#she depends on andy to be the only person not to abandon her be in her group and help her survive without him shes doomed

[ladynicte]

Adding Ashely into my pile of ASPD girlies together with Makima

I really think ASPD fits her so well though, like that inability to really connect with others, that inability to stop herself and do things accordingly.

That feeling of never fitting in even though she did have friends, of never being able to be fully liked by anybody else.

The lack of empathy of natural understanding for the direct suffering of others.

ASPD people like Ashley who never manage to become accepted into any group from early age who are too different for anybody else to really like and accept so they have to force their own group into existence or else they won't be able to survive on their own.

So Ashley sees herself forced to keep Andy with herself by all means possible, feels good when they are locked up together and he can't escape her, feels threatened by any other girl who could come into his life and astray him away from her, feels that if she doesn't personally isolate him he will end up running away from her.

Knows that she has to get her brother stuck with her because he's her only social circle and without him she won't make it.

[autolenaphilia]

Some thoughts on The Coffin of Andy and Leyley

I found out about The Coffin of Andy and Leyley from an ”antiship” blog that I was on solely to block, because these people are always violent callout culture transmisogynists. Them getting very upset about this game having incest in it piqued my interest. The art looked interesting, and if these people hate it, it can’t be all bad.

(Case in point about the transmisogyny, from my understanding some people tried to dox the pseudonymous and secretive developer of this game, Nemlei. And the motivation was to prove the doxxer’s suspicion that Nemlei is a trans woman, because “only a trans woman could create such degeneracy.”)

Sure enough, TCOAAL is actually a nuanced and well-written psychological dark comedy /horror game. This is going to be more of a preliminary analysis than a review so full spoilers beyond this point. It’s by necessity preliminary since the game isn’t finished yet. My review is: go buy it if you are a fellow sicko who enjoys interesting stories about cannibalism and incest and like visual novels.

TCOAAL uses a trick from more transgressive forms of horror fiction, where the protagonists are not the heroes, but the villains, and the story is from their perspective. Andrew and Ashley Graves are murderers who kill people, sacrifice their souls to demons and cannibalize their bodies. They would be the villains of a more conventional horror story, their crimes investigated and thwarted by some heroic detective perhaps. But in this type of story, you are denied the comfort of heroes, or even innocent victims as you watch the protagonists twisted psychology lead them to commit terrible deeds.

The tone of the story mostly isn’t really horror, but very dark comedy, kinda Jhonen Vasquez-ish. The horrors are portrayed with a gleeful flippant tone, and cute appealing art. The tone mirrors how especially Ashley feels about her crimes. The game’s tone gets serious sometimes, going for straight horror occasionally, acknowledging how heartbreaking yet insane the Graves situation is, but there is a deep vein of the blackest humor.

Andrew and Ashley

Andy and Leyley themselves have this co-dependent toxic abusive sibling dynamic. Ashley is emotionally abusive, extremely possessive and manipulative towards Andrew. But her beloved Andy is the only person she actually cares about, and the rest she is able to kill with gleeful abandon in her heart.

Yet Andrew is not purely a victim. I’m going to talk at length about him, because the gap between how he describes himself and what the game shows is fascinating. I’m not the first to point this out. And it even extends to the game’s promotional material, like this official art on the game’s steam page is actually subverted by the game itself.

His character is not "doormat extraordinaire" who just "exists", the words "very not good, in fact very bad" apply to him too.

He is a victim, and loves to point at times how exploited, manipulated and abused he is by Ashley and he’s of course right. But he also uses that as an excuse for the horrific violence he commits, that he is just a doormat has been manipulated and corrupted by Ashley. “I was just being manipulated by Ashley to do it” is his variation on the old Nuremberg defense for his crimes. He has no sense of personal responsibility, no understanding that even if someone else tells you to do it, you are still responsible for your actions.

And the game itself proves that “it’s all Ashley” is not really true. A lot of the violence and murder are definitely on Andrew’s own initiative. He is violent towards Ashley too, the abuse is reciprocal. And he like Ashley doesn’t care much about other people. He gets distraught about killing people, but if you follow his dialogue, he is mostly freaked out about the consequences for himself. He is dependent on Ashley as someone who he can lay all the responsibility and blame for his own actions for. And of course, there is genuine affection there, because things are complex. He was parentified to take care of Ashley as a child and still has the drive to be her caretaker and protector.

It’s a fascinating pair of characters, and an interesting dynamic to observe.

“Der Mensch lebt nur von Missetat allein”

And the game’s writing is smart enough to have them not be an individualized evil, that came out of nowhere. Andrew and Ashley are the products of a neglectful and cold parents. Their mother made Andrew the favorite, but basically in order to parentize him to take care of his younger sister. And their dad can’t even remember the names of his kids. Not that the cycle of abuse starts with the parents, the mother had Andrew and Ashley when she was 15 and 17 respectively. But that doesn’t excuse how they ultimately, sell their kids’s lives for money to an organ harvesting scheme. This scheme is strongly implied to be part of an hilariously over-the-top soda company, toxisoda (it’s implied their soda is literally made from humans, so the company is doing the same thing that Ashley and Andy does, but on an industrial scale).

This is the situation that pushes Andy and Ashley to become evil murder-cannibals horror movie villains they become. They are deliberately being starved to death, and decide human meat is preferable to that. And the point here is obvious. To quote Brecht, “Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral” or in english translation “Food is the first thing. Morals follow on.” Andy and Ashley are bad people who kill and eat other people, but they are the product of an evil society. A family system where children are property of their parents to be abused and sold. And ultimately a capitalist system which kills people to feed others, a societal and systematic version of what Andew’s and Ashley does. They literally become cannibals to escape becoming literally or essentially cannibalized themselves by the capitalist system. Capitalism is a system which works on prey and predator dynamics, and they just fought to became predator instead of prey. To further quote the same song by Brecht, in capitalism, “Der Mensch lebt nur von Missetat allein” or in english ���mankind is kept alive by bestial acts.” And in that broader view, Andrew and Ashley’s small-scale evil is dwarfed by the system they are born into.

Incest

It’s with all this context the game’s treatment of incest must be understood. It’s a horror game, about two siblings with a fucked-up abusive relationship. Of course there is incest, it’s far from being the worst thing these two do. The game only gets more explicit about incest in one optional ending, but it’s there explicitly and subtextually from the very start. Ashley jokes about it repeatedly, it’s there in the possessive jealousy Ashley feels for any of Andrew’s girlfriends, it’s implied in the casual physical intimacy of the siblings. Like it’s very obvious that their fucked-up but close relationship can lead there right from the beginning of episode 1. It’s a very natural conclusion to their dynamic. And the characters know it, Ashley definitely knows it, and their own mother accuses them of it. Andrew denies his mother’s accusation of fucking Ashley, and he’s probably not lying at that moment, but his relationship with Ashley leading there make perfect sense and he is not just capable of admitting that. Anyone who claims to have played this game and then claims be shocked that there is an optional incestous ending can’t have been paying much attention. This is the incest cannibalism game.

The Graves siblings are heading towards committing more murder as long as they stay alive, and incest is a minor sin for them. And probably not even the unhealthiest way for their relationship to develop. It definitely won’t fix them, but I doubt it will make things much worse.

And condemning the game morally is just absurd. This is a horror game, and you are outraged about the incest and not the murder-cannibalism? The Graves siblings relationship is not portrayed as healthy and the incest is part of that.

In fact the game portrays this double-standard in the actual story. It’s the possibility of her kids committing incest that finally makes Mamma Graves admit she is “the worst mother ever”, and not the whole selling the lives of her kids for money thing.

Sure, there is a fair argument to make that the incest is romanticized and fetishized. Ashley and Andrew are certainly drawn as attractive, and even the abusive elements can be part of the fetish. But the thing is, Ashley and Andrew are not real people, it’s fiction, it’s not real incest, so if people get off to it, I have no reason to see it as a problem.

The antiship blogger was actually especially angery about this official art from a devlog and honestly after playing the game, it kinda sums up my feelings about the incest controversy:

[sukunasboytoy]

typed this up after watching the movie on opening n i was gonna keep it in the drafts for abt a week before posting it but ppl r talking abt it so im gonna go ahead n post it now !

‼️ cw: alien romulus spoilers ‼️

there is so much to be said abt andy im not even kidding theres so many conversations that can be had they include:

the black chara thats the emotional support for a white chara (andys whole thing is that he tells bad puns to rain to cheer her up - his one n only reason for existence is the do wtvr is best for rain is his literally a black chara that exists to prop up n support a white chara)

white feminism/white tears (how rain centers her own pain over the pain she caused andy, rain victimizes herself n openly argues w andy for turning on her n aligning himself w wy even tho she left him first - ofc they work thru this at the end but yk)

i rlly feel like andy has feelings for rain but hes been ‘brother zoned’ n his line abt ‘u can finally see me as a adult’ is what solidified that for me but i do think a mix of ableism n racism r at play there (black man being infantilized by the white woman he has feelings for bc of his blackness n mental (programming???) disability)

white savorism - inb4 rain ran back to andy at the end of the movie andy depended on rain for survival (needing help to fend off attackers at the start of the movie, rain constantly stepped in n defended andy against the anti-synth bigot which could be read as a metaphor for racism here, but its rain using her privilege as a flesh person (again metaphor for racism n ableism here) to constantly save andy that props her up as the Good Person even tho shes willing to use n abandon him)

andy doesnt rlly have any agency- he does what he feels whats best for rain (black chara used to prop up white chara) gets his agency overridden (by another white chara rook n mu/th/ur) n then makes the switch back to supporting rain (sure he chooses to let rain take the module out but yk plot convenience- they need the black man to sacrifice his life to save the white woman)

like dont get me wrong its great to have a black n disabled chara on screen n its great that he gets to be morally ambiguous (my personal fave) n i like that andy n rain have a complicated messy relationship n they hurt each other (like ppl do) but yk … hard not to notice some of this stuff yk

n i do think its on purpose bc synths r seen as not human/subhuman in the same way poc n neurodivergent ppl r (esp for his lack of empathy n emotions) hes viewed as inherently dangerous (like men of color r viewed as being innately violent n aggressive n mentally ill ppl r seen as violent n unpredictable)

rains decision to leave him behind bc hes “not rlly human bc he doesnt actually feel” is a good metaphor n representation for how poc r used as stepping stones n viewed as not “real” ppl by white ppl n the same can be said for neurodivergent ppl esp mentally disabled ppl rain seems to be fulfilled by andy needing her but is willing to leave him behind the moment including him becomes a hinder ace to her (n ofc its fixed in the end- but i like synths being a more obvious metaphor for ppl who r dehumanized in society aliens have largely been a white cast franchise so taking the narrative of the bigotry that synths face in the universe n having that applied to a synth that is black n disabled is great n i rlly like that the bigotry is portrayed in those subtle ways on screen like andys lack of agency n being used as a literal prop for the white woman by literally existing to support her)

[gimblestank-the-goblin]

Andy and Leyley Analysis

Both of Andrew and Ashley's "core" issues seem to stem from the conditional love their mother provided. Its clear from how she (and they) talk during the home invasion that while their mother wanted kids, she didn't really want to put in the work of *raising* them. Thus, she only really loved them when they weren't being a bother (which isn't love at all).

Andrew reacted to this by learning not to be a bother. He became passive.

Ashley reacted by acting out for attention, which pushed her mother and giving her abandonment issues. These then manifested in her constantly *testing* the people around her. Trying to make them leave both as a way to protect herself from harm (by pushing them away before she could form an attachment) and to reassure herself that they *wouldn't* leave. This, obviously, is not a healthy outlook and her coping methods for her issues only exacerbate said issues, but if that were all that were wrong she would be... not fine but a lot less worse than she is. Notably, however, by the time we first see her at about 5(?) years old, she is already displaying an extreme lack of empathy, a distinct cruel streak *and* that she can manipulate her brother via emotional abuse in the form of guilt and threats of self-harm. None of which seems to have *changed* over the course of her life.

Ashley is - at least so far - a relatively flat character. Who she is in the flashbacks is who she is in the present. Even the murder of Nina - the siblings first real crime - does not seem to have affected or changed her in anyway.

This is *very much* in contrast with Andrew. If Ashley's story is that of a flat character arc, then Andrew's story is a descent into darkness. Each flashback - as we move closer and closer to the present - Andrew is becoming *worse*. Doing more and more questionable things, all stemming - it appears - from Nina's death.

And here we get into a bunch of complicated stuff which is all inter-related so I may struggle to lay it out well. But the key point here is that this is when - in the eyes of both Andy and LeyLey - Andy becomes *as bad as her*. And this belief starts his descent into a worse and worse state of mind because he internalizes the idea that he is a bad person.

So I want to lay out the scene. The two kill Nina. Andrew's guilty, but he's also scared. He's scared of being found out. And he's scared of that because he - and Leyley, this will be important later - has internalized the idea - both from watching how his mother treats him and how she treats Leyley - that people who cause problems *are unworthy of love*. He knows, they both know, that if this gets out their mother won't protect them. She won't love them. Leyley says this explicitly

"It's you and me now! No one else will like you. You're a bad person Andy." It is at this moment that Andy internalizes the idea that he is a bad person, unworthy of love. That no one can ever know the real him (and so he can never form a real, meaningful connection) because anyone who knew the "real" him would see him for the monster he is and reject him. No one, that is, except for Leyley.

Again, she says this explicitly. "Andy I know you don't like me... But that doesn't matter anymore. Because from now on, no one will like you either. So let's always be friends okay?"

She is now his *only* support network (as he is hers) and she can use that to control him. Weirdly, this does not create a power imbalance between them, but rather normalizes their relationship. He is now as dependent on her as she is on him, they are *each others* only support network. She does try to push the balance of power between them in her favor by blackmailing him, but he correctly identifies that she is unwilling to lose her only "friend" and so they work out their blood oath.

So that is the story from Andrew's perspective. But what is the story from Leyley's? Well its largely the same, but with a few key differences. See, Leyley had *already* internalized the idea that she was a bad person. Long before Nina's death, Leyley's acting out had isolated her from first her mom, then her friends at school. Because she was a "bad person" and bad people don't deserve (or get) love. Presumably, she reacted to this by embracing it, and by latching onto the only person who didn't push her away (because she had learned to manipulate him) Andrew.

And so Nina's death, which to Andrew was a tragedy, was to Leyley a *miracle*. Because it brought him down to her level. Made him her *equal*. And in doing so it created the co-dependence which led to... well the rest of their problems.

Notably, and I think the core reason why I view Leyley as “worse” than Andrew is that Leyley’s issue can’t be pointed to any singular tragic event. Andrew has the “excuse” of a tragic death, guilt and fear - not to mention Leyley’s manipulations - to explain away why he turns from timid boy with some issues to absolute monster. Leyley, as far as we can see, was always this way. And I can extrapolate outwards to see how this is a reaction to her mother’s lack of love, but it’s clear there was no singular event which drove her to act the way she did. She doesn’t have the excuse of singular tragedy, and so I find her less sympathetic (even if I like her as a character more). 

---

Related, I think it's worth talking about their relationship and blame. Because it's true, to an extent, that Andrew uses Leyley as an excuse for why he “has” to do awful things and deflects the blame onto her. But it's equally true that the Andrew we see after Nina’s death is not the same man who butchered a cultist for meat or murdered his parents. We see his descent through flashbacks and gameplay, watch as he crosses line after line and becomes worse and worse. And I think it's worth noting that Leyley is there every step of the way, pushing him further along. Working to isolate and abuse him so he has no-one to turn to but her. This is most clear in how she works to isolate him from his other female relationships (sending them death threats and threatening phone calls and making up emergencies so he cancels plans) but it is just as easily scene in her threat of blackmail.

And so why they are both bad people - especially at the time of game start - it's clear that Andrew is that way because of a combination of a so-so mom, a terrible tragedy and active abuse by someone close to him. And I find myself more sympathetic to someone whose spent their whole life living with an abuser, then I do with the abuser. Even if by game start they are equally abusive to each other.

[ejsandfarkleslovebot]

MAKE IT SHINE - kendall knight

ANDROMEDA, BETTER known as Andi, didn't have the best childhood. Her parents had given her up for adoption when she was just a baby, so she grew up in foster homes and in orphanage facilities, and her life was filled with constant disappointment. She felt unwanted by everyone-her biological parents, the foster parents who only took her in because they received the state's check every month, and the other children at the various places she stayed. The adults told her all the time that she needed to act and behave, otherwise she would never be adopted.

So she learned to hide her emotions and put on a good front. She would tell the adults what they wanted to hear and do as she was told because she wanted a loving family, a real home, and she didn't want to have to move again. She felt like she never belonged. She tried not to let it get her down, but she always wondered why her parents didn't want her. Was she a mistake? Was there something wrong with her? She couldn't understand how a parent could abandon their own child. She thought that if they could just see her, spend some time with her, they would want her, and she would finally have a place where she fit in and was loved. But that never happened.

