#like i PROMISE you there are people out there getting warped into absolutely wild shapes by insular environments based on irl socializing

[aeide-thea]

a while back i made a post (that of course i now won't be able to find) that was like, two really popular (complementary!) fallacies are (1) thinking an experience is universal, when in fact it's specific to one's particular body/psyche/milieu; and (2) thinking an experience is specific to a particular body/psyche/milieu, when in fact it transcends such divisions—

anyway i get that the phrase 'purposelessly cloistral' is fun to sneer but i'm afraid that, like rhetoric about 'touching grass,' i actually think it's both unkind and intellectually unrigorous as analysis. yes, exposure to a broad variety of people is good for you, and can help you realize that positions you've taken for granted aren't shared by everyone; but people tend to cluster into insular echo chambers anywhere they congregate, whether that be in chatrooms or churches or cities, and i'm frankly very tired of this recurrent urge to, like, resurrect middle school ideas of coolness and use them as cudgels. clubbing—of either variety!—doesn't make you a better person.

[bladekindeyewear]

Freed up some time, actually!  Gonna blog the new pages of HS^2.  Liveblogging resume...

FYI, the post I glimpsed that alerted me to the fact that new pages exist had a translucent screenshot of Brain Ghost Dirk on it, so I know that at least is in store for me.  Makes sense; a way to involve Dirk’s voice obnoxiously heavily even when he’s too far away to narrate.  And ties into this... chapter(?) name, of course.  Chapters, huh?

> CHAPTER 1. Ghostflusters

God. Damnit.

Could we NOT???  No?

Fuck you, Dirk.  I blame you for this.

So we have greenery, a can-city and Sburb-legal human house mix... some sorta cow-looking thing from far away in the front yard...

The void resounds. Space seizes and warps as the bounds of relevance erode away to nothing but the wishful nostalgia of times passed. There is a hole in the middle of the universe, and it is hungry.

All very literally true.

But the denizens of this particular iteration of Earth C don’t know it. All of this is just business as fucking usual for a planet plagued by war, continuous inclement ghost weather, and the general malaise of being absolutely severed from canon.

--oh, FUCK.  This isn’t the new planet, this is Candy timeline Earth.  I didn’t wanna come back here!  :C

I guess that explains most of the content warnings.  Except fucking ALCOHOLISM.  Gee, thanks for adding THAT to the Candy timeline, as if it wasn’t fucked over enough!!!  Bluh.

I thought the closing lines of the Epilogue were that after RoboDave, Aradia and alt!Callie dove out of the Candyverse inside the singularity, the black-hole timelines and Dirk’s presumably-still-”relevant” nonsense weren’t going to collide with each other again?  So... why are we seeing this?  Is there going to be MORE influence like that, and the ending line was just fancy-talk?  Is it just an irrelevant little follow-up to Candy to show things turning out okay or pseudo-okay, like an epilogue to the epilogue?  Or is some of this Dirk nonsense presumably within the bounds of some sort of canon going to still have some last bit of influence on this so-called non-canon timeline?

That last one would make sense, given that it echoes how Homestuck^2′s dubious canonicity would still have definite influence on fanworks outside of canon.  Right?

Let me pull that last line from the epilogues again--

...where’s the Epilogues’ log, this is getting kind of hard to find with all their reorganization... fuck, I had to guess at the URL even.  Here we go, the last page of Meat...

The hole leaves behind an absence in the sky so calm that continuing to call it a sky wouldn’t seem to do it justice. It’s a perfectly neutral expanse into which anything one can imagine might be summoned. And for a while, anything was. But not anymore. Where the hole gaped just moments ago, there now exists an imaginary line.

Above this line resides all that matters. Below exists all else. Never again the twain shall meet.

...Right.  This implies that Canon and Non-Canon shall never meet again.  BOTH ways.  Doesn’t quite gel with the fact that we’re cutting back here--

Oh.

This is about Jake and Brain Ghost Dirk isn’t it.  I noticed his name down further on the page.  THAT’S why we’re cutting back here.

So, Canon and Non-Canon aren’t exactly meeting... not for anything relevant, anyway.  But we’re using Candy Jake’s visibility of Brain Ghost Dirk to get a better idea of Dirk’s broader self and plans through a splinter of him?  While getting another glimpse into how the post-epilogue Candy timeline is going for our, er... “curiosity”?  Is that it?

Hm.  I guess that doesn’t count as the twain “meeting”... I’ll just keep reading now.

They spend their days absorbed in the petty and pointless pursuits of “having jobs” and “raising families” and “falling in love”.

Is this Dirk’s narrator voice?  This sounds like something the current megalomaniacal Dirk would say.

I’m not going to quote the rest of the text’s further reminders of how Jane has been made into an absolutely fucked-over asshole in every timeline except the one where she grew old to open a Joke shop, adopt Dad, die, get prototyped and timeline-doubled, then mysteriously disappear from any mention in the Epilogues as if the Sprites were just forgotten about completely eventually.

> (==>)

Oooh, using the less-relevance-surrounding-parens that were used on retconned ghost!Vriska back in Homestuck proper to denote our presence in the non-canon Candy timeline? How handy!

Not a far-away cow, then.

John has been an incredible pal, opening up his home to Jake and his son on such short notice, and even offering him a pair of pants, as well as a shirt that he has so far neglected to put on.

Alright, that got a chuckle from me.

John’s house doesn’t have air conditioning.

