISTENTLY that they call him Bucket List. But he's soooo sad. And don't get me wrong, he does some fucked up shit and I won't deny it. But his backstory. Made me cry lol. His entire journey. Made me cry. Him on his knees crying into Chloe's stomach because he wants to be better and heal for her but he can't??? Made me cry. His journey isn't for everyone, but I found it gorgeous. And also, did I laugh so much when they were like "well MacRieve, your woman needs sex healing, and we can't trust you to do it, so I don't know man maybe she needs to be double-teamed by some incubi" and he literally flinched because his inner werewolf instinct went SCREAMING at him??? Yes I did. He had no thoughts for like a solid five minutes. Just static.

... so those are my top 5... I also very much love all the other Wroth brothers (my 1D), Lachlain MacRieve (crazy werewolf king turned "Mature Dad Friend"), Bowen MacRieve (the original fuckboy/BEAST FAMILIAR), Trehan Daciano ("babe look I got you this bag of... severed heads... oh.... that wasn't...... the request..."), Rune Darklight (cue the TWO STANDING OVATIONS HE GOT FROM BITCHES HE'D FUCKED LMAO), and uh......... Declan Chase (..... I won't be defending this choice). And THAD, even though Thad isn't a hero. YET!