By the time she reached eight years old, she knew better than to get her hopes up. She realized the only person she could depend on was herself. That is until she got adopted by Kelly Wainwright. Kelly had been looking to adopt for several years. When she met Andi, she knew right away that Andi was the child she had been searching for. The instant connection she felt to Andi was overwhelming. She couldn't imagine not giving this little girl a home. At first, Andi wasn't sure if this was permanent or not. She just assumed that this was another foster home. But as the days and weeks went on, it became obvious that Kelly truly cared about her and that this was her forever home. So she slowly let her guard down, and when she was with Kelly, she felt the love that she had craved for so long. She finally felt wanted and accepted. Andi had always been a little spitfire. She had a strong will, and once she made up her mind about something, no one could talk her out of it.

Kelly saw a lot of herself in Andi, which is probably why she gravitated to her from the start. But Andi's stubbornness was a source of many arguments between the two. Andi was used to taking care of herself and wasn't accustomed to having someone else in her life that truly cared about her well-being. But Kelly was patient with her, and eventually, she came to trust and rely on her. They quickly fell into a comfortable routine and life was good. It was great actually. Throughout her life, music has been the one thing that has grounded Andi. It has been a way for her to express herself when she couldn't find the words.

Music has helped her through her darkest times, and it has brought her comfort and solace when she has been afraid. It has also helped her find her voice. Growing up, it was difficult for her to express herself, especially her emotions. There was always the fear that if she did, she would be rejected, so it was just easier to keep it inside. But over the years, music has been the one constant in her life. The one thing that has given her an outlet, allowing her to feel confident and empowered. She had always been a dreamer and she dreamt of becoming a famous musician. She would often imagine standing on stage in front of a huge crowd of screaming fans, singing her heart out and bringing them all to their feet. But deep down, she knew it was an unlikely dream. Mainly because no one knew she was a songwriter and she always was too shy to sing or play instruments in front of people. Even Kelly. But she soon realized with the help of four hockey players from Minnesota she didn't have to be afraid to put her dream in action. These four hockey players, the tall blonde haired one to be more specific, helps her not fade away and be the main attraction as she makes it shine.

[a-hell-of-a-time]

Muses

((Copypasting from my blog page for Android users since the tumblr app hates android for some reason.))

Canon:

Name: Octavia

Nicknames: Via, Starfire, Princess, My Owlette, Sweetie

Age: 17

Birthday: August 20th

Orientation: Lesbian Asexual

Likes: Astrology, taxidermy, depressing punk music, reading, spending time with her dad, learning magic

Dislikes: Her parents fighting, her dad’s affair with Blitzo, her parents being overprotective, rip offs, fearing she’ll be abandoned/left alone by her dad

Occupation: Princess of the Goetia family, precautionary heir

Bio: Can be found HERE.

Some notes:

My Octavia is a minor, so no sexual nsfw or other things with her. She is also not open to shipping at this time.

While she loves Stolas deeply, Octavia holds some resentment and anger towards him, namely his affair with Blitzo and fears that her father will choose him over her. As such she tries to put some distance between herself and Stolas and comes off as hostile at times. It’ll require work and constant assurance to regain her trust and repair the bond that was damaged, both by the affair and by her parent’s rapidly deteriorating marriage.

Her human fc is Mitake Ran from Bandori/Bang Dream.

Depending on how the series goes/butchers things, Octavia may become canon divergent.

Verses:

Octavia Morningstar - She was adopted by Lucifer during her parent’s divorce and is no longer a Goetia.

Birds of a Feather - Octavia and Phel meeting while under Stolas’s (grimowled’s) care.

————————————————–

Name: Andrealphus

Nicknames: Andre, Andy, Arrogant Prick (Stolas probably, or anyone else having to put up with him)

Age: Early 40’s (Hell years/appearance wise)

Birthday: December 22nd

Human fc: Camus (Uta no Prince Sama)

Occupation: Marquis of Hell (One of them)

Likes: Obtaining power, authority, status, being rich, spending time with Stella, his niece, the cold, Caim (ex fiance, currently the only thing he has to a friend rn), being the center of attention because ofc he would, being pretty (probably)

Dislikes: Stolas, not having power/control/status, the poor/being poor, the heat

Orientation: Gay and polyamourous.

Personality: Pretty much your run of the mill haughty, arrogant, self absorbed rich person who is very pretty and very much punchable. Has an over inflated ego and sense of self because money, but is also very calculating, clever and cunning. While he adores Stella, Andrealphus does have limits and can only take so much of her behaviour before snapping.

He does have a softer, more caring side toward his niece and Caim, but he refuses to show it in public because he has an image to maintain.

More can be found HERE.

Abilities/powers:

Cryokinesis - Controls and manipulates ice Intellect Swordsmanship - Has a sword made of ice as his primary weapon

Small Bio (Canon to this blog only): A marquis of Hell, Andrealphus was born into the Goetia family and attained his mansion and legions from his father. When he was a child, he met and befriended Caim when she was training in Hell. The two became quite close, which led to their respective families to propose a marital union between the two. On her father’s end, this was an attempt to keep Caim in hell and move up her place in the Goetia hierarchy, which she refused after leaving Hell with her mother. For Andrealphus’s family, since he could not marry up, they wanted to marry him off so the title of marquis would stay with their family via any potential heirs.

Caim leaving hell, hurt Andrealphus, but he was not surprised nor held it against her; Caim was more in touch with the youkai side of her family than the Goetia’s, and he made no move to interfere. He still kept in touch, and during the early years of Stella’s marriage to Stolas, would make a trip or two to the human world to visit. The two remain close friends to this day.

Note: My Andrealphus will be canon divergent, despite whatever the show decides to do with him. I will not condone incest, or have him act in an incestuous way to his sister because that shit’s nasty.

Andrealphus Headcanon Masterpost

Verses:

Andre/Beej - Ship verse for Andrealphus and Beetlejuice (micsmasmuses)

Fire and Ice - Ship verse for Andrealphus and Vassago (jc helluva mumu)

——————————–

OC’s:

Name: Caim

Alternative names/nicknames: Caimo

Human Face claim: Yor Forger (SpyxFamily)

Age: Early 40’s (Hell years); 400 (youkai)

Birthday: April 17th

Orientation: Lesbian

Relationship status: Married

Wife: Yui

Species: Part thrush bird demon, part crow (corvid) tengu youkai

Occupation: Great President of Hell (formerly in one verse); Working various odd jobs in the human world.

Likes: Her wife, swordsmanship, training, some members of the Goetia family (Andrealphus), her mother

Dislikes: Her father, dishonesty, disloyalty, pompous idiots (Andrealphus is the only exception but he’s on thin ice at times.)

Personality: Caim is generally a reserved, quiet, yet no nonsense woman with a stern demeanour. She values loyalty and will not tolerate anything underhanded, or anyone who engages in such methods. Due to being half youkai and struggling to fit into both her society and the nobility of hell, Caim suffers from low self esteem and often withdraws into herself. Fortunately her wife is able to bring Caim out of her shell and is a source of refuge and strength.

If you are someone she loves and holds dear, she will go to hell and back for you. However, if you were to ever cross her, you will be met with a swift, steel strike.

More TBA later.

History: Born to a lesser noble in the Ars Goetia and a tengu warrior, Caim was trained to be a soldier and commander from an early age. Her skills with the sword were evident from a young age and she was quickly deemed a prodigy. Her mother was a highly respected and revered warrior, though when she met Caim’s father, their union caused a stir among her compatriots. Youkai, who were powerful spirits of the Earth, did not take kindly to the beings inhabiting heaven or hell, and saw this union as a grave transgression of their way of life. As a result, most youkai began to shun Caim, along with her mother.

Despite this, Caim would end up travelling to hell on occasion to be trained under her father in the hopes of her attaining her father’s title and legions and a spot in the Goetia family hierarchy. To this point she was arranged to be wed to a member of said family (Andrealphus), but when she came of age, Caim abandoned both her duties to the Goetia family and her fiance to return home to be with her mother.

Since her return she grew close to one of her childhood friends, Yui, and eventually the two were wed. Caim and Yui now spend their days wandering and working among humans while taking the occasional trip to Hell. She also remains good friends with Andrealphus.

More TBA later.

Abilities:

Extreme Speed Has some magical ability (Limited to transformations and portals) Swordsmanship

————————————–

Name: Yui

Face claim: Yae Miko (Genshin); Yukime (The Eminence in Shadow) (When in Hell she takes on a more fox like demon appearance similar to Beelzebub.)

Age: 500 (youkai/human years), looks to be about late 30’s/early 40’s

Birthday: May 29th

Orientation: Lesbian

Relationship status: Married

Wife: Caim

Species: Kitsune youkai (five tailed)

Occupation: Works various part time jobs

Likes: Her wife, mischief, pranks, having fun, parties, teasing Andrealphus

Dislikes: Hell nobility (Specifically the Goetia family), anything boring, too many customs/rules.

Personality: Yui is a very fun loving, playful, mischievous woman who likes to stir the pot whenever possible. She shows a more mature, serious side when working but still retains her playful nature. As a high ranking youkai in terms of spiritual power, she wields a certain amount of influence in youkai circles, more so than her wife. However, when she is in hell she is treated the same as a hell hound due to her fox-like appearance until they get a taste of her power. Yui enjoys teasing others, especially members of the Goetia nobility (namely Andrealphus because it is fun to get under his skin. She makes it a personal mission to fluster the hell out of him, much to Caim’s exasperation.)

Short Bio: Yui was born into a rather prestigious youkai clan, and most of her life involved the strict rules and mannerisms of the upper class society. This would often clash with her mischievous, fun personality and was a source of tension among her family. It also isolated her from a good chunk of her peers, though she would find a friend in Caim who was raised in a similar manner as herself. The two would quickly bond over their experiences, and as they grew older, this bond would deepen into something more.

Once Yui came of age, she fled from the confines of her clan and took on a human guise, fully intending to experience a more free life. Caim went with her after denouncing her position in hell, and after many years the pair married and now live together in a small house on the outskirts of Tokyo.

——————————

Name: Dawn

Age: Early 30’s in Hell Years

Birthday: July 21st

Species: Avian Demon (White tailed kite)

Orientation: Lesbian

Title: Princess

Group: Ars Goetia

Family: Paimon (father), many (half) siblings

Likes: Sweets, tea, soft music, fencing, tennis

Dislikes: Noise, disruption, chaos

Personality (WIP): Dove, at first meeting comes off as a rather quiet, shy, yet polite woman. Strictly raised in the royal ways, she takes the phrase ‘seen, but not heard’ to heart and strives to be the most perfect mannered princess she can possibly be.

However, those who are close to Dawn know that she can be rather chatty, bubbly, kindhearted and warm. She will do anything for those she loves, and she knows her way around a rapier if you really want to fuck around and find out.

Dawn is also a fan of sports, namely tennis and badminton and is quite good at both. She also moves quickly and with a precision not many would expect of someone like her.

History (WIP):

Dawn is one of Paimon’s many children, as well as one of the youngest. Like the rest of his children, Dawn never saw much of him growing up, nor was afforded any sort of special attention. She was not magically gifted like some of the other goetia, so Dawn was often looked over in favour of those who possessed some level of magical ability.

She spent most of her time with her mother, and still lives in her mother’s home to this day. She is yet to be wed or engaged, which has been a bone of contention between Dawn and her mother that continues to this day. Little does her mother know that she is not attracted to men in the slightest and does not desire an heir; this is a secret she keeps close to the point that not many outside her closest friends know.

This character is a WIP and more will be added as she’s fleshed out!

-------------------

Name: Yukitaka (meaning Noble Snow)

Nicknames: Yuki, hellspawn,

Parents: Andrealphus (father), Caim (mother), Yui (mother)

Age: Infant - toddler (main verse); 15 going on 16 (I Got Teleported To the Past to Fulfill My Destiny in Hell)

The following is for the I Got Teleported To the Past to Fulfill My Destiny in Hell verse

Orientation: Gay

Likes: fighting, swordsmanship, hanging out with his friends, festivals, soccer, parkour, snowboarding, Chikao (his boyfriend, a nekomata), the cold

Dislikes: Ryuu (rival, dragon youkai), goetian politics, the heat,

Occupation: Precautionary heir (illegitimate), next great marquis

Personality: (Note: This is a heavy WIP since he’s a new OC that’s still being fleshed out)

Loud, brash, brazen (a quick tongue that has gotten him into plenty of trouble) and confident to the point of arrogance are just some of the adjectives used to describe Yuki. He is not afraid to call things as he sees it, nor afraid to speak up for himself should the situation warrant it. He is equal parts of both parents when it comes to his attitude and fearlessness, caring little for the intricacies of goetian decorum in favour of pursuing his own interests.

He can be rash at times, especially when faced with something that catches his interests. He is known for getting swept up easily in his emotions and the adrenaline rush of a good fight, or the height of a soccer game, or when participating in sports that Caim has considered reckless and which threaten to put her in an early grave.

When it comes to his combat skills, Yuki is quite proud and fearless; he won’t hesitate to challenge opponents stronger than him, and will meet any challenge head on. This has led to him often rushing in, sometimes without thinking, and ending up with more than his fair share of injuries.

Despite this, Yuki is highly intelligent, a good strategist and has a good heart that looks out for the people he cares for the most, such as his friends and family. He isn’t one for injustice and if someone has wronged him or his loved ones, he won’t hesitate to make things right or settle the score.

Tl;dr: This kid is a cocky little shit who is too smart for his own good and runs his mouth like nothing else. He’s also the kid that will help you in a pinch while also threatening to fight any enemies of yours. Or anyone in general if they’re strong enough. He may/may not value his own safety and is a bit too reckless.

He means well though.

History: Born to the Great Marquis, Andrealphus, and the former Great President of Hell, Caim, Yukitaka is a goetian with the blood of his tengu (youkai) ancestors running through his veins. His birth was shrouded in secrecy, and he spends most of his days living with his mothers just outside of Tokyo. He attends one of the local high schools and is the top student, as well as one of the stars of his school’s soccer team.

Approaching his 16th birthday, Yuki awakened his cryokinetic powers, prompting Caim to reveal his goetian heritage. She also explained how, once he turns eighteen, Yuki will have to choose between following in his father’s footsteps, or remaining in the human world.

To prepare for this future decision, Yuki started splitting his time between his father’s mansion in Hell, and his family home in the human world. While at his father’s he trains to master the demonic abilities inherited from his father, along with the ins and outs of goetian politics, all the while remaining hidden from the Ars Goetia at large. While in the human world, Yuki continues with his studies in the hopes of graduating high school with his friends.

Should he make the decision to follow in his father’s footsteps, he would be initiated into the Ars Goetia, and his identity revealed to the nobility at large. Should he stay in the human world, he would have to continue living among humans and taking on mundane jobs all the while hiding his identity and abilities.

More TBA.

Powers/Abilities:

Cryokinesis: Can manipulate ice and snow for a wide variety of uses (offence - weapons; defence - shields; weather manipulation (can cause blizzards, drop the temperature to sub zero, etc.)

Extreme Speed: Can move as fast as any tengu, appearing as a blur to the untrained eye.

Swordsmanship

High endurance

Weapon of choice: Katana

Verses:

Normal Verse: Yuki is born and Andrealphus struggles to be a dad while hiding the child’s existence from Paimon. Shenanigans ensue.

I Got Teleported To the Past to Fulfill My Destiny in Hell: Gusion (keeperofanswers) showed Andrealphus many books, each covering alternative lives based on choices made, and not. One of the books was triggered by magic, and Yuki manifested from its pages as if it were a portal. He is now living with his father in Hell while trying to figure out a way to get back to his own time.

[whatyourusherthinks]

Alien: Romulus Review

I got off on the wrong foot with this movie, because the first time I heard about it was from the 45 Anniversary rerelease of Alien in May. Before the movie there was an interview with Ridley Scott and the director of this movie. and between every question they reminded us that Alien: Romulus was coming to theaters this August. Bad start for what ended up being the best horror movie I've ever seen. And then the trailer came out.

And it was glorious.

What's The Movie About?

A group of young miners attempt to scavenge cryopods from a abandoned space station and must contend with the Xenomorphs frozen away on the station.

What I Like.

This movie is fucking awesome! The story is a lot of fun. It's set up to be the original Alien for a modern audience, but when they get to the space station the scenario shifts and it becomes it's own story. I like that because it gives us a lot of insight into the world of Alien itself. Most of the time the movies are set of uncolonized worlds and isolated ships, so it was cool to see how the average person lives on an isolated planet. I wasn't sure if I liked the ending or not at first, but after talking with someone who knew more about the Alien franchise, I think it is a cool payoff for a long standing question. Admittedly it does callback to Prometheus and Resurrection, and I can see long time fans getting annoyed by that if they hate those movies, but I thought the connection was the best they could've done. I also like Rain and Andy. They're adopted siblings that are basically our leads for the movie, and they're dynamic was cool. Rain is the typical Alien's protagonist, but she really cool fight scene. It's nice to see Cailee Spaeny in a movie that doesn't suck ass. And I really like Andy. He's an android that was programmed to do what's best for Rain by their parents, and is stuttering and prone to robot seizures, but tells terrible dad jokes. I wasn't sure if I like the autistic-coding on him at first, I mean he's literally that way because of physical damage to his mechanics. But his plot in the movie revolves around getting an extra chip implanted inside of him which less stutter-y and turns him evil, so the happiest outcome for him to to revert back to the way he was. (And besides, getting the chip didn't fix his seizures, so it's not like becoming neurotypical fixed all of his problems.) The acting in the movie is pretty good, so is the effects. I love that I hate seeing the face-huggers gigantic proboscises that get shoved down humans throat.