What the flying fuck.

...Ah, John’s been away patching things up with Roxy some more, I presume.

It, like the rest of his assets, is in her name. She’d seen to that as soon as they were married.

Life players and assets, huh?  Always gotta be hoggin’ em.

He hasn’t seen much of Tavros today either, but that’s not unusual. He’s probably out with his kismesis, the one he thinks Jake doesn’t know about.

Huh.  Maybe Candy’s young Vriska?  Couldn’t get the real Tavros with your main self, so your alternate nigh-clone self settled with a human by the same name?  Or one of the other kids we heard of from this ‘verse..?

> (==>)

Jake’s hot man-bod cropped out of this image to avoid titillating my readers too much.

(Tumblr keeps jumping back to the top of my post after I add images and I keep thinking the title reads “Ghostfuckers”.)

Jake washes the dirt out from under his fingernails, and his eyes fall on the bottle still sitting on the counter. John had opened it, but together they’d barely touched the stuff. Jake had promised him and Tavvy he’d dry up his act and all, but... well.

God damnit.  If this is still Dirk-voiced narration -- I’m not sure it can be, now I think about it, as he’s supposed to be “out of range” or something, unless non-canon is just malleable like that, which wouldnt be surprising (or Dirk’s splinter’s presence allows it) -- he could literally be inducing or writing in Jake’s drinking problem just to hurt him more.  You can’t really put an overstep that assholish past Prince Dirk the way he’s gotten to be.

There was another ask in my inbox insisting that Dirk wasn’t going to stay the true villain here, if only as some sort of karmic revenge for declaring his self-importance... but I still don’t think that’s the case.  For one, Dirk HASN’T declared himself the villain... he still can’t see how fucked-up and unjustified his trampling over of everyone’s wills IS.  Shadows of recognition... but not really.  He really honestly believes he has the fucking RIGHT to do what he’s doing.

(Which is, incidentally -- to answer another ask -- why there’s basically NO chance that Rose has some sort of control or recognition of her situation under the surface, and is playing Dirk, as another person hopefully surmised.  No.  She really IS being unknowingly steered away from personal growth and recognition of the thought-control she’s under... because nothing less could feel as horrible to us.)

Part of the entire POINT of Homestuck and its Riddle was to show that these crazy kids, if they put their wills to it, always had the potential to be the literal Gods of the world around them.  That when ordinary people grasp the will and drive to shape the world around them, they can turn everything back from the brink of destruction... or vice versa.  Thus, it’s only appropriate that a player from this game could become a villain more disgusting than any we’d imagined in the series so far.  What he’s been doing -- writing twisted sorrow directly into the lives and experiences of those around him, nurturing their worst, most power-hungry tendencies (Rose) and deceiving them more directly than Doc Scratch (who was PART Dirk) ever did, making a JOKE of their free will in a more terribly direct way than ANY have been shown onscreen to do?? It IS, and is MEANT to be, the worst we have EVER seen in Homestuck.  Not as clumsy and from-the-outside as Lord English, but just as blatantly direct.  Not as easy to ignore or mistake as Doc Scratch’s horrible, intentional Prince-of-Hearty worsening of the players, instead just as impossible to gloss-over as it is to bear witness to.  That very TITLE, “Prince of Heart”, can embody the very ANTITHESIS of the Ultimate Riddle itself, robbing EVERYONE of their ability to shape not just the world around them, but even so much as themselves or their very thoughts.  When used the way Dirk is using it RIGHT NOW, anyway.  And his ambition is to impose this on all of Paradox Space.

There COULD be another villain, later.  But I can’t imagine a single one more appropriate.  And Andrew’s just the type to use one of the Striders, both practically self-inserts of parts of his personality and presence, as that ultimate villain to be overcome in a story about escaping Canon, too.

Turning his ex into an alcoholic just for his own self-satisfaction?  In a side timeline where Jake didn’t even try a relationship with him again and finally had a chance to grow up happy in SOME universe?  I wouldn’t put it past him, and you shouldn’t either.

Moving on.

> (==>)

Eugh.  I just... don’t want to think about him being an alcoholic on TOP of everything else.  As if there wasn’t enough to deal with in Candy already.

> (==>)

Hm?

> (==>)

The jungle air is heavy, humid, and familiar. Twenty years on and the thick drag into his lungs settles on him in a blanket of nostalgia, reassuring in its discomfort.

Hm.  Is this his fantasy, or a view of him in another timeline?

He is deeper in the jungle than he’d ever venture in his waking hours. There were places on his island that not even his Gran would tread, and she’d been the bravest person he’d ever known.

Hmm.  So he even knows it’s a dream, but is still in control...

Jake doesn’t recognize anything. The jungle of his dreams is wild and unknown, and there are things moving in the dense undergrowth.

...Hhhuh.  Still not sure what to think of this yet.

A sudden wind thrashes the canopy. There are pine needles in his mouth. There aren’t any pine needles in the jungle.

Very Dream, then.

> (==>)

--Yup.

> (==>)

Yoink--

> (==>)

JAKE: Yes you are i know that much. I saw your body! I carried your coffin chock full of all those stupid fucking swords! DIRK: Nope. JAKE: Dont nope me mister!

They would pile all those shitty swords into his coffin, yeah.

Anyway, now to see how much Prince Dirk is in this Dirk.  And if he’s in one mind with himself or has the slightest chance of feeling rebellious.

