#need to set up some disasters first tho

[untitledrockstar-if]

Would MC be an actor/actress or a model or something? Or are we just kind of the rockstar's accessory like you said before?

at the beginning, mc doesn't have a regular job and is more of an it girl/boy that's often in the tabloids but that changes! I already am thinking of potential jobs for them and the ones you listed do come up :)

[oldiesstationlover11607]

hey queen!!

i've been thinking of tyler x roadie!reader, where she's in charge of making sure their wardrobe is in order! lots of banter backstage and tension-filled costume fittings 😈

maybe tyler experiences some kind of malfunction on stage, causing reader to come rushing out to help him. while turned away from the audience trying to fix his outfit, reader teases tyler about the situation, which leaves his face bright red while he's trying to perform 🫣

i hope exams are treating you well!!

🕸🕸🕸🕸

Wardrobe - Tyler Joseph x Roadie!Reader

Warnings: None

Word Count: 1144

A/N: Sorry my stuff is getting shorter :( exams went well tho! Hopefully you enjoy this one. I haven't written a tyler fic in a while so it's nice to finally get a request for my baby hehe

The hum of the crowd filtered through the backstage walls, muffled but electric, as I fidgeted with the final buttons on Tyler’s jacket. My job wasn’t glamorous, but I loved every chaotic part of it. Tour life meant being part stylist, part therapist, and part magic, but my main focus was wardrobe. And right now, Tyler was standing in front of me, arms outstretched like a mannequin, as I worked my magic.

“You’ve got two minutes, Y/N,” Tyler said, glancing toward the door that led to the stage. He looked down at me, a small smirk slapped across his face. I could tell he was trying to remain calm, but the nerves showed in the way his foot tapped against the floor.

“Relax,” I replied, tugging the hem of his jacket into place. “You’re gonna be fine. You always are.”

“Not if my pants fall off mid-song,” he quipped.

“That’s what I’m here for.” I shot him a cheeky grin, earning a chuckle. Moments like these, the banter and the easy camaraderie, were what made the job worth it. Tyler had a way of making everyone feel like they belonged, even when the pressure was sky-high.

Satisfied with his outfit, I stepped back to inspect my work. Black jacket with silver accents? Perfectly fitted. Pants? Secure. Mic pack? Discreetly clipped to his waistband. “You’re good to go,” I announced, brushing a stray thread off his shoulder. “Now get out there and do your thing.”

He flashed me a grin, his excitement palpable now. “Thanks. You know, you’re the best.”

“I know, that’s why I’m here,” I shot back, already moving to tidy up my kit. But as I turned away, I felt the warmth of his gaze linger a little longer than usual, like he wanted to say something more. It left a faint flutter in my chest, though I quickly brushed it aside. Just work, Y/N, I reminded myself.

The next thirty minutes passed in a blur of tasks. Between organizing costumes for the next set and making sure the crew had everything they needed, I barely had time to breathe. But I always kept one ear tuned to the stage. Tyler’s voice carried through the monitors, and I could picture him moving across the stage, commanding the crowd like only he could. He had this way of captivating everyone, including me, though I’d never admit it out loud.

Then, it happened.

At first, I didn’t register the commotion. The tech crew’s radios crackled with chatter, but I was busy double-checking the next costume change. It wasn’t until I heard Tyler’s voice, sharp and urgent, that I froze.

“Uh, Y/N? Can you get out here?” His tone was strained but playful, as though he was trying to mask whatever disaster had struck. My heart leapt into my throat.

Grabbing my kit, I sprinted to the stage entrance. A stagehand gestured wildly toward the center of the stage, where Tyler stood with his back to the crowd. His hand was clutching his jacket, and even from a distance, I could tell something was off.

I didn’t have time to hesitate. I ducked past the speakers and onto the stage, staying low to avoid the spotlight. Tyler half-turned, catching my eye, and muttered, “The zipper’s stuck. I can’t get it down, and I need this jacket off for the next song.”

“Of course it is,” I muttered under my breath. “Turn around.”

The crowd roared as Josh took over with an impromptu drum noise battle with them, buying us precious seconds. Tyler pivoted so his back was to the audience, shielding me as I worked. My fingers fumbled with the zipper, which had somehow snagged on the fabric. The lights were hot, the pressure immense, but I forced myself to focus.

“This is a first,” I teased, keeping my voice low. “Wardrobe malfunction in the middle of a show? Guess I’m earning my keep tonight.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Tyler muttered, but his voice wavered, and I caught the edge of a smile tugging at his lips. “You’re loving this, aren’t you?”

“Oh, absolutely. Nothing like a little mid-show chaos to keep things interesting.” I finally managed to free the zipper and yanked it down, freeing him from the jacket. As my hands brushed against his, his breath hitched for a fraction of a second. It was so subtle, I almost missed it.

“There. Crisis averted.”

Tyler slipped the jacket off and shot me a look over his shoulder. “Thanks.”

I smirked. “Anytime, rock star.” My tone was light, but there was a faint tension that hung in the air, an unspoken undercurrent that made the moment feel heavier than it should have. I stepped back toward the shadows, but not before catching the faintest hint of pink creeping up his neck. Tyler Joseph, unflappable frontman, blushing? I filed that away for later, already grinning as I disappeared backstage.

The rest of the show went off without a hitch, but my mind lingered on those brief moments on stage. The feel of his jacket beneath my fingers, the warmth of his skin brushing mine—it shouldn’t have stuck with me, but it did. And the blush? That was new. I couldn’t stop replaying it in my head, wondering what it meant, if anything.

Backstage after the show, Tyler found me as I was packing up my kit. He was still flushed from the performance, his hair damp with sweat, but his grin was as bright as ever.

“Nice work tonight,” he said, leaning against the doorway, his voice softer than usual.

“You too,” I replied, trying to ignore the flutter in my chest. “Even with the whole zipper fiasco.”

He laughed, running a hand through his hair. “Yeah, thanks for saving me. Apparently we do need you.”

“It’s my job,” I said, giving him a playful salute. “But you owe me. Next time, maybe don’t test the limits of your wardrobe ten minutes before showtime.”

Tyler’s smile widened, but his gaze lingered on me, unreadable. There was a beat of silence before he finally spoke. “How about I make it up to you? Dinner? My treat.”

I blinked, caught off guard. “Are you asking me out, Joseph?”

“Depends. Are you saying yes?” His voice was teasing, but his eyes searched mine, as if the answer mattered more than he let on.

I considered him for a moment, my heart hammering in my chest. Then, I grinned. “Sure. But only if you promise not to make me change your outfit at the last second again.”

He laughed, a genuine, carefree sound that sent warmth spiraling through me. “Deal.”

As he walked away, I couldn’t help but smile. Tour life was chaotic, unpredictable, and exhausting. But moments like this? The way he looked at me, the way his laughter lingered in my ears—they made it all worthwhile.

//

REQUESTS OPEN

[inks-writing-space]

The Anti-Wedding- Klamille

My Masterlist <3

6.5k words: Klaus and Cami are getting married, but while loving a Mikaelson is already no easy feat, marrying one might be the cherry on top. Between Hope's magic juice boxes, a jealous ex-girlfriend and a double booked venue the day leads to a supernatural disaster. Will they be able to fix all their problems, before the catering arrives or Klaus loses it and rips someone's head off?