What I Don't Like.

Only two complaints. One, one of the characters is a major douche bag. He's super racist to my sweet android boy and is literally the catalyst for everything going wrong in this movie. There's a part where his brother and Rain are talking about it's all their fault that things are going wrong and I'm like, "No no no, it was that fucking idiot's fault." The other thing is that it... uh... how do I explain this? So the first Alien was lowkey a feminism masterpiece. I mean, the whole Bechdel Test joke is that Alien is the only movie that passes. I heard the original script was written with all the characters being gender-neutral and they just changed them depending on who wanted to play which part, which I think is how any movie where gender or relationships isn't a focus of the story should do it. I've heard Aliens leans into it more, but I haven't seen that yet. Anyway, my point is Alien: Romulus backs away from that legacy and I found that disappointing. It's not sexist or anything, but there's just little things. When the crew goes into the space station, all the female characters stay behind. And yet the female pilot is somehow the first one to die! And Rain has to be taught to do anything by all the guy characters. The only thing she knows how to do on her own is reboot Andy. Again, it's not offensive, but it's definitely noticeable comparing it to the original.

Final Summation.

This movie is just as good as I hoped it would be! Definitely check it out if you like Alien, but maybe start else where if you don't have any knowledge of the franchise. Oh really Roan? Don't watch the seventh movie first? I'm shocked. Okay fair point Buggnutz, but the best sequels stand on their own somewhat. Alien: Romulus does achieve that, but the ending is easier to appreciate if you have more knowledge of the franchise.

[mellarkably]

Favorite BenVi or BeVi scene in terms of performance?

there are many benvi scenes i love from both season one and season two, that feature great performances from maitreyi and jaren. i think they are both very young and talented actors.

if i had to choose one, though:

2.04's devi, you followed him.

this scene, no matter how much it hurt me, was easily one of my top five benvi scenes this season, dare i say the entire run of the show. there is something about it that feels unsettling, uncomfortable, yet raw. and while the scenery, dark atmosphere, night-time setting, and sad music playing behind it do add to its tension, a lot of its hard hitting nature is in fact, not only owed to the writing, but the performance.

this scene is risky. it's risky to do because its success is majorly dependent on the performance.

the beginning of this confrontation starts off with the two approaching each other like their usual snarky selves—except it isn't usual. yes, they're both smiling. but ben is not smiling because he's happy, not even smiling the way he normally does when he used to banter with her, specifically in season one, cockily and with snark. it isn't entirely that same feeling anymore. devi is smiling in efforts to avoid the true gravity of the situation, as well as her frustration over him flaking on their bet (she seems to be more disappointed over the fact that he's still angry with her more than the actual bet itself but that's an analysis for another day). she rushes over her apology, and desperately asks, in a lighthearted manner, can we just be even now?

the genius of this performance is that although viscerally, they may be smiling, you can clearly see there's so much more underneath it. under devi's smile is desperation. under ben's cocky remark is pain. (i guess it feels bad to commit to something not knowing the other person was lying the whole time) i personally believe that someone who doesn't know about the events that transpire in 201 and 202 could still be able to tell the difference between their cocky smiles in season one, while they argue over how contraction of aids works, versus this scene, where what they're arguing over—not bantering, important to make that distinction—holds much more emotional weight than any of their previous bantering. that previous bantering was over trivial things. this conversation is not. it's heavy. and we see that difference not only in the context but in the acting.

when devi asks for them to be even now, we see it sets ben off. others who are much better at metas than i am have already gone in depth over why this sets him off as much as it does, abandonment trauma in all of its galore, and so i won't go too deep into the psychology of his actions. back to the performance, (since that's what anon's question asked me) no, we're not even, he says, with no more smile, no more façade. he is deeply hurt, and bothered that devi doesn't seem to realize just how much she has hurt him. to him, he's thinking she doesn't care about his feelings (we know it's untrue, ben does not) this thought of his has arguably been worsened by a week of seeing devi and paxton in the hallways chumming it up, as andy says. keep in mind ben has no idea till now that she's tutoring him. all he sees is her prioritizing paxton's forgiveness over his, choosing paxton over him once again. it's a common theme in the season, comes full circle in the finale when ben realizes that isn't the case, but alas, it's meant to be tragic, isn't it? that's its beauty.

and when we return to this scene with more knowledge of why he's this hurt, the acting, THE ICONIC devi, you followed him—everything just drops.

devi's smile drops. ben's smile has long dropped. the emotions have intensified, and are fully out, fully being shown, visually. he starts his speech, delivered fucking perfectly by the actor, with vocal inflections, tensed up emotions, and tear brimmed eyes.

at the party, you followed him and you left me behind.

it's not like we haven't seen serious scenes like this before in nhie. straying away from benvi scenes, even devi and paxton have some serious conversations this season, but for some reason (to me at least) nothing (only regarding scenes about the love triangle, my favorite performance overall would probably be the therapy scene in 209) feels as raw as this scene. nothing about this scene is sugar coated, there isn't even a slight attempt at humor. the show takes the dangerous route of showing the true consequences of certain actions done, and what's most important is that neither of them are meant to be antagonists in this scene. ben finally communicating his feelings lets devi know she's messed up more than she originally ever thought, and we see it keeps her up all night, the fear that she may never be able to win ben back—not even just romantically, because he was a great boyfriend, but as a friend in general. she values what he offers her, as a confidant, someone on her intellectual level who understands her. they're very similar people.

so yeah, this scene is my favorite benvi scene, performance wise. maitreyi and jaren shine here, and i can tell they both put a lot of effort into it, especially jaren with his line delivery. this scene could have gone horribly wrong: it could have made ben seem like a dick, or devi seem like a dick, but the true hard fact is that although both of them have done shitty things up to this point (arguably devi more than ben) you cannot hate either of them. you cannot villainize them. these are just two teens who are hurt by each other and being vulnerable with another.

it's the vulnerability of this scene that intrigues me, and it's something i love about devi and ben in general, the fact that they'll always be honest with one another, won't bullshit or skirt around things. and a lot of my love for them has to do with the great acting. they're both, on paper, sometimes unlikable characters, but in combination with the writing, maitreyi and jaren give the characters undeniable depth (even lang fisher agrees). that depth is shown in this scene. 11/10.

the runner up would have to be the s2 bathroom scene, there's a lot of feelings i have about those stares, the repressed feelings shown, the delivery of lines. they are all very swag. i also love the talk at her house in season one, episode six, and their talk at the hotel on the model un trip.

[endeavcrs]

. ✧ . * . ⌜ ink stained fingers leaving smears on every surface, abandoned scraps of paper with unapproved sketches, knuckles bruised and battered, lingering scent of petrol and leather ⌟

basics

full name : andromeda skye barzetti

name meaning: princess of ethiopeia ( constellation ), the sky

nickname / alias: andie

gender / pronouns: she/her

sexuality: pansexual ( female leaning )

age, birthday + zodiac: 26, october 12th, libra

place of birth: brooklyn, new york

accent : neutral american accent

occupation: tattoo artist @ skin deep

song: you’ve got your whole life ahead of you baby by ider

appearance

faceclaim: hailee steinfeld

height: 5″9

eyecolor: hazel

haircolor: hazelnut

build: athletic/muscular

tattoos / scars: sleeves on both arms, an array of tattoos across her back, legs, ribs

personality

positivetraits: altruistic, dependable, imaginative

negativetraits: inquisitorial, guarded, dismissive

relationships

parents : milena barzetti ( mother, deceased ), luca barzetti ( father )

siblings : none

children : none

pets : mutt the dog ( he’s an oversized, hairy, mutt. probably some wolfhound, some gsd )

additional info

born in brooklyn to milena & luca barzetti, andromeda was an unplanned but much loved baby. her parents were young artists, having met when joining a local collective and had fallen head over heels and were just starting off their life together. a baby wasn’t on the cards but was viewed as a blessing. 

they didn’t have much money growing up but money wasn’t considered the desirable thing. her parents were focused on creating, loving, growing. they were very spiritual ( though not prescribing to any particular religion ) and dedicated to honouring the earth, being as natural as possible etc. basically, big ole hippies trapped in a tiny brooklyn apartment. 

her parents were well-meaning but fairly scatterbrained and andie learned to take care of herself from a young age. it wasn’t neglect/abuse, they loved her deeply but they were focused on their art, their love for each other and weren’t great at the day to day stuff. as a result, she became very independent when it came to the practical things - school, cooking, cleaning, etc. she learned how to take care of herself and became a very practical, pragmatic person. 

her only deviance from ‘practicality’ was her own art which was deeply encouraged by her parents and is one of the few things she has in common with them. since she was a child she has been a skilled artist, developing that into specific pieces as she got older. when she turned 18 she moved out of her parents place and got an apprenticeship in a local tattoo parlor. 

the tattooist took her under their wing and showed her how to turn her art into tattoos. since then she has become an incredibly skilled tattoo artist. 

she found growing up that she has some unintended resentment towards her parents - not because they were bad people but because she had to be so independent. as a result, she needed somewhere to channel that frustration and anger. she started out at a gym on the punching bag and made friends with another woman who told her about some local women’s boxing. she fell in love with the sport and became a regular fighter. 

when andie was 19 she met jupiter bernstein. he had been in new york for a few years and was investigating local cold cases. one of them was related to the building she lived in and they ended up striking up an unusual friendship focused around their obsession with true crime. andie, despite being quite a bit younger than him, saw a man that was too gentle for new york - that would need looking out for. they became close - to the point where jupiter is the only person she allows to call her her full name - and now andie would do anything for him. 

when jupiter said he planned to follow a lead to shrike, andie decided that she would go with him. she’d never left new york and it was time to start over fresh. she hadn’t expected that shrike would be quite so...deadly. 

she’s been in shrike for 7 years now, working at skin deep and has become a fixture as far as getting tattoos goes. she has also been part of setting up a local women’s boxing group. 

andie is pansexual but is mostly attracted to women, it’s quite rare for her to be attracted to men. it would have to be very specifically personality based. 

she loves/is obsessed with true crime, drawing/designing tats, b-movies, her dog, feminism

she hates cheesy pop music, seafood, her full name, excessive pda 

wanted connections

flirtationship, regular clients, fellow boxing friends, exes ( local or from new york )

[scrapyardboyfriends]

Here’s that fic I mentioned that I started. The one where Sarah escaped the fire and ended up in hospital with trauma based amnesia and then shows up in January 2015 as Robert and Chrissie’s wedding planner right in the middle of affair era. Someone read the beginning and make me finish it at some point. Haha. I did have it mostly planned out. I just got lazy. 

-----------

It’s Monday morning and Robert’s in the office, tapping his pen against the desk. He’s the first one in, hoping that shows his initiative. Tap, tap, tap turns into Aaron, Aaron, Aaron in his mind. Aaron’s all he can ever think about these days. And right now, Aaron’s mad with him, which grates on him, makes him itch for another touch, another taste that he can’t have until he gets Aaron to change his opinion of him again. He’d managed before, at Andy’s wedding. He can get him on side again. Aaron’s a challenge but he’s a people person. He can do this. And it’s not like Lachlan isn’t perfectly alright again, home from the hospital and back to being a pain and stressing Chrissie out. 

Tap, tap, tap. He should be calling a client back about a shoot they want to book next month but his mind can only focus on Aaron, Aaron, Aaron. 

He pulls out his phone and the taps become a text. ‘Kiss and make up?’ He writes, chuckling to himself. 

It’s Aaron’s birthday today, he knows. Vic had mentioned something the other day and he’d filed away the information in his head. He hopes Aaron doesn’t have big plans. Besides, what better present than Robert shagging him senseless? He doesn’t add that to the message, just smiles and hits send. Now he has to wait. 

The papers on his desk flutter as Chrissie blows into the room, wedding binder clutched in her arms. He doesn’t even think she sees him there as she starts rummaging through every stack of papers she can get her hands on, lines of frustration growing deeper on her forehead. 

“Have you seen the sample that the printer sent over for the order of service?” She asks. So she did see him. He takes too long to respond, so she stops her whirlwind and stares at him. “Robert?”

He makes a show of looking around his desk before shaking his head. “No,” he tells her. “Wasn’t that the whole point of hiring a new wedding planner in the first place? So they can keep all of this stuff straight?”

She huffs at him, looking irritated, which feels like her default with him at this point. He really should do something about that, so he gets up and starts helping her look for the sample which seems to please her. 

She’d fired their first wedding planner, Leyla, after the suit measuring incident. Chrissie just didn’t feel comfortable having her work so closely with her husband to be. It was ironic then that that incident had given him the motivation to seek out Aaron in the first place. He didn’t think much more on that, shifting papers around for a distraction. After that, Chrissie had taken over the wedding planning herself, which was worse, because it meant she checked in with him on everything. He knew more about floral arrangements and place cards and the food allergies of her friends than he ever wanted or needed to know. Still, it had been going alright and Aaron had often given him a much needed reprieve. Then Lachlan had gone and decided to end up in the hospital full of drugs, which was somehow his fault by all accounts and it had all become too much for her. Seating charts and dresses and first dance songs, none of it had been important when poor little Lucky had gotten himself into a mess. Still, there was a wedding to plan because despite being furious with him, he’d managed to make amends enough that she still wanted to marry him and he needed to make sure it stayed that way. All he’d worked for depended on it. 

He’d suggested hiring Leyla back but she wouldn’t hear of it, especially not since Katie had been in her ear again. Instead, she’d hired someone from Hotten and he’d encouraged it. Anything that got him out of being on hand for every decision. Except maybe cake tasting, he thinks he could do that. 

“I still have to show her what I’ve done so far,” Chrissie tells him, looking around frantically. “She’s coming here in half and hour. I need that sample.”

“Then we’ll find it,” he placates her as his phone buzzes in his pocket.

He pulls it out to see ‘A’ pop up on his screen. It makes him smile. He can’t help it but he quickly forces the corners of his mouth down before Chrissie sees. 

‘You think that’s all it’s going to take?’ reads the reply when he opens it. 

His fingers are tapping out a response before his brain can even tell him not to, ‘oh I think you know I can do so much more than that.’ 

His body is singing with nerves as he waits for a reply. 

“I expect you to be here when she arrives,” Chrissie says pointedly once she’s noticed he’s stopped going through the motions of looking for the sample. 

Robert sighs. He really hadn’t planned on sticking around for her meeting, hadn’t even remembered it was happening until right now. “I uh-“ he stalls, trying to think of an excuse. 

His phone buzzes in his hand again. ‘Fine. Barn in an hour. But ur not off the hook yet,’ he reads, picturing Aaron typing with that frown of his that’s not a frown. 

“I’ve got a meeting,” he tells Chrissie. “I can’t.” The amount of meetings he’s lied about in the last month are getting a bit out of hand but what can he do? 

“Surely this is more important,” she sounds cross with him. “Can’t Dad go?”

Lawrence can definitely not take this meeting for him. Still, he needs to keep on her good side or they won’t need this wedding planner at all. Abandoning the search, he sidles up to her, takes her hands in his and flashes that charming smile he’s perfected so well. “This is important,” he tells her, “you know it is. And I promise, I’ll make the next one and you can fill me in on every detail when I get back.” He can’t think of anything more tedious. 

She purses her lips in a pout, making them look so kissable so he leans in and captures them with his. It takes her a second or two of defiance before she’s kissing him back, wrapping her hands around his waist. He loves Chrissie, he reminds himself. For a second, he thinks maybe Aaron can wait. No one is around. He could just push all of the papers off of his desk and...he moves his lips across her cheek and down into her neck, reaching out toward the desk with his hand when he opens his eyes and sees it, the sample, tucked under a file folder that he swears he looked under before. 

“Here it is,” he says, pulling back. “Your print sample!”

Chrissie’s eyes light up. “Perfect!” She accepts it greedily and shoves it into her binder. “You don’t have to go right now do you? To this meeting?”

No, he thinks, licking his lips as he moves closer again, ready for more but she pushes him off. 

“Robert!” She scolds him with a laugh. “She’ll be here soon, the wedding planner. You can at least meet her before you go.”

He sighs, disappointed at being denied. Sex, he’s always been good at that part. It’s the rest of making a relationship work that he’s sometimes rubbish at. “Yes, I’ll meet her,” he says quickly as another text comes through for him. 

‘Well?’ Aaron asks him and he pictures him looking annoyed, glaring at the phone, a crease in his forehead between his eyebrows, but biting at his lip which always makes Robert weak for him. 

“Briefly,” he tells Chrissie, giving her a hug so he can text behind her back. ‘I’ll be there,’ he tells Aaron. To Chrissie, he says, “I really can’t be late to this meeting.”

—-

By the time the wedding planner is due to arrive he’s pacing, back and forth across the living room floor much to Chrissie’s annoyance. He can’t help it though. He knows how stroppy Aaron gets when he’s late. Although, part of him enjoys the grumpiness, the part of Aaron that doesn’t just fall at his feet, that makes him work for it. He must be mad. 