JAKE: I know a dead dirk when i see one! DIRK: Sure you do. But that wasn’t me. Are you really surprised to find out I got a couple of spares? JAKE: So what youre saying is you arent my dirk. DIRK: ...That is a whole ‘nother conversation that we really don’t have time for, pertaining to exactly who or what ‘your dirk’ actually constitutes. DIRK: Do you mean the Dirk from your timeline? DIRK: Then yes, that Dirk is dead. DIRK: If you mean the Dirk that you fucked and then ghosted, no, I’m not your Dirk. DIRK: If you mean the Dirk that you felt closest to, that you really knew--

...well, this Dirk still knows how to be a presumptuous, pushy creep.  :(

JAKE: Ahhh! Brain ghost dirk! DIRK: In the ghosty flesh. JAKE: Crumbs bro where have you been? JAKE: I could have used someone on my side! JAKE: You just disappeared one day without even the odd toodaloo to mark your passing! DIRK: That isn’t strictly true. I did disappear, but it was in a catastrophic blaze of hope-drenched pathos. I even threw out a couple one-liners. DIRK: But you wouldn’t remember that. JAKE: Because...it was a different dirk? DIRK: No, a different Jake.

Hhhuh.  So in the claymation-reproduced Lord English stagefight -- or, maybe more likely, the pre-retcon Aranea-induced Game Over timeline -- he was too washed out by hopesplosions to manifest properly?

DIRK: Until recently there’s been a shortage of ambient narrative relevance for Dirks, since one particular motherfucker has been sucking it all up like a thirsty little twink at his first interspecies rave.

Hm!  So Prince Dirk has been making it so other splinters of himself have really limited ability to influence, huh?  Guess that’s a sort of price for the narrative-hijacking power he’s attained.  Wonder how this Dirk really feels about that.

> (==>)

--Pff.  He’s certainly not shy about letting Jake know he shouldn’t trust him, though!  That’s a good sign.

I’ll split the post here for a bit.  Seems we’re about halfway through this upd8 from the look of the log.

[queerbaitingjuce]

Metamorph - Chapter One (Part Two)

“Perhaps,” Bruce agreed quietly, mostly to just roll the word around on his tongue for the sake of doing something. He felt terribly estranged. He’d never felt this way about anything before. “Are you coming?”

Alfred smiled the ghost of a smile at him, a smile that assured him that, eventually, they’d be okay. “Eventually,” he promised.

That was all the assurance he needed. With a polite smile, Bruce turned and walked out the door.

***

Bruce spent a good hour greeting guests, offering them champagne more expensive than their month’s rent and offering around a few courteous dances. Of course, he was also asked, mostly by young women, and, graciously, he accepted every time. No sooner had he started to dance with a brunette was he dancing with a petite blonde girl with drawn-on eyebrows, emphasised black lips and a skimpy Gothic dress paired with clunky leather boots. He wouldn’t look at her, and not because he was being discriminative against her sense of dress. She was young, maybe too young to have alcohol on her breath, and she was getting very strange with her hands.

“Excuse me? Please can I cut in?”

Bruce turned to look at the man who’d spoken in surprise. He was tall, though no taller than Bruce: probably six foot or so. He had tawny skin and dark brown hair and was wearing an unstylish brown suit that looked cheap and worn past its youth. “Yes, of course,” he said politely, but the man wasn’t looking at him; he was looking at the woman.

“I was talking to you, sweetheart.”

The woman looked both confused and harassed. Her cheeks flamed up with colour under her pasty makeup. “I beg your pardon?”

“Oh, baby, please. If you were begging, you’d be on your knees.” The man took one of Bruce’s hands, assuming a dancer’s stance, and a dominant one at that. Bruce was too surprised to reject the casual contact. “Hello, darling,” he greeted quietly, steering him away from the woman who stared after them in amazed puzzlement. “Have you been having fun?”

Speechless, Bruce stared at him. There was something familiar yet unfamiliar about his voice, his long jawline, his wild eyebrows, even his hands, one folded firmly around his. There were scars randomly speckling his spidery fingers, Bruce observed despite himself, that were very similar to his own. Under the spicy, cheap smell of aftershave, Bruce could detect a hint of smoke and cinnamon.

“The champagne is absolutely phenomenal,” the man continued, undeterred by his silence. People were starting to stop dancing in favour of staring, and Bruce felt a very distant and very quickly receding sliver of alarm scorching the lining of his stomach. He wondered what people would say about the fact he was dancing intimately with another man, but, in a more forward part of his mind, he wondered what was so familiar about the delicate arch of the man’s throat, peeking out from a pink collar. There was a splotch of either blood or wine on the fraying rim of it. “You must simply introduce me to your dealer, darling. The taste reminds me of Paris, you see, and the pastel azure of the sky in the afternoon-”

“John?”

The man’s eyes glittered in his browned face like poisonous water. Pretence of normalcy forgotten, he leaned closer like a secret. His breath smelt sour, so different from John’s own. “Guess again,” he murmured, his voice as silky as satin and wrapping Bruce as delicately as so. “Better than John,” he hinted assuredly.