Warnings: nothing it‘s just fluff and my attempt to be funny

A/N: This is my response to all the Cami vs. Caroline Tiktoks I have seen on my fyp recently. Because in my mind they would be besties, and Caroline would be the biggest Klamille shipper. I'm also absolutely ignoring any Originals plotline, because Hayley and Elijah are together, Klaus raised Hope and everyone's alive and loves each other. I'm also ignoring the last episode of The Vampire Diaries because Caroline and Stefan came together. In my mind The Originals is a romcom, and EVERYONE IS HAPPY. Because I say so. Uhm yes also apologies to the girl I made the antagonist (I swear I love you) , but I needed someone (I'm not gonna spoiler). Also I passed all my written finals for anyone who wondered because I kept complaining about them in every. single. author's note. (Also my country just won the ESC 2025- which has absoloutely nothing to do with the story)

~~~~~~~

The morning sunlight poured through the tall windows of the apartment above Rousseau’s. The breeze from the French Quarter was thick with the smell of spring and music, floating in from the street below where a brass band was warming up for someone else's celebration. The bird's were singing, and a dove was watching the first flight tests of her children. The day was perfect.

Not said apartment tho. An annoyed groan broke through the may-sun and windows were quickly closed. Camille sat at the vanity, half-dressed, half-ready, entirely overwhelmed in the worst way. Her makeup was perfect and a hairdresser should have curled her blonde her into soft locks and do an updo hairstyle with flowers knitted into them about twenty minutes ago. She should have looked perfect. Excluding the shirt and leggings she was still wearing, since there was a lot she had to take care of before the wedding. But the hair dresser had not shown up, and Camille had to do it on her own. Cami, a normally not very nervous person, was freaking out.

Caroline stood behind her, curling iron in hand, her expression a mixture of concentration and careful neutrality. She hadn’t volunteered to help with the hair, but when she saw the nervous way Cami had dropped her comb three times in a row, she'd quietly stepped in. It wasn’t weird. Okay, maybe it was a little weird. But Caroline couldn't help it, she was the Queen of organising and would never ever let a woman cry on her wedding day.

While Caroline worked, neither of them mentioned the years of comparison that had sat like ghosts between them.

“I'm not going to panic anymore, quick please tell me a reason not to panic anymore,” Camille murmured, watching Caroline’s reflection in the mirror.

Caroline gave a tiny smile, brushing one last curl into place before stepping back. “You’ve dated Klaus. Nothing about today could possibly top that.”

That earned a genuine laugh from Camille. The sound echoed lightly in the quiet room, chasing away some of the tension.

“Fair point,” she said, "But on the other hand, both of my bridemaids are missing, my hairdresser did not even send an apology text, and I'm pretty sure that my fiancé is draining a blood bag right now."

Caroline set the curling iron aside and looked down at her own hands. For a moment, she hesitated. Then she started to braid Cami's hair carefully.

“Don't worry. Hayley and Davina will show up soon. And you look beautiful,” she said. “Not vampire prom beautiful. Actually beautiful.”

Cami blinked, caught off guard. “Thank you.”

Caroline nodded, a bit awkwardly, then busied herself with straightening a tiny strand that didn’t need fixing. Complimenting Klaus’s fiancée wasn’t something she’d expected to do when she agreed to attend this wedding, but here they were. And to her own surprise it didn’t sting. She was here with Stefan and when she thought about it, she really was happy. Not just for herself but also for Klaus and Cami.

The door was slammed open and in ran an excited Hope with a flower basket in her hand, followed by her mother and Davina, both a little out of breath.

All started to talk at the same time, "Cami we are so..." "...picked flowers..." "Uncle Elijah and Mom...." "...waited for Hayley..." "...Kol..." When they were done they were all still breathing heavily. Cami blinked a little.

"Could you all please repeat that?," Caroline asked. Hope was the first to talk, "Okay so basically Mom was late and she had forgotten that Uncle Elijah had already driven to Dad, and then we had to have Davina pick us up, and everyone's phone was empty, and Uncle Kol forgot juice boxes at home and we just had to return. And I went to pick flowers" Hope held up the basket filled with flowers very proudly

There was a short silence, before Caroline interrupted it, "So...you all look like you could use a charger and a drink." She unpacked her bag and gave a charger to Hayley before pouring them all champagne with Orange juice.

"Do you want orange juice only?," Caroline asked Hope. "No I'll drink Uncle Kol's juice boxes," Hope said. Davina walked to Cami.

"Are you okay?," she asked softly. Cami nodded as she emptied her glass. "Give me three more of this and maybe then I can say it like I mean it."

A knock at the door interrupted them before the silence could stretch too long. Rebekah waltzed in, flawless in navy satin and already wearing her dress looking stunning as always

“I come bearing earrings and passive-aggressive remarks,” she announced, brandishing a small velvet box. “Try not to cry. They’re vintage.”

She placed the box gently in Cami's hand. Inside were delicate pearl drop earrings with gold filigree so fine it almost shimmered.

“They were our mother’s,” Rebekah said more softly, "I'll give them to you now, because you belong to the family.”

Camille’s breath caught, she hadn't expected Rebekah to declare her family so openly. “Oh… Rebekah, I...”

“No tears,” Rebekah interrupted quickly, though her smile had softened. “You’ll ruin the work of at least two makeup artists and a supernatural setting spray.”

Camille smiled, grateful, overwhelmed, and beginning to feel the soft ache of what today truly meant.

"Actually the make-up artists were shit, she did it all on her own," Caroline mumbled and Hayley had to hide her laughter.

Downstairs, music swelled, something too formal, too grand for the rustic charm of Rousseau’s and then stopped abruptly.

“Odd,” Caroline murmured.

Suddenly there came a voice from behind the door, it was Stefan, "Hey ladies maybe you should get downstairs we have a situation here and I think someone should stop Klaus from killing people."

The women shared a look. Hope was meanwhile standing on a stool putting the flowers she picked into Cami's hair.

“Of course we have a situation,” Rebekah muttered.

Caroline rolled her eyes and grabbed her clutch. “If he’s already killed someone, I swear I am not helping to clean up body parts.”

Camille stood slowly, looking into the mirror, the shimmer of nerves now alive in her chest. She knew what this day meant. She looked and appreciated her beautiful hair and Make Up, ignoring the pants and shirt she was still wearing.

“Let’s go see what kind of situation it is.”

As they descended the stairs together, sunlight trailing behind them and the weight of the Mikaelson name hanging in the air, Camille had one thought:

It was her wedding day. Nothing could ruin it.

(The universe took that as a challenge.)

---

Camille descended the stairs like a woman on a mission, still in her slippers, her T-shirt, her hair perfectly styled with fresh-picked flowers tucked into soft braids, and the delicate pearl earrings dangling from her ears. Her bridesmaids flanked her, and Caroline brought up the rear with the poise of a battle-seasoned woman who had already organised hundreds of weddings, ready to throw hands or fix centerpieces as needed.

The moment they stepped into the main room of Rousseau’s, the tension hit like humidity thick, choking, and unmistakably Klaus.

He stood in the center of the bar, radiating fury in a tailored black suit, his jaw clenched so tightly it looked like it might snap. Stefan stood beside him he had tried to offer him a scotch for five minutes straight, he was now just hoping to escape with his limbs intact.

Two strangers in matching khaki polos stood near the back, nervously flipping through a clipboard and whispering. One of them looked like she might cry. All of them were drinking from the same juice boxes as Hope had before. There were hundreds of them standing in the room.

“What is going on?” Camille asked, the edge in her voice only partially softened by the fact that she looked like a woodland fairy halfway through a costume change.

Stefan raised a hand. “Before Klaus rips someone’s throat out, can we all agree this was probably a clerical error?”

“Clerical error?” Klaus spat. “They double-booked the venue, Camille. On our wedding day. I told you we should have married in the compound and not in a bar!"

"A pretty bar," Hope said and leaned against her father who picked her up.

“I didn’t book Rousseau’s,” Camille said quickly. “I would’ve triple-checked. This screams tourist wedding."

The clipboard woman stepped forward, trembling. “We- we were told this was available at noon. It- it’s for the Johnson-Richardson wedding-"

“-which no longer exists,” Klaus snapped, fangs flashing just briefly. “Congratulations, your ceremony is now a bloodbath.”

“Klaus,” Caroline said, stepping forward, her voice low and calm, “Let’s not eat anyone before the cake arrives.” Cami looked like she was about to cry. Klaus looked at her as Caroline nodded into her direction, this time he really looked, hair perfect, eyes tired, shirt mismatched with the rest of her, and yet somehow still the most breathtaking thing he’d ever seen. His anger dimmed slightly.

“You look beautiful. But you should be in white, love,” he said quietly.

“I will be. As soon as we have a place to actually get married," Camille said and Klaus sat Hope down to hug his bride.

Klaus turned to the event staff again, fury rekindling. “Unless these idiots plan to move, I’ll-”

“Wait,” Hope interrupted, suddenly tugging on her dad’s sleeve. “They can’t be compelled.”

Klaus blinked, thrown off. “What?”

Hope looked very guilty. “Um... they all drank from Uncle Kol's juice boxes, don't you see? He left them there and, um...there is...vervain in them.”

Everyone stared at her.

“I didn't know he'd leave the juice boxes here I swear!," Hope exclaimed.

"Hope, love," Klaus said his voice too calm to actually be peaceful, "Why did Uncle Kol bring vervain juice boxes?"

Hope's eyes lit up, "That's actually really cool, so they were normal juice boxes and he taught me a spell and we put vervain next to them and then the vervain was in the juice boxes. But he didn't want them at home so he brought them all here for me to drink."

Caroline pinched the bridge of her nose. “Why does this family make weddings feel like end-of-the-world events?”

Rebekah wandered in, holding an aperol and looking completely unbothered. “Because they usually are.”

Cami let out a sharp breath and rubbed her temples. “Okay. We can’t compel the staff, we have no venue, the caterer’s arriving in half an hour, and Klaus is going to make someone cry tonight. And why is everyone drinking?”

Hayley, always one for solutions, glanced at Davina. “Could you magic us a new venue?”

Davina winced. “Only if someone wants to get married in an abandoned church with suspicious demon energy.”

“Hard pass,” Cami and Caroline said in unison.

Klaus took a long breath through his nose and stepped closer to Cami, gently brushing one of the flowers from her braid back into place. “I am sorry. This was supposed to be your day,” he murmured. “Perfect and peaceful, without all the drama. You deserve that.”

“I deserve us,” Camille said firmly. “Not a Pinterest-worthy background.”

Caroline snorted. “Okay but we still need a background.”

“I might have a solution,” Marcel said as he walked in, the bar slowly getting fuller “There’s a gallery not far from here, my friend owns it. Long story. It’s closed today, but if I promise her lifetime access to vampire-proof security systems...”

“We’ll take it,” Cami said immediately.

“I haven’t even called yet-," Marcel said

“I said we’ll take it. Klaus, no murdering anyone in the meantime.”

He raised a brow. “No promises.”

Camille looked at him pointedly.

“…Fine. For you love, one bite. Maximum.”

She leaned in and kissed his cheek. “You get none. You get juice box energy only.”

Hope lit up. “I have juice boxes!”

Caroline clapped her hands. “Okay! Klaus, Marcel, fix the venue. Stefan watch them so they don't make someone bleed or drink themselves to death. Hope, find Uncle Kol and make him get the juice out of the way. Everyone else, let’s get this bride into a dress.”

---

The upstairs room buzzed again, this time with dress zippers, phone calls, and the sound of a seven-year-old trying to get her uncle to help her pick up juice boxes.

Cami stood barefoot in front of the mirror now, the soft white of her dress pooling around her feet like a sigh. It wasn’t extravagant, nothing in her life ever really had been, but it was beautiful. She had picked it out together with Davina and Hayley when her wedding day hadn't seemed like the most stressfull day in her life yet. Clean lines, delicate lace, a shape that made her feel like herself and someone new all at once.

Caroline was at her side, straightening the straps and smoothing the back, and for a moment, the world was still. No stolen venues. No vampire temper tantrums. Just two women, both of them once thrown into the chaos of Klaus Mikaelson. Hayley and Davina were making sure everything else was ready.

Then the phone rang. Camille answered, holding the phone with the kind of composure that only someone deeply exhausted could manage. “Klaus?”

She listened. Her posture stiffened and her hand trembled, just slightly.

“What do you mean, gone?” she asked her voice dangerously low. Caroline looked up immediately. Camille’s voice dropped even lower, now barely a whisper.

“They were in your office. In the box I gave you. No, I know it was locked, Klaus. That’s not what I- no, I’m not saying it’s your fault, I’m just well how?” There was a pause.

Camille blinked rapidly and turned away from the mirror, shoulders hunching. “No, no- don’t come back. Just… just fix the venue. We’ll deal with it. Okay?”

She hung up. For a second, she stood still. Then she let out a shaky exhale and pressed her palms to her face. Her voice cracked.

“He says the rings are gone.”

Caroline’s eyes widened. “Gone how?”

“He doesn’t know. The office was locked. He left this morning to a bloodbath or something, and now the whole drawer is empty. The box, everything.”

Hayley looked up from the corner, phone pressed to her ear. “I’ll call Elijah,” she said sharply. “He was at the compound this morning.”

Davina was already typing on her phone. “And I’m texting Kol. I swear, if this is another one of his ‘tests of love’ things...”

But Camille barely heard them as they left the room. She moved to the vanity chair and sat down, carefully, like her knees might give out if she didn’t. She was silent for a beat too long, and when she finally spoke, her voice was quieter than before.

“I know this is stupid. They’re just rings. But they were ours. They were part of this. Of making this feel real," she whispered. Caroline knelt beside her, gently, folding herself into that moment of soft panic and heartbreak without trying to fix it too fast.

“It’s not stupid,” she said. “You’ve spent all day trying to hold it together while everyone around you was one chaotic supernatural meltdown away from disaster. You’re allowed to care. You’re allowed to want it to go right. And honestly you are allowed to be mad. At...well I don't know at whom but honestly at everyone.”

Cami gave a wobbly laugh and looked at her hands. “I used to think weddings were just romanticized nonsense. But now that I’m here? All I wanted was one perfect moment.”

Caroline tilted her head. “Klaus is not a ‘perfect moment’ kind of guy.”

“I know,” Cami said with a soft smile. “But he tries. And when he does, it feels like... the rest of the world could fall apart and I wouldn’t care, because he’s standing next to me.”

Caroline exhaled. Her voice was quieter now too. “Yeah. I know what that’s like with Stefan.”

Their eyes met. The silence between them didn’t feel tense this time. It felt shared.

“I used to think we were... supposed to hate each other,” Cami said, "When Klaus told me he invited his ex-girlfriend, I was throwing hands. But he wanted to invite his friend Stefan."

“I think we were just supposed to survive each other,” Caroline replied. Then, a smirk. “But honestly? I don’t hate you. He is lucky to have you.”

“Thanks. I don’t hate you either.” Cami wiped her eyes carefully with the edge of a tissue and gestured to her reflection. “Thanks for the hair. And the calm. And the mimosas.”

Caroline stood and offered her a hand. “Anytime. Now come on. We’ve got a gallery to fill and rings to steal back. Let’s go ruin someone’s day.”

Hope popped her head in at just the right moment, holding a juice box triumphantly. “Aunty Cami? Uncle Kol says if the rings are missing it’s probably a ‘redhead thing.’”

Both women froze.

“Redhead?” Caroline repeated.

Hope nodded, very serious. “He said, and I quote, ‘If the rings are gone, check the psycho with a grudge and fabulous cheekbones.’”

Cami took a deep breath.

“Aurora,” she said with a smile on her lips that could have killed someone.

---

Caroline jingled the keys as she and Cami slid into the front seats of a sleek black car borrowed from Marcel, because of course his emergency wedding fleet included vampire-safe vehicles. None of them had changed into their normal clothes and only as Cami started the car Caroline realized that, that might have been a dumb idea.

“I swear if this day throws one more twist at us, I'm going to need some blood or I'm going to drain the city dry,” Caroline stated and Cami just nodded a little absently.

"Where are we even going?," Cami asked. Caroline shrugged, "Maybe some creepy old church. From all you have told me about that Aurora girl she seems like the type for that."

Suddenly a quiet thump came from the back seat. Both women turned slowly, afraid of what they were going to see.

Hope popped her head up from behind the passenger seat, eyes wide, juice box straw halfway to her mouth.

“Hi,” she said, voice small.

“Hope Mikaelson,” Cami groaned, turning in her seat. “What are you doing in the car?”

“I just..." Hope fiddled with the straw. “I wanted to help. I didn’t mean to mess things up with the vervain boxes. Uncle Kol said it was funny, and then he left, and I thought I cleaned them up, but-” she paused for a breath, cheeks flushing “-I thought if I helped get the rings back, maybe it’d make things better.”

Caroline rubbed her temple. “We’re bringing a child into battle. Fantastic. This wedding officially qualifies as a supernatural disaster.”

“I’m not just a kid,” Hope said, straightening. “Dad taught me to track psychic residue. Aurora leaves a trail like cheap perfume. And... I have magic juice boxes.”

Caroline blinked. “What exactly makes them magical?”

Hope grinned. “They explode if you throw them really hard.”

Camille gave her a long look. “That… should not make me feel better. And yet, here we are.”

“Besides,” Hope added quickly, “Aurora hates you. She’ll come out if I can get us close enough. Then boom. Wedding rings, back where they belong.”

Caroline exhaled slowly, pressing her fingers to her temples. “We’re letting an emotionally unstable ten-year-old help us fight a psychotic ex with unresolved jealousy issues and possible access to explosives.”

“Seven and three-quarters,” Hope corrected.

“Right," Caroline said, "You know what, I have two witchy girls at home who'd love to meet you."

"You have children?," Cami asked.

"Long story. Hope how about you tell us where our beloved Aurora might be?"

---

They followed Hope’s direction down twisted side streets and through a locked iron gate into a crumbling old church that looked like it had been dying for centuries. The stained glass windows were shattered but catching the last light of day just enough to throw shards of color across the dusty floor. Caroline huffed, "Can't believe that I was right."

They entered the church, after a long discussion with Hope if she should stay in the car (of course she didn't) and in the middle of the ruin stood Aurora de Martel.

In a blood-red gown that looked as if she had stolen it from an opera house, she stood before a rusted altar. Behind her, were multiple people dressed in wedding clothes and facing each other. The "groom" wore a paper mask with Klaus's face taped on. Everyone seemed compelled, but they could also see some of the people being mannequins. A compelled human was playing “Here Comes the Bride” off-key on an organ.

The three of them stared for a full second before Aurora turned.

"Is that creepy or is that funny?," Caroline asked Cami who just starred not believing what she saw. Even Hope was quite.

Aurora's smile spread slowly, “Aww,” she purred. “Camille. And... another blonde. I was hoping for Klaus.”

Caroline folded her arms. “Sorry, he’s a little busy not marrying you.”

Aurora tilted her head and looked her up and down. “And you are? Let me guess you are ex-girlfriend number four? Five? He has a type.”

“And you’re not it,” Camille said tightly, stepping forward.

Aurora mock-gasped. “You wound me! And here I was, about to exchange vows with your little ring.” She held it up, glittering between two fingers. “Stole it right from his drawer. A locked box? I thought you were smarter. Besides I think Klaus' and my past speaks for itself, so yes, I think I'm his type.”

Hope narrowed her eyes. “You stole the rings and you’re talking to mannequins. You are creepy."

Aurora smiled, unbothered by the child's comment. “Better company than most of the Mikaelson's. Present company included, darling.”