There’s a knock on the door and he’s hot on Chrissie’s heels as she goes to answer it, phone in his hand and ready to text Aaron and say he’s on his way. He’s already trying to think up an excuse if he’s late. Something that’s not ‘I had to meet with our wedding planner’. Nothing kills the mood more than reminding Aaron that he’s not the only one in his life. 

The door swings open and Robert looks up, his phone slipping from suddenly sweaty hands and crashing to the floor. He’s sure his screen’s cracked but that doesn’t matter, his eyes are locked on the ghost in the doorway. 

There’s concern in her eyes as she looks at him, concern he recognizes, remembers, has wished for, for years. It can’t be though. She’s older, but she would be. Her hair’s different, more modern, a bob with a bit of grey in it. Grey like she means for it to be there, like she’s proud of it. There’s still some of her old color too, though he’s sure it’s not real anymore. He doesn’t know if she’s real either. There’s crows feet around her eyes, that are still watching him curiously. Those are new. And then she smiles at him, maybe at Chrissie, but that smile is one he’s longed to see again, filled with the warmth of a home he’s been away from for too long. 

All so familiar but what makes him certain, what makes him blurt out the word as she introduces herself, Vicky Roberts, the wedding planner, is what he sees under the scarf around her neck. It’s there for warmth, he knows, the scarf. It is January in Yorkshire after all. Underneath though, creeping along her skin up toward her jaw is the puckered skin of a scar, a burn. On the hand she extends toward Chrissie there’s another, reaching back under the sleeve of her jumper and coat. 

“Mum?” The word feels heavy on his tongue and it lands like lead in the room as both women turn to gawp at him. 

—-

“Robert!” Chrissie’s voice is sharp, half with surprise and half scolding him like a child for making a scene. She scoops up his phone and if he had any of his wits about him at the moment he’d be glad for the cracked screen. “What are you-?” She starts but then whispers, “Don’t be rude.” 

He feels insane but it’s her, he’s so sure of it. Still, it can’t be. She’s been dead for so long. Surely he’s just seeing things. 

It’s the woman in the doorway herself who makes it feel like he’s not completely lost it. “You-you know me?” She asks, her voice small and tentative. 

“Well of course not,” Chrissie decides for the both of them. “Robert, darling, are you alright?” 

She thinks he’s gone mad. Maybe he has but his mum is standing there in front of him, looking desperate for him to speak again. 

“You’re my-“ It feels ridiculous for him to even say it again. “I think-“ he amends, “I think you’re my mum.” 

—-

She’s sitting in their living room now, his mum, Sarah, Vicky Roberts, and she can’t stop staring at him and he can’t stop looking at her. Chrissie’s moving around their little bubble, bringing them tea, asking how she likes it. 

“One sugar and a dash of milk,” Robert answers for her, the phrase coming back to him. 

“How did you-?” his mum questions through a smile. Chrissie’s waiting, not believing him. “He’s exactly right,” she confirms. 

He watches her sip at her tea and he feels like he’s gone back in time. She doesn’t remember the past though she’d told him. Amnesia from trauma from the fire she was in. She didn’t know anymore than that. Just that she’d been found on the side of the road just outside Hotten with no idea how she’d gotten there. A head wound and burns across her body had left her in a coma for months and when she’d come out of it her mind was blank and she’d been scrabbling around for some kind of familiarity ever since. 

“It was a barn fire,” Robert tells her, twitching at the words as they still bring him pain. He wants to tell her everything, spew out his entire life story and hers all at once, but he doesn’t want to overwhelm her, doesn’t want to ruin this before it really begins. It feels like at any moment she could just blink out of existence and he’ll wake up somewhere, drunk and maudlin about what he could have had. What else could this be but a dream?

She’s listening intently, hanging onto his every word. He’s a link to a past she thought lost forever. “I don’t remember,” she says, her frustration clear and then, “Sarah Sugden.” She’s said it a few times now, trying see how it feels. 

“You must remember something,” he says. “Where did Vicky Roberts come from?” He’s trying desperately to get her to grasp onto something too. What kind of cruel twist of fate to give him his mum back but without any of her left?

“I had to choose a name for myself and those just seemed right somehow,” she tells him. “And you’re...Robert.” She says the name with a thoughtful look and a slight grin on her face, happy that she held onto something. 

He smiles back at her, beaming at the knowledge that some part of him stayed with her. “You have a daughter, my sister. Her name is Victoria,” he explains further, his voice shaking with nerves. 

“A daughter,” she smiles again, working over the concept in her head. There’s sadness there too, he thinks. Sadness that she can’t remember, sadness that she’s missed out perhaps. He feels the same. 

“And...An-Andy,” he trips over his brother’s name, the two syllables stinging his tongue as he thinks about having to tell her it was Andy who started the fire. He can do that himself, Robert decides. Andy owes that to her, to him. 

Chrissie sits down next to him and he realizes he’d almost forgotten she was even here. She takes his hand in hers and squeezes, trying to be a comfort to him but he just feels suffocated all of a sudden. Next to her, in this house. Since he’d been back they’d been things to show off but now he feels almost embarrassed, even if his mum didn’t remember. He wonders what she makes of him, if she’s happy that he’s her son. He was always a disappointment to Jack, but never to her. He hopes that holds true now, deep down. 

—-

An hour later and he’s sitting beside her on the sofa, flipping through the faded, sticky pages of an old photo album, one she had put together once. It’s surreal sitting next to her, leaning over her shoulder and pointing out memories that she doesn’t have. Chrissie sits opposite them, trying get a look at the photos. He realizes he’s never even shown this to her. Trying to get ahead, it wasn’t the best idea to show off his more humble roots. 

“That’s Ollie,” Robert points at the owl in his arms. “I helped nurse him back to health and then I got so attached I didn’t want to set him free again,” he laughs, remembering.

His mum smiles again but nothing connects. 

“And that’s you holding Victoria just after she was born,” he says, running his finger over the plastic page and the photo underneath. 

“It’s so strange,” she stares at the picture, “seeing yourself doing things you don’t remember doing with people you feel like you’ve never met.” She pauses and does what he did, running her hand over the page before looking over at him. “Sorry,” she tells him. “These are all your memories and I can’t share them the way you want me to.”

Robert wants to hug her, tell her to take her time. Even if none of it comes back, she’s still here and alive and he’ll take that right now. He restrains himself though, not sure what she would make of him lunging at her. “Don’t be sorry,” he rushes to say instead. “It’s alright.”

“It’s not,” she sighs in frustration. “All I’ve wanted for fourteen years is to fill this hole in my brain.” She flips to the next page and stops, staring at a photo of her and Jack. Pointing at him, she turns to him again.

“That’s Dad,” he says, feeling uncomfortable when he thinks about what happened between them, what led her to be in that barn in the first place. 

She stares a moment longer, lines on her forehead deepening as she concentrates on the face of the man she married once. “Jack,” she pulls the name out of thin air and Robert gasps, never so happy to hear his father’s name. 

“You-you remember?” he blurts out. 

She seems surprised herself, sitting up, eyebrows raised. Her mouth opens again, forming the name silently. “I screamed it,” she says, sinking back into the sofa again, closing her eyes around a memory. “I can feel it, the heat closing in, strangling my voice but I screamed his name.” Her body shudders and she reaches up to kneed her forehead between two fingers. 

Again he wants to hug her, wrap her up in his arms and protect her the way he couldn’t back then. He settles on the squeeze of her shoulder, just to let her know that someone is here for her. Her eyes flutter open, startled and he’s afraid he’s made a mistake but then she settles again and leans into his touch. He feels his heart swell in his chest. 

“When I hired you, Robert, I did expect you to actually do some work,” Lawrence’s smug voice shatters the moment as he sweeps into the room, an intruder. 

“Dad!” Chrissie scolds him and shoots Robert an apologetic look as she flies up off of the chair and leads Lawrence back out again. 

A moment and a few whispered words later and he’s poking his head back in, wide eyed yet mistrustful. Robert’s only hated him more when he was faking that heart attack and interrupting his speech at the cemetery. It takes all his self control not to go off on him as he pops back out again. 

“My soon to be father in law who hates me,” he says by way of explanation. 

“Oh Robert, I’m sure he doesn’t hate you,” his mum tells him and he melts. She sounds so like how she used to and he wants to drown himself in that feeling. 

She seems to feel it too, some connection between them and she looks bewildered by it. He can’t imagine how she must be feeling about all of this. An hour or so ago she was Vicky Roberts, a woman with a blank past and now she finds out she has all of this family she’d forgotten. Her fingers press into her forehead again, right between her eyes, making small circles there and he squeezes her shoulder again, the only thing he can think to do. 

“Are you okay?” he asks. 

Bringing her hand back down to the page of the album, she shakes off whatever had come over her. “I’ll be fine,” she assures him, still staring at the photo. When she turns back to him she asks, “Jack...your dad, is-”

Robert swallows hard, doesn’t know if she remembers that they weren’t exactly together at the time. He doesn’t know how much this is going to hurt but he can’t lie to her. “He...died a few years ago,” he tells her. 

“Oh,” she sighs, and there seems not to be sadness so much as frustration at a potential connection lost. “And Victoria and...uh...Andy?”

That doesn’t hurt as much to answer. “They’re both still in the village,” he says. “Vic works at the pub. She’s a chef. And Andy...he’s a farmer. Like Dad.”

She looks at him carefully, like she’s studying him. “You didn’t want to be a farmer.” It’s not a question. 

His heart is in his throat. “You remember?” he nearly begs for the answer. 

“It’s all so hazy,” she says, massaging her forehead again. “Like putting together a puzzle in the dark without all of the pieces. This, this is more than I’ve ever remembered before though. Being here, with you, seeing all of these pictures, it’s helping. I-I don’t-I don’t want the memories to stop.” 

Robert smiles at her, his eyes tearing up. He never cries, not anymore, but having her here means more to him than anything else ever could. “I don’t either,” he agrees. “I can take you to the village, to the pub. Vic has a shift today. Maybe it’ll help.” 

“I’d like that very much,” she says, her smile matching his along with the glistening tears in her eyes. 

Chrissie appears in the doorway again, looking like a bit of a spare part and hating it. “Well that’s Dad sorted. Can I get anyone anything else?” 

Robert stands, helping his mum up from the sofa and grabbing her coat from where it was laid over the back. “I was going to take her to the pub actually.” 

“Oh right, of course,” Chrissie spits out quickly. 

Reluctantly, Robert leaves his mum’s side and rounds the coffee table and the chairs and takes Chrissie’s arms in his. “You don’t mind do you? Only-”

“Of course I don’t mind,” she tells him. “Robert this is your mum. If I could have my mum back-”

“I know,” he whispers and kisses her cheek. “And thank you.” 

His mum is by his side again, reaching out towards Chrissie, a hand on her arm above his own. “I’m so sorry. I came here with a job to do and I’ve-well we’ve gotten a bit side-tracked haven’t we?” 

“Don’t be silly,” Chrissie assures her, a warm smile on her face. “This is more important.” 

“And so is my son’s wedding,” she beams back and Robert feels his heart beat just a bit faster at hearing her call him her son. “We will reschedule. I promise.” 

Chrissie nods, tears in her eyes as well as she takes in the moment, mother and son reunited, before shooing them towards the door. With a returned kiss on his cheek, she hands him his coat and wishes him luck.

—-

“I can’t believe it,” Vic just keeps saying over and over again, clutching her blue chef’s hat in tight, shaking hands. “I can’t actually- can I hug you?”

She doesn’t even let her answer before she’s flinging arms around their mum, burying her tear stained face into the folds of her jumper and scarf. For a moment Sarah freezes, unsure, but then something kicks in and she’s wrapping his little sister up in a warm embrace. Jealousy washes over him for a second before he pushes it down, feeling the acute absence of her arms around him. He wishes he had asked for a hug. 

“Let her breathe Victoria,” Diane warns her off with a good natured laugh when the hug lasts a bit too long. 

“Sorry, sorry,” she apologizes as she backs off, straightening Sarah’s scarf for her. “I just-“

“Can’t believe it?” Sarah finishes for her. “Neither can I. Certainly not what I expected when I took this job.”

“Job?” Vic asks. He didn’t really get a chance to explain the whole thing yet. 

“She’s our new wedding planner,” Robert tells her. “If we haven’t scared her off.” He adds the last bit in, in some desperate need to gauge the situation all of a sudden. 

“Oh that’s perfect, Rob!” Vic’s eyes light up. “Hey does that mean you’re actually going to give me the cake job then? Cause I’ve got ideas-“

“Vic!” He rolls his eyes. She’s been at him for a month now asking about it. 

“I’d love to hear about them,” Sarah tells her, both in wedding planner and mum mode at the same time. “And of course you haven’t scared me off.” 

There’s quiet voices behind them at the door that cease the moment they spot Sarah. Robert turns to see Andy there and the relaxed, warmth he’d been feeling immediately runs cold and his body stiffens. Katie’s on his arm, looking frosty. She still hasn’t forgiven him for the rings and ruining the wedding and normally when he’s reminded of it, he feels mostly smug about even if he wishes he hadn’t done it. Anything to wind her up. Now, he just feels ashamed, standing next to his mum. She’d probably have been furious along with the rest of them if she’d been here.

She could have been here, he thinks, looking at Andy. His brother might not have killed her in the end but he took her from him all the same. All the hatred he had for him back then comes bubbling back to the surface, all compressed and forced into a single withering stare. Andy has the decency to look guilty when he looks at Sarah but he hardly even bothers to glance his way, which only makes Robert all the more furious. 

All these years, he could have had his mum. When Andy and Jack were united against him, he could have had her on his side. He might have done better in school, on his exams, if he’d had her there to encourage him, rather than just his dad’s disappointment hanging over him. He might not have ended up on that road near Wilson’s field, playing chicken and ready to kill his brother. He might never have been sent away, from his home, his family. So many what ifs swirl around in his head, making him dizzy. 

“Hi,” he barely hears Andy say sheepishly even though he’s right in front of him. 

“And you’re Andy,” she replies kindly but her expression looks a bit blank and it makes Robert a bit smug to know he has more of a connection with her than him. 

“It’s so-I can’t believe-I-“ Andy stutters as he studies her. Robert sees the exact moment he notices the burn scars on her neck because his face goes white as a sheet and he blurts out an, “I’m so sorry.” 

There’s tears in his eyes now and Robert’s too although his burn with hatred. Sarah looks taken aback by the display of emotion. She doesn’t have a clue and despite his anger, Robert doesn’t want to be the one to explain it to her. Fortunately, he doesn’t have to. 

“I did it,” Andy blurts again, Katie hanging on his arm, trying to calm him down. The early pub goers are staring now, no one else is really there who knows the tale though. 

“Did what?” Sarah asks, her face contorted in her confusion. The creases in her forehead deepen more as she tries to work out something she feels like she should remember. This isn’t one of those memories she should have though. 

“I’m sorry,” Andy sobs and now Vic’s crying and Diane’s coming around the bar to comfort him and Robert just wants to roll his eyes. Andy’s trying to admit he almost burned his mum alive and they’re still falling all over themselves to be there for him. And what does he ever get? Nothing. 

“Oh Andy,” Diane tries to soothe him. 

Vic chimes in with an “Andy no.”

Robert doesn’t understand why his sister isn’t more upset with Andy for taking her mum away like he is. It only angers him more, his hands balled into fists at his sides, fingernails digging into his palms. 

“I-I-I did it, I started the fire,” he finally gets out. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean-“

“You didn’t mean it?” Sarah’s tone is harsh and Robert feels vindicated for a moment. 

“I didn’t know anyone was in there,” he tries to explain frantically. “It was-it was for the insurance. It was stupid, I know, but the farm was failing and I wanted to help Dad and-“ 

Sarah backs up against the bar, using it to support her weight as she sags against it. It’s too much for her, Robert can see that, trying to process it all. Andy takes a step forward, still sobbing out apology after apology but Robert puts himself between them, a stern look on his face, hoping Andy gets the message. 

“I shouldn’t have come,” Andy sighs. “I’m so sorry. Please believe that.” 

He pulls free of Vic’s and Diane’s and Katie’s grasps and hurries out of the pub amongst the whispers of the punters. Before she runs after him, Katie shoots him a dagger filled glare that promises him death if he makes this worse. He only shrugs at her. Let Andy feel bad for what he did. He should. 

Turning back to his mum, he helps her up onto one of the bar stools and Chas who’s joined them, briefed on the situation by Diane, gets her a glass of water. She’s got her eyes closed again and he wonders if she’s reliving the fire. Abandoning some of his earlier restraint, he pulls her into a one armed embrace and she lays her head on his shoulder. He couldn’t save her back then, but he can be here for her now. 

—-

“Here you are,” Marlon says brightly, as he sets out their food in front of them. He doesn’t go though, just stands there with his hands on his hips, staring. “I just, wow,” he gasps. “Oh! You probably don’t remember me!”

“No,” she replies politely, but again, Robert can see the frustration simmering underneath. “I take it I should.”