It clicked. This wasn’t John, no; he believed that. Standing in front of him was the very man that he had lost in the rain, the one that had sported his face in Arkham Asylum; the man that had tried to manipulate himself into John’s darkest desires that had been cleverly hidden with the help of medication and Dr Leland. Bruce could almost feel rage and disgust as a live thing inside him as he stared at the creature now donning his best friend’s face. Everything else fell away into a camera-lens blur, the man coming into a sharper, more detailed focus, and he forgot how to function, how to breathe, shutting down completely. He’d imagined plenty of things he would do when finally getting his hands on this man, and now the time had come he didn’t know which or what to do. Nothing violent – Bruce Wayne shouldn’t have a violent part of him, he reminded himself sternly.

Don’t make a scene. You are Bruce Wayne, a stupid, weak businessman. You cannot make a scene.

Bruce tightened his hand around his, stilling. The man’s brown suit seemed so strange on John’s skin, so bleached of colour, so harsh against a backdrop of chalk-white, and Bruce tried not to think about how he might have acquired the outfit. It didn’t help the burning sensation in his midriff. “You,” he spat.

The man – the creature – tutted at him disapprovingly. He was using John’s voice in a way John never used it, with silky, cloy, cocky smoothness and something akin to careful seduction. “Such impolite savagery,” he taunted. “I thought you would be pleased to see me. I’m hurt. Weren’t you scouring for me day and night as though hopelessly in love with me like in Cinderella, Bruce Wayne?” He said his name like it was fine, powdered poison, through a straight set of teeth – John’s teeth. “Well, here I am. Your own beautiful nightmare in the flesh. Your own devilish Cinderella.”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Bruce forced out through his teeth. The urge to haul him outside by the flesh pouching the back of his neck, like a kitten, was so powerful his hands shook. Instead, he focused on dancing again; them standing motionlessly in the centre of a gaggle of dancers was earning a few stares, or maybe that was a matter of their gender. “Assuming another man’s face during conversation... Are you really that cowardly?” he sneered now, wanting to destroy this man in the only way he could. Personal. This was still personal. And now he was wearing John’s face...

The man’s hand tightened around his with surprising strength. Bruce’s skin thrummed with pain. He hid his grimace expertly. “Don’t assume,” the man said, slowly, softly, “to understand, Mr. Wayne.” He flattered him with a brilliant smile, the anger dissipating from his eyes like tepid water from a pierced water bottle, just like that. “Aren’t you going to ask me?”

“What?”

“The obvious questions!” the creature rejoined cheerfully. “‘Who are you?’, ‘What do you want?’, ‘Where are you hiding?’, ‘What are you?’, ‘How did you get here?’”

Feeling like he was being made a mockery, Bruce snapped, “Would you tell me?” without hope, more to prove a point than anything else.

“Well, no,” the creature admitted with the same assured cheer woven around his voice, and Bruce gave him a pointed look, “but what’s a vocal first meeting between villain and hero without unanswered questions? I need to be a mystery.”

“Get to the point.”

Now it was the creature’s turn to blink. “What?”

“Don’t tell me you came here to dance with me and indulge in my champagne.”

An equal mixture of amusement and bitterness etched the creature’s face. “Oh, very well,” he sighed lightly. “Though dancing with Gotham’s most eligible bachelor was a pleasant bonus, and the champagne really was marvellous.”

Bruce stared. He wondered if this man was human, or had been human once, with extraordinary circumstances; he also wondered if this was a creature born to both the art of shape-shifting and manipulation, which barely seemed possible. He could process giant men and purple-skinned men in tubes, because, really, that was just science. He couldn’t blame shape-shifting on science, though, which was all he knew. He felt suddenly very tired.

“Oh, relax.” With a slender thumb, the man traced his eyebrow softly, which was apparently warped in distress. “Soon, I’ll be out of your hair, and then you can go back to melting zippers and panties for miles over glasses of flowery champagne.”

Incredulously, Bruce said, “I can’t just let you leave.”

“You’re going to have to, I’m afraid.” The creature’s eyes flashed. “Do you like puzzles?”

Bruce paused. “What?”

“Puzzles. Do you like them?” He didn’t wait for a response, tripping over his own words in his haste to get them out. “Because our time together, sweetheart, will be a puzzle, and an arcane one at that: no picture on the front of the box, no single idea what the finished product will look like, the finale at the end. The puzzle of my life, in fact – the puzzle that shows how deeply you wronged me, divided in sections that once broke my heart. Can you handle that?”

“And if I refuse to... to play?” Bruce muttered through numb lips.

The man pressed his mouth against Bruce’s ear, and Bruce had the savage, alarming thought that this was what it would feel like to have John so close, and hot blood seared him from his ears to his cheekbones to his throat. His hands shook violently now. They’d always been as steady as a heartbeat. “Then I can’t promise you the next time you see Tiffany, Alfred or John, even Selina Kyle, they’ll have a heartbeat.” He leaned back calmly, like he hadn’t just threatened Bruce’s entire family, and stuck out his hand. “So – do you assent to play with me?”

Then he smiled, and Bruce thought it was what a spider’s smile would look like every time another naive insect fell tangled into their intricate web. He was the insect, thrashing against the sticky silk listlessly, and, somehow, in such an abrupt space of time, the man was the spider, staring at him devilishly from his position of his superiority. Bruce was, in fact, so deeply tangled he didn’t know where the exit was. He knew one thing: the man wasn’t bluffing. If he didn’t build the puzzle, play the game, everyone he loved would turn up dead.

The man’s hand was clammy and soft with makeup.

“So, the game begins,” he purred, and then he disappeared, leaving Bruce alone with a memory card in his curled fist.