Caroline raised a brow. “Okay. So how do we want to do this? Magic juice boxes or girlfight in the pews?”

“I vote girlfight,” Aurora said, lifting the hem of her dress as if preparing to curtsey. “But only because I’ve been dying to slap someone since the 1800s. Especially little Cami here."

Hope pulled a juice box out of her bag and whispered, “I can make it explode near the altar and distract her.”

Camille, eyes fixed on the rings, replied calmly, “Only if you can aim. She’s not worth the fire hazard.”

Aurora giggled, completely deranged. “Oh, Camille you are always so pragmatic. It’s no wonder Klaus chose you. But don't you worry it won't last anyway, nothing with Klaus ever lasts. And you little Hope Mikaelson? Do you think your daddy will love you forever? He will soon lose interest. He looses interest in everyone."

Cami stared her down, jaw tight. “Shut up." Hope looked at Cami, "She lies."

Cami, "Aurora you are not Klaus' beginning, you are nothing to him."

Aurora stepped off the altar with a grace that felt more like a snake than a human (vampire). Her red dress whispered across the dusty church floor as she twirled the rings between her fingers like it was nothing more than a pretty toy.

“Well then,” she said, voice syrupy and cracked at the edges. “Let’s not drag this out. I really don’t like being upstaged on my wedding day."

Hope narrowed her eyes. “Yeah? Well, I don’t like kidnappers who throw fake weddings with mannequins. And with my dad. Like how creepy do you want to be??”

Aurora smiled sweetly. “Your father never disciplined you properly, did he?”

Hope didn’t answer. She just dropped her juice box, stomped on it, and whispered a sharp incantation under her breath.

The air snapped.

Wind roared through the church like it had come screaming out of the grave. Pews shattered. Candles blew out. The stained glass above them rattled dangerously. The fake groom's paper Klaus mask blew clean off. Hope screamed, the guy beneath the mask was a sceleton that immediately fell down.

Aurora’s smile faltered for a second, eyes flicking to the altar. “Brat.” At that Caroline lunged. She could watch Aurora throwing a fake wedding with the guy who she had once slept with, but not her insulting a child.

She moved faster than most could see, knocking Aurora off-balance with a full-body slam. They crashed into the side of the altar, Caroline grabbing for the ring as Aurora hissed and threw her back with vampire strength. The two vampire's were fighting, but Aurora was older and stronger and whipped Caroline off with ease. Camille ducked just in time as Caroline flew past her and slammed into a pew.

“Rude,” Caroline muttered, flipping to her feet. “But expected.”

Aurora stalked forward, all elegance and menace. “You want these rings so badly? Fine. Come take them.”

Cami didn’t hesitate. She launched her bouquet of half-dead flowers at Aurora’s face. It was ridiculous. It worked.

As Aurora staggered, Cami charged in, bare feet slapping the floor, and punched her straight in the face. Not elegant, but it felt amazing.

Aurora reeled back with a snarl. “Oh Camille,” she spat, wiping blood from her lip, “you always pretend to be above it all, but deep down you like the violence, don’t you? That’s why Klaus chose you. You’re as broken as he is. He will turn you into a vampire soon, won't he? To go kill with you.”

Cami’s fists trembled. “No,” she said quietly. “He chose me because I make him want to be better. And for the record, you make him want to jump out of a window.”

Then she raised a heel and stabbed it straight toward Aurora’s eye.

Aurora grabbed her wrist, twisting it, they struggled, heel inches from flesh, until Caroline tackled Aurora from the side, sending all three women tumbling to the floor in a flurry of blond hair, red silk, and pure chaos.

Meanwhile, Hope whispered another spell. This one sparked, quite literally. A glowing circle spread under the altar, then burst upward in a column of shimmering light. One of the mannequins caught fire. The possessed organ player screamed and fled.

“Oops,” Hope muttered. “Okay. That was too much. In my defense I have only tried that once, with Freya”

Cami finally landed the heel. It didn’t hit Aurora’s eye, it slammed into her shoulder, hard enough to sink through fabric and skin.

Aurora screamed.

Caroline grabbed the ring mid-fall, rolled to her feet, and tossed the box to Hope.

“Got them!”

Aurora flailed, ripping the heel from her shoulder and hurling it across the church. Blood ran down her arm.

“You bitches!” she shrieked.

“Correct,” Caroline said. “And we’re the ones leaving with the rings.”

Aurora lunged, teeth bared, hair wild, fury unhinged.

Hope threw another juice box. It hit the altar and detonated in a spectacular splat-spark combo, knocking Aurora off her feet and into one of the fake Klaus mannequin's, which toppled dramatically on top of her.

The church fell silent except for the sound of flames slowly eating the edge of a pew. "I...I guess she wanted him on top of her?," Caroline said, her voice a little unsteady as she smoothed her clothes.

Cami stood up, breath ragged. “Okay. That was unnecessarily satisfying.”

Caroline nodded, brushing ash off her shoulder. “Definitely ruined my hair. Worth it.”

Hope strolled up, holding the ring box proudly. “Got them both! They’re sticky but they still sparkle.”

Aurora groaned under the fake Klaus.

Cami turned to her and said, voice low, cold, and utterly triumphant: “You can keep the church. We’ll take the future.”

She stepped over the torn hem of Aurora’s dress and looked at her friends. “Let’s go get married.”

---

The gallery doors burst open.

Hope marched in first, chin high, carrying the ring box like it was the Olympic torch. Behind her came Caroline and Camille, both covered in soot, hair windblown, dresses ripped at the hems, but their eyes were blazing.

The crowd fell silent. Even the jazz band stopped playing mid-note.

Klaus stood slowly, walking towards his soon to be bride. “Camille?”

She pointed at the ringbox, smirking. “We got them.”

Klaus crossed the room in a blur, cupping her face in his hands, eyes scanning her like he couldn’t quite believe she was real. “Are you hurt?”

“Not really. One heel short. Might have bruised my pride a little.”

“You look perfect,” he said, voice lowly, kissing her “I’d marry you like this. Dirt, blood, vengeance and all.”

Caroline groaned. “Absolutely not.”

Klaus blinked. “Pardon?”

“No offense, but she just ripped out a possessed wedding crasher’s soul with a stiletto. That deserves an actual gown.” She spun on her heel and pointed dramatically. “Rebekah, I bet you know were to get wedding dresses quickly.”

Rebekah perked up. “Say no more.”

Cami opened her mouth to protest but got steamrolled by Caroline who already had her by the wrist. “Let me have this. I’ve seen way too many terrible dresses not to be your fairy godmother right now.”

Klaus chuckled, "Caroline, when can I have my bride back?"

"Give us an hour. Maybe two, the hair might be worse than I thought."

---

Meanwhile Klaus took Hope up to the rooms were the guests had gotten ready. Hayley crouched in front of Hope with a wet cloth, gently scrubbing dirt off the girl’s cheeks. “You smell like cementary and fireworks. What exactly did you do?”

Hope grinned. “Nothing Freya hasn’t done. I only slightly exploded a church, but it was really cool. By the way dad's ex-girlfriend should go eat shit. Not my words, Caroline'"

Hayley narrowed her eyes. “We’re going to talk about that later.”

On the couch beside them, Elijah sat with quiet focus, braiding Hope’s hair. Each section was precise, smooth, and almost meditative. He was smirking at Hayley as he heard the conversation.

“Is it weird that Uncle Elijah braids better than Aunty Bex?” Hope asked.

Hayley smirked. “Nope. Not even a little.”

Hope turned to Elijah, "Can you make me look like a fairy princess who likes to blow up things?" "Already at it," Elijah said with a smile, placing a kiss on Hope's forehead.

---

Klaus waited at the end of the aisle, hands folded behind his back, expression unreadable, he was worried for Cami, but know he was just happy to marry her, to finally make her his.

Caroline leaned toward Stefan and whispered, “If he cries, I’m getting it on camera.”

Stefan placed a kiss on Caroline's forehead, "You owe me one. He would have almost blown up that bar."

Caroline rolled her eyes, "I fought his psychotic girlfriend. Who had mannequin's with his face."

"Okay you win," Stefan said with a smile.

The crowd hushed as the music changed to something gentle, not the classic "Here Comes The Bride" like planned (Caroline had made sure to change that in case Cami would still have PTSD from Aurora) The sunlight, stretching through the high windows of the restored gallery, caught the edge of the white runner now rolled out across the floor. Hope's flower petals littered it like soft confetti, and the air buzzed with the ghost of the battle they had just fought and the magic of something new beginning.

At the end of the aisle, Klaus waited.

He was still in his suit from earlier, though his jacket had been replaced with a dark vest, and someone, Rebekah, no doubt, had pressed a white rose into his lapel. His expression was unreadable, but his hands twitched at his sides like he didn’t know what to do with them.

He'd waited a thousand years for many things. Power. Family. Revenge.

But this? This was the first time he looked like he was waiting for something that made him truly nervous.

Hope appeared first, in a pretty yellow dress, her eyes sparkling with joy. She tossed flower petals with both hands and a grin so big it nearly split her face. She hugged her father before sitting in between Hayley and Elijah.

Then the music changed again and the room turned.

Caroline had done the impossible. In less than an hour, she and Rebekah had scrubbed, glamoured, sewn, and whipped together a dress that looked like it had been stitched by Calvin Klein heimself.

Camille O’Connell stood at the top of the aisle in a gown that shimmered with every breath she took. It was off-the-shoulder, elegant without being flashy, with a hint of silver embroidery at the waist. Her hair had been braided back loosely, a few strands falling free. She wore no veil, she hadn't wanted one.

She was beautiful. A little bruised, slightly limping, but more radiant than any bride had a right to be, in Klaus' eyes. Klaus forgot how to breathe.

Caroline leaned toward Stefan. “Told you. Actual fairy godmother.”

Davina and Hayley stepped forward slowly, the ring box in their hand, but now held like something sacred. They were Cami's bridesmaid's and for Klaus it were Kol and Marcel.

When Cami reached him, he took the box from Hayley, gently, like he was afraid it would break and gave it to Elijah.

“I love you,” he whispered.

“I know,” she said, smiling softly. “You’re not that hard to read.”

Elijah stepped forward as officiant, composed and still, dressed immaculately, a quiet pride in his eyes. “We are gathered here today,” he began, “in a moment hard-earned, long-fought, and against every conceivable odd, to witness the union of two souls who... probably should’ve eloped.”

Laughter rippled through the room, but Elijah’s eyes turned solemn again. “Camille. Niklaus. You’ve walked through blood and ash to find each other. If that doesn’t qualify you for love, I don’t know what does. We all have watched your ups and downs and are glad to find you here today. To your vows.”

Camille turned to Klaus and took both of his hands. She inhaled once, deeply. And began.

“I don't believe in fate. Or soulmates. Or any of that crap. But then you walked into my life. And wrecked everything. I met you close after my brother's death and I thought...I don't know what I thought or expected but...not that.”

Klaus looked faintly offended. She squeezed his hands.

“You ruined my quiet. You tore open every door I had locked. You made me question what kind of person I was. And then you did something I never saw coming, because you made me want to stay. I never understood people trying to reason with me. Because from that moment on, when you carried me home from that church, I somehow knew it was going to be you.”

She paused, voice trembling just slightly.

“You’re not perfect. God, you’re not even close. But you’re honest with me. You love me without rules. And you let me love you back and you don't close down. You trust me and I trust you. Around you everything is easy. And I love you for that."

She smiled, a tear running down her face.

“So yeah. I’m going to marry you, Niklaus Mikaelson. And if you ever forget why I'll be by your side forever to remind you why you are a good person and the love of my life. And I hope you don't have more jealous ex-girlfriend's I need to fight.”

There was silence, Klaus stared at her like he wanted to burn the moment into his memory forever.

Elijah spoke, "Klaus?"

He took her hands tighter before he spoke.

“Camille O’Connell. You once told me the world is not as cruel as I believe it to be.”

His voice was low, rough with emotion just peak Klaus.

“You were wrong. The world is still cruel. But you... you are the proof that it doesn’t have to be. You have been my mirror. My mercy. I stood before you, blood on my shirt, no mercy in my eyes and you told me that everything is going to be alright. Do I deserve you? I don't know. But now, today, here I promise you that I'll love you forever.”

His voice cracked. But Camille heard it.

Elijah gave a nod. “Then, with the powers vested in me by questionable vampire authority, who happen to be me, because we have an urgent need for something good in this family’s story... I now pronounce you husband and wife.”

Klaus didn’t wait.

He pulled Cami into his arms and kissed her like she was breath itself like the world might end if he stopped. There was nothing chaste about it. It was fire meeting fire, stubbornness meeting stubbornness, and two broken people who had decided to live anyway.

The crowd erupted. Hope jumped up and clapped, starting to throw petals at everyone indiscriminately.

Caroline sniffled and muttered, “Damn it, it was romantic.” Stefan wrapped an arm around her and kissed her.

Camille pulled back, laughing against Klaus’s lips. “You’re crying,” she whispered.

He blinked once. “No. I’m merely... overwhelmed by pollen.”

“Sure,” she teased. “You’re adorable.”

And then he kissed her again. Because finally they had nothing left to run from. Only everything to run toward.

[doitforbangchan]

Hiya honey💛 First, ABANB; 🫠❤️‍🔥 ruined but also healed my soul, thank you ily you deserve all the ice cream!

Quesstionnn thoooo, I’m still new to the A/B/O universe, would it be possible for one alphas rut to trigger the other’s? 🤔 Like Chan thought he had his under control, but this one is just so, aggressive and aromatic it causes Binnie and Innie to go into theirs?! Could Baby handle it?! Pleeeasse tell me your thoughts oh wise one ❤️❤️❤️

Hi babes! thank you for always supporting the story and being so nice to me 😭 can we get ice cream together instead? 🤗

im not sure about other abo universes or lore, but in my story i'm thinking that it would be possible for one alphas rut to trigger anothers. the first alpha would have to be putting out some crazy powerful pheromones and the other alphas would need to be within at least a few months away from their next rut, so like innie couldn't go into another one so quickly if chan went into his rn, ya know?

I would agree that if any one of them could cause the other two it would be chans. As the head alpha he naturally exudes the most dominance but when hes in a rut it is so much worse, the mean stink clogging up the house and also having baby around who is always putting out the sweetest scents especially since she's getting railed by chan? oh its a recipe for disaster.

i say disaster because an alpha in their rut does not share, not with anyone. rutting alphas are possessive and become incredibly aggressive towards any one who comes near their mate. having all three alphas rutting in the same house with the same girl is a terrrrrible idea that would only end badly for everyone 😰

thats why its so important for chan to leave to the safehouse during his rut. half the reason is because he is is extremely territorial in rut and the other half is so he doesn't set off the other two.

BUUUUUUT if they were able to share... baby would do her damn best to keep all three calm cool and satisfied 😎 tho lets be real it would be a STRUGGLE to be used so mercilessly by all three at the same time for days on end. she was exhausted after going through it with one can you imagine all three?? 💀💀

Thank you so so much for your question I hope this answers it enough! Love ya bb 💕

[vaguely-concerned]

I’m on a Star Wars books roll so here we go with my — unhinged thanks for asking! — thoughts on Dooku: Jedi Lost, specifically the audio play. Short version: I fucking loved this one! For maximum emotional devastation, pair with Master and Apprentice and Padawan the way my stupid ass did and then be sad about it forever I guess that's what I’m going to have to do.

 Long (LONG oopsie) version:

- So. First of all, let’s get the most important thing out of the way on this here old man yaoi website. We all agree dooku and sifo dyas explored each other’s bodies right. Or at least definitely would have if not for the laws of this order etc., potentially. That’s not just me. Good. Thank you. We can now move on 

- Secondly. Well. Guess I’m just going to be inconsolable about Sifo-Dyas forever now. I miss the days in which he was just a throwaway line in AotC spawned by a random misspelling to me, rather than an eternal raw aching wound in my heart

- poor poor ventress just reading through all the proof that dooku absolutely does have it in him to be a good dad I mean master and just — idk got tired of that and went the force lightning route with her. I love the move of having her dead master hang out with her all that time as well (having her slip up and refer to ‘us’ did something to me, god this is so sad. Is he actually there in spirit or is it just her grief dreaming him up because dooku is awful and cold as a cliff  wall and she needs some kind of attachment figure even if she’ll have to reinvent him herself, rebuild him word for word, gesture by gesture. Pain. sorry about your terrible track record with father figures asajj) 

- Lene: (About Averross): He hasn’t changed. 

Dooku: (In the warmest fondest voice you ever heard) And I hope he never does

WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO WITH MYSELF? MUST I SET MYSELF ON FIRE TO ESCAPE THE PAIN???

Another strong showing for Rael in general, btw. He’s so warm and charming as a presence even though he’s also a little chaos gremlin. (He’s quite similar to how Sifo-Dyas was when he was young in some ways, I can definitely start to see what Dooku responds warmly to in terms of character traits.) 

- the fact that good ol’ sheev showed an interest in rael, dooku and anakin… interesting huh! He’s just got a soft spot for the disaster lineage I suppose, maybe there’s an element there of luring yoda’s most direct lineage into the dirt with him without yoda even noticing for the longest time. Also cackling at the idea that he looked at qui-gon ‘too fucking stubborn and insufferable to fall to the dark side out of sheer spite’ jinn and went ‘...not that one tho’ fhdskjfa. And obi-wan is more like ‘that one blorbo all my little guys seem wild about but I just don’t get it guys’ 

IF rael’s refusal to join dooku at the end of ‘master and apprentice’ is the last word (which I am not convinced of ;___; be safe cowboy jedi we never see in mainline canon so far), then he’s the only one who has dodged palpatine’s attentions. Wonderful if true love that for him

ALSO rael is one of the few people we know to be on (or at least to consider himself on despite what palps might think lol) first name basis with palpatine. Hilarious. I concur with dooku never change rael 

- Sifo-Dyas: That’s insane. 

Dooku, deadpan: Yes.

Sifo-Dyas: The worst plan I’ve ever heard.

Dooku, somehow even more deadpan: Most probably. 

Sifo-Dyas: I’m in. 

Crying… weeping and dying………… what if someone could have helped sifo with his unfortunate prophecy propensity and they hadn’t drifted apart. Clone Wars averted methinks if dooku still ended up leaving the order he would have been too busy having tender gay sex with the love of his life (and only person who can call him out on his shit and have him actually listen) to be a war criminal (I am being extremely facetious of course this is very much a ‘time traveler killing baby hitler’ situation where the underlying forces causing this point in history are way too powerful to avert the catastrophe in one move. but at least palps would probably have had to pick someone else to wreck the galaxy through and sifo-dyas would be kissed & held instead of going slowly mad. A net plus some (I, me) would say) 

- I just wanted to applaud both the writing and the voice acting for the characterization of Dooku in this, from his young self trying so hard to be haughty and self-possessed but also being like, y’know, twelve and a dweeb and easy for Sifo-Dyas to pull into trouble, to the dry wit and warmth he shows with Rael and Qui-Gon or his sister later. It took me a little while to get into the voice acting specifically (the actor makes no attempt at going the full Christopher Lee, which in hindsight was probably wise), but now I love it. It gets a bit goofy in places but you know what, I am a long time lover of audio plays, that’s part of the charm 

- “Master, have I done something wrong?”