“Marlon,” he introduces himself, “Marlon Dingle. We used to work together once! Like mother like daughter I guess, but well-“

“Marlon,” Robert cuts off his rambling before he sits down and recounts their whole history. There’ll be time for that later if she wants. 

“Oh, right, sorry. I’ll just let you get on,” the gangly chef apologizes and heads back to the kitchen. 

Sarah hangs her head as he goes, looking a bit defeated, a bit angry at herself. Over her head, Robert shares a worried look with Vic, both of them out of their depth with this. Fingertips pinch at her forehead again, like if she massages it enough, all of her memories will come back to her. He wishes that were the case. 

“I should remember,” Sarah chastises herself, staring blankly at her meal. Robert hates seeing her like this, empty. He wants to see the quick witted fire back in her he remembers from his youth. “And I should...I should go after...after-”

“Andy?” Vic provides the name for her with a gentle smile. “Katie’s with him. She’ll sort him.” 

“Katie,” she says the name to herself like she’s trying to hold onto it. 

“His wife,” Vic fills in the blank. “It just, it took him a long time to get over what he’d done. Seeing you, it’s just brought it all back up.” She pauses, eyes full of sympathy, letting Sarah process the information and Robert keeps his mouth shut, or tries to, managing to only let out a quiet grunt of derision for his brother. “It really was an accident though.” 

An accident that changed everything, Robert curses Andy to himself as he pushes his food around his plate. He’s not hungry even though it’s lunchtime now. He should just be enjoying having his mum back but instead he can’t stop his mind from working on overdrive. There’s others in the pub now too, gawking at them. Zak and Lisa are there and Paddy and they’ve got matching bewildered looks on their faces, mouths hanging open and closing so as to not draw attention. Robert sees them though, sees another familiar face wander into the bar as well. He’d forgotten about Aaron, about their barn meeting, his useless phone still smashed up back at Home Farm. Catching his eye, Aaron fixes him with an irritated glare and one of his frowns, this one saying ‘I don’t care about you’. Robert feels his heart sink at that but even as it does, he can feel shame prickling up his spine as he sits next to his mum. He tries to focus on her, on the conversation she’s having with Vic beside him. 

“-out of the barn?” he catches Vic saying. 

“I’ve tried so hard to piece it together over the years,” Sarah tells her, “but I’ve blocked so much out. I barely even remembered the fire beyond the feeling of burning before today.” 

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Victoria cringe at the words and an apologetic expression wash over his mum’s face. But with his divided attention, he’s still watching Aaron at the bar, greeting Zak and Lisa, having an awkward exchange with Paddy who gives him some kind of envelope. A card. His birthday, Robert remembers suddenly, remembers all the plans he had for Aaron that morning. 

“Sorry love,” he hears Chas tell him, nodding in the direction of their table, “You’ve been a bit upstaged today,” 

Aaron shrugs and follows her gaze and they lock eyes again briefly but he doesn’t linger on him long before moving onto Sarah. “Who is that then?” 

“Sarah Sugden back from the dead apparently,” Chas says it so flippantly, barely scratching the surface on what a monumental moment this is for him. “I never knew her but it’s knocked Vic and Diane for six.” Robert doesn’t miss that she leaves him out. 

Aaron doesn’t ignore him though, eyes flitting back to his, widening in disbelief and Robert can only nod to confirm it’s real. For a moment, he’s caught, transfixed in Aaron’s gaze, lost in the concern for him he sees there, and then suddenly he’s back to spiraling, the what ifs assaulting his brain again. 

Beside him, Sarah notices a picture hanging on the wall. “Is that Jack?” he hears her ask. 

Vic’s on hand with an answer, “Yes! You remember Dad?” Her excitement pours out of her but it does nothing to penetrate the constant barrage of thoughts swimming around in his head. 

What if Andy had never lit that match? What if his mum had come home that night?

“Only bits and pieces,” Sarah tells Vic. 

He hears Vic’s sigh of disappointment humming underneath more questions.

What if his mum and dad had worked things out? What if she had moved back in? 

At the bar the Dingles are talking, Paddy stuttering through a story about Sarah to Chas, Chas mostly ignoring him and focusing on Aaron, asking him if he wants a birthday pint. 

What if they had become a proper family again? 

“-on the wall?” Sarah asks and he missed the first half. “Did he own this place?”

“Oh,” Vic goes quiet for a moment in time for another question as Aaron ignores Chas’s question about the pint to keep focusing on him. 

What if his mum had been there that that summer? When Tom had been helping on the farm? 

“He uh-” Vic pauses again and he can see her looking at him for help but he has none to offer. 

“It’s alright Victoria,” Sarah tells her, gives her hand a squeeze, her other hand still massaging her forehead. “I want to know as much as possible. Good or bad.” 

What if she had found him in his room-

“After,” Vic starts, “after you-well he married Diane.” He sees her point to the woman in question, serving another punter behind the bar. “She put his picture up after he...after he died. To honor his memory.” 

-when he kissed- Aaron’s name flashes in his mind before he corrects himself - Tom? 

“He was with her before,” he hears Sarah say. “Wasn’t he?” 

“I don’t-” Vic stops, unsure of herself. 

What if he had told her about Tom in the first place? That he liked him? What if- 

“Are you okay?” Vic asks.

It’s too much, he thinks. 

“It’s too much,” Sarah says his words out loud, making him swing his head back towards his mum, angry at himself for getting distracted. 

She’s got her head in her hands, her face gone pale and she’s shaking ever so slightly. 

“Mum!” he shouts over his own thoughts, his voice too loud. He startles her and she turns toward him looking rattled, panicked. 

“Mum,” Vic echoes him, wrapping an arm around her shoulders, being a damn sight more useful than him at the moment. “Let’s get you to the back room. You can have a lie down.” She gets her up and looks toward the bar. “Diane?” 

“Of course, pet,” Diane tells her, moving Dingles out of the way so she can let them through easier. 

Robert abandons their lunches, trailing after them in a daze still himself. It was all too much, the thoughts swirling around in his head, all the pieces of memories flooding back into hers. Maybe the pub hadn’t been such a good idea but she’d wanted to come. She’d wanted more, he tells himself to assuage the guilt. On his way through, he brushes by Aaron, exchanging another glance, Aaron’s eyes full of worry, not for his mum but for him. Their arms brush, shoulder to fingertips and he can’t help but wish it lasted longer before he’s following Vic and his mum and Diane into the back, watching his little sister pull it together to settle Sarah down on the sofa. Diane’s getting her a glass of water and he’s just standing there like a spare part. He should be doing something, offering to call her doctor, something practical. That’s how he usually operates but all he can do is stare, thinking. 

After another moment, frozen, Aaron comes through, Chas on his heels, offering help if needed. Robert can’t help thinking that Aaron should be furious with him for missing their barn meeting, should be telling him he’s blown it, that he should pull his investment from their non existent business or something, but instead, he’s just standing there, wanting to help in any way he can. And Robert wants him to.

What if she had known that he liked-what if she’d been alright with it? 

“I need some air,” he says suddenly, the words barely a whisper. 

“Robert!” he hears Vic shout after him but he doesn’t stop, needs to get out of there for just a minute or two. 

---

He’s found himself a spot on the picnic benches, head resting in his hands, body shivering because like an idiot, he’d gone out without a coat on. It doesn’t matter though; he can’t go back in yet. Not until he clears his mind. He shouldn’t be thinking like this. He has her here now and he should be in there helping her. Chrissie should be with him but he’d left her behind and Aaron-

The bench dips underneath his thighs as extra weight is added to it, a pair of black jeans appearing next to his blue ones. Reluctantly, he looks up to find Aaron watching him. His cheeks are flushed from the cold and his gelled hair is being blown free from its hold by the wind, but his eyes are kind and Robert knows he doesn’t deserve them. 

“What was all that about then?” Aaron asks him. “They’re all worried.” 

“Doubtful,” Robert defaults. 

“Your mum is,” Aaron says softly and yeah, maybe just maybe that’s true. He’d forgotten what that was like. “Guess now I know why you stood me up.” 

There’s that frown that’s not a frown again and it both settles something in him and flips it on its head all over again. “I didn’t-I meant-” he’s stuttering like Paddy now. “I was coming and then Chrissie-she wanted me to meet the wedding planner.”

“Wedding planner?” 

“My mum was the wedding planner,” he explains. 

Aaron laughs, covers it quickly, but laughs all the same and yeah, if he wasn’t all twisted up inside, it probably would be funny. He can’t laugh though so instead he watches the little puffs of breath from Aaron’s laugh dance in the cold air in front of his lips before they disappear. 

“Wow,” Aaron sighs, shaking his head, before he turns more serious. “What ya doing out here then, eh? I know how much she means to you.” 

He does know, Robert thinks. He’s the only one that listened to him when he was upset about Lawrence ruining his speech at her memorial and they barely even knew each other then. Aaron’s always ready to listen, just like now. 

“I just-” Only he doesn’t know quite what to say. “Andy was here.”

“Oh?”

“You know what he did,” Robert says. “He told her. I didn’t think he’d have the balls but he told her.” 

“Shit,” Aaron assesses the gravity of the situation succinctly. 

“And all I could think was what if-” he stops himself. He can’t tell Aaron all of this. There has to be some shortened version, something he can say to make it all make sense. “I could be-if he-never mind.” 

Flustered, he pushes himself up from the table and stalks off, hands tucked into his armpits for warmth, getting further and further away from where he should be. His mum is here, she’s here and she’s struggling and he’s running around the village like an idiot because-he can’t finish that thought. 

---

Aaron finds him on the bridge, leaning over the railing, half wishing the river was deeper so he could just jump in and let it carry him away for a while. Quietly, gently, Aaron takes the place beside him, mirroring his pose, elbows up on the railing, a small gap between their bodies that Robert dares himself to close. He doesn’t and neither does Aaron. They just stand there in silence for a while, watching the cold water below. 

Eventually, Aaron speaks. “I use to play a game with myself,” he says softly. “What if my mum had never left me as a kid? What if she had taken me with her when she went? What if I’d grown up surrounded by my mad family instead of isolated with my dad?”

The word ‘isolated’ strikes him as odd but Aaron rarely talks this much so he listens. 

“Would my life have been different?” he continues. “Would it have been better? Would I have been better? Less of the screwed up mess that I am?”

“You’re not,” Robert can’t help himself but say. 

Aaron huffs. “Yeah well you don’t know me that well, but you’ve seen-” he pauses, curls in on himself a bit, “my scars.” 

Robert thinks back to that night in that - gay bar - what he’d said before he stormed out. He hadn’t regretted it enough then but he does now, seeing the way Aaron looks when he says the words. It was just, being in that place, it put him on edge. That wasn’t him, no matter what box Aaron wanted to put him in. That was one time Aaron wasn’t listening, not properly, not about Andy and the ring. He didn’t get it but maybe now-

“What if Andy hadn’t started that fire?” Robert says. “Maybe he didn’t kill her but I lost her all the same. What if I hadn’t? She always-she always understood me you know?” “Suppose someone had to,” Aaron quips, knocking shoulders with him to lighten the seriousness of the mood. He’s grateful, despite being teased. 

“My dad never did,” he admits. “Everything changed when I lost her. My relationship with Andy, Dad. I set out on this path trying to prove- what do you do when you feel like you could have been a whole different person with a whole different life if you’d just-”

“You accept the way things are,” Aaron tells him plainly. “I’ve got my mum back in my life now and we’re in a good place. You could have the same.” 

“I’ve missed her,” he blurts out. “So much.” 

“I know,” Aaron says, a hand patting his shoulder and pulling him towards him. “Come here.” 

A hug. They haven’t done this before and it shows, Aaron’s arms awkwardly wrapping around him, one over his shoulder and one under his arm. They don’t fit at first. Aaron’s on his toes and Robert’s just standing there, too stunned to make an effort. And then, warm, Aaron’s warm and his fingers are clutching at the back of his jumper, bunching up the fabric and tugging him in and finally, Robert allows himself to let go. He buries his face into the folds of Aaron’s worn purple hoodie, hands stretching across his back and meeting in the middle as they press closer to one another. They’ve seen each other without clothes but this is the most naked he’s ever felt with him. It’s too much and not enough all at the same time. 

What if his mum had known back then he’d liked Tom? What if she’d known he’d liked boys as well as girls? What if she’d accepted him? What if this could be-no-no-Aaron told him to accept the way things are. He’s with Chrissie. He loves her. They’re getting married. His mum showed up as his wedding planner. She’s there at the pub, back in his life after all this time and he’s here, wasting his time on some fling, something that’s not even real. He can’t do this. 

“I can’t,” he sputters, pushing Aaron away. 

He tries to ignore it, but he can’t miss the hurt on Aaron’s face. It’s better this way though, to break it off now before either of them get in too deep. And yet-he lies to himself like he has before. He’s got Chrissie and that’s enough. It’s time to go. 

“Sorry,” he manages at least before he’s taking off across the bridge and back towards the Woolpack.

“Robert!” Aaron’s call follows him for a time but he just pushes onward, trying not to listen.

[ofbloodandbullets]

So it’s recently come to my attention that not everyone in the world has actually watched The Old Guard (WHO KNEW?!) so I’m going to try and do some info dumps about the world, the general canon and Andy’s history, personality, powers etc.  This will ... probably get kinda lengthy. 

Also: MAJOR MAJOR SPOILERS FOR COMICS & MOVIE.

The first thing you need to know is that for the main part, the history and the world that TOG takes place in is the exact same one as the real history of the world.  It’s set in modern day, though the plot points stretch back to 7k+ years ago.  It’s also important to note that there is a lot of historical inaccuracies and some things in canon that conflict themselves so it’s best to just take it all with a grain of salt and just go with what works best for your particular preferences etc. 

The main difference between reality and TOG is that in TOG there are a very minute like .00000000002% of the population that are immortals.  Now, it’s important to note that these people can die but they resurrect pretty close to immediately after they die no matter the amount of damage done.  Now it can take some time to fully heal or reform, depending on how extensive the trauma (being blown to bits or burned etc. will take longer to fix but there’s no amount of damage that we know of that can actually keep them dead).  

There are times when, for reasons unknown to the characters in character (or to us as readers  of the comics / viewers of the movie etc) that the immortality just stops.  There’ll just be a time that they suffer injuries that just don’t heal, and they die.  There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to this, be it age, number of times they’ve died, whatever.  Now, I have my own entirely headcanon and personal preference based theory which you can find HERE but it’s totally just a random idea that I had that I liked to explain the loss of Andy’s immortality in the movie (that doesn’t happen in the comics) and lets me say that she regains her immortality post canon so that I can nudge things back in the direction of the comics for post movie plots and so on.

Andy is, as far as we know, and as far as she knows, the oldest (human) immortal, coming in at around 7,000 years old.  She was born into a tribe, the Scythia (hence what she’s generally called: Andromache the Scythian).  A nomadic warrior tribe that I headcanon to be a matriarchy, Andy was betrayed by the ‘queen mother’ when she was sixteen and killed in battle because the leader feared that Andy posed a danger to her continuing rule.  This person was practically a mother to Andy and it was a horrific betrayal.  What was almost as shocking to Andy was the fact that she got back up again after being literally stabbed in the back and killed.

In the vein of trying to thwart prophecies making them happen, Andy killed the matriarch and took her placce ruling the tribe, eventually becoming a God King to her people and ruling over them for hundreds of years until her loneliness absolutely overwhelmed her and one day she just vanished.

At some point after this, she began to dream of a woman, feeling a pull towards this stranger that she couldn’t begin to explain.  After dozens, maybe hundreds of years, she managed to track down the woman in question (Noriko in the comics, Quynh in the movie) and realized that they’d been dreaming of each other.  (In the comics she meets Lykon before Quynh/Noriko, whom she had also been dreaming of).  

Now, the connection between these immortals isn’t explained in canon, and for a long time, Andy, Lykon, Noriko (and eventually Joe, Nicky, Book) thought they were the only ones but there is a scene in the second set of comics that implies that there are other ‘packs’ of immortals.  I headcanon that it’s a ‘like calls to like’ / kind of Sense8 simpatico type thing - like minded souls drawn to each other, which is why Andy and the others didn’t know about the other immortals, but again, that’s just entirely my thoughts on the matter. 

Lykon is the first to succumb to the loss of immortality, a short couple hundreds years after he and Andy find each other.   He dies on a battlefield, one that he and Quynh/Noriko and Andy fought on like a hundred/thousand before, champions for the abused etc.  Skip forward a couple hundred years again and enter Joe & Nicky, a Knight and a Muslim warrior who kill each other on the battlefield only to both wake up and spend (an unspecified amount of time) hunting and killing each other before eventually Andy & Quynh/Noriko find them.  In time, Joe & Nicky realize that they love each other.   (Important to note that Quynh/Noriko and Andy were also lovers).  In the movie, when the first major surge of witch hunts began, Quynh/Noriko and Andy go to help the women that stood accused, only to be captured and accused of witchcraft themselves.  After being hung, drowned, burned at the stake and coming back to life every time, the witch hunters settled on locking Quynh into an iron coffin and dropping her into the ocean.  (In the comics, Noriko is lost at sea during a massive storm that had thrown their ship entirely off course with Andy having no clue where they actually were at the time.) 