***

His vision was starting to blur, words dancing onscreen like they were alive. He’d plugged the memory card given to him by the strange man into the computer in the cave a few hours ago, but so far he’d run into countless errors and no idea of how to crack them. Nothing he did seemed to wheedle the contents of the card out. In red block letters, ‘ERROR’ striped over the screen again, flashing in a way that drove pain behind his eyes, and he had to turn away.

Alfred was approaching him, a tray of tea balanced precariously in his wizened hands. “Tea, sir?”

Bruce almost smiled. Alfred insisted most things could be made better with tea. With a sharp pierce of longing, Bruce thought how he desired that to be true at the moment. “Thank you, Alfred.” He heard the weariness in his voice as he reached out for the tea and took a grateful sip. It had the rich essence of alcohol. Then he really did smile. “I needed this.”

“Have you made any progress yet, Master Bruce?” Alfred asked, obviously trying his best to push aside his conviction against Batman for Bruce’s sake. Bruce seriously could have cried; he was so tired.

“No. The Computer keeps saying ‘error’, again and again, like clockwork. I haven’t figured out a way to get past it.”

“Perhaps,” said Alfred, “it would be best to just buy the camera it belonged to.”

Bruce blinked at him in surprise. “Do you think that’s all I can do?”

“It would be the most simple way to get around the problem, Master Bruce,” Alfred confirmed, putting the tray down. On it was also a plate of homemade cookies, fluffy and moistened by melted chocolate chips. Bruce’s childhood favourite. The cold stone in his gut thawed. “Are you sure doing what this man says is a good idea, Bruce? You don’t know the first thing about him.”

Bruce sighed and turned back to the computer. He’d been asking himself that since the gala, but he knew he couldn’t run the risk of casualties, not innocent ones, not loved ones. “You know I have no choice, Alfred,” he said. “He said this puzzle will teach me about him and – and how I wronged him.”

“Maybe it was something your father did,” suggested Alfred, sounding resigned. “Many hold grudges against you for that.”

“Maybe,” agreed Bruce, his heart not in it. “I’ll ask Tiffany to try crack this while I go to the closest electronic shop and try buy a camera that matches the card.”

https://archiveofourown.org/works/15817548/chapters/36821610

[some-dark-side-writing]

Beauty Leaves The Beast

[ckyking]

glaive!nyx/oracle!noctis/knight!nyx

well @nicrt @bitchkrieg, this is how the nyx sandwich happened. because i have no self-control  (@jasperraven can attest to that). #jokingturnedfeelings is how i like to decribe this process

alright, so, this started as a joke where i considered what oracle!noctis would do if thrown into the canon verse (mainly because i was rewatching kingsglaive at the time and my salt increased tremendously)

"what a sad and hopeless future this world holds." noctis whispers as he looks up at his father's figure going down the steps of insomnia's citadel, "though, it is not that different from ours in the end."

the kings of lucis trying to pull him into their games when the hostilities start. crystal fragments fighting against the oracle's light as he struggles to keep his trident in place, "you cannot grant what is not yours to give!", he shouts as the trident grows hotter in his hands, "you are nothing to me, kings of lucis!"

"i am the oracle of tenebrae and you will heed me.”

also, him going "fuck it, no one here is dying, do you hear me? "

"i do not fucking care, even if we only stay one day, none of you are dying!"

nyx is both glad and salty about this, "if i knew this was what it took to make you fight against fate, i would have opened that damned portal myself ages ago"

looking at regis and nyx and crowe and luna and going, "you're mine, you're mine, you're mine and you're mine. "

"no one is dying ever"

he is all dutiful and all but you fuck with someone else's fate and he will wreck you

oracle!noctis is a vicious little creature who gladly tear you apart if you threaten his people and he will look harmless while doing it

And then, because my brain hates me, it shifted to noct struggling to keep glaive!nyx alive as dawn rises because a) healer and b) fuck the lucii

while knight!nyx is trying to convince him that " no, you cannot take him back with you!"

"he nearly died! I'm not leaving him there!"

"noctis, no."

"noctis yes.”

"your strays are not crossing the dimensional barrier, i forbid it. "

noct stops looking up at his nyx to ask glaive!nyx who he is keeping alive through sheer force of will, "do you want to come with me?"

he nods vaguely because he is dying and dazed by the pain, and noct goes "well, that settles it"

"goddammit noct, you can't take him, me, glaive!me back!"

"just say he is your long lost twin!"

"he is in no shape to agree to this!"

"well, he is dying, so he doesn't have that much choice left if I leave him like that.”

but, but imagine for one second if something happened between glaive!nyx and noct while knight!nyx was still held back by his "duty"

(because it’s a thing in the oracle!au. also, they are good at talking about every single feeling except for whatever is growing between the two of them. anyway)

glaive!nyx still reeling from the events and having to adapt to a whole new world and to a whole new life where everything he cared for is unreachable now. everything he knows is switched around.

but he is still nyx so he would take one look at noct and what he is going through after everything calms down and be like, "i can't just leave him like that."

knight!nyx literally seeing what his life would have been without noctis. and he is so thankful.

but nyx without the weight of the years spent together? noctis would find it that much easier to act on his growing affection, even if he still feels guilty as hell and so painfully in love with his nyx.

not that he continues to separate them with the word "his" seeing that glaive!nyx also becomes his in noct's eyes after a while.