My heart is clenching… do you think… that master yoda’s deal with leaving his student to try fucking everything to have some kind of relationship with him until he just breaks down in tears of despair… is the kind of thing that maybe started a little bit of a generational trauma cartwheel through the ages. The point that bb!dooku is arrogant isn’t without merit and he strikes out incredibly ungracefully about it (in fact I would be a lot more worried than yoda seems to be that he decides to try to kill a tree about it, ‘I felt like destroying something beautiful’-style)  but I just don’t think a… fourteen year old? A teen anyway, Is going to learn what you think he learns from this. I simply don’t believe that silent treatmenting kids will teach them emotional intelligence I guess especially if they already struggle with that naturally lol 

(It is exactly the same mistake (in my opinion) that Qui-Gon makes with Obi-Wan, too, just leaving the kid completely alone and forcing them to come to you every which way for comfort or guidance instead of meeting them or reaching out to them. Especially once you see that really Dooku’s prime emotion/big core wound right from the beginning is loneliness. And that doesn’t only come from a feeling of superiority (which to be sure is also a big factor), because he has no idea where he comes from until he meets his sister. I don’t think the jedi as a whole were unsalvageable by any stretch of the imagination, but Yoda specifically… you are on such very thin ice with me at this point you little green fuck. You’re very funny and moving in yoda dark rendezvous and that’s all that’s keeping you in my somewhat good graces.)

- Okay, coming back a bit later I think I’ve found the right words to say this. more precisely dooku has two big issues which you can later see haunting all the way down his lineage — loneliness and control. (and not incidentally the intersecting elements of the two haha.) We see from his relationship to sifo-dyas that he’s not incapable of having close mutual relationships with an equal, but that kind of crashed and burned for reasons neither of them could really help and after that it seems quite telling that he has the easiest time with deeper connection in a teacher-student sort of form. I think his affection is unconditional and real, but you can’t get away from the fact that he also has the most control in that relationship structure by default, he gets to dictate what form it takes to a big extent. He doesn’t trust other people — the underlying idea ‘Only I can do this’ that eventually leads him down the Separatist path is there the whole way. It speaks both to a sense of superiority and an utter lack of faith that other people can or will help him. And then that echoes down through the master-padawan line: 

Qui-Gon with his self-righteousness and utter refusal to compromise leaving him isolated among the jedi (only he is right. Yeah the Force told him so. Don’t worry I’ve got a permit *insert parks and rec I can do whatever I want meme here*), Obi-Wan with his anxiety and perfectionism and incredible sense of shame and responsibility that he should be able to carry the whole world on his shoulders alone and beating himself up for failing, all feeding into not knowing what to do with Anakin and his complete lack of control of himself and his desperation to gain and maintain connection and love (which earns him the title of ‘Dooku’s least favorite family member’ fhdsa his immediate disdain for him is so funny and so in character. Repress and go slowly mad like a normal person anakin the way you’re carrying on is just undignified and that is much worse than being evil)… 

- Rael gently telling Dooku to take on another padawan soon… so sweet, so sad, local cowboy jedi looking out for his dad. Also highlights something about Dooku I think is true: that he does much better and seems to have an easier time holding to the light when he’s responsible for someone else. Again, I do feel like Dooku’s core problem is loneliness, but it seems like raising kids is the one point where that relaxes somewhat. Maybe if Sifo-Dyas had stayed in a better mental place and they kept in touch it could have been different.

- Lene Kostana is SUCH a character! Charismatic and deeply fucked up, when it’s revealed how her and Sifo-Dyas’ relationship remains long after his padawan stage is done I felt a little bit sick, to my surprise. Because that could just be kindness on her part, of course, it’s good that he has someone he trusts to look after him when he can’t himself, but also there’s something… queasy about the way it keeps him continually young, in a way. (Notably he still calls her ‘master’ even as an adult, when they’re working together. Not uncommon in Star Wars, of course, but together with everything else going on vibes-wise… hm.) The inherent unreliable narration of this story really worked for me in this regard especially — do we know that young Dooku was entirely wrong when he sensed the dark side in her? She certainly is willing to go to lengths that are… worrying! in her fascination with sith shit, she tempted children into a dangerous place they didn’t understand and couldn’t know the consequences of and she continually puts sifo-dyas in situations that are implied to be a risk to worsening his condition. Run of the mill incredibly irresponsible at best, sincerely sinister at worst. Did she choose Sifo over Dooku because he’s more vulnerable and shapeable? There is an undercurrent of something icky and emotionally incest-y going on with how she relates to Dooku and Sifo-Dyas in general (right down to the ‘NO, no one can know about this’ intensity after the… evil moss cave. I can’t believe I’m this emotional about a book with an evil moss cave). I don’t think she’s a proper sith in any way and I also believe there is real affection there on all sides, but idk something about the whole thing makes me deeply uneasy. Yoda where the fuck are you your son is out there with his irresponsible mom again they’re looking for dirty needles in haystacks and they’re not even wearing any gloves

- dooku telling sifo-dyas he can come back to haunt him if he likes as a joke… well well well I’m sure that doesn’t ring with some dramatic irony at some point down the line lmao

- honestly looking back at master and apprentice after reading jedi lost makes qui-gon's apparent lack of reaction to dooku leaving seem — let's call it highly suspect haha. rael asks him if he's spoken to dooku after and qui-gon is like 'no. why would I. it's literally fine. anyway this topic is done now'. (and rael seems to just go ‘*older brotherly knowing* uh-huh’) meanwhile he's thinking about dooku *all the time* trying to figure out his role as master to obi-wan, thinking about being a padawan himself, the parts of his life he shared with both dooku and rael. The jedi doth protest too much methinks  

ALSO how much of qui-gon thinking the council was too lenient with rael after he had to kill his padawan is about that actual situation, and how much is a ‘our family still likes my older brother more than me even though he Fucked Up so bad and breaks just as many rules as I do’ sort of deal mixed with his own neuroses about how he’s failing obi-wan (to which rael’s situation symbolizes the worst possible outcome, i.e. the kid dies and it’s basically your fault). Many thoughts. 

- moment of silence for jenza of house serenno. Girl your only sin was being surrounded by asshole male family members and I’m so sorry I think you did all you could with what you had to work with here.

Not… entirely sure how dooku’s claim to the title supersedes hers — is he a year older than her? (she’s eleven when they first meet, he might be twelve or older at that point I don’t remember haha) Does she just give up her place in the inheritance order? Are primogeniture and male heir preference factors in Serenno inheritance law? Not the most important thing honestly it works anyway thematically but could have been clarified quickly!

- interesting to see that the council’s restrictive policy against engaging with prophecies had a surprisingly big impact on how things went down. Kostana has a lot of responsibility in Sifo’s fate for insisting he keep it secret, but there is genuine fear for what might become of him if the rest of the order finds out he’s got 24/7 futurevision hovering over him threateningly… listen it’s not like the poor guy can help getting the future constantly pumped into his brain at nightmare resolutions, I think maybe if there had been more willingness to at least engage curiously with the concept of prophecy and how it works, even if you don’t put your faith in the particulars of what the prophecies say, this wouldn’t have had to be such a shitty isolated secretive life for him. hearing him slowly fall apart over the years considering how bright and lovely he started out... oof is all I can say 

- when dooku was a good jedi he was such a good jedi!!! The scene where they’re saving the kids from the collapsing hospital, every time he teaches his students anything…the impulse of someone has to do something about this! that made him so good at saving lives turning dark with the tarnish of frustration and rage over the years… nooooooooo problematic grandpa why did it have to be like this :(

- …do you think infant jedi can sense what’s going on around them in the Force. Because it makes a very sad kind of sense if dooku on some level remembers bodily or in the Force that he was not only abandoned but rejected in disgust as one of the first things he discovered in the world. Oh boy. With all the ways attachment relationships can go wonky in the first few years in real life I don’t even want to consider how much more wrong it can go when the baby is fucking psychic lol

- vaguely related: the way dooku seems to find the very idea of being truly reliant on anyone, emotionally or otherwise, personally offensive, terrifying and humiliating lol. Yoda saves him from being crushed by rubble and he is outraged because that means he can’t save himself (and his newfound sister) without anyone’s help like he thought for one glorious moment he could. The fantasy of perfect emotional self-sufficiency, doing away with all the messiness and risk of interpersonal relationships and cutting off the possibility of really being abandoned again. It’ll get ya every time. This is also a thing you see reflected in his lineage — they’re all quite inward-turning that way until you get to anakin, to different extents and with varying presentations but it is there I think. Qui-Gon turns to the Force, Obi-Wan to perfectionism and shame and rumination, Rael to the bottle and depression and hedonistic apathy, but they all struggle hugely with letting anyone in to help them. Dooku’s line are all much more comfortable being the helpers rather than the helpees, as it were.  

- “Thank you for everything, Lene. Tell Rael and Qui-Gon — tell them… tell them the Force will be with them, always”

Emotional terrorism against me specifically and personally. You asshole you just excused yourself from the non-attachment rules there’s literally nothing in the world except you to stop you from reaching out and telling your children you love them yOURSELF why are you like this

- the recurring theme of dooku seeing something beautiful (the tree in the temple, the tirra’taka as a child and an adult) and ending up lashing out to destroy it… but the tree was old and mighty and he was young and new and couldn’t truly harm it, so he was saved from his own impulsivity. And then when he sees the tirra’taka as an adult he loves it immediately. And in the end he still mangles and destroys it. He didn’t mean to, but he did. He woke it up and hurt it just by existing as a child and then he had to kill it as a mercy because he was too powerful at that point for anything to buffer his mistakes. The parallel with the bird he loved that he also couldn’t protect. He starts out with an aching loneliness somewhere at the core of him through no real fault of his own but by the end it is entirely his own fault that it’s worse, because he starts wrecking everything he loves in an almost absent-minded but definitely intentional way, like it’s a nightmare he’s listening to through the door as it happens in the next room over. He really IS the ‘I just felt like destroying something beautiful’ central of the jedi.

at the end qui-gon is dead and through dooku’s own influence, however indirectly. Rael has had to turn away from him. Sifo-Dyas is dead on Dooku’s own orders and so is his sister, he might as well have done it with his own hands. (though I think it’s very interesting that in each case he didn’t do it with his own hands, he consistently uses a middleman.) He lives within the coldness of his sterile empty castle and horrifically mistreats the one person he might have found something like connection with the way he did with his students before (Ventress), deliberately trapping her in a similar state of utter desolate isolation and telling her, essentially, ‘We’re like this as people and nothing can be done to change it. We can’t escape, we’re already doomed, stop trying, it’s too late. You are just like me (and if you aren't already I'll make you like me)’. And that’s the closest thing he gets to love anymore. When he accused Ky of using her ‘as a salve for his own loneliness’ and you’re like well well well mr projection man how’s that working out for you. He is completely, shatteringly alone and he is so entirely as a consequence of his own actions and he's too far gone to understand or care. I’m howling you useless fucking FOOL dooku  

- dooku 🤝 john gaius

“Hm. I have observed that there are in fact many flaws in our society and the government is deeply corrupt. So if I kill a few billion people here and there in order to fix it, is that not basically okay when you really think about it” 

Dooku making salient points about the political and ethical failures of the Republic and then, just when you think he’s onto something, he goes and makes The wildest fucking decisions about what to do about it. Sure. dark magic and genocide are probably the only ways out of this you’re so right bro. If we make enough minuses to add together surely we’ll end up in plus sooner or later

- *head in my hands once more* I can’t believe I am genuinely emotionally invested in someone called Count Dooku with the looks of a knockoff dracula and ultimate moral character to match right now this is terrible. hey. hey dooks. what you have to go and fuck everything up so bad for huh I’m so incredibly sad now

there is something to be said about how getting to see glimpses of what dooku looked like in the light makes it so much more heartwrenching that he never came back. he could have, a thousand times. and every time he chose not to.

[sleepymccoy]

Thinking about that tweet where someone learned that Australia has new year's eve like 14 hours before America and deduced that we genuinely live in the future and they were so pissed off that we hadn't called to warn about 9/11 lol

Anyway I'm thinking about a world where that's true. Time zones are man made, their genuine pockets of time difference. So the country at the start knows what happened next door an hour ago, and across the sea a day ago. Would they warn people? Would they use it for strategic advantage? Bit of both?

Im not gonna talk about war cos I don't have the brain for that kind of strategy

As time goes on I think you'd see humanitarian aid set up in the first country, whose role is to stay on top of news alerts from the future and parse them into preemptive advice. So, for 9/11, advice to either ground the air space or evac the buildings

It would be helpful for accidents and intentional acts of violence and stuff like that. I don't see the future warning bells being useful for natural disasters tho

Aotearoa has a lot of earthquakes. If they had an hour warning for which buildings weren't gonna survive this quake, theyd be able to evac. But they couldn't save the buildings and the clean up would be just as hard

Australia has bushfires and cyclones. A couple hours warning means very little there. Evacuating last minute is never a good idea, so it's just not enough to be helpful. If it were a full day maybe they'd be able to send more fireys to a small fire with the warning that it'd get out of control, but in this set up Australia is quite early in the order of ops and it takes a little while to mobilise that many people. And cyclones we see coming for days, two hours doesn't help

Cyclones are like that across the world, and storms in general. Fires too, although in some of the very later countries fires could be helped a little. We tend to get a heads up on tsunamis these days as well. Landslide is a good one tho, we get little warning on them and they're devastating.

I could go on but I need to go get dressed to leave, so this is where the post ends

[alexandraisyes]

joining in on ranting in you're ask box part- uh- idk 3?? 4??? I dont even know anymore

Anyway, *cough* i think still have some of these left (edit: I just finished typing this all out and think is defiently an understatement-)

SolarNexus: Solar just goes off on Moon for how much he hates Nexus. Thats all I have for that. I'm sorry im this close to forcing myself to start writing fanfiction again just to write this. Also for my true loves kiss saves Nexus idea- and just to write about Nexus finding who he is instead of who he's supposed to be. .... can you tell i think about these two a lot? (Edit: I prove later that I think about them even more, and Eclipse)

BloodySun: I'm like feral for these two- just, like- Bloodmoon giving dead birds and stuff to Sun and he's absolutley digusted but trying not to hurt their feelings- i- ansusnhas

Servant Sun x Servant Eclipse: I've seen like 1 ship fic with these two but I dont care. I'm obsessed. They need to hold hands and heal and go to therapy together. Obviously Eclipse would defiently be able to help Sun more (cause lord Eclipse), but Sun could defiently help Eclipse too. (Is Eclipse faking losing his memories/being reset or some shit canon? I've read too much fanfiction- im going to assume it is for this) he can also help Eclipse learn that he doesn't have to be fake all the time and thatd be cute

Nexus x Dark Sun: I dont even have thoughts about this. Like I have feelings but I dont have thoughts. I cant even reason why I like this, I just like the toxic yaoi. I just like the concept of Dark Sun not even liking Nexus but manipulating him- like- Moon turned bad x biggest moon hater. I also just like hurting Nexus so other characters can help him heal. Only thing turning me off from this ship is that its an alternate universe of his ex-brother who would most likely be his brother again if he had a redemption arc. Like- I love seeing the ship and I like the concept just it gives me the ick, but thats okay cause I dong have to rot over every ship. Actually, I'm glad I'm not obsessed with this ship I dont need more angst living in my brain. ... I am obsessed with it in a platonic sense tho so I guess the angst is in my brain anyway

Nexus x Eclipse but its when they were looking for who made Eclipse: Nexus abolutley collared him. Im sorry. .. no im not, im right. Like, what is with Nexus and treating others like dogs??? Like first v4 Eclipse, and now Ruin??? Nexus is there anything you want to tell us??? Okay pet play- also doing that to the masochist is crazy, like if you're going to treat anyone like a dog why would it be Ruin that feels like setting yourself up for disaster. Even if he isn't actually a masochist he sure is known for pretending to be one

Nexus x any Eclipse ever: listen, im just saying I think he has a thing for Eclipse's (which is funny cause Moon fucking hates them) Treating Eclipse and Ruin like his dogs. Solar being his best friend. Even Dark Sun, who's a really smart Evil Sun who absorbed the knowledge of his Moon, so im counting him. Like I think Nexus would like being thrown around by Lord Eclipse, or helping to fix up Servant Eclipse. I'm just saying-

Eclipse ² x Nexus (gets its own section i rot about these three): them just reassuring the other's that they're loved and cared for- im sorry you can't tell me that these three don't all have some form of attachment issues- Eclipse being so used to people hating him that he kind of just instinctively pushes people away. Similar with Solar, but he does it more so emotionally while also feeling like he has to earn his place and do things for people. And Nexus also feels like he has to prove himself, and that he isn't good enough.

And they just reassure each other and then the others use their words against him (/pos) and they realize how stupid it sounds and anisnsusnsns <3<3 like- nexus being like "you don't have to prove yourself for anyone, Solar. We love you, you don't need to overwork yourself for us." And, like- solar saying it to him back- and Nexus is just like ".. okay listen-" and similar things happening with the other two and ensunsjss-

also they're the three worst at interaction (other than old Moon he takes the cake for worst at it, but its okay i love it)- like they're all pretty bad at it. Eclipse is Eclipse(aka memories as a villain, and is a sarcastic little shit), Nexus is just kind of awkward, and cmon Solar didn't really ever have any interaction after his split than his Moon and probaly kids, we know he can't talk to people easily. Honestly tho Solar is the best at it (he was able to start up a conversation with Moon easier than Moon could with him) and I imagine he's the one who orders at restaurants

And Moon hates both of Solar's boyfriends and Moon and Solar are friends and I think that's just kind of funny. Like Moon likes Solar so he doesn't stop being friends with him even though he's dating the two, but he's bitter about it (though honestly if Nexus had a redemption arc and it was proved he had a virus, I feel like Moon would hate him a little less. But he'd probaly still be insecure about Nexus probaly taking his place and everyone not really liking Moon again so he'd probaly still be an ass to him.)