Joe & Nicky arrive in time to rescue Andy, but Noriko is already gone and despite spending decades tracking down every person even remotely involved in the so called ‘investigation’ into the women’s inquisition and punishment, Andy wasn’t able to find anything about where Quynh could be. 

Cue angst & depression & guilt for ages after.

The trio still steps in over the following decades, trying to help prevent the worst of atrocities, but Andy quickly begins to spiral into an, at best apathetic, at worst, entirely distant and withdrawn mindset and steadily begins to lose hope that they’re actually making any difference at all.

Skip ahead a century or two and enter Book; a Russian conscript who had been forced into the fight after being convicted of forgery.  Hung for desertion, Book spend days dying over and over again as he hung there, unable to attempt an escape until the troops finally packed up and moved on.   He and Andy, Nicky and Joe meet up and Book kinda reluctantly joins their little group.  It’s revealed that Book dreams, still, of Noriko/Quynh and while he can’t tell where hse is, dreams of her still dying, drowning on the floor of the ocean over and over and over like she had been for the last hundred or two years.  

Book returns at some point to his mortal family which ended in disaster when his last remaining son was dying of cancer, cursing and screaming at Book for ‘choosing not to save him’ by making him immortal too, even though it’s something Book had no ability to transfer or make happen.  Between his nightmares, losing his son and a number of other factors, Book decides he wants to end it all but no matter what he tries, doesn’t die and stay dead.

Eventually he’s approached by a pharmaceutical company that has figured out what he is and wants to run tests on him to see if they can unlock his healing / immortality for other people.  Merrick’s company works in league with an ex CIA agent whose wife died of a horrific terminal disease who hopes that they can find a way to keep anyone else from dying if they don’t have to.    Initially it was just supposed to be him, but he’d set up a display to stream for proof of what he was / they were and the corp decided they wanted all of the immortals.   Book ends up betraying the team, and he and the others end up locked up and tested on / killed / experimented on etc.  

There’s another character introduced in the meantime, the first new immortals in centuries, an American soldier named Niles.  There’s a lot more that goes on here, but the main point is that in the movie, Andy stops healing from her wounds shortly after she tracks down Nile and is put into incredible amounts of danger when Merrick (the leader of the pharmaceutical company) captures Andy, Joe, Book, Nicky.  Book is devastated, Nicky and Joe are furious, Andy’s just tired.

Eventually, Andy and the others break free with Niles’ help, destroy the lab they were originally held in etc and set out to try and hunt down any other proof, lab results, anything that Merrick got his hands on during the tests.

The group meets and settles on a hundred year exile for Booker (which I think is one of the stupidest things - like, the man’s clearly desperate and depressed and lonely and mentally unstable so by all means let’s isolate him for a fully century) and at the end of the movie we see him stumbling home to his apartment six months later to find Quynh standing in his apartment, pouring and drinking a glass of water which is a whole power move considering how many millions of times she died by drowning.

In the comics, Quynh/Noriko was driven entirely mad and to the point of wanting vengeance against Andy for abandoning her and spends a while gaslighting Andy and torturing her physically and emotionally and what not until she manages to isolate Andy from the other immortals and scoops in to ‘rescue’ Andy.  IDK what they’re going to adapt this to in the second movie, 

Again, via the link posted above, my Andy slowly begins to regain her immortality (again, IDK what they’re going to do with the next movie).  

Uhhhh yeah.  So I .. think that’s the majority of what you need to know for canon info about Andy.  THIS is also an important PSA regarding my Andy’s history & her longest lasting relationship that has nothing to do with canon at all but that is part of Andy’s bg in every verse, even if it never comes into play.

[bestillmyslashyheart]

butterflies on the wind

Booker

Nile gives herself a weekend. Three days, counting Friday because she needs that extra day, to grieve, to cry, to scream and shout at the unfairness, to drink her misery away. It’s been months since she woke up from having her throat cut and for the most part, she’s adjusted pretty well, if she did say so herself. Andy, Joe, and Nicky had helped, had been wonderful support really, but Nile had had to leave her entire life behind. Everything and everyone she had ever known; it was all still out there and she had to stay away, she had to cut herself out of her life and somehow be okay with that.

She wasn’t. No matter how much she pretended she was. So she gave herself a weekend to mourn and rage against her new reality, to let it all out, and then she’d be okay.

She’d be okay.

Nile woke cold and gasping on the banks of the river on Sunday. The last two days were mostly a blur of tears and anger and alcohol but she didn’t remember being near the river. There was a moment of clearness, the disconcerting breath of fresh air after coming back, before her head revolted violently. Nile twisted to the side and vomited into the river.

“Death by alcohol,” drawled a familiar but unexpected voice. Nile spun, or tried to, in shock. Booker smiled crookedly. “It is the only one that leaves a mark.” He tapped his head. “Even we cannot avoid the hangovers.”

“What,” Nile’s teeth chattered when she tried to speak. “What are you doing here?” She tried again.

Booker looked around them, like the walls of the Seine had all the answers. “It is Paris.”

“I know it’s Paris.”

He laughed. “Nile,” he said gently. She almost felt like he was being condescending but not quite. “I am French.”

Right. Napoleon. 

“Aren’t you sick of it yet, then?”

“A little bit,” he confessed. “But where else would I go? The rest of the word is painfully inferior.”

Nile groaned. She stood up and shook her limbs, the warmth returning to them. “You’re French.”

“For better or worse,” he agreed. “So what brings you to my fair city?”

“I needed to get away and I’d never been here before,” Nile shrugged. She resisted the urge to rub even more warmth into her arms but Booker must have seen it on her anyway because he took off his own jacket and handed it over. “Don’t you need it?”

He shrugged. “I am used to it.” She waited for him to ask again why she was here, why she’d gotten so drunk she’d somehow ended up dead in the Seine, but he didn’t. “Need another drink?”

Nile thought about it. She couldn’t truthfully said she didn’t. “I shouldn’t.”

Booker accepted that with a nod. When he turned to leave, Nile found herself following. They walked quietly side by side until they’d made it back up to the streets and Booker turned left when Nile needed to go right. 

She stopped. A few steps later so did Booker. “I’m that way.”

He nodded. “Stay away from the booze,” he warned. “It will not do you any favors.”

“I don’t want it to,” Nile confessed. “I wanted to not think. Just for a little while.”

A hint of a smile appeared on his lips. “I know the feeling.” He didn’t say anything else so Nile turned away. They still had over 99 years to go.

“Nile,” he called softly when she was almost too far away to hear it. “Not thinking for a little while will turn into not thinking for a long while if you are not careful. A lifetime of oblivion is not nearly as much fun as it sounds sometimes.”

Nile accepted the advice with a careful nod and watched as Booker disappeared down a side street. 

It was only when she got back to her hotel, she realized she still wore his jacket. No one said a word when she turned up at the latest safe house with it in tow so she kept it. The next time she wanted to not think, she curled herself in the jacket instead.

Nicky

It was late, late enough that even Andy had succumbed to sleep. Nile headed for the kitchen when she passed Joe and Nicky’s room. Through a crack in the door, she saw Joe curled up on the bed, alone. Nile wasn’t sure she’d ever seen either of them sleeping alone; they were always curled up around each other, even when one needed to sleep and the other didn’t.

Nile forwent the kitchen in favor of searching for Nicky. It took only a matter of moments to clear the small house before she stepped outside.

A few yards from the house, on the edge of the cliff which offered stunning views in the daylight, was Nicky, his body casting a small shadow in the moonlight.

“Nicky?” She called softly. He didn’t respond and Nile instantly went on alert. She couldn’t see any danger but that didn’t mean there wasn’t any. The others’ senses were far beyond hers, honed over many many more years, and she’d learned to trust them more than her own. “Nicky?” She hissed.

Slowly, Nicky turned his head to indicate he had heard her. “Everything’s fine,” he told her softly. “What are you doing up?”

Letting her shoulders relax slightly, Nile crossed the yard to where Nicky stood, not saying a word until she came abreast of him. He had his eyes closed, his head slightly bowed, and he didn’t so much as glance at her as she came into view. “Couldn’t sleep,” she replied softly. “You?”

“Praying.”

Nile startled slightly. “You pray?” After what Andy had said the first time she caught Nile praying, she hadn’t expected any of them to believe in God.

Nicky’s lips turned upwards. “I do.”

“Andy said-”

Now, Nicky laughed. “Andy hasn’t believed in anything in a very long time. She has not had reason to.”

“But you do?”

“I do,” he bowed his head a bit more in acknowledgement. He still hadn’t opened his eyes. “Though what I believe in, I cannot say.” Nile cocked her head in confusion. Before she could ask, Nicky continued, “I have had my faith my entire life, I see no reason why I should abandon it just because I live longer than I expected to.”

Nile suddenly remembered that Nicky had fought in the Crusades, the most famous of religious wars. “You fought for God, once,” she wondered.

“Of course,” he smiled. “I had already pledged my life to His service, fighting for it was a given.”

“Pledged your life?”

Nicky finally looked over at her. “Before I died the first time, I was a priest,” he told her. Nile’s eyebrows rose in surprise. Nicky laughed. “Priests then were not quite like priests now. The rules were different.”

“Apparently.” Nile returned Nicky’s kind smile. “How do you reconcile our lives and your faith? I’m having trouble.”

“I cannot tell you that,” Nicky told her. “It is something you must decide for yourself. But for me? I discovered what was most important. My faith and my prayers. I don’t always know what I’m praying to but the act of it gives me comfort. If you ever need to talk about it, I am here, but I have always found faith to be of a personal nature.” He paused. Nile watched in amazement and confusion as a look passed over his face that she had only ever seen directed at Joe. “Or you could abandon your faith like a heathen.” His voice raised slightly and he leaned back into Joe’s arms as they wound around him. Nile hadn’t even heard him approach.

“You believe in your God,” Joe said teasingly. He nosed at Nicky’s hair. “And I will believe in mine.” From the look on his face, Nile inferred that Joe was not talking about a celestial god. From the look on Nicky’s face, she knew she was correct. “I can’t sleep, Nicolo,” he whined.

Nicky rolled his eyes but let Joe pull him back into the house without complaint. 

Nile listened to the door close and turned back to the view. She was familiar enough with it by now that she could imagine the sight before her, even if she could not see it. Taking a deep breath, Nile let it out slowly and felt some previously unknown tension leave her with it. Her faith had always been important to her and a part of her had feared the day it wouldn’t be any longer. But if Nicky could still believe even after a millennia...

Andy

When they’d first met, Nile could not have guessed how old Andy was. Depending on her behavior or her clothes, she could appear of a similar age to Joe and Nicky, or as their older sister, or even as their mother, at least in relation to Nile. She had an ageless look to her that Nile had marveled at, especially after realizing just how old she really was.

But that was no longer the case. Andy had found her first gray hair this morning. Or rather, Joe had found it and immediately teased her about it until she rushed into the bathroom to stare at herself in the mirror.

When she didn’t come out after 20 minutes, Nile knocked on the door. “Andy?” The door opened.

Nile eased it open to find Andy still as a statue, her hands braced on the edge of the sink, and her eyes fixed on the strand of gray hair that fell just on the edge of her hairline. “Andy?”

“I never thought I’d get old,” she whispered. “Even before. I only ever knew two people who were old enough to have gray hairs and I knew I would never be one of them. I was a warrior and warriors didn’t get to grow old.” Her voice was barely audible. “When Lykon died and I knew that one day I might get to, I never even considered the possibility that I would get to actually live with my mortality. I just assumed-”

She assumed that she’d discover she could finally die when she didn’t come back. 

Nile closed the door behind her and sat on the edge of the tub, unsure what to say. Even in the face of Andy’s mortality, Nile had long resigned herself to never aging, to never seeing her own hair turn white. 

“You can stop,” she found herself saying. Andy looked at her in the mirror. “Joe, Nicky, and I can keep going. You can stop. You can grow old.”

Andy smiled and it wasn’t brittle. “No.”

“Andy-”

“I’m not going to stop,” she said firmly. “And I will grow old.” Her smile grew. “The two are not mutually exclusive.”

Nile stared at her. “You don’t have to do this, Andy. Not anymore.”

Andy rinsed her hands in the sink and dried them. She placed the towel carefully back on the rack and opened the door before facing Nile. “Neither do you. But you’re going to.” She left without waiting for Nile to reply.

It was true, Nile supposed. She didn’t have to do this, this job of theirs. But she was going to, because it’s who she is. 

Something settles inside her at the thought. She’s not here with these people, doing these jobs, because she has no other choice. She does have a choice. She’s chosen this.

Joe

The anger felt good. It felt right. Andy was dead. The skies should rage and the ground should quake at her absence but the earth stayed silent and the skies stayed clear and Nicky knelt quietly over her in prayer and Nile wanted to scream. Andy was supposed to have more time. She hadn’t even gone gray yet.

Nile left. 

The compound was empty, everyone else already dead, and Nile ignored the bodies in her way as she sought clearer ground. A ways away, death in her rearview mirror, Nile screamed. Loud and long, the sound pierced the air. When she stopped, her chest heaved and her hands clenched in tight fists. There was no one left to fight but oh did Nile cra-

Her head whipped to the side with the force of the punch. She went with it in a faint attempt to lessen the blow. When she spun around to face her attacker, her gun was in her hands and pointed at Joe’s face. He ripped it from her without a thought and Nile lashed out.

Her hits landed hard and his landed harder. When her leg snapped and she fell to her knees, Joe went with her. Their bout lasted a few more seconds before Nile just stopped. 

The anger fled her as if it had never been there and left only sorrow in its wake.

Joe’s arms were around her before she even realized she was crying. He held her as her leg knit back together and then he held her longer. When her tears ran dry, Nile noticed the wet spots on her own shoulder and reached up to hug Joe back. 

“I’ve never felt so angry in my life,” she confessed in a breathless whisper. In hindsight, she hated the feeling, knew it had no place in her.

“Grief is funny like that,” Joe replied. He put his chin on her head and held her closer. “Makes you feel things you don’t want to. But it’s all part of the process.”

“Breaking my leg is part of the process?” She asked sardonically.

She felt him smile. “If I hadn’t, what would you have done? You wanted a fight, Nile, and there is no one else around to give it to you.”

Nile knew he was right. She had felt the rage under her skin and the itching for violence. It was gone now and despite the grief, she felt better for it. “Thank you.”

“No need,” he replied immediately, like he always did. 

She pulled back to look at him. His cheeks were shiny with spilled tears. “What do you need?” She asked, even as she knew the answer.

Joe smiled. “The only thing I have ever needed.” He glanced over his shoulder and Nile followed his gaze to find Nicky kneeling next to a covered body. “We have had time to prepare for this and we will be okay. We have each other.” Joe turned to her. “You’ve had Andy all these years. Will we be enough?”

Nile wanted to say yes, wanted desperately for these men who had become her family to be enough, but they all knew that Joe and Nicky had a habit of forgetting the rest of the world when they were together and Nile wasn’t sure she could survive on her own right now. She looked up at Joe, unwilling to admit it aloud.

He read it on her face anyway and nodded. “Alright,” he sighed. “We’ll go find Booker.” But it hadn’t even been ten years, yet, and Joe was the one who had needed the time apart.

“Joe-” she started to say.

He shook his head. “It’s all part of the process,” he said, echoing his earlier words. Nile cocked her head in question. “I needed to grieve the man I thought I’d known and the relationship and trust I’d thought we’d had. Anger was part of that,” he confessed. “But so is forgiveness.” He stood and pulled her to her feet. “We will find Booker.”

Nile swallowed the lump in her throat and sent a quick thanks to God for giving her these people to spend forever with. She wouldn’t have made it on her own, or with anyone else. “Let’s start in Paris.”

[historic-old-guard-lover]

How many languages and which of them would the cast speak if we’re going to be completely historically accurate ?

This a great question that I can’t quite answer, but I spent six hours researching to give it a shot. I think that there’s a broad range of plausible languages and you’ve got leeway to choose how many. The first part is that different people have different affinities for languages. Some people can speak ten different languages fluently (or near-fluency), while others will struggle juggling three different ones in their brains. The range in the languages can affect this, too: it’s easy to mess up between similar languages. I personally have trouble speaking Spanish because in the middle of the sentence, I’ll drop a French word without even realizing it. The same thing doesn’t happen to me in other languages like German, though. By the same token as I’ve discussed before, similar languages are easier to learn. Going from English to Russian with the Cyrillic alphabet? More difficult than English to French, which makes up about a third of modern English. These are languages that are still in the same family (Proto-Indo-European, PIE), though, so it holds nothing to the difficulty of going from English to a language like Mandarin.

I’m breaking this answer into two parts: 1) how many?; 2) which ones? and I’m going to get carried away because I’m me so it’s below the break to spare you if this comes across your dash and you’re not a nerd...

PART 1: What’s a realistic number for them to speak?