glaive!nyx is wilder than knight!nyx, and drags noct everywhere with him while exploring this new eos. it feels like his first meeting with knight!nyx, and it's fun to watch discover new-old things and to show him around tenebrae.

knight!nyx never leaves them alone if he can help it, but seeing glaive!nyx flirting with noctis just drives him crazy. and it hurts seeing noct react to him so easily

and noctis feels guilty over stealing nyx away from his world and tries to make it up to him, which ends up drawing them closer to each other.

the worst, the absolute worse in knight!nyx's eyes is when glaive!nyx is sworn in as a knight. and his tattoos start around the finger he wore the ring on and goes up his arms following the veins of power the lucii's power left behind.

it's horrible seeing him with as deep a connection to noct as nyx himself, because the oracle's power had to dig in deep to keep him alive, and it shows

he can see them falling in step with each other like the oldest knights automatically do with noct, or reaching for the same thing, or doing remarkably similar movements and it grates

you better believe he enjoys fighting himself when his counterpart is recovered enough. lets him get all his agression out, and he not-so-secretly enjoys him having to teach himself a new fighting style what with the lack of warping

(not that glaive!nyx doesn’t try to create an alternative to that using the oracle’s power)

but noct still comes to him, still seeks him out as usual, even if a little less than usual because of glaive!nyx.

he still wonders if noctis gravitating toward his other self means that he is not good enough

glaive!nyx sees this, because some things are universal to every nyx ulric, but he doesn't want to do anything about it. because noctis is the only familiar thing he has in the entire universe and he is so tired of letting things go.

also, glaive!nyx is so suicidally protective of noctis, it's unreal. the oracle is ready to tear his hair out over this because of course the only thing worse than nyx at this staying unharmed business would be nyx

that would be the thing to make knight!nyx snap to be honest. just him looking at noctis being himself and imagining him with glaive!nyx and his heart just breaks. 

him taking noct into his arms and kissing him, "please, don't send me away. i will be better, i promise, just please. "

and it's noctis' heart that breaks this time

"i'm sorry nyx, i'm so sorry, but i can't send him away. i can't. he has no else, and- "

"do you love him?"

"i- i can't- "

and he can feel nyx retreat from him at his non-answer and he panics and holds on that much tighter to him,

"don't leave me nyx. i- i may be growing to love him, but i do love you, so please. "

nyx wants to believe, knows that it may be true, but he is still not sure, and it kills him

he gently disentangles himself from noct and walks away, because it's a mess of feelings and thoughts and he can't

the connection between them slams shut and he knows without looking back that noctis is holding back tears, just like he is

glaive!nyx finds noctis in the same position later, when he goes in search for him, because they were supposed to explore around town together.

noctis is looking out of the window at the setting sun, eyes dry but cheeks wet and he is just- blank. nyx just sits near him, one knee folded back against his chest and talks softly, to try and draw him back. but noctis refuses to look at him because he will break if he sees his face

except he eventually does, because they are nyxandnoctis and he can't help it. when he does, he just folds nearly in half and cries because his heart has always been the most fragile part of him

noctis ends up leaning against nyx's chest and cradled in his arms, exhausted from all the emotions. he shakes his head when he is asked if he wants to go to his bedroom, and he is curls closer to him.

they end up spending a good part of the night there. when he finally falls asleep, nyx takes him to bed and go hunt hunt for his counterpart, because he can imagine what went on exactly.

when they do, glaive!nyx goads him into a fight like he is so good at while knight!nyx tries to ignore him. but when he brings up noctis, they go all out.

knight!nyx is trying to deal with his love and his sadness and his perceived inadequacy while glaive!nyx is letting out all his pain and his confusion and yes, his growing devotion for noctis because he is the only thing he has in this world. and he ends screaming at his counterpart in the middle of it

telling him that he's an idiot for not taking what was freely offered for so long, and that he is not going to let noctis go to matter what 

knight!nyx is terrifyingly silent and the deadlier for it while glaive!nyx's words destroy him.

it's the taunt about him never loving noctis that sets him off and glaive!nyx is fucking glad because this means the other him is feeling something. even if he ends up pinned to the ground with a kukri to his throat while he presses his own against knight!nyx's stomach

and that's how noctis finds them when he runs out of the manor in search of a threat, their wild emotions having awakened him

noctis gets so sad then, sad and self-recriminatory and angry and most of all guilty "i want you both. is that what you wanted to hear? because it's true! are you both going to leave now!? poor sad naive noctis who cannot even make up his mind. it that what you wanted to hear!?"

they stop fighting at this and painfully get to their feet while noctis is looking from farther away, terrified of their reactions and trying not to show it. they limp toward him with strikingly similar expressions which makes his hand tighten around his trident, summoned in preparation of battle. and then, they kneel in front of him, head bowed low and they apologize of all things.

noctis laughs at that, because all of this is ridiculous, they are all ridiculous. but this is such a nyx thing to do, and he ends dropping the trident which vanishes before it hits the ground and hides his eyes with his hand.

and things get a little better after that, because they sit down and fucking talk about the three of them and where they're heading

bonus : they both go by nyx ulric. it drives the other knights crazy, so they end up calling one of them nyx and the other ulric. noctis is the only one to call both of them nyx, and it baffles everyone how, every single time, no exceptions, nyx and ulric know exactly which one of them he is referring to.

aaaand voilà! this is how the thing happened. now back to sleep with me.