Anyway they cuddle. Doesn't even have to be romantic, those three deserve to be in love (also the potential from forbidden love Eclipse² is Nausnsusnsn)

... I- shipping dynamics are neat

I apologize for making this so long, I expected it to be short and then I remembered I started to like new ships 😔

ALSO were being brave and doing this off anon (also id like you to know I genuinely just stared at my phone for a moment when I saw youd followed me lmao. I was so suprised [and delighted, you're neat]- plus it was like 4 am and I hadn't slept yet. I thought it was a dream the next day because I was that tired- I had to check cause i get very vivid dreams-)

All of these are so canon bro.

Solar saves Nexus with true loves kiss real? Real. I saw it with my own two eyes. It happened chat.

BLOODYSUN!!! They love their sunny and try to show that in the best way they know how, dead birds included. Sun is so grossed out by the blood and feathers and ough that's a dead bird ewww but he just forces a smile and nods and feeds it to his cats when Bloodmoon isn't looking. Then drowns his hands with soap and shampoos the carpet.

I feel like I've seen that fic too but my poor brain- Also yes, the pretending to be reset is canon. And that's so cute I'm-

Platonic ships are just as valid as romantic ones! And I really like the angst potential too heheheheh

Ayo 👀 Mmm I have thoughts about that but I must refrain.

Objectively correct. Nexus is an eclipsephile. He loves himself some eclipse.

POLY POLY POLY 🎉🎉🎉

THANK YOU FOR SHARING ALL OF YOUR THOUGHTS THESE ARE SO TASTY OH MY GOD ROLLING THESE AROUND IN MY BRAIN

Also awww ur so sweet. I love ur art! It's very cute! Of course I followed!

Ask Game

[iyanayukihime]

Chapter 3: Video call, gone wrong or right?

I really should set up deadlines for myself but at least this didn't take a whole week to finish lmao, I hope ya'll enjoy reading this as this has to be the most chaotic chapter yet LMAO.

Enjoy, sit back, have a drink and snacks. Let's read~

Last Chapters: Chapter 0: The Beginning of Chaos, Chapter 1: Homesick already, Zander?, Chapter 2: HISSSS at the Intruders, Chapter 3: Video call, gone wrong or right?,

Reminder: Please be known that I'm only writing about the Persona and not the person affiliated with the Model. This is also just fictional work so please don't take this too seriously.

Disclaimer: Might be OCC, might have spelling and grammar mistakes as English isn't really my first language ehe.

Summary: Video call with Zander Netherbrand, going to the beach with Ryzar and his cupcakes as well as another escape attempt!? Netherlings.. calm the fuck down fr.

"ZANNY WAKE UP!!"

"AHH WHAT THE FUCK-"

It was Zander's third day in Japan and this was the day the important meeting was gonna be held with the higher ups of FSP.

But unfortunately, he didn't wake up at an early enough time that they all discussed so.

So the rest of Avallum decided to.. take matters into their own hands, and that ended up with Gale holding a mic while the rest of the boys held pots and pans.

Hence why, we got to a point where all of them (Especially Gale) had visible red marks on one and each of their cheeks. The incubus did not hold back indeed.

"Today's a lovely morning isn't it gentlemen?" Zander asked as he brewed himself a cup of coffee.

The boys groaned and didn't answer his question as when they talked, the pain in the rash would get worse. But it wasn't fair! Gale was the one at fault and planned it.

After sometime, they finally left the airbnb and drove to headquarters. The meeting was long and a little boring to Zander as he kept thinking back to how his netherlings were doing.

Well no matter, today was the day he could finally video call with the netherlings (With Ryzar watching as supervision) so his really excited to see and talk to his netherlings again after awhile. (Its only been three days.).

The meeting was over after two hours, and they were all planning to eat out for lunch, however. Zander decided to just cook lunch back at their airbnb as he wanted to call the netherlings already and couldn't wait. (Not like he told the boys that part tho lmao).

"You sure you don't wanna come with us Zanny?" The pirate asked as he watched the incubus get out of the car.

"I'm sure, have fun you lot." Zander waved goodbye to the rest of Avallum and he quickly prepared to cook his lunch, which was just a simple fried rice with some leftover meat from their dinner yesterday.

It was a good thing the airbnb had the ingredients he needed as he didn't wanna make a trip to the grocery store.

After he finished cooking his meal, he settled down and held his phone in his other hand. He pressed the video call button and waited for the dinoboi to respond.

. . . . . . . . .

"Netherlings. No! That is NOT food!" Currently, the poor ginger was protecting the netherlings from dying caused by poison. (He doesn't know that they can't die hehe).

About an hour ago, he decided to take the netherlings to the beach as he felt bad that they were cooped up inside the club all day everyday, of course he made sure that it was very safe for the netherlings to go and he made sure to bring the ryzarws along too!

However, when they got to the beach.. he had thought that the netherlings would be fine if he took his eyes off of them for a bit to tend to his ryzarws for a little while and whole and behold!

A netherling was almost kidnapped.

But when Ryzar fought off the kidnapper, he then saw a netherling being carried away by the waves and after saving that said netherling he saw three other netherlings trying to eat sea urchins and so on, so on, so on.... It was chaotic and a disaster.

With all the disasters happening and Ryzar trying to make sure that each netherling stays alive. (Bless his soul, someone tell him).

A netherling who was surprisedly sane was under the shade of a umbrella that Ryzar set up for all of them, the netherling watched the chaos unfold while munching the chopped fruits Ryzar prepared.

"?" The netherling looked under the dinoboi's pants to see his phone ringing, the caller ID said 'Incubussy' so that made the netherling curious.

With its tiny paws, the netherling pressed the accept button and what flawed the phone screen was Zander's surprised face.

The netherling mewled in happiness and started licking the phones screen while Zander looked at his phone screen in shock.

He had a lot of questions running inside his brain right now like: Why does a netherling have Ryzar's phone? The background looks nothing like club netherbrand's but rather the beach.. why were they there?

And the last question/thought.. Where in the fuck was Ryzar Blazenfang?

Zander took a sip of the totally not alcohol drink he had prepared and looked seriously at the netherling who was blushing.

"Darling, take me to Ryzar please." The netherling holding the phone didn't waste anytime as the incubus sounded like he was upset and the sweet netherling didn't want its incubus to be upset, no-no...

So the netherling walked over to Ryzar, who was holding three netherlings by the tails as he scolds them about not eating too much ice cream. (Hence why there was also a angry ice cream owner who was waiting for Ryzar to pay him back the money he owns in behalf of the netherlings).

The netherling squeaked and Ryzar looked down at it, only to see Zander's not so happy expression first hand... Ohh boy, he was in for a long discussion with the incubus for sure.

He first decided to end the video call with Zander and messaged him that he'll call him once they get home, with Zander just seen-ing the message. (He really is in trouble).

When they finally arrived at club netherbrand, Ryzar entrusted the Ryzawrs to help the netherlings clean up and to also make sure that they don't cause any harm.

He sighs and opened his chat with the incubus and pressed the video call button, and not even a millie second later, the call was accepted with a serious Zander Netherbrand greeting a Ryzar Blazenfang who wore a weary expression.

Ryzar inhaled and exhaled before explaining what had happened in the last few hours and it didn't take long for Zander to just laugh at his story instead of actually getting upset, even If it seemed that that was the outcome a few seconds ago.

"Thats my netherlings for you.. always causing trouble." He said smiling happily. Ryzar smiled and was happy that he wasn't in that much trouble.

"But don't think I forgot about how you didn't ask me for permission and also almost getting one of my netherlings kidnapped." The incubus said with a smile present on his face.

Ryzar sweat dropped and quickly decided to change the subject. "Do-Do you wanna see how the netherlings are?" He asked.

Obviously, the incubus agreed and Ryzar pointed the camera to what was in front of the bar.

The netherlings were happily just doing their own things while the ryzawrs just stay beside each murder of netherlings to make sure that no mischief happens.

"Put the phone down near the netherlings and let me talk to them Ryzar." Zander ordered and the ginger made the phone stand on a table with the help of a wine bottle.

The netherlings quickly made their way to the phone and all of them happily squeaked, each trying to lick the phones screen but stopped when Ryzar almost took the phone away.

"Netherlings! How are my lovely sweethearts, darlings doing? I hope that you lot are behaving properly for your poor dino babysitter~" Zander spoke in a soft yet ended with a teasing tone towards Ryzar.

The netherlings started whining and complaining, stating that Ryzar's been awful to them. (Ya'll mean af).

"Whatever they're saying Zanny, do not trust them. I've been treating them nicely." Ryzar said while the netherlings still whined and complained at Zander, whom, laughed at the gingers demise.

"Alright my sweet netherlings, enough bullying the dinosaur." Zander chuckled as the netherlings all giggled and looked mischievously at Ryzar who really didn't want to deal with a legion of netherlings probably wanting revenge-

"Netherlings, it won't be long before you lot are back inside my arms again so hang tight till then my netherlings." Zander looked at his netherlings with sadness present in his eyes.

The netherlings all walked closer to the phone and sheep piled the phone, all the while purring.

Zander almost cries at the actions the netherlings did but held it all in as he didn't want to cry in front of his netherlings, so instead. He told the netherlings to give the phone back to Ryzar who watched the interaction unfold before him.

Zander asked Ryzar to go outside the club for now so that they could have a serious chat for a minute.

"What's up Zanny?" Ryzar saw how detached his friend looks but Zander quickly calms down, his usual suave behavior coming back.

"Thank you for putting up with my netherlings' behavior. Told you that they can be a handful." He saids, chuckling a bit at the situation that had happened earlier.

Ryzar chuckles with Zander as well and they both talked more about the netherlings. (Society will call them, close friends, roommates-).

The netherlings that were all left alone inside the club were trying to climb the clubs kitchen window as they all thought that Ryzar was gonna get their incubus.

The ryzawrs, meanwhile, were all panicking and didn't know what to do besides let out panic roars and they all tried to pry the netherlings away from the kitchens window.

. . . . . . . . .

"Alright netherlings, come say goodbye to Zanny- hm? Netherlings?"

"Ryzar.. what's happened?"

Ryzar walks to the opened kitchen door and immediately drops his phone on the ground without even ending the video chat with Zander who seems the whole situation happening in the background.

He let out panicked, demonic screeches as Ryzar makes sure that none of the netherlings accidentally fall out of the window.

.

.

.

.

"Zanny we're home! We brought you some cake." The captain walks to the airbnb's kitchen to put the cake on the kitchens counter.

"Gale, did you see my-"

"AHHHHHHH-"

"GALE WHAT THE FUCK- AHHHH"

The rest of Avallum have found Zander Kvoir Netherbrand.. passed out on the floor of the kitchen floor.

Zander Netherbrand's exe. stopped working.

FINALLY FINISHED UGH, this took me so long to finish idk why tbh, if I got Zanny's middle name wrong tell me and I'll edit it lmao.

Also this was pretty shorts this chap was more of a prompt than a actual chap I thought off but its good.

Hope ya'll enjoyed reading this far and see ya'll on my next post~!

Reblogs are appreciated and Feedback/Comments are always appreciated! :3

(Note: please don't copy and paste my works anywhere, and if you do see them on other platform please inform me.)

[helsgcddess]

— VEILED SPARKS; iii

READ ON AO3 || PINTEREST BOARD (in the works)

summary: "You should be more careful about what you draw, Toria." In which an artist with a knack for seeing things she shouldn't meets a suspiciously perfect stranger with glowing blue eyes and a possessive yellow Camaro. Set during ROTF.

pairing: bumblebee/original character

word count: 3.1k

a/n— y'all.... the way this chapter wrote itself?? like one minute i was like "lets write toria being high and gay panicking about brooks" and suddenly it's 4am and i have 3k words of her being a disaster??? also yes, jayde ( @morbid-personality ) is absolutely going to be the "what if he's a robot tho" friend and honestly? we love her for it. also also, bumblebee needs to chill with the stalking but like... he won't bc he's Like That (chapter 4 might come sooner than expected bc these two won't leave me alone send help)

warnings — weed use, anxiety/mental health stuff, vague mission city references, highly questionable coping mechanisms

I slapped at my phone when the alarm blared. "Shut up, shut up, yeah, I got it!" I groaned as I finally hit the snooze button. The sunlight streaming through my window illuminated the sketches I'd stayed up way too late working on—pages and pages of impossible blue eyes and edges that didn't quite match reality.

Why had I decided to wake up at 9 am?

My brain slowly pieced together yesterday's events as I stumbled out of bed: broken down Chevelle, suspiciously perfect stranger, weird fog-shrouded maybe-stalking, and—

I froze, hand halfway to the shower knob. My car—my dad's car—was supposedly somewhere "safe." According to the cryptic text from an unknown number who apparently had opinions about my sketching habits.

Oh fuck. I was going to have to deal with that after therapy. And somehow not tell my therapist about the return of my post-Mission City paranoia, now with bonus government-adjacent stalkers and cars that moved like they were alive.

I groaned but stepped into the shower, letting the water blast away some of my racing thoughts. After two washes of my hair, I let the conditioner sit while I contemplated how exactly one explains "I think my dad's military projects are haunting me via an impossibly attractive maybe-human" without getting committed.

"Okay, Toria. It's just therapy. You'll do fine," I whispered to myself as I rinsed my hair out and stepped out of the shower. "Just don't tell her anything about him or the car or—" I caught my reflection's eye. "Wait, how are we even getting to therapy?"

I called my best friend after brushing my teeth. She answered on the first ring. "What's up, bitch?" She coughed into the phone. "Sorry, just did a dab."

"You good if I steal your car to take to therapy? I'll pay you in cannoli," I offered as I checked the weather. I grabbed shorts from my clean laundry basket, along with a black sports bra and a Hawaiian button-up that had definitely been Dad's at some point.

"Only if I can smoke you up after therapy," Jayde replied. "You sound like you need it. Something weird happen at the café again?"

"You could say that." I tucked my sketchbook into my bag, deliberately not looking at last night's drawings. "Deal. Be there in 20."

"Love you," then she hung up.

I laced my steel toes, grabbed my smokes off the counter, and headed into the California heat. My thumb ring caught the sunlight as I twisted it—a nervous habit that had gotten worse since mysterious hot strangers started texting me about my art.

I took the long way to Jayde's place, walking by the pier to get slapped in the face by the smell of salt and ocean. Every yellow car I passed made my heart skip, but none of them were that impossibly pristine Camaro. Not that I was looking.

I paused at the coffee shop by her place, picking up our usual: Red Bull infusions with pomegranate and blueberry syrup, topped with half and half. The caffeine-sugar bomb we'd perfected during our brief stint as art school roommates before... everything.

It wasn't until I lit my cigarette, trying to calm my pre-therapy jitters, that my phone vibrated.

Unknown Number: Your car will be parked at your apartment in time for your shift.

I dropped my lighter in the ocean. "No, fuck! Ugh." I groaned, watching my last lighter disappear into the waves. Perfect. Because this day needed to get more complicated.

My phone buzzed again.

Unknown Number: Also, the alternator wasn't the only thing that needed fixing. You're welcome.

"Oh, that's not ominous at all," I muttered, taking a long drag of my cigarette. "Totally normal to have a suspiciously perfect stranger doing unauthorized repairs on your dead dad's car."

A yellow Volkswagen Beetle drove past, and I nearly choked on smoke before realizing it wasn't the same shade of yellow. Wrong car, wrong driver, wrong... everything.

I threw my half-finished cigarette back into my pack and headed up the creaky steps to Jayde's apartment. The whole building smelled like weed and beach air—pretty much Jayde's signature scent since high school.

She opened the door before I could knock, practically bouncing despite being high. "There's my favorite disaster! One slightly beat-up Civic at your service." She grabbed her drink and took a long sip. "Now spill. What happened to your car? The Chevelle's like, your baby."

"Alternator died," I said, following her into her mess of an apartment. Art supplies competed with bong collections for surface space, and her walls were covered in our collaborative pieces from school. "Some guy helped me out."

"Some guy?" Her eyebrows shot up. "Like, a cute guy? A mysterious guy? A—"

"A guy who apparently knows how to fix cars and sends cryptic texts," I cut her off, pulling out my phone. "Look."

Jayde read the messages, her eyes widening. "Okay, that's either really sweet or really serial killer-y. There's no in-between." She paused. "Is he hot though?"

I thought about impossible blue eyes and too-perfect movements. "That's... complicated."

"Oh my god, he is." She grinned. "You're doing that thing where you want to draw someone but can't quite get them right. Show me your sketches."

"Absolutely not." I snatched her car keys from their hook. "I'm already late for therapy."

"Fine, keep your mysterious hot car guy secrets!" she called after me. "But we're totally talking about this when you get back!"

I slid into Jayde's Civic, immediately assaulted by the smell of weed and her vanilla air freshener. At least it wasn't as pristine as... certain other cars I'd been in recently.

The radio crackled to life when I turned the key—some pop station Jayde always left it on. Not classic rock, not engine purrs that sounded like speech. Just normal car stuff. Totally fine.

"Get it together, Toria," I muttered, pulling onto the street. "You've got exactly forty-five minutes to figure out how to talk about your week without mentioning glowing eyes or mysteriously repaired cars."

My phone buzzed in the cup holder. I definitely didn't swerve checking to see if it was another cryptic text.

Just Mom: Don't forget to ask about upping your anxiety meds!!!

I snorted. Yeah, because that conversation would go great. 'Hey doc, I think I need stronger meds because I keep seeing weird lights like in Mission City, and a suspiciously perfect stranger knows things about Dad's car, and I can't stop drawing his impossibly symmetrical face.'

The traffic light turned yellow—just yellow, not that specific shade that kept haunting me—and I tried to focus on normal therapy topics. Work stress? Safe. Mom's hovering? Classic. The fact that I hadn't touched my college applications since Dad died? Definitely therapist-approved discussion material.

Strange men who moved like machinery and knew things about classified military projects? Maybe save that for next session.

The parking lot of Dr. Clarke's office looked exactly like it always did: half-full with sensible cars belonging to people with probably sensible problems. Not a yellow Camaro in sight. Not that I was checking.

I grabbed my sketchbook out of habit—Dr. Clarke encouraged "artistic expression during sessions" or whatever—then immediately shoved it back in my bag. Yeah, maybe not today's sketches.

The waiting room was its usual study in beige calm, complete with generic watercolor paintings and magazines from three years ago. The receptionist, Amy, gave me her usual sympathetic smile. Everyone here still had that same look since Mission City, like they were waiting for me to crack.

"Dr. Clarke's running a few minutes behind," she said. "But she'll be right with you."

I slumped into my usual chair, twisting my ring and definitely not thinking about how Brooks had known things about Dad. About the base. About—

"Toria?" Dr. Clarke appeared in her doorway, clipboard in hand and reading glasses perched on her nose. "Ready to come in?"

Her office was familiar at least—walls lined with psychology degrees and children's artwork, the leather couch that had witnessed two years of my post-Mission City processing, the view of the bay that was supposed to be calming or whatever.

"So," she said as I settled into my usual spot, "how has your week been?"

I opened my mouth, closed it, then laughed. "That's... kind of complicated."