I think that each member of the old guard probably has a certain number of languages which they’re comfortable with, a few more that they can understand/get by in, and a few that they may only know phrases from. The number of each isn’t the same for everyone. The average human being is able to speak ~1.5 languages. The most talented polyglots can speak upwards of 50 languages, maybe one guy even spoke 65 (mostly I want to mention he loved translating the phrase “kiss my ass”). This hyperpolyglot, Kreb aka “Kiss My Ass” Stan, had his brain dissected after his death and it showed a lot of “abnormalities”. That leads neuroscientists and me to believe that being able to study and learn 65 languages is either 1) a major skill that rewired his brain because he was flexing it so much; or 2) very abnormal and facilitated by his brain differences. Since their powers don’t make them stop being limited by the human brain (they can forget), I would say that it is unlikely that one of them is fluent/near fluent/comfortable in more than ~65 languages.

Getting past twelve languages is considered a feat, so I think only Andy, Quynh, Nicky, and Joe could be anywhere near the upper-bounds of languages. Remember, these hyperpolyglots spend their entire lives studying languages and often need refreshers. The members of the Old Guard don’t have the luxury of reading grammar books all day, and they also have to remember a bunch of combat training. You can argue that a lot of fighting is “muscle memory” aka located in the cerebellum and nowhere near language processing areas, but there’s still things like math, navigation, etc. that they need to remember. I doubt they have a list of their safe houses just lying around. The older members can speak more languages by virtue of being around longer and having that time to learn, but if we’re being realistic they should probably speak no more than ~45-55 languages comfortably. This doesn’t mean that they only *know* that many, but the other languages would be more like bad high school Spanish in America than able to wax poetic. Aside: that Joe is able to be poetic in what is AT LEAST his fourth or so language is very impressive and we should talk about that more.

How Many Each Member is Maximally Proficient In/Knowledgeable Of at the end of the film/Opening Fire comics run:

Lykon (comics): proficient in ~15, knowledgeable of ~30*

Lykon (movies): proficient in ~45, knowledgeable of ~80*

Andy: proficient in ~50, knowledgeable of ~100**

Quynh | Noriko: proficient in ~51, knowledgeable of ~90**

Joe: proficient in ~30, knowledgeable of ~80

Nicky: proficient in ~30, knowledgeable of ~80

Booker: proficient in ~10, knowledgeable of ~30

Nile: proficient in ~2 (maybe 3), knowledgeable of ~5

*In the comics, he is younger than Andy and Quynh and I assume he dies young. In the movie, it is strongly implied that he was the oldest. The reason why his numbers are not larger, however, is because at some point there were fewer languages as humanity had not dispersed as much as it eventually did. He’s also long before written language which facilitates learning for most people. RIP Lykon.

**I’m not saying that Quynh is smarter than Andy, just that she comes after written language and it should be slightly easier for her to pick things up. I’m giving Andy access to more languages, however, because PIE alone covers Europe, Central Asia, and South Asia. More on this later.

PART 2: Which languages would each of them speak?

I’ve covered this question a little in a previous post that was broadly about proto-indo-european/Andy-centric (check it out if you want), but I’ll give a broader survey of each character here.

A Quick Aside on Lykon: We don’t know enough about this character, and the fact that the comics and movie diverge so sharply does not help at all. I’m going to headcannon that he was from Eastern Africa, where most archaeologists agree that modern humans first appeared in the Horn of Africa aka modern Ethiopia and Somolia and neighbors, and predates Andy by ~3,000 years. For future purposes below and assuming a birth date for Andy in the range ~5,000BCE - 4,000BCE, this puts his birth at around ~8,000BCE - 7,000BCE. This is wild speculation, however. Maybe the early immortals should be spaced by warfare types (Stone Age, Bronze, Iron, Steel?) or maybe they pop up once a cultural region reaches a certain historic point or maybe they just sorta pop up and then live for six or seven thousands years. I’m working off the last assumption because it’s the simplest. The only thing I’m certain of is that Greg Rucka probably didn’t sit down and think this pattern through. If I’m wrong, oh well. I’m mad at him for all his historical inaccuracies. With dating from ~8,000BCE - 7,000BCE, I’m having trouble finding a name for the cultures that scientists/historians know were living there at the time. It’s probably because the region has been continually occupied since the first humans, which one can safely assume makes abandoned and undisturbed sites hard to fine.

A Quick Aside on Quynh | Noriko: I like the film better, so I’ll be working with Quynh. If there’s enough interest, I can add on Japanese for Noriko. I’m going to date Quynh to be ~1,500 years after Andy (maybe this should be the new date system, before Andy “BA” and after Andy “AA”). This puts her in the time range of ~3,500BCE - 2,500BCE which could place her in either the Đa Bút neolithic culture of modern-day Vietnam or the Phùng Nguyên bronze age culture of modern-day Vietnam. Those names are archaeological in nature, based on the location where sites have been found and dated to those ranges.

Other Origins: Because we have diverging cannons, I’m going to just state the backgrounds that I’ve assigned. Joe is from 1066CE with a background in the Arab-controlled Maghreb (more specifically, modern-day Tunisia and Northern Algeria). Nicky is from 1069CE with a background from the Italian maritime republic and city-state of Genoa. Booker is from 1770 southern France. Nile is from 1994 Chicago in the United States. Andy is from ~5,000BCE - 4,000BCE in the Caucasus (modern-day Georgia and Azerbaijan) or the South Western Eurasian Steppes, probably the Shulaveri-Shomu culture assuming that location.

The first language everyone learned, their “mother tongue” or “native language” is one that they definitely speak. It’s the language that they think in and would be hard-pressed to lose. This even includes now-dead languages, because, again, it’s the one that they learned to think with. Of course, it is possible to lose a language when you have no one to speak it with if you wanted to do something tragic, but I think that these things are too deeply ingrained for it it to happen by accident.

What Each One’s First Language Would Be:

Nile: American English, possibly African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) at home

Booker: Provençal/Occitan, possibly “standard French” (school and other places outside the home)

Nicky: Genoese Ligurian/Zeneize

Joe: Tunisian Derja/Tunisian Arabic/Tunisian, and possibly one of the dialects of the native Zenati language group based on where more precisely you place him

Quynh: Proto-Viet–Muong (which isn’t well documented because it’s so old)

Andy: Proto-Indo-European (PIE), but if you’re curious the Classical Scythian Language for which she is probably named is only off by a factor of 10 (4000 vs 400 BCE) *cue distressed sighing*

Lykon: Proto-Cushitic (also suffering a lack of documentation from being old as heck)

Other than their first languages, what else they learn depends on where they go. People learned languages back then for the same reasons that they do today: to communicate (and to read, after the invention of writing). 

Additional Confirmed or Likely Cannon Languages:

Nile: Spanish because of the American school system for sure. French is listed on the IG account, but she probably speaks only Spanish or French to a degree of fluency, definitely one better than the other. Very Basic Pashto, which we see her use some obviously-memorized phrases with in the film.

Booker: The IG promo things asserts that he knows (modern, standard) Italian and Greek. Why not? He also probably knows Spanish depending on where more specifically in southern France he is from. He’s probably also picked up on at least Very Basic Arabic from Joe and Nicky, but actually learning the language would take commitment from him. He also clearly speaks English.

Nicky: Other Italian dialects, and it would be fairly easy for him to have picked up modern Italian. He definitely reads Latin. If he was from a wealthy family, he probably also speaks Greek. If he was from a trading family, he probably speaks the trading pidgin of Sabir. The IG account confirms Arabic (vague, but okay I’ll be generous and say modern standard Arabic) and Romanche (they meant to write Romansh). I think Romansh is poorly chosen to characterize him in Northern Italy, but I’m feeling generous. He also clearly speaks English.

Joe: He definitely speaks standard Arabic to have been able to communicate with other Arabic-speakers in Jerusalem.  Genoese Ligurian/Zeneize because of the love of his life, which also means he probably picked up modern Italian at some point. The IG account confirms Farsi (they call it “Persian” *cue screaming*), which works if he was a merchant who traveled far to eastward on the Silk Road...and if you go with the comic cannon makes more sense. I’m going to say that he speaks the Mediterranean trading pidgin Sabir because of his location in Tunisia. If he was from a wealthy merchant family and could afford schooling, he probably learned Greek and maybe also Latin. There’s a good chance that he knows conversational-levels of other native Zenati languages thanks to colonialism discouraging their usage. He also clearly speaks English.

Quynh: We don’t actually know if she speaks English, but it’s safe to assume she does speak at least some of it. She’s probably learned Vietnamese and Mường because of her mastery of their proto-language. Because I see her returning to modern-day Vietnam to fight the Chinese colonization, I think that she might know Cantonese or Mandarin. Based on her travels with Andy, I’d like to propose Greek, Latin, and Mongolian. I’m sure that Andy and her share a language, but who knows which one they were each speaking when they met!

Andy: The IG account says “all,” but I’ve discussed this elsewhere (*major eye rolling*). She almost certainly picked up Scythian and Greek based on her chosen name. Latin isn’t as likely as you’d think, but is possible. I’d like to think that she’s also partial to learning Russian (or some earlier form of the language), Mongolian, and Armenian. Based on her travels with Quynh, I imagine that she speaks Cantonese or Mandarin and Vietnamese or Mu’o’ng. There is some mystery language shared with Quynh, too. She also clearly speaks English.

Lykon: I really don’t know enough about him to hazard any guesses. He should share at least one language in common with Andy and Quynh. If his date of death is ~2,000- 1,000 BCE like I’m supposing, there’s a good chance that he only speaks one or two currently-named languages. Sorry, OP.

[writer-levi]

***Love the Old Guard and love these two. True story, someone on Tumblr got me into it. I mixed the movie with the comic, taking the parts I liked from both. And I chose to keep the movie name for Kimiko/Quynh. Playing catch up with writober prompts!!! Going to try to get a lot out today!***

Trigger warning: death, language, blood and little gore (not really, but will still include) , injury, cruel feels

Writober Day 1: Darkness

One. Two. Thre-- The time was always different, depending on the injury. Sometimes, it felt like no time at all. And other times, the seconds in the darkness dragged on far too long. 

Unfortunately, Nicolo found himself in one of those moments hefty with seconds. Or rather, he was trapped witnessing the love of his life stuck in the darkness. It didn't matter how many times they had watched each other die, or how many times they resurrected, because there could always be a last time. They didn't know when, but everything had to die. And even after a thousand years knowing their end, Nicky was not ready to lose Joe. 

One. Two. Three. Four. 

"Yusuf… You come back to me," pleaded Nicky shakily in his native tongue. "Please."

He cradled the bloodied man's head in his lap, running his hands through tousled dark curls before pulling them back warm with blood. The fall off the top of a half constructed building was one thing, only one thing, but Joe had fallen after being riddled with bullet holes. Quynh, that bitch, even looked Nicky in the eye as she shot one final round right into Joe's heart before he free-falled. She took off after that, but Nicky cared less that she got away.

Joe was broken in every imaginable way, splattered, mangled… and he wasn't getting back up. 

Booker glanced nervously in the darkness, straining his ear for the sound of sirens; the gunshots practically echoed in the dark, at least to his ears. He had just gotten back to the group, luckily skirting his one hundred year banishment when Quynh made him her personal slave and waved "look at who you abandoned now" guilt in Andy's face. Even worse, Quynh had found out about Andy becoming mortal and was gunning hard to draw her out from where she sat safe with an ear piece. Just one night, Nile had convinced her to just one night not putting herself in danger and letting them handle it. She could direct from afar, with Copley helping her keep up with the audio-- and video feed on Nile's vest. Andy had seen enough. 

--Damnit, Booker!! You said you would keep them safe!! You said-- I never should have listened to you or Nile! I should have been there, I should be there!!!---

Booker barked back, cupping over the ear with the earpiece. "And be the one splattered on the concrete? Just… give it a moment. He'll… he'll be back." 

Though, Booker had stopped counting seconds… seconds that were turning into minutes. Minutes was a bad sign, and it had taken them well over just to get down to floor level after Joe went down. 

Nicky's pleading started to hitch in volume, the longer Joe stayed as he was. The Italian sputtered at a faster pace from his mouth. 

"Please. Please, please. Come back. My everything, please."

--I'd rather it be me than them!! Not them…--

They came in together, Andy had thought, maybe, they would give out at the same time and never have to know the loneliness she had felt dozens of times over. She was jealous of their circumstance, sure, but she would never wish this on them. She would never wish for one of them to get lost in the darkness while the other had no choice but to stay in the light. 

Finally, in the distance, the faintest wail of sirens. 

"Shit." Booker turned to Nile, who had been staring down at the two with a stunned look. Just like Andy, she would take Joe's place in a heartbeat. But she was just too damn new. "Nile, we got to go." 

Booker stepped over to the two and started to kneel down and reach for Joe's body. "Come on, Nicky. We have to--"

Nicky slapped Booker's arm viciously away and Booker stood up again quickly. 

"Don't you touch him!" Nicky snapped in English, his accent cracking uneasily over his erratic words. "Don't- don't touch him!! Just give him… a few more seconds… he… Joe…" 

Booker pursed his lips before relaxing them with a sigh. "Nicky… we can't stay here. We need to--"

Joe's body hitched suddenly, a loud ragged breath in trembling his splintered frame. Just as he breathed in, Nicky finally breathed out. The tension that held his tears back broke, and Nicky released it all in uneven, relieved sobs. 

"Joe. I'm here. I'm here." 

Nicky searched for Joe's hand and Joe found his, giving it a light squeeze as his fingers snapped back into order. 

"N-nicolo…" Joe wheezed. 

Booker started shifting uneasily as the sirens got closer. "Okay, we need to get out of here. Now!" Though, he was glad that Joe had climbed out of the darkness. He was really scared there for a moment… scared they would be taking a body to Andy and dragging a grieving Nicky with them. 

Nicky started to help Joe sit up as his wounds closed and his body started to shift back into place. It would still take some time, but he was breathing. Nicky finally let Booker come over and help get Joe up. They stood with the man groaning between them as his body fought to catch up. 

"Hrrgg… mff… so, what did I miss?" 

Nicky looked incredulously at Joe for a moment, face stained with tears. Nicolo let out a fragmented laugh and smiled weakly.

"That is what you say, after scaring me to death?"

Joe smiled lightly as he looked at Nicky, pure love and adoration in those dark eyes. "You're not getting rid of me that easy." 

Nicky shook his head, shifting so they could touch their foreheads together. 

"Please. Don't take your time again." 

They fell in silence as they moved out, getting clear of the sight as soon as possible. Time… they would run out soon enough. One day, they would fall into the familiar darkness and stay there. They dreaded that inevitable day. But today was not the day Nicky lost Joe. And it would not be the day Joe lost Nicky. The darkness would have to wait.

Writober prompts not by me. The name and credit is in the lower part of the picture.

[purplesurveys]

1085

survey by -egocentricity-

On Myspace, what was in the last bulletin you posted? I haven’t been on Myspace for well over a decade; and even when I was there I didn’t have any friends added nor did I remember ever posting anything. Friendster and Multiply were a lot more popular.

When and where was the last time you took a picture of yourself? I took a selfie last Saturday in the dining room. It’s of me holding up the vape pen that Andi lent me for the meantime to show Angela, since she wanted to see what it looked like.

Have you ever been scolded by a mall cop? I remember being lightly chided once when I was like, 7 – I was leaning on a glass wall of a store in the mall, so the guard from that store nicely told me to get back up to be safe. Overall, I don’t think I’ve ever exhibited behavior in public that should’ve gotten me into trouble.

How often do you catch yourself daydreaming? Definitely not so much these days. I need to keep being preoccupied with work or other things to do/accomplish since my daydreaming always seems to end with thinking of scenarios that now upset me, like, idk, happier times with my ex. I’m tired of letting that happen and always being upset in the end, so I try to avoid getting lost in my thoughts anymore.

What's your favorite thing to think about as you're falling asleep? Idk about you but thinking in general keeps my mind up and racing lol, so when I’m trying to sleep I do my best to black out my mind so that I can doze off.

Is there anything that you want to do, but won't because you're too afraid? So I went to college with this girl - I believe she’s several batches older - who, as soon as she graduated, set out on a hitchhiking journey across the world. She’s been doing it for four years, and I believe she has finally made it to Europe after being stuck in Kazakhstan for a year due to Covid. She’s amazing and her spirit is so fucking beautiful. She has a Facebook page that I actively follow detailing her experiences; but as great as her journey has been, I don’t know and I highly doubt that I can set out for such a demanding, commitment-heavy challenge myself.

Who was the last person to yell at you? My mom is the only person who does that, but she hasn’t done so in a while.

Who gets up the earliest in your household? The latest? My dad, since his work starts the earliest. I will sometimes hear the car engine purring by 5:45 AM. The latest would be my sister, since she stays up the latest as well. I think she’s up by 8 AM, but she doesn’t show up outside of her bedroom until 10 or 11.

Have you ever had a pet walk across your keyboard while you were typing? No, and I am glad that’s the case because both of my dogs are too big and I fear that they could actually snap my laptop in half.

What political issues do you think deserve less attention/worry? No political issue deserves any less attention than others. Political issues always mean that someone is on the losing end and I don’t think it’s fair to compare and decide which ones can be put on the backseat. 