[malibootie]

Man Caves: Wood Sheds

Man Caves: Wood Sheds

Building a man cave on a budget doesn’t work when you have limited space—and that’s why many people have turned to backyard man caves. Wood shed man caves allow you to fine-tune your space down to the smallest detail. You choose what sort of floor, wall, and ceiling you want. You can build your entertainment system right into the walls. With a little ingenuity, you can even make the cave open out into the backyard so it feels like an outside bar…with all the essentials of a man cave! Wood sheds provide an empty template with which you can create any man cave you can dream of.

So, interested in man caves made out of wood sheds? Do you already have a shed you want to convert, or are you planning on building your own? Either way, I put a bunch of advice for you in this post that helps you with everything you need for building your custom man cave. Finding the best wood, picking the best decor, looking for plans, finding pre-made kits, and converting old sheds into something livable are all necessary knowledge for a man looking to build a wood shed man cave! Now, let’s start from the beginning and make your dream a reality!

    Wood Shed Plans

If you already have a shed or want to find a pre-made kit, skip the next two sections. If not, let’s get you started on your journey. Building things with your own two hands feels great, anyways. Woodshed plans help you measure out all the needed materials, save money in the long run, plan for utilities, and help you with legal matters in the future. If you are an architect, go wild—after all, a shed is pretty easy to build. Why not add more stuff to it?

If you have never built anything before, I highly recommend you look into wood storage shed plans or simple wooden shed plans. By referencing pre-existing plans, you can come up with your own designs. It’s important to know how much weight each portion of your floor can support as well as how much you can tack on to the ceiling without losing structural integrity. This is especially true of something you plan on converting into a man cave! If you’re not confident in your mathematical prowess (and hey, it happens), don’t feel bad for using a pre-designed shed with no alterations. It keeps things simple, safe, and speeds up construction.

If the concept of going off a plan intimidates you, don’t start building from scratch. That’s just a recipe for disaster. Look into prebuilt sheds, shed kits, and contractors instead. I provide information for all of that in a bit.

  Making Wooden Storage Sheds

Now that you have your plans, you want to grab your materials. There are many different grades of wood, and you want to go for the first and second grades. These pieces of wood contain very few—if any—defects. The wood needs to be level with no twists or warps in the shape. There are several different types of board sawing styles you can consider. Rough-sawn is cheap and durable, while plain-sawn, rift-sawn, and quarter-sawn boards have progressively higher stability…and price. Whatever you choose, find it at a local lumber yard—it’s cheaper than the big stores and helps support local business.

Check the weather ahead of time before you begin building. Sheds take multiple days to build, unless you’re working as a highly efficient team! You don’t want it to start pouring as you put your foundation in place. Most shed plans come included with the tools and materials needed, but some architects and designers go the extra mile and include instructions on how to build with their plans. If this is your first time building, learn the basics of building from those plans and utilize that knowledge to make your own shed.

For making a man cave shed, I highly recommend a large and tall shed structure. See the largest allowed in your area and size one out a few feet below that. This allows you to create a huge man cave and even build in some awesome features as you go along. If you pick a plan with a lot of windows, invest in some black out curtains.

To estimate the costs of your wood shed, check out my dedicated post on the matter.

  Wood Shed Kits

If building things from scratch isn’t your talent, but you still want to keep things cheap and avoid contractors, then wooden shed kits are the thing for you. You can find shed kits for sale in most large home and garden stores. It will be pricier to buy these premade sheds…unless your time is money. The prices range from $1,000 to $6,000, all depending on the size and style of the shed you want. For small sheds, some companies will deliver it pre-constructed to your doorstep. Well, driveway, anyways. They help you situate it in the backyard.

For larger sheds, they arrive as a pile of materials. You can have whatever company you buy from construct it for you, or you can follow the simple directions to assemble it. I promise it’s easier than reading IKEA hieroglyphics. The difference between gathering materials yourself and purchasing a shed kit is that the shed kit comes with some pieces preassembled. With the best companies, you only need to attach the walls and roof together. Shed kits do not usually include foundational supplies, so make sure to consider that while you price out your options.

Some companies out there specialize in selling man cave shed kits. They construct the shed and plan out your cave for you. However, given their expense and rarity, it’s much easier and more efficient to do the decor stuff yourself and get a ‘cheaper’ kit.

  Finding a Contractor for Wood Sheds

If you absolutely must hire a contractor, you have two options: go to a large brand name, or go to a local and reputable company. By going with a brand name, you protect yourself from shoddy workmanship (the brand name can’t exactly go under the radar when you contact them). A local and reputable company is obviously better, but do some serious research into them, because horrible contractors are out there in droves.

  Converting Wood Storage Sheds

Do you already have a pre-built shed on your property? Excellent! Let’s learn how to make a shed livable, and then how to upgrade that livable space into a man cave! A shed man cave conversion takes a similar amount of effort as a shed bedroom conversion, but you get to prioritize different things. With a bedroom, you are required to follow certain laws to ensure it is safe for living. With a man cave, you can stick to the minimum amount of effort—mostly making sure the building has structural integrity—and then your effort focuses on optional quality of life changes. I made a huge post on how to convert sheds into man caves.