"Complicated how?" Dr. Clarke asked, settling into her chair with that perfect therapist posture. She probably didn't have to worry about mysterious men fixing her car or sending cryptic texts.

"Well," I started, focusing on the safe parts, "the café's been busy. Mom's stress-baking again. And my car broke down, which is... yeah."

"The Chevelle?" Her pen paused over her notepad. "Your father's car?"

I twisted my ring. "Yeah. Alternator issues."

"And how did that make you feel?" Classic Dr. Clarke, always with the feelings.

"Honestly?" I stared out at the bay, watching fog roll in. "It felt like losing him all over again. Like—" I stopped, remembering Brooks' words about the car attracting attention. About Dad's classified work.

"Like what, Toria?"

"Like maybe some things should stay broken." The words came out before I could stop them.

Dr. Clarke's eyebrows rose slightly. "That's an interesting perspective. What makes you say that?"

I thought about the text messages burning a hole in my phone. About the way Brooks had looked at me like he knew things—about Dad, about Mission City, about everything.

"Sometimes I think..." I chose my words carefully, "Maybe Dad was trying to protect me from something. With all those classified projects he never talked about."

Dr. Clarke shifted in her chair, a subtle movement that meant we'd hit Something Important. "Your paranoia about Mission City—has it been getting worse?"

I focused on a particularly boring watercolor on her wall. "Not... exactly." Lie. "It's just—" I twisted my ring again. "The whispers are back."

That got her full attention. The whispers had been my first symptom after Mission City—constant theories about what I'd seen, about Dad's work, about the lights and sounds that didn't make sense.

"The same whispers as before?"

"Different," I said carefully. "Less about what happened then, more about..." I thought about Brooks' impossible movements, about engines that sounded alive, about texts that knew too much. "More about what might still be happening."

"Can you elaborate?”

"You'll think I'm crazy." I laughed, but it came out shaky.

"Toria," her voice went gentle, "we've talked about this. Your reactions to trauma—"

"It's not trauma this time," I interrupted, then winced. "I mean, yeah, obviously there's trauma, but this is..." I gestured vaguely. "This feels real."

The clock on her wall ticked loudly, reminding me we were almost out of time. Thank god.

"Have you been taking your medications regularly?"

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. "Yes. And before you ask, I'm sleeping. Eating. Working. Being a functional human despite my various mental health issues." I stood up, gathering my bag. "The whispers are probably nothing. Just stress about the car."

Dr. Clarke gave me that look—the one that said she didn't believe me but couldn't prove it. "Same time next week?"

"Yeah," I said, already halfway to the door. "Assuming mysterious car trouble doesn't get in the way."

I took the coastal route back to Jayde's, windows down and music up—trying to drown out both Dr. Clarke's concerned voice and my own paranoid whispers. The salt air helped, even if every flash of yellow in my peripheral vision made my heart jump.

Until one of those flashes wasn't just my imagination.

The yellow Camaro was parked at the pier, looking impossibly pristine against the backdrop of tourist shops and street vendors. No Brooks in sight, but something about the way the car was angled—like it was watching the road—made me grip Jayde's steering wheel tighter.

"Nope," I said out loud, definitely not looking at how the sunlight hit the black racing stripes. "We are not doing this. We are going to smoke with our best friend and not think about hot guys with government secrets or their stalker cars."

I pulled into Jayde's parking lot, killing the engine just as my phone buzzed.

Unknown Number: Your artistic talent is impressive.

Unknown Number: But maybe focus on drawing something less classified.

I stared at my bag, where my sketchbook was definitely closed and definitely hidden.

"How the fuck—" I started to mutter, when another text came through.

Unknown Number: The Chevelle's waiting at your apartment. Try not to break it again.

I practically ran up Jayde's stairs, bursting into her apartment where she was already setting up her favorite bong—the one we'd painted with glow-in-the-dark stars during finals week.

"Here," Jayde said, passing me the bong and her favorite drawing pencils—the ones we'd stolen from art school before I dropped out. "Smoke this and draw something that isn't government-spy-boyfriend for five minutes."

I took another hit, letting my hand move across a blank page without thinking. Somehow it still turned into those impossible blue eyes.

"I can't stop drawing him," I groaned, flopping back against her couch. "Like, my brain is just... full of him? His stupid perfect face and the way he moves like... like he's never quite figured out how bodies are supposed to work but somehow it's still hot?"

Jayde snorted, taking the bong back. "You're so high right now."

"No but listen," I sat up too fast, sending colored pencils scattering. "He shows up in this ridiculous car that probably costs more than my entire life, looking like some government catalog's idea of the perfect human, and then he just... knows things? About Dad? About my car? And sends these cryptic texts like he's watching me but somehow it's not creepy? Okay it's a little creepy but—" I paused for another hit, "—okay but he's so fucking hot though."

"There it is!" Jayde cackled. "I was wondering when we'd get to the thirsty part of this crisis."

I grabbed a handful of Jayde's Doritos, still sketching with my free hand. "It's not fair. Like, who told him he could look like that? While also being all mysterious and probably dangerous and definitely involved in whatever classified shit got Dad killed and—" I stared at my newest sketch. "Oh my god, I'm drawing him again."

"Girl, you've got it bad," Jayde laughed, taking the sketchbook. "Damn though, if this is accurate..." She tilted her head at the drawing. "Wait, are his eyes actually this blue? That's not natural."

"Nothing about him is natural," I mumbled around a mouthful of chips. "He's like... too perfect? Like someone tried to design the hottest possible person but forgot humans are supposed to have flaws."

"Maybe he's an android," Jayde suggested, reaching for the bong again. "Like, a really hot android sent to protect you because of your dad's secret government work."

I started laughing and couldn't stop. "Oh my god, what is my life? I'm sitting here, high as fuck, crushing on some maybe-not-human guy who keeps fixing my car and judging my art choices."

"Speaking of your car," Jayde checked her phone, "don't you have a shift at four?"

"Shit," I sat up, the world spinning slightly. "Mom's gonna kill me if I show up high again."

"Drink water first," Jayde said, tossing me a bottle. "And take these." She handed me her emergency sunglasses—the ones we'd decorated with little stars during our last art school all-nighter. "You look absolutely blasted."

"Love you," I mumbled, gathering my stuff and trying not to forget anything important. Like my dignity. Or my ability to walk straight.

"Text me if hot government boy shows up at the café!" Jayde called after me. "I want to know if his face is really that symmetrical in daylight!"

I was halfway down her stairs when my phone buzzed.

Unknown Number: The walk from Powell Street to your apartment has fewer surveillance cameras. Take that route.

Unknown Number: And maybe wear sunglasses. You look... relaxed.

"Oh my god," I whispered to my phone, torn between mortified and impressed. "Are you actually stalking me or just really committed to this mysterious protector aesthetic?"

Another buzz.

Unknown Number: Both. Be safe, Toria.

"Fuck," I muttered, shoving on Jayde's sunglasses and heading toward Powell Street like a good, obedient disaster. "He's so hot when he's being creepy."

I took the suggested route home, only slightly paranoid about every yellow car I saw (which, being high, was probably more than actually existed). The sunglasses helped with both the sun and my dignity, even if I kept wanting to sketch the way light bounced off passing windshields.

My apartment was exactly how I'd left it—organized chaos of art supplies and half-empty coffee cups. But there, visible from my window, sat the Chevelle. Looking... better? The paint seemed shinier, and something about it felt more alive.

"Nope," I told my reflection as I changed into my work clothes. "That's the weed talking. Cars don't look 'more alive.' Get it together."

I threw my hair up in a messy bun, switched to my café-approved black t-shirt, and tried to look less like I'd just spent the afternoon getting supremely baked while drawing a suspiciously perfect stranger.

My phone buzzed again as I was applying eye drops.

Unknown Number: Your mother's making that fusion dessert again. Might want to hurry.

"Okay, that's just showing off now," I muttered, but grabbed my bag faster. Mom's culinary experiments were legendary for all the wrong reasons, and I really didn't need to add 'death by experimental tiramisu' to my growing list of concerns.

I hesitated at my door, staring at my sketchbook. After a moment's debate, I shoved it in my bag. Something told me today's shift wasn't going to be boring.

The walk to the café felt different somehow—maybe because I was still slightly high, or maybe because I kept catching glimpses of yellow in my peripheral vision. But this time, instead of anxiety, each flash just made me want to reach for my sketchbook.

Mom was indeed in the kitchen when I arrived, surrounded by what looked like an unholy union of cannoli and mochi. I quietly rescued the latest batch before it could become a health code violation.

"Oh, tesoro!" She brightened when she saw me. "Did you see? The Chevelle's fixed! Such nice work too—almost like new! Did you find a mechanic? How much do we owe—"

"Let's not worry about that right now," I cut her off, tying my apron and definitely not thinking about mysterious car repairs. "Friday night rush is starting."

I made it through the first hour of my shift almost normally. Almost. Right up until I glanced out the window and saw a yellow Camaro parked across the street, its engine humming just loud enough for me to hear through the dinner rush chaos.

My phone buzzed one last time.

Unknown Number: You look better when you smile.

Unknown Number: Even if it's because you're still slightly high.

"Well," I muttered, tucking my phone away and fighting back a grin, "this should be an interesting shift."

[bookofmirth]

I feel like Sarah’s latest projects Acosf Hosab and Hofas have felt kinda different from the og acotar books and the throne of glass series, tho i don’t know if it’s maybe just me connecting them less. I was entertained with all three. Especially with acosf which I don’t think it suffered as much as the cc books. But in all three Sarah’s writing feels off.

Now I’m no specialist in criticising English books in depth but I think you said once you’ve studied literature and that’s why you make mostly analyses of the text.

So I was wondering what’s your take on this, if you’ve noticed it too or not and if yes why or how you believe the writing is off

I've been having a lot of conversations about this with people and we had different ideas, though none of them are certain.

I think that the crossover played to Sarah's weaknesses and took away from her time to write to her strengths. I think that she's at her best when she is delving into characters and emotions, and at her least effective when she's trying to do all this big plot and world stuff.

The points in her series where you can see people starting to wonder what the hell is going on, is where you can see her trying to manipulate the plot in order to set up other stories she wants to tell. The best examples of this are acowar and the acosf/hofas arc. acotar was originally going to be a trilogy and then she manipulated acowar to set up more stories. CC was going to be a trilogy until she came up with the crossover and decided to set up more stories. If she could just stick with her original plans, everything would go much better. The points at which she decides to expand the world or plot or characters, those are the places where she begins to falter. (Some people I think would include HoF in this, but I do not.)

Sarah's writing style is to not outline - she is on record saying that she does not do extensive world building, that she isn't good at it, that she doesn't outline, that she let's the story take her where it will. All of those are fine, valid ways to write! However, they make it nearly impossible for her to pull this crossover off successfully. You absolutely cannot go about such a massive undertaking and just bang out 100k words in a week, or whatever ridiculous pace she worked at this time, and have it make sense.

She is also on record saying that the crossover came to her while she was writing hosab. That means she was thousands of pages into acotar and hundreds of pages into CC before she decided to do this huge, series-altering thing. That's... not just poor planning, it's a recipe for disaster. This is why there are inconsistencies, the weird pacing, and dropped plots from hosab. It was too much and she's not the kind of writer who can take on those sorts of tasks and make it still compelling and cohesive. She just isn't.

One of my big concerns about the crossover was the genre shift - CC being urban fantasy and ACOTAR being high fantasy meant that it wasn't going to fit together. There was going to be some friction, no matter how good a writer took it on (and imo a better writer would have known that and not done it in the first place). It's not that it can't be done, it's just that both series need to have an equally strong foundation to work from. The world building in CC was much more intense than it was in acotar, and so trying to fit those two together was trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.

ToG never suffers from this because Sarah never tried to make it something it wasn't. She always had a clear vision of what kind of person Aelin was and why, and even though she doesn't outline, I would bet a lot of money that when she started writing ToG, she knew that at the end, Aelin was going to end up happy and on the throne of her own kingdom.

Also - and I'm sorry, I know that I am babbling haha but since your question was about acosf/hosab/hofas specifically, I do think that urban fantasy is not Sarah's genre. She clearly reads it, but... it's not the genre for displaying her strengths as a writer. All of the swearing and sex and drug use had me rolling my eyes constantly because she was just beating us over the head with how hardcore and adult the characters are.

So there are a couple of things, really, that made those three books feel off in comparison to the rest of them:

urban fantasy is not Sarah's genre,

the crossover took her energy and attention away from her strengths (emotion, character) and made her emphasize her weaknesses (plot, world)

It feels like we are watching her become a worse writer, and not better. I'm going to chalk it up to her experimenting a little bit with hofas and it not panning out. Optimistic!Lele says that now that this is out of sjm's system, we can go back to our regularly-scheduled emotional journeys with some magic stuff sprinkled in. Pessimistic!Lele doesn't trust sjm farther than she can throw her.

All of this has made me really nervous to read anything ToG-related that she might come up with in the future. I would love more ToG content from 2016 Sarah. 2024 Sarah? I'm honestly not that interested in more canon ToG stuff from her.

Sorry this got long, and I'm not even sure how cohesive all of this is, it's just been on my mind since I finished hofas!

[souji-upseta]

[SHOCKING QUESTION] what are your thoughts on jade harley.

i really love jade. all jades. all of them.

i've known girls like jade, who white knights (usually white men and boys) think is so frail, so in need of protection, who gets infantilized due to characteristics about her life and circumstances, and every time, i have just wanted to be like,

"bitch, you don't think god NERFED her the way he did because he was SCARED of what she could do to him if he didn't?!"

i'm so biased against my favs (striders striders striders) but i still think jadesprite is my favorite depiction of a splinter self interaction*. the voxus dub for her scenes was genuinely so upsetting to me, like, i think i told you, i put the let's read on to fall asleep to, but then i couldn't sleep after that?

it was genuinely moving and i could see all sides and it really spoke to the conflict of jade's character.

it was really uncomfortable in scenes where karkat would have to outright TELL her that she has to ask him before kissing him. i had to read those scenes through my fingers while trying not to groan. that was the point. jade be like that.

people tend to forget how selfish she can be, but i love that about her. there's some level of abstraction to a lot of the characters in candy, but i can def see it as a path she'd go down.

and her just. bumming around the davekat hive for 7 years. leaving her bras strewn everywhere. living her best life despite being a socially maladapted disaster person. leaping ass first into adulthood. getting her yiff on with some chess people. i aspire to that level of doing whatever the fuck i want.

i think she's really relatable in the epilogues because a lot of us just want to get our best lives on after spending so much time pushed to the side. others have pointed out, she was really the only one who seemed happy on earth-c.

and she's definitely relatable in a post-pandemic world. fuck, that girl is so lonely.

her "heroic" end in her pesterquest route hit a little too close to home for me.

the epilogues work very very well as a "failure of community" narrative wrt her character as well. it's really easy for me to see how she became such a shitty person in candy.

and like. well. at least, unlike her meat counterpart and teen retcon!self, she had a chance to be that on her own. so far, at least.

i really loved seeing her fight back against alt!callie in hsbc. i want so badly for her to just stop being a fucking chess piece—and i guess that's also the point of her character, heh.

i feel like ultimate dirk would have treated teen retcon!jade much better lmaooo. his intentions were shitty, but he would have. i could see it set up in every way to be a doc scratch callback and expecting him to be creepy af, and then... nah. that'd have been funny, at least. fuck, i need to stop talking about dirk all the time. gdi.

space players are a special kind of batshit, and require a special kind of nerfing by paradox space.

jade is the reason i have spent at least some part of 10 minutes every day for the past almost two months now hoping i got my player aspect wrong, lol. so much pressure and so much sacrifice, damn. i can't wait to see where things go with her.

believe it or not tho, i feel like i don't know her character that well or spend a lot of time thinking about her, so my interpretations might be off!

*besides ultimate dirk and younger dirk in pesterquest. because i love nothing in all of homestuck more than i love dirk's pesterquest route.

[felikatze]

chaos child chapter 5 feli's theory time intermission yay

FUCK YEAH I WAS RIGHT HINAE IS A GIGALOMANIAC. it's so wild to see takuru just get the gigalomaniac explanation. straight up. hey, this is a di-sword, this is what a gigalomaniac is, also, you are one.

("impressive that a you heard of the dirarc sea" thanks i read chaos head lol)

meanwhile at this point takumi only knew that there's swords and he's hallucinating every 5 minutes and also ayase just threw herself off a building. so he was doing. not so great by comparison lol <3

LORE RN THO. THINKING. it's kinda weird how both hinae and takuru get One Specific Power pointed out by Mio: Hinae being a truth detector and takuru having minor psychokinesis. since every gigalomaniac in chaos head just had The Full Set of reality altering and mindbreaking shenanigans. they all had their own flavors of gigalomania of course but that mainly came from how they used the same powerset and not what those powers were ykno?

so i'm expecting a moment where the limiters come off for everyone lol

i REAAAALLY liked the sequence in the hospital basement w the newspaper club and mio. mio is a fun force to reign them in and the actual horror scenes down there were. pretty good i think!

this is the first time the game takes the delusions out of the player's hand, iirc- i really liked that it kept the sound cue for the first one, but the visual cue for the second, so you only had half a cue on either.

this was also the first time the delusions weren't just takuru's hypotheticals, but actual hallucinations that took him straight outta reality and left him reeling. things are going downhill.

the sumo stickers being a sort of detector for gigalomaniacs... hm. feels a bit weird considering they didn't exist in chaos head but Retcons Whatever they needed their plot device here. however i DO like that across the story takuru's reaction to them grows more and more pronounced? he hunted them down with serika as a child no problem, then he starts being uneasy around them, then he starts being scared of them, then they cause him to hallucinate -- mirroring how he's getting closer to awakening as a gigalomaniac.

NEW THEORY TIIIIIME.

so, the interludes with the limping woman gotta be Senri, nono's dead friend, yeah? i thought takuru and serika saw rimi down in the basement, but the hospital scene revealed it was actually senri.