Anyway, I do believe it’s not so much the issues that should be compared, but the people in politics who are given the spotlight. Here in the Philippines especially, a lot of celebrities want to have their own political careers (and usually win a seat) despite their zero experience and the media gobbles that shit up all the time, which is disgusting. Related to this, I hope the media makes a consicous effort to wipe Trump out of the headlines once he’s out of office.

Which political issues are you most passionate about? I dunno if I can measure that since I’m pretty vocal about a lot of things. What I can tell you is that in the political issues I have a say in, I always side with the marginalized and the oppressed. IPs, POC, LGBTQ+, immigrants, factory workers, jeepney drivers, contractualized employees, activists, student-activists...my heart has always been with them and their cause.

You're going to your favorite foreign country; what landmarks do you go see? I’m not sure if I have a favorite country, but I’m very picky about landmarks in general anyway. I’d rather experience the local life and eat at smaller local places and go to lesser-known beaches and stuff.

What is the longest amount of time that you have spent away from your home? A little longer than a week, and this was usually when I traveled abroad.

Did the last movie you watched have any emotional effect on you? Yeah, so much so that I was unable to finish it and I had to show up at dinner while still fresh from crying.

What motivates you to go to school? Not applicable to me anymore, but I suppose this can be easily rephrased to mean work. Honestly, my main motivation is the desire to have a perfect record at work lol. I’m super neurotic about this and I hate the idea of being absent or late. Money comes second; I rarely buy stuff for myself so I mostly don’t even realize the money coming in to my account every two weeks. Then third is the desire to be good at my job because I do want to get promoted and rack up more positions as I go along.

How much caffeine have you consumed in one day? The most cups of coffee I’ve had in one day is 3, and that was not an enjoyable experience ha. Right now, I’m on my first cup of coffee.

Are you more hyper and up-tight, or laid back and relaxed? I guess it depends on the situation. I can definitely exhibit either, but my behavior will vary based on the people I’m with and/or how comfortable I am in a certain situation.

When was the last time you heard someone talking about you? Around a week ago. My parents were having dinner separately and I heard my name being mentioned in a few sentences.

How did you pick out your last outfit? I wanted an outfit that was chill and easy to carry around, but would still make me look like I put some effort into picking it out.

When buying shoes, what do you look for in the product? I admittedly like brand names, so that’s the first thing I look at. I also like to keep up with what’s trending, so I look at items in a brand’s catalog that I see more and more people wearing. If it matches with my own personal style, then I keep an eye on it/purchase it altogether.

What happened to cause the last mess you made? The last and current mess I have on me is my work desk, which I’ve since abandoned in favor of my bed + portable desk as my new workspace. Idk, over the Christmas break I just ended up stacking up so much shit on the desk until it became a little too cluttered. I’ve cleaned it up here and there to make the space look neater, but there’s still a lot of stuff.

Are you embarrassed to bring people into your bedroom? Not embarrassed; I just find it unnecessary. My bedroom is too small to host guests and the only times I’ve let someone in there is when I had a significant other. I prefer people to stay in the living room.

When was the last children's birthday party you attended? It was my third cousin Isabella’s 7th birthday party at a Jollibee. Her family has been living in Australia for a while, but I guess they wanted to host a party with their Filipino family so they flew back here to stay for a few days. Because she is my third cousin and because she’s been living in Australia all her life, I don’t actually have any sort of relationship with her lmao but I still made an effort to greet her and stuff.

Are you good at reading other people's body language? Yes, to the point that it contributes to my overall anxiety.

If you're sick, do you go to school or do you stay home [usually]? I rarely get a fever so when I do it feels like actual death. For that reason, I usually have to skip the day and focus on feeling better.

Does chicken noodle soup really make you feel any better? I never had it whenever I’ve felt like crap in the past. I don’t really like soup though, so on a personal level I doubt it would have any effect on me.

What is one meal that you like to eat whilst sick? I don’t have a go-to meal because again, I rarely get sick.

Think of the last survey you filled out; did you enjoy it? Sure, it was easy to digest and it’s the kind that you can take over and over again.

Have you ever fed bread to ducks or geese? I’ve fed bread, but to fish in the sea; not ducks or geese since idk if we have either here other than in zoos. In our trip to Mactan in 2010, I remember how we were allowed to pay a certain small amount to get bread from the resort and proceed to feed the fish swimming around in the beach.

Is it hard to imagine you were ever as small as a 1-2 year old? Yeah, I definitely feel that way sometimes.

What set the tone for your mood today? Eh, I wouldn’t say I had an overall mood today, honestly. It was a normal day at work, maybe a little more uneventful than other days; and I was on top of my tasks so there wasn’t anything to dread or worry about. I was just concentrated on getting the day over with and wasn’t strongly attached to any emotion.

Have you ever set out to ruin someone else's day? I don’t think so.

Have you ever felt like the whole world was against you? It happens sometimes.

The name of the last video game you played? Mario Kart 8 probably? It’s been a while but it’s all I play if I do play a video game, so it’s a safe guess.

The name of the last board game that you played? We whipped out my old box of Trivial Pursuit last November when we didn’t have electricity and internet because of the typhoon.

What was the last thing that you told yourself? I don’t remember the last time I talked to myself, but like two minutes ago I was starting to feel sad so I silently reminded myself to think of positive things.

How many times a day do you wash your face? At least once, in the morning before I start work. I’ve learned that cleaning myself up, even if it’s just splashing water on my face, super helps if I want to start working in a good mood.

Do you remember your D.A.R.E. officer's name? I didn’t have one of those, anddd I’m sure we didn’t have that program here.

Someone throws hot coffee on you; how do you react? It’s taken me a whole goddamn week to finish this survey, lels. Anywho... I think out of instinct I would scream out in extreme agony first? And I’d probably spend the first immediate seconds to try and process what just happened. I don’t know if I would fight back because I’m pretty sure the burns would be hurting too badly for me to focus on revenge.

Is there a high school or college that you would rather be attending? I attended one school from kindergarten to college, and I can’t imagine having attended anywhere else. I had one dream university and I ended up attending it.

Have you ever lived in an apartment or duplex home? Yes, both. My parents lived in an apartment for a few months when I was a newborn. From ages 2-10 I lived in my childhood home, which is actually a duplex. The other house belongs to my grandpa’s late sister and her family.

Has anyone ever commented on your weight? Sure, but I care so little about my weight that they don’t really have an effect on me. The most common one I get is to “eat more.”

Where do you stand when it comes to sexual intercourse? Erm not really lmao. Just do it?? Idk. And just make sure consent is mutual and that you aren’t doing it out of pressure.

Name a show from the 90's that you miss? I guess ‘miss’ is the wrong word since I never watched it while it was ongoing, but I do love Friends. I’m excited to see what they have planned for the reunion episode.

Who provokes your sarcastic side the most? Bad co-workers, but luckily I haven’t had to pull that side of me in a while.

Have you ever thought about joining the military? Never.

When you were little, did you ever stare at disabled or "different" people? Being a kid, I probably did but never thought anything of it during those times. My mom certainly would’ve whooped my ass if I tried to comment anything mean or be a smartass.

Could the contents of your bedroom get you in any trouble? The one thing that would piss my mom off are my vape pens. I still have Gab-related stuff in my room that I’m too lazy to throw out, but I doubt I will get into trouble from those anymore because there has been no relationship to speak of in the last four months.

Do weather patterns sometimes have an effect on your health? Not on my health, but on my mood.

If it snows a lot where you live, do you experience cabin fever? It doesn’t, so idk what this would feel like.

When was the last time someone disapproved of something you were doing? Not entirely sure; this hasn’t happened in a while. Admittedly, as a people pleaser, I thrive on doing what people would want me to do lol.

How good are you at getting along with other people? On a scale of 1 to 10, probably a 9? I’m super nice to everyone and in the end it only really boils down to whether I have chemistry with them or not. If I fail to feel comfortable around someone I’m more likely to stay formal, but I do try to be lively and crack jokes with everyone as much as I can.

Do you consider yourself to be approachable? I want to be and I always try to come off as such, but my resting bitchface hurts that chance sometimes haha.

Do you know anyone that's a little emotionally unstable? Uhm, no one comes to mind.

Have you ever felt like you were going out of your mind? Yes.

Has anyone ever suggested that you might need "help"? I don’t recall being told this by anyone before. But with the way I broadcast my anxiety and sadness from time to time, I’m sure people have thought of it.

Do you take offense to things easily? Yeah you can say that. I’ve always been more sensitive than most.

How do you respond to cheesy pick-up lines? As with any pick-up line, I inwardly roll my eyes and move on.

Do you like to give people a taste of their own medicine? It’s such a waste of time and energy for the most part, so no. But if I feel petty, I have no problem doing it.

How was the service at the last restaurant you visited? It was...fine. Nothing to write home about. It was unlimited Korean barbecue and they actually had a system in place where they gave us a link to some internal website they kept, and we could simply order from there to minimize contact with the servers. I will say that I never got the kimchi jjigae I had ordered, but it was fine because I was full by then lmao.

Are you ever jealous of happy couples? No. I mean, I guess I’m reminded of my loneliness when I see couples in public, but I don’t get jealous or angry. I just shake it off and try to focus on myself.

Describe a thought that is sticking with you today? That I can’t wait for Friday.

Lately, who has spent the most time on your mind? I’ve been thinking more of my anxieties than certain people, tbh.

In a car: air conditioning, or roll the windows down? Air conditioning. Though sometimes it’s nice to have the windows down, especially when I’m driving within my village or up a mountain.

When was the last time you did anything to your playlist? I made an angst-themed playlist over the weekend.

Is there a new song or band you've discovered? Massive Attack. Hayley Williams did a super great cover of their song Teardrop, so I checked out the original version which I also ended up enjoying. Olivia Rodrigo too, who I found out is part Filipino yay!

Which teacher gives you the most homework? My Journalism Ethics professor will probably rank the highest on this list.

What type of personality do you find most annoying? Idk, condescending ones maybe? There are a million kinds of personalities lol, but yeah I hate those who make you feel dumb, and feel good about doing so.

How did you hear about Bzoink? If my memory serves me correctly, my 10 year old self just wanted empty about me surveys to answer. Bzoink was always one of the first websites to come out if I searched for surveys on Google.

How long did it take you to sign up for an account - if you have one? I don’t think I ever made an account on there since I was too shy to share my answers.

Are you punctual? Yes, very.

Have you ever howled at the full moon? No.

Have you ever seen yourself on camera? Like if I’ve seen photos of myself??? I would be very surprised if anyone can say they haven’t.

Do you give any consideration to what's said in your horoscope? No.

When was the last time you felt like you were being followed? This has never happened before, thankfully.

[mythicalbinicorn]

Hey could you talk about the oc's you were telling me about? I'm curious about them.

You got it! I have alot though, so buckle up 

 Crestri/Insomniai: She's half human, with her "mother" being a Lu'ai person (a race I made up)(also, "mother" is the closest term to what they use) who is married to Edward Nygma. She exists in 2 worlds, the Young Justice show, and the DCAMU. In the DCAMU!Verse she is the main adversary of Lady Light, however is good friends with her alter ego, Elayne Leclair. She is also the SoS' pseudo mother (more ocs you'll meet in a minute) She is over 2 000 years old, and has a lot of abandonment issues. She has morals, and refuses to do things for the Light (which she is a part of in the YJ!Verse) if it seriously hurts children. Her powers include: shape shifting, voice mimicry, illusions, portal creation, and has alot of magical capabilities. Also, YJ!Verse Crestri sees Klarion as a little brother. 

 Elayne Leclair/Lady Light: She's a young French woman with the ability to absorb energy around her and use it. She ia a fashion designer (Yes, she made her own suit) and is good friends with Crestri (They do know abt each others alter egos). She lost one of her arms saving Damian Wayne, and nearly gave Bruce a fucking heart attack. On that note! She's part of the Justice League and is good friends with Hal and Barry, the three often teaming up to annoy Bruce. She is also in a relationship with Bruce Wayne, but that's really only one part of her life. She's both serious and silly, something that can be both helpful and annoying to the Big Bad Bat. She exists only in the DCAMU!Verse  

Vallili Dru-Zod/Superflare: She is the daughter of General Zod and a Kryptonian woman who wasn't on Krypton when it fell. She was adopted by the Kent's after her mother sent her to Earth, due to developing a terminal illness. Vallili exists only in the YJ!Verse, however not at the same time as Crestri or alot of the others. She is lesbian, and falls in love with Demand'r (Wally dubbing them the "Space Lesbians"). 

 Demand'r/Sunfire: She is a young Tamaranean princess, and sister to Komand'r, Koriand'r, and Ryand'r. She was kidnapped when she was young and doesn't see her family for years. She is also a lesbian and returns Vallili's love. Demand'r is strong and kind, often going out of her way to help her friends. 

Noania/Nalliand'r/Solar: She is a clone made by the dna of both Vallili and Demand'r, and they took her in as soon as they found her. She's very young, but when she does grow up she will be part of the YJ team along with the other hero children. She has a tiny crush on Artur (Aquaman and Mera's son). 

 Nikolai and Nicole Hunter/Predator and Prowler: They are twins who became orphans after their parents "died" (only on of them is dead). They are extremely close to each other, and rarely do things without the other. When they were 13 Nikolai suggested they become vigilantes because they had powers those being cat-like scences, claws, and a small healing factor. Their father is Luke Hunter. They exist in the YJ!Verse and the DCAMU!Verse. Trixie is one of their closest friends, her being Nicole's bestfriend and Nikolai's crush/girlfriend. Speaking of crushes, Nicole has the biggest one on Garfield Logan. Nick is very feminine in general, while Nicki is somewhere between feminine and androgynous. My favourite fact about nick is that he wears dresses, skirts and makeup with no regrets. 

 Kameela Ahmad: She is a Muslim scientist who adopts the twins after discovering their "extra activities". She supplies them their gear and a home. Kameela is extremely smart and often works with S.T.A.R. Labs. She is now in a wheelchair due to something that happened at S.T.A.R. Labs. Kameela exists in both the YJ!Verse and DCAMU!Verse. 

 Durriyah Ahmad: The younger sister to Kameela, she is a meta human with limited reality manipulation. She is still young, and very much looks up to her sister. 

 Luke Hunter/Dark Claw: He's the father of the twins, and is the one they inherited their powers from. After heroes failed to save his wife, he faked his death and became "Dark Claw". He later found out his children were Predator and prowler, and allows himself to get caught and sent to prison. 

Beatrix Taylor-Queen/Quiver: Known as Trixie to everyone, she is the daughter of Oliver Queen, although he didn't know about her till she was around 15-16. She decided to become Quiver after being saved by Roy/Will Harper (depending on the universe) and is very close with him. She doesn't like her father much, bacause she's scared that she's just a charity case for him. 

 NOW ONTO THE SISTERHOOD OF STEEL (they only exist in the DCAMU!Verse) 

Melody Prowell/Ballad: She is the daughter to Dennis and Sophia Prowell, being very close to bother parents she definitely inherited Dennis' penchant for theatrics, and is the most well adjusted member. She is in a relationship with Kon-El, them often leaving their respective teams for dates. 

 Sophia Prowell: Not much is known about her yet, only that she is married to Dennis Prowell and is one of the most talented voice actors known. She is incredibly close to her daughter. 

 Andreia Drakor/Oblivia: Andi is the daughter of Ares, and she begins the sos as a way to please him. She is in love with Darcy, and after only her death does Andreia become less of a villain and more an anti-hero. 

 Emiko Takahashi/Kira: Her family was killed by assassins when she was young, and her emotional state has been going downhill since. She was taken in by a League of assassins member, Black Spider, and took on the name "Kira", cutting out the tongue of anyone who calls her Emiko. She is close to all of the SOS, and later follows them in becoming anti-heroes. She is unofficially adopted by Bruce Wayne. 

Darcy Merryland/Red Lantern/Star Sapphire: After her father murders her mother, she gains a Red Lanturn ring to exact her revenge. She starts out cold and fulll of rage, but becomes more mild as the years go by. She later she discovers she love Andreia and her ring rejects her, and she dies in Andreia's arms. She is resurrected later and is given a Violet Power Ring. She leaves Earth for a while, later coming back and reuniting with the SOS (done with the sos) 

 Penelope Isley-Qinn/Red Thorn: She is a clone of Harley and Ivy the created. She is part of the Teen Titans (2003 ver.). Penny has a plant she created, named Walter. Walter is carnivorous, and Beast Boy has gotten stuck in him. She is in a poly relationship with Raven and Beast Boy. 

 NOW FOR MY NON-TV/MOVIE OCS (all of them exist in the comic books) 

 Aretha Diamondis/Valor: Adopted by Athena after her parents dies, Aretha is incredibly loyal. She was granted powers by Athena that she uses to fight bad guys. She is also in a relationship with Kon-El. 

 Daphne Galitz/Spectre: She is a young Jewish girl with the ability to turn invisible and phase through stuff. She is energetic and kind, and in a relationship with Bart Allen, something that annoys the bad guys to know end. This is because they now have to deal with two times the taunting. 

 And lastly,Caelan Sideris/Mayhem: He is the son of Ares, and is originally a villain. He turns sides after his father seriously injures Aretha, who has shown him nothing but kindness (albeit a strict kindness at times) I hope this helped, I'm still flushing out alot of my characters