The first thing you’ll want to decide is what to do with the ceiling. I prefer to leave the shed supports exposed or build a partial loft (more info on two story sheds here). It makes the man cave feel much larger and, well, cave-like. It also makes it easy to mount things up high on the wall when you can easily wrap wires around the support beams. Think about how you will set up your surround sound or hang up your flags before you cover up that stuff! After that, think about how you will ventilate the area. Sheds work a little bit like big ovens—it’s tolerable in the winter without heating, but in the summer…well, you will need to get that air flowing somehow. Windows do the job well, but planning for an AC works even better.

    More Conversion Tips for Wood Sheds

Lastly, let’s talk about floors. Some people might like the dirt floors of storage sheds, but if I’m putting a fancy TV and furniture in there, I want it to have an actual floor. Level the floor out and use large sheets of plywood to get a sturdy surface. For bonus points, apply sealant so that water won’t seep in from the floor (a pretty common issues). Once that mini “foundation” is in place, you can put down tile, carpet, or wood flooring to make your man cave really shape up. Get some contractors to throw in whatever utilities you may need, and voila, your shed is ready to be made into the perfect man cave!

  Backyard Man Cave Shed

So, how do you use your shed, now that it’s ready to throw in stuff? I talk all about this in other articles (like this one), but here are the basics to get you started. Put your large furniture in first—the fridge, any counter tops, and then your seating and tables. Think about where your TV will go as you set things up and place things accordingly, or you’ll regret it later. For decor, find some awesome posters or pieces of art that fit your man cave theme.

And you did pick a theme, didn’t you? All man caves need a central theme that tie it (and you) together. You can pick Star Wars, your favorite football team, Final Fantasy, minimalism, and even the color green. It really doesn’t matter, as long as you love it and can show it off to anybody. Throw in some signage to denote this as a man cave, rather than a study or a living room. Remember that everything should be casual and doesn’t need to follow the ‘etiquette’ that an actual home would. Your wood shed man cave is a place to relax, not a place for rules!

  Legal Stuff: Concerning Wooden Sheds

Living in a shed on your own land sounds like a dream for fans of minimalism and the simple life. However, if you want to build a man cave shed and then rent it out, there are a few things you should know. First, a shed is a class 10a building, but in order to rent, you need a Class 1 building. The difference is that Class 1 buildings need insulation, hot water, cross ventilation (for fire safety and airflow), a septic waste and water disposal system, and a few other things. There are a few pre-built sheds that include the basics for these utilities. I recommend also including electricity, since that is becoming more and more necessary in modern times and many counties require it.

  Always Check for These Before Building:

Speaking of counties, regardless of whether you want your man cave livable or not, you will have to look at state, county, city, and neighborhood regulations regarding backyard sheds if you live in a thriving community. If you have already had a shed for years, I wouldn’t worry about it, but building a new one while ignoring building codes is just asking for trouble.

  Common Codes

Attachment – Attaching your shed to your building isn’t building a shed at all—it’s building a porch or extending your house. It sort of defeats the purpose of building a secluded man cave shed in the first place, so I recommend against attaching it to the house. Look up how far away from the house your shed needs to be.

Building Permit – This is pretty self-explanatory. A building permit tells the city and the neighborhood that you understand the rules of building your own shed. It assures them that you’ll follow all the minimum requirements and lets them more easily hold you accountable if you shirk your responsibility. Real men don’t cut corners, anyways.

Location Restrictions – Even if you build on your property, that doesn’t mean you can build whatever. Home owners associations are notorious for a rule that says no constructions should be visible from the street. Furthermore, some places restrict your shed a certain distance away from your home and fence. Its vicinity to trees may also play a big role. The location restrictions can be quite random, so look them up!

Wood Shed Design Proposal – The single most important part of your building proposal, the shed design lets people know what you plan on building. It tells them about the structural integrity of the building and how you plan on meeting all the regulations above. It tells them if your building is the correct size and can be constructed in a timely manner. There are lots of pre-made wood shed kits and wood shed plans that you can select from, if you don’t have time to make all of the blueprints yourself!

    Highly Recommended (and Occasionally Required) Legal Stuff:

Yep, there’s still more! This is all common legal stuff you will run into–but even if you don’t, try to follow these guidelines.

Electricity Regulations – If you run electricity into your shed, many places will require it to be done by a licensed electrician and approved by city health inspectors. It doesn’t matter if you plan on renting out the man cave or living in it. This is just a safety concern for them.

Foundation Restrictions – Depending on your location, you need to guarantee a certain amount of stability for your new structure. Places with a high water table may require cement foundations to keep water out…or they might require a raised wooden foundation to keep water underneath! They need assurances that your shed won’t just blow away in the next bad wind storm.

Severe Weather Planning – Foundations make up a big part of this, but there are other ways to weather-proof your home. Your building must be fully insulated, the roof may not leak in even the worst thunder storms, and your shed should be on raised ground so that water flows around the foundation—rather than through the foundation—during a rain storm. Your roof tiles and side panels must be securely in place.

Once you have all of the legal stuff out of the way, feel free to build your own wood shed and convert it into the best man cave you’ve ever seen!

  Using Man Cave Wooden Sheds

Despite all these hoops you have to jump through, man cave sheds really pay off in the end. Separated from the rest of the house, they truly feel like a sanctuary (or mantuary) that you can relax in whenever you need to. Of course you’ll have to go back to reality eventually, but for now, kick back, relax, and enjoy your hard work! It can take weeks—or even months—to create the perfect man cave shed, so when you pull it off, make sure to relish it. Nothing feels better than enjoying the fruits of your own labor, after all!

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