esp with how the game shifts focus onto the question of what happened to senri, here- the logical thing to think is she died in the earthquake, of course, but if she were to escape at any point, it would be when the building collapses on her. (EXTREMELY neat detail that her patient file lists her doctor as norose!! the bitch himself!! how many girls did you torture, dude!! well at least he's dead.)

in all likelihood, senri was ami-chan, both in the rumor and the mystery text chat person seen throughout the game. she awakened as a gigalomaniac during the earthquake, which let her escape, but she took some permanent damage from that (the limp + the scars on her face). she is, understandably, mentally broken by the torture she went through, and probably wants to kill takuru and serika because she recognizes them (though it seems more specifically takuru) as the people who failed to save her so long ago.

that then only leaves open who her mystery helpes ed & max are. male names, but it's not gonna be shinji, he doesn't know shit about fuckall. right? and is senri responsible for the new newgen murders? why are gigalomaniacs being targetted? who knowsssss.

i'm still betting that SafeWorks is connected to Nozomi Corp somehow, despite the experiments collapsing with the destruction of noah ii and norose's death. thinking also about the "chaos child syndrome" brought up early on during the game... i mean, where else are you gonna find gigalomaniacs than in a generation of children that all have trauma due to a massive disaster that upended their lives, right. start looking for em in warzones man. that's gotta be easier than putting teen girls in the torment nexus.

actually, since senri was kidnapped by nozomi for an indeterminate amount of time - how and when did nono befriend her? how did senri's name end up on the memorial if she escaped the facility? if SafeWorks is Nozomi, and erected the memorial, did they use the earthquake to fake the deaths of all their test subjects? perchance.

the mystery is Getting To Me. can i have any barest cameo of chaos head characters besides fucking Momo please i miss them. show me seira-tan even. where's my freaks

[cosmo-watches-movies]

Bright Young Things (2003)

Triggerwarning: Drugs, Homophobia

Summary: In this context does it matter? You know why we’re here.

Spoilers beyond this!

FIrst off, this post is long. I have a lot to say about this film, maybe a bit too much, but hey, I had a good time writing it, maybe you'll have a good time reading it. So get comfy, grab your favourite hot beverage and dive with me, into the world of the Bright Young Things:

In this film Michael plays Miles Maitland, certified disaster gay. Saying I enjoyed the scenes he was in would be the understatement of the century. This movie follows a group of young people in the 1920's and their partygoing escapades. I refuse to write anything else about the plot, because it drops Miles like an unwanted dog at a gas station and I won't stand for that. But I will elaborate later.

About the movie:

Exept for the protagonist himself the young characters in this movie are in a very interesting situation. They are upperclass, living in London in the midst of the roaring 20’s and are way bejond giving a shit about anything. Consequences for one’s actions? Never heard of those. Apparently they don’t need to study or learn for some kind of job or anything, because their parents are rich. They don’t seem to have any other interests they would want to follow even if just for some fullfillment in life. They are just constantly bored. Bored and rich. So what do they do? Party. Hard. All the time.

Overall I really like this film. It’s entertaining to watch, has interesting, funny characters and it paints a very vivid picture of it’s world. They did a very good job at making you feel like you’re there. The sets, the costumes, the music, the whole aesthetic works very well together. We spend the first two acts watching the lot enjoy themselves, having parties, taking drugs, living in a fantasy world and when the third act hits everything goes downhill until most everyone is either in a really miserable situation or, worse dead. And listen, I enjoyed it a lot. But...why? What is this movie about? Like not the story. I got that. You know, the text is obvious. But what is the message? The point, the subtext? Is there even one, or do I want to read too much into this? For some reason it took me along time to understand what I was supposed to take from this all.

You don’t want to know how much bs I wrote before it dawned on me. I was asking myself. Why do the characters end up where they do? They are not inherently bad people. Bit ignorant maybe. But you don’t put characters in these situations and expose them this misery for no reason. Only after looking into the source material I understood what this movie was getting at. It’s just that, this ignorance! Society sucks big time and they do not care! It’s about extreme escapism!

You know: Don’t loose yourself only to the pleasures of life, the world is a difficult place and if you ignore that it will come around and bite you in the ass.

However, that would be the message of the book this film is based on. The movie tho, says: Don’t loose yourself only to the pleasures of life, the world is a difficult place and if you ignore that it will come around and bite you in the ass...unless you’re the main character :)

Sort of, let me explain:

In this film the only people in it who kind of evade this miserable fate are the protagonists Adam [Stephen Campbell Moore] and Nina [Emily Mortimer]. Adam is not as lucky as the other characters are, he has no fortune or rich parents. He has to fight himself through the world with hard work. Or rather lying and gambling. He makes a bet and techincally wins, but then spends the whole movie trying to actually get hold of the money he's owed. He ends up having to write for the chatterbox column in a local newspaper that usually gossips about his friends. He is loyal enough to not want to defame his friends, so he just makes up wild stories about imaginary people. With that he managed to make a choice that is somehow both morally right and wrong. Love that. He does get fired for that, but after some more, mainly monetary, hardships and after his service at war, he manages to get together with Nina in the end. They are broke, but they are alive and together.

The book however ends with Adam at war, no conclusion, no nothing it just ends. I get why they changed that, but it does soften the harsh message of the original story a lot. The thing is, Adam might not ignore the reality around him, but he uses very questionable methods to reach his goal.

Writing that, I think I just cracked the second meaning. I think somehow it's also about class. The ’’Bright Young Things” grow up privileged and throw their money away for nothing but pleasure while the poor young people have to use shady tactics to even just get by. But as Adam wants to build himself a proper life with his girl and find his place in the world his methods are at least a little excused. Not fully, he is broke again, but he can build his own familiy. Thats more than any of the others ever care for, even if they probably could have had this if they wanted to. Adam Fines says eat the rich.

Having put together all of that. There is something about this in relation to Miles that in my opinion doesn’t quite work how it might have been intended. But let’s put a pin in this I will come back to that later.

About Miles and his part in the story:

First of all tho: Whoever wrote Miles’ character for the movie knew exactly what they where doing and, judging by the end result, Michael Sheen sure as hell did aswell. Miles is, toghether with the other sidecharacters of the core group, only in a few scenes in this film, but every second he’s on screen is delightful. He’s very bubbly and openly flamboyant, as I said a pure joy to watch.

Thing is, they needed this character to read as gay to even the most average audience. There are several options to achieve that.

Option #1 You can show it

Option #2 You can say it.

And what option did they choose?

Exactly! Option No 3! They made him camp! And I’m so here for it.

Okay, there's no beating around the bush in this scene, but my point still stands!

The weird thing about this is, and that was true expecially back then, a character like this can easily be offensive. But he’s not. How is that?

Maybe the difference is, while he could be described as kinda stereotypically gay, y’know so everybody get’s the message, it’s not played for laughs. Not by the story and not by Michael either, obviously. Yes, he’s flamboyant and yes, that can be read as a stereotype, but you know, people like that do exist. And he’s written and played so sincerely, that it just works. He just is gay. Just like most of the other characters are just straight and it's so refreshing to see (especially for a film from 2003). He may be lucky enough to have a supportive friend group, but still, he is affected by the problems of his world. You know, like actual real humans in our actual real world. Crazy how easy that can be. The bar has been so low, wtf. (Bless Stephen Fry and his sense for realistic gay rep)

Continuing, Miles doesn’t get a bad ending because he is gay, but because the world he lives in sucks and wants to eliminate his kind from society. Is that punishment fair? Absolutely not obviously. But it is a consequence of ignoring the real dangers around you, right? Seen in the context of a queer character that sounds a bit weird now, doesn't it? But that would've been the general conclusion one might draw from my interpretation earlier. Does that hold up if we think this through, tho?

To draw a comparison here, Agatha [Fenella Woolgar] suffers a similar fate. She regularly takes a lot of drugs to escape reality and ends up in a mental hospital with (probably) drug induced psychosis. But her actions and consequences are way more direct and personal and don’t involve nearly as much malicious outward influence as Miles’ case does. So I’d hardly say these cases are equal.

Let me paint you a picture of what happens to Miles:

At first let me say a few things about Tiger. That fucking spineless maggot that is Tiger. If you think I disliked Bosie, oh boy, do I have a suprise for you.

So Tiger is, essentially, in the same situation as Miles is. Being gay (or bi we don't know for sure) in a world that has no place for you. But Tiger thinks he’s one of the smarts. He wants it both ways and he thinks he’s clever enough to get it all. So he has his super masculine car racing thing, his by society accepted ambition, but he also secretly sleeps with men (or at least one, the result is the same). We never really learn how serious the relationship between Miles and Tiger is, but it is made obvious that there is something between them. Anyway Tiger’s arrangement seems to work just fine for him, until those two worlds meet:

So there’s a big racing day for Tiger and his “friends”, or rather Miles and his social group, managed to worm their way into the racing team so they can watch it up close. But before the race starts Tiger pulls Miles aside telling him to “tone down the gay a bit or the boys will suspect there’s something up” (I’m parapharasing obviously).

Miles agrees, fully knowing he already failed several times just while walking up to the race track (he knows exactly what he’s doing).

With this short conversation we can see that Tiger is first and foremost afraid. He built this niche for himself in this shitty world where he can have both things and he doesn’t want to loose them, or worse go to prison if found out. Now that itself is understandable but he’s only scared for himself as we will see.

The race starts off well, Tiger is doing a good job probably, but oh no, Agatha raised a blue flag, which is a signal of their team to switch the driver in the next round. However, Tiger has to finish his current lap first so the friend group decides to quickly go to the racing tent to chill and have some coke (no I’m not kidding I wish I was, they don’t even try to hide it from the people around them lol) They return to the race track as Tiger finishes the lap and apparently their team doesn’t have a real spare driver, so Agatha (while totally high off her shoes) is put in the drivers seat. Adam tries to stop her but she goes anyway. I don’t even have words for how weird this part of the story is. You’d expext that she would kill herself now, but no, she just drives along. Well, very fast actually, she overtakes several competitors, but then is thrown off the race track by another driver. She’s fine just driving along and thru some fields, havin' the trip of her life.

The others, inlcuding Tiger, sit in the tent again and hear the announcement, that Tigers car has left the track. And this is where shit hits the fan. Tiger’s like: “Where the fuck’s my car?” Miles answers: ”It’s gonna be fine, darling.” The others are bored and want to leave. Tiger is already mildy offended that they could even think this is boring. Adam actually quite politely expresses that it’s getting late and they have to leave. And then this interaction happens:

Look at Miles’ face! I’m very sure he has never seen Tiger act like this before.

Now we could draw several conclusions from this. Either Tiger is just an asshole, who cares more about a car than a human being. Or Tiger is an asshole who cares more about his reputation than a human being he has a relationship with and this interaction scared him so much that he totally freaks out and decides to do a very inhumane thing to this specific person very soon, just to protect himself. I, personally, I think it’s both.

Because, as we learn soon, what he does after that is, he snitches letters to the police. Letters from Miles. So now there’s a warrant on our dear boy and he has to flee the country. What the fuck? Do you now see why I called Tiger a spineless maggot? How could he do such a thing? Miles himself even says:

“Tiger of all people.”

He would’ve never expected him to do such a cruel thing. That and the way Miles looked at him earlier tells me, that Tiger probably acted very different when they where alone than to how we saw him behave. Imo that just makes it worse. And the even worst part is, there are no consequences for Tiger! He got scared, threw his supposed friend/partner under the bus and got away unscathed. And Miles is the one who has to leave everything and everyone behind or go to jail! How fucked up is this? Getting wrecked not only by the system, but also by someone you trusted? This is like Wilde plus Underworld times 100. My heart is broken and my spirit needs a sweet tea, a warm blankie and a gentle hug.

So taking that pin out again, earlier I wrote that whole thing where I was like: Oh the point of the movie is to don’t just fuck around and party, even if you are privileged enough to do so. Don’t disregard reality or there will be consequences. And… I don’t know, maybe this applies to Adam and the other characters? But for Miles? For him this doesn’t work at all. What could his space in the world be? He knows how hostile society is towards people like him and I think he is aware of the situation he’s in. But he’s lucky enough to have a at least protective family and supportive friends. Why should he leave that safe space? What else is he supposed to do? Hide who he is and have a pretend normal life? He’s way too visibly queer to hide anything and at the point we see him for the first time we immediately know, even if that might have been an option once, to him it’s definetly not anymore. Other characters in the movie acknowledge this aswell:

Elaborating, now that we know what happend to Miles, can we actually say: His punishment is a consequence of ignoring the real dangers around him? I sure can’t. Can you? Everyone knows what his deal is. And in this community you either take part or keep shut. That's what keeps everyone save.

I 100% stand by Miles and wish he could just have a normal live and do what he wants. But unfortunately that is not the world he lives in. He lives in a world where homosexual acts are punishable by law and his actions are one pissed off boyfriend away from turning from rumors to provable allegations. That is fucking tragic but it’s his reality. This is the situation, you can do what you want, but if someone else doesn’t like that you could suffer for it. So either be aware of that, play it safe and hide yourself, or do what your heart tells you and disregard reality, but you could be punished for that. That’s a hell of a queer narrative if I’ve ever seen one. Unfortunately in this case Miles does not have an alternative. There is no choice that leads to a happy ending for him. Eventually he would suffer either way, so he chooses the “do what your heart tells you” - route and the narrative goes in the corresponding direction. In a different, more idealistic story he would’ve been rewarded for that choice, but this is not that kind of story. I don’t like that very much, but it’s the narrative the movie goes for.

To me it doesn’t seem like Miles is as ignorant of reality as the story wants him to be. This one line: “Tiger of all people.” demonstrates that he knows that he is consantly in danger of being prosecuted. He knows there can always be someone who can prove whatever allegations they might have and get him arrested. He just didn’t expect it to be Tiger. I’m sure at some point in his life he realised the situation he’s in and has decided to just not play the game. He’s gonna loose anyway. If just existing as who you are is actively discouraged or even punished by society wtf are you supposed to do? Again, why should he leave that safe space and suspect himself to danger? That wouldn't break ignorance, that would be stupid!

The lesson I thought I was supposed to take from this doesn’t work here. If he was just another straight, rich guy, taking drugs, constantly being at parties, escaping reality, this framing could work. But he’s not. So I don’t think it does.

So what do we take away from this? The world sucks, so bitch your way through it like anyone else? That’s what the main character does. He has a goal and the methods he uses to reach it aren’t exactly noble, but somehow he kinda made it. And as for Miles, he tried to bitch his own way through the world, but the stakes against him are just too high, so he fails. Sucks to be you, I guess. Fuckin depressing, thank you for that punch in the gut.

Conclusion of all...that:

Okay, I came to a conclusion. I know it’s unreasonable to expect every movie to just end happily for every character. It’s just a bit frustrating for me personally to watch it happen over and over again, but that’s not every individual movies fault. That’s my current watching habit.

However, and this is important, the film chose Miles’ arc to signify the shift to the third act. His arc is the first to reach it’s unfortunate end and it has a huge effect on the tone of the movie. And that makes it even more jarring than it already is.

[Warning Personal Opinion] I now sort of get what the movie is going for with it’s characters, but after thinking about it this still seems…just cruel. In the kind of inescapable situation Miles finds himself in, I can very much understand why he behaves the way he does. It’s almost the most reasonable choice. I don’t believe he’s just a flamboyant party gay, that is, at least to some extent, an act. Somewhere in there is probably a very scared, depressed young thing. And, admittedly through his priviledge, he has found a way to get some enjoyment out of this life that has put him in this horrible, horrible situation. Why would he not use this opportunity? He knows the world is shit and it’s very probable that someday he could be prosecuted or even worse. But he decided to not give in to this dispair. If partying and whatever the heck else they do makes him happy right then and there, that is the right choice if you ask me. Who would I be to judge? Am I thinking too much into this? Maybe. But if you’ve seen the movie, (especially if you're lgbt+ yourself) tell me you didn’t have similar thoughts.

I don’t really think the writers of this film really considered how the whole situation would be like if a character is not just rich and priviledged but also part of a discriminated minority. Because if they did, they must have noticed that this black and white moral doesn’t really apply for this character they wrote. It ceases to work if you see it more nuanched than escapism = horrible consequences. They messed up a bit on this one if you asked me.

Note: Don’t expect me to always justify any characters actions just because they are queer and/or happen to be played by Michael Sheen. If a character he plays is a bad person or behaves badly will call them out on that (happily in fact, I can’t wait to get there eventually). I just don’t think the consequences this film draws for Miles work the way they where intended.

Okay I did ramble maybe, but I wanted to express the full range of impressions I got from this film. I do actually have fun things to say about it tho. Because I want to talk about all the good stuff that’s here aswell.

Fun stuff about this movie:

Aside from my personal issues with the story I have to say this film is very well written. Especially the dialogues. I can’t say how much of the text they took from the book, but the script itself and what the actors do with it is truly amazing. Just look at this:

Every

Line

Is

Gold!

Putting the focus on Michael Sheen tho, he doesn’t have that much dialogue in this film, but he makes every sinlge line count. He steals every scene he’s in, I love it.

We all know Michael “she has the range” Sheen is famous for his ability to absolutely melt into his characters. But what I find abolutely brilliant is, he’s damn good at exhibiting this range in each character individually aswell. Every time I watch this movie and that scene comes up it leaves me shattered to a million pieces. The sheer contrast between Miles before he was betrayed to after? It breaks my heart time and time again.

First: Look at this bundle of pure joy! He’s so cheerful!

And then:

I don’t even have words for this. Just…how?

The gasps inbetween his words. He’s not just crying, he’s actually sobbing! Miles does his best to keep his composure so he doesn’t break down completely and somehow he manages to do that. But just…barely. Like there’s this thin, so very thin thread that he, through the heartbreak, sorrow and pure dread he’s facing right now, desperately holds on to. He does his best to keep up the usual act, maybe to cope or maybe to seem less vulnerable but anyway it’s just painfully heartbreaking to witness.

Everytime this scene ends I sit there, absolutely devastated and just wonder how Sheen did that. Iv’e seen many crying scenes before of course, but something about this one just feels…different. In a good way, for the emotional impact of this scene. In a bad way for my emotional wellbeing. What Michael does in this scene, how he does it, his breathing, his voice breaking, his godddamn eyes, look at his eyes! This doesn’t give me the feeling of watching a sad scene in a movie, this makes me feel like I’m watching a real person right in front of me have a breakdown. I’m not kidding, it feels almost too real. It feels so real, that I’m genuinely a bit worried as to how Michael got himself to that point. How do you get yourself in the headspace for that? No one can just cry like that on the spot, right? How do you achieve that? Can someone explain this to me?

I think they told him something like: "Okay Michael, this scene signifies the beginning of the end. This is where the sunshine and rainbows suddenly turn to darkness and misery. The audience has to overwhelmingly feel, that nothing will ever, ever be the same again. There will be only doom from here on. Oh and, turn up the gay angst. Don't hold back." And he went on and fucking delivered!

I know it's really sad, but please, if you like Michaels acting, don't skip this scene. You can see that he really put everything in it and I want everyone to appreciate that.

But moving on to the more cheerful parts of this character. Have you ever just stopped to appreciate the gorgeous hair, make up and especially costume in this movie? Incredible! Alltogether Miles just…nksdfs...he looks so damn good!

The characters in this movie have many themed parties and go to events that have a certain dress code and Miles doesn't only commit, he delivers. Every. Damn. Time.

The silver/black spotted waistcoat, that beautiful, shiny blue coat, the tie, that fucking adorable hat and to top it off the make up, earring and black nail. They went above and beyond with this one.

Have you ever seen a turtleneck look more comfy than this one? And that in combination with a houndstooth jacket, topped off with an adorable beret? Cutest shit I've ever seen.

Somehow they managed to make this one subtle and flamboyant at the same time, perfect for this scene. I do not understand the choice in bow tie but I'll let that fly, because look how cute he is in that hat.

Especially love how everytime they gave Miles a hat of some sort, they had to have his curls pop out on the front or side. Very cute touch. Insert "he's so gay he can't even wear his hats straight" joke here

We're not just blessed by Michael being an incredible actor, but by him constantly being given such great costumes/outfits aswell! And ugh...I'm truly living. I think many people aren't aware of how important clothes are to characterizing a role. Especially if the actor knows how to work with it. And in this film Michael proves (once again) that he very much does.

*chefs kiss* rent free

(I'm a bit of a costume-design nerd, so this topic will reappear in the future, believe me)

But wait there is more!

I was watching through all the scenes with Miles and a small thing in the background caught my eye. It took me several rewinds to understand what he is doing here:

He gave Tiger his jacket! He does kinda look like a hungover mom, who's done with absolutely everything while doing it, but that doesn't change the fact, that he obviously cares for Tiger.

This exchange cracks me up everytime:

No comment

We're almost done, hang in there! I can't write about Bright Young Things in context to Michael Sheen without mentioning one more very important thing.

If you don't know already, this movie has David Tennant in it aswell! His character is Ginger Littlejohn, who is Adams rival of some sort. Basically, he's there to keep Adam and Nina apart till the conclusion at the very end. He's not a very deep character, but he has his moments:

These two are A++ react meme material, feel free to use them.

So now you know, when you hear Michael or David talk about a movie they both starred in, but never shared a scene, it's this one.

Now one very, very last thing before I leave you into the night (because let's face it chances are very high, that it's almos 3 am as you're reading this). I watched the bts footage and they captured an absolute gem:

Just to be clear, this is Michael, not Miles. Thank you to the people who decided to put this interaction in the bts.

Now while, obviously, Michael flirting with the cameraman is by itself hilarious, I wanted to point out something else here. Now again, I know nothing about the process of acting and getting into character, but thing is: This guy just walked off camera and then, like a lightswitch, instant welsh boi. Sure, good actors can switch their accents and voices on and off as they please, but in this case he sounds so drastically different to Miles it caught me off guard. I often see people talk about how varied his looks are from role to role and how good his microexpressions are and I wholeheartedly agree. But we need to talk his ability to modify his voice aswell. It's often very unnoticable if your'e not listening for it, but when he suddenly starts talking in his normal voice it becomes very obvious. His accent and tone of voice are very memorable. And everytime I see him switch from a character voice to his normal voice I feel like I'm watching a small shift in reality, it's so weird. I'm sure I'll get back to that in the future aswell, I think it's really cool when someone can do stuff like this.

Goodie, I guess that's it actually. If you couldn't guess by... ^all that^ I actually kind of enjoyed this movie and I think you should watch it. Maybe take it a little less seriously than I did tho.

If you read all the way through this, holy shit, thank you so fucking much, you're incredible, I love you. Also go to bed please.

[butts-bouncing-on-the-beltway]

I'm deeply ready for the days off I've planned for myself, including PRIDE night for me and wifey (and maybe some new clothes to go with? Neither of us have had a new outfit in over a year. I think maybe for wifey for sure, as her wardrobe always take harder and faster hits than mine does)

I've got a nice four day lil 4 day weekend, and a 3 day weekend to follow, so hopefully by the end of it, I will be feeling much better rested and will have gotten a few things handked around the house.

God and I have our anniversary to plan for next month already, and I'm still neck deep in initial planning for our tenth so I honestly don't even know what that's gonna look like. Maybe just a nice dinner at our favorite place? And maybe buying a new movie to watch together and cuddle. A nice jug of cider for me to spice up.

Lord I'm just tired all the time lmao, and I'm trying to get myself in order, but I'm just usually so busy or exhausted or we've run thru the paycheck for the week, or whatever the fuck.

We definitely need to buy and build the chicken run first thing during my long weekend, because it's almost butchering day for the waffles, and the ladies are almost big enough to deserve real exercise space (the hen house is huge lol, and until now genuinely has been big enough for them all to not need outdoor space at all). They can managw another week together in there with no consequences, but after that, they're gonna need their outdoor run.

I think I'll buy the berry bushes and the fencing supplies all in one go so I don't have to worry about coming back to it later and disrupting the ladies. Which really means I need to find a local nursery with native berry bushes, because I don't feel up to driving all the way down the mountain to Ream in the same weekend if I don't have to. I can save that trip for picking up our trees later in the sunmer.

Man, I really am looking forward to having the garden set up and the ladies grown enough to lay. Free fresh eggs are a huge relief on our budget, especially if we keep doing periodic waves of meat birds to keep cutting down our meat budget alongside it. I'm thinking probably 2-3 sets of meat birds per year, maybe a dozen each time? I'm never doing Cornish Rocks again tho, these little abominations are a disaster to raise. Literally every bird we lost (4 total) was a fuckin Waffle, and they always died for the stupidest reasons. One literally just ate too much and then passed out for a nap under the heat lamp until he got heat stroke because he didn't bother also hydrating???? The only other birds I've raised with this kind of mortality rate are fuckin great white turkeys and they drown in the goddamn rain. Apparently it's not just us either. If I'd taken the time to research more instead of trusting the meat and egg chick mix, I'd have seen all the other homesteaders online panicking about half their flock dying and meing warned by more experienced folks that Cornishes are really only viable for industrial scale farming that can reliably take those kinds of losses. In retrospect, now that I *do* know that, I'm almost proud we managed to keep 80% of our Waffles alive.

Point being, I'm never going through that again. There are plenty of heritage meat birds, and I'll be sticking with them please and thank you.

I've considered starting to do rabbit too? It would cut down on our pet food costs a fair bit, and then maybe I could co-graze themand the chickens in a tractor along the yard to manage overgrowth of ground cover. I'd prefer a goat obvi, but I don't think the council will let me have one, even if wifey would lmao. That's definitely a later thing tho. Gotta get the humans more sustainably fed before I can consider any new livestock lmao

I think the chicken run, the berry bushes, the first order of seeds, and a chest freezer are probably the major expenses this coming paycheck. We might be able to postpone the chest freezer? Our freezer isn't overly full at present, and I think could actually fit 20 processed Waffles if needed. We'll need one soon regardless tho, cuz it definitely won't fit the next butchering day product at that point, nor the frozen fruits, veggies, and easy preps we'll be starting to make over the summer. So if not this pay period, then the next one.

God, I guess that means I should prep all my orders so I can place them first thing on Friday when I get paid, and price out the batches. Ughhhh I'm so busy today, that's gonna be hard to make time for during my breaks, and after work it's dinner and eorzea time, plus probably some tidying.

Awww fuck i gotta bring in the washing too and maybe do another load.

Whatever. Point is, I'm gonna be busy for a while. Which is good. But also means I have less time to sit and think and write which does make me a lil sad. It's just until harvest season is through tho! Once everything is planted and plucked and canned and stored, I'll be back to having time for other things. I'm probably gonna prioritize my writing and my sewing thru the winter so I can be ready for fiber processing in spring and publishing season in summer/fall. I'll want to get back to the zine soon too, because I really do want to add in the documentation I've been building around appalachian riperians

Lordt

Someone needs to tell my brain to pick a goddamn lane. This is how I end up pulled in so many directions that nothing gets done lmao

[calkale]

I'd love to hear more of your thoughts in re mi7, cause most of the responses to the movie that I've come across have been positive (which clashes with the way I see it....) and I really agree about the negatives you mentioned (stunts being underwhelming even though they're the trademark of the series, the literal main character being neglected in favor of someone who's appearing in the series for the first time and whose biggest credit is that fuckass cgi disaster excuse for a multiverse movie- fr I had to look Hayley Atwell up to see what she'd even been in- and the long-standing supporting cast including luther, who'd been there since the beginning, just being discarded by the script like litter out of a car window). also it'd be cool to hear about smaller details cause often something is really off about a script and it kinda ruins the whole thing but you don't really know what it was till afterwards, and with new releases you can't rewatch or discuss it with much of anyone else (again, all there is are column reviews and stuff and they're mostly the same and very general on account of staying spoiler-free ).

Okay gonna be honest i havent looked at a single review or post about this movie other than the ilsa one i reblogged this morning cause im still so upset over it. Thank you for sending this ask cause i felt so alone lmao im glad someone agrees with my thoughts.

I hate them for making hayley the main character, if these are the last two movies, which it feel like they are, ethan and luther should really be the main characters along with benji and ilsa, not some new character. All for adding new characters and hayley couldve been in the start of the movie she had a place there she was the thief but after that she literally just took ilsas spot as the “woman of the team” as well as ethans spot in the spotlight.

This movie also seems to go against a lot of things ive heard mcq say in interviews, i cant source them cause i dont remember which ones theyre from but he’s talked about not over explaining things in movies and hes talked about not not wanting a strong female lead thats exactly like what hayelys character is in this movie. The over explaining thing happens SO FUCKING MUCH in this movie i was so bored and it just made me more lost because there was all this information i was taking in CONSTANTLY and i was trying to remember what character was doing what and who they were and it was just too much. I get this movie is probably more of a set up for part two but now we have all this shit we need to remember for part two and i dont even really wanna see it if im being honest, i will but if its anything like part one i know im gonna be disappointed again especially if its going in the direction i think its going.

Ive been trying to remember a lot of the smaller details that i noticed when watching it but a lot of them were part of bigger issues anyway so i just kinda grouped them together. Ill talk about the plot tho cause i knew i was gonna hate it but i didnt know id hate it for this reason. In other mi movies theyre doing the things they do because they have no other choice, in this movie it felt like there were so many choices that couldve been made and they didnt even talk about them it was just we’re doing this and thats it. Like on the train there were definitely better ways of doing that and i get there were short on time but that was almost exactly like the burj khalifa scene. Short on time, cant make a mask, need to meet with someone to make a deal. I just feel like there was so much more that they couldve done with that and the cliff jumping stunt and they just didnt do anything it was so underwhelming.

Going off of that a lot of things in this movie just didnt make sense to me and/or didnt need to be there, the ai villain?? Honestly couldve been cut completely, yes it was creepy but it didnt like actually do anything? everything it did couldve easily just been garbiel messing with the team and that wouldve also given paris more screen time (which i really would’ve liked i loved her character). As much as i loved briggs and degas they also didnt really need to be there? Dont get me wrong they were one of the things i really loved about this movie especially degas but there was really no point in them being there.

The main focus of the movie should have just been getting the keys and destroying them so no one can use the weapon that was on the sub, the ai did not need to be a part of it, someone couldve found the untraceable sub because this is fucking mission impossible!! Thats what happens in these movies!! The impossible!! Im grabbing tom cruise by the shoulders and shaking him nothing impossible happened in this movie

The submarine scene at the start also bothered me. I was fully expecting that to be the big stunt at the start of the movie i was really excited i was constantly like omg wheres ethan, i thought the torpedo or missile they saw on the radar was ethan and that was him entering the sub and something was gonna happen but no, not even close. Not a bad opening just not what i expected and that kinda made it bad.

This is an absolute mess of a post my apologies i have much more to say but i need to get back to drawing benji

[team7-headquarter]

Hypothetically what if karin would become the jinchuuriki (or the one of the 10 tailes, if we just act like the ending was a genjutsu) would that change the dynamics of the story? Her relationship to her team etc?

I have given this a lot of thought, even before I got this ask. Mainly because I'm always thinking 'bout what of the girls got the crazy powers and what if they were the protagonists of the story.

The first thing we need to acknowledge is that, as a character, Karin is way more cynical than Naruto ever was. Of course, that's because she was just a "common" kid, her parents were no one special in particular. However, the aspect that defines her character the most is her Uzumaki kekkei genkai, where a bite of her flesh guarantees healing to the person biting. She was physically abused and she was sexualized in ways Naruto never was. Karin as a girl suffered a different type of discrimination, the same as Karin as a survivor of a genocide that had no home, not really, so she was a refugee.

All these aspects are really important.

Naruto was rejected and isolated by Konoha, but being from Konoha was still part of his identity (in fact, that's how the manga started). He sexualized himself as a weapon against people. Like the Sage of the Six Paths would later tell him, aside of the kyubi, Naruto didn't get most of his parents' skills. Don't forget that the only reason Naruto had half as much freedom is because Minato was the one who sealed Kurama in him. Previously, the kyubi jinchuriki had to stay within a giant seal and they had to use the Uzumaki chains to keep the kyubi at bay, right?

While Iruka was the one who set Naruto on the hero path, Orochimaru was Karin's "saviour".

Do you get where I'm going?

Hypothetical scenarios where I see Karin Uzumaki somehow becoming the jinchuriki of the kyubi:

Minato and Kushina stay alive for whatever reason, which means they don't have to seal the kyubi in him and instead, Karin is selected as the next jinchuriki for her abilities and the fact she can learn to use the Uzumaki chains.

Something goes reeeally wrong, Naruto dies or is incapable of keep being a jinchuriki and they have to seal the kyubi in Karin.

To stop Obito and Madara, they had to seal a tail beast in Karin because the other jinchuriki died. This is more of a "we need to put this in a safe place to prevent Obito from stealing it"

An Otsutsuki decides to swap the characters abilities for whatever reason.

The Uzumaki clan never falls and Karin grows up in Uzushiogakure or Konohagakure as the next in line to be jinchuriki.

Konoha lost the nine tails and Karin ends up becoming the kyubi jinchuriki for whatever reason.

These are just some possible scenarios, okay?

In some variations, Karin is a nukenin (rogue nin) while being a jinchuriki, which shifts the dynamic of the story to prioritize the opposition to the corruption of the Hidden Villages. This elevates her to be more like Sasuke's equal than Naruto, in truth. She is, of course, more of a target and has less support, which spells disaster all around.

In other variations, she is part of Konoha and she shares the Uzumaki burden with Naruto. This one can shift to Karin leaving the village like Sasuke, or staying and changing her view of the world even if only a little. Naruto and Karin wouldn't have been as lonely growing up together and hey, it'd have been interesting to see Karin competing with Ino and Sakura, right?

As for the shift in Team Taka's dynamic, I believe Sasuke and Karin could have a closer friendship maybe, but the dynamic would be basically the same. They don't care that much about the skills of the other, because it's the personalities what rules their team dynamic. She'd participate more on the fights and have more protagonism, tho.

The major change would be the dynamic of Kurama and Karin and what it'd entail.

For once, I can see the craziness of Jiraiya trying to teach Karin. We're talking about the Pervert™ of Naruto and one of the most sexualized women of the entire manga. Yet, we all know how strong Konan is and she's a student of Jiraiya, so there you have that. I also think Kushina and Karin are an interesting duo, so why not believe they would have a relationship like Mito and Kushina? Or that Kushina could be the sensei of Karin genin team?

Now, if Orochimaru is her sensei... I don't know what he'd do with a jinchuriki for a student. The possiblities of that one is endless, but as a rogue nin, hiding with Orochimaru could be Karin's best option. If she had participated in the attack to Konoha in the Classic, who says the Sound and the Sand wouldn't have ended Konoha right then?

So many options, so many cool things about the jinchuriki Karin aus!