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soloroomies · 3 months

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lifemate (Chapter 4/ Sakusa x f!reader)

summary: talking about the details of your arrangement with Kiyoomi word count. 2.4k cw. marriage pact au, mature content, suggestive a/n. it's here!! the marriage is happening!!(＞0＜；；；) Masterlist

When you step inside your apartment, your heart starts to pound hard. The full realization dawns on you quickly. The fuck. You can't be like this. You fan your face, feeling the heat rising to your cheeks. You kind of feel like screaming. “You can't be like this,” you repeat the words loudly to yourself.

Why do you feel this way, though? You despise yourself for it. Maybe the idea of tying the knot with someone is really getting to you. You walk to your kitchen and gulp down some cold water to hydrate your throat. You need to be logical about this. Gosh, you need your best friend, Tami, right now. But she’s probably asleep already; it’s almost 1 am. So, you send some urgent texts to her, telling her that you’ll meet Sakusa tomorrow. You also send her a message that says something like, “The marriage plan is happening!! I’m gonna make a list of things that I need to discuss w him. Please give me ideas for some important topics!:( Love u.” You know your best friend can at least give you some pointers, especially since she's been married for four years.

You start to clean yourself up, changing your clothes, removing your makeup, brushing your teeth, washing your face, and doing a quick skincare routine. Now that you’re more comfortable, you might think more clearly. You check the time on your phone and lie down on your bed. Okay. You’ll make a few points yourself first.

You try to think hard, but nothing substantial comes up. So, you search for it on Google. You click on some articles and jot down notes in your notes app. You can't write much because you find some topics aren't relatable to your situation. Some of them are too real couple things. For example: "How to spend the right time together?" or "What happens if you feel like you’re drifting apart?" type of questions. That’s totally not relatable, right? A few topics that you’ve written down are: finances (how will you split the bill?), where you will live, personal space, and how you will divide the chores. Before you know it, your eyes start to close as you drift off to sleep.

When you wake up, it's because of the constant vibration from your phone. You check it and see that it’s still around 7 am. The vibration is from Tami’s texts. You quickly check her responses.

She lists a few topics, some of which are already written in your notes app. Then, there are some you haven't listed before:

1. Who is allowed to know about this pact? Damn, she’s right. You'll need to create your version of a love story either way.

2. How would this marriage be? Can each of you date other people, or do you want to be exclusive? Oh. Right. You’ve thought about this before, too. This is important.

3. The wedding. How big should it be? Yup, you still need to talk about this.

4. Physical intimacy? (P.S. Please talk about this, girl! You’re stupid if you’re not getting that dick)

You roll your eyes. This is so her. But then you start to reflect on yourself. Sex? Of course, you're no virgin. You’re sure he’s not either. But, to be honest, you can’t really remember the last time you had sex. Damn! You think it was years ago with your last situationship. Yes, you’ve had your share of one-night stands, but that was in your early 20s. You just know that those kinds of activities are not that safe. Not that you judge anyone who does it, but for you, you usually do it with someone you trust pretty well. And there aren't a lot of men that you can trust to do that. Plus, the act is often disappointing. So, sex isn’t your top priority nowadays. Yes, you have your needs, but you could always take care of yourself. So far, so good. It’s manageable. You’re not sure how to bring this topic up to Kiyoomi, though. It feels wrong too to imagine stuff like that with him. You huff. You won't bring this up.

5. Children? Hmm, you haven’t really thought about this topic.

Do you want children? Yes, you do, but it's not like you really want them. You guess it’s just because of an image of a perfect family you had in your head since you were little. This discussion will also complicate some financial topics. And you don’t know whether Kiyoomi wants children or not. So, you might skip this part. This is not something you considered when agreeing to this anyway.

6. Deal breakers? You can’t really think of what this would relate to in your relationship right now. Since there’s no romance involved, right? You might as well skip this part.

You type your thanks profusely to Tami and then start your Sunday morning by snacking on your energy bar. You'll have your breakfast with Sakusa. Then, you take a shower and get ready. After you finish getting ready, you check your phone and see some messages from Sakusa saying he’s on his way to your apartment. His trip to your place usually takes about 20 minutes. So, you sit on your couch and continue watching the series you haven’t finished.

A few minutes later, your phone vibrates. It's a text from Sakusa saying he’s arrived. You quickly respond and make your way downstairs. Spotting his car, you knock on the passenger seat window. He opens the door, and you slide in.

"Hey," you greet him.

"Hey," he replies. "Where do you want to eat?"

You suggest a restaurant not too far from your apartment that serves good avocado toast and truffle mushroom benedict. He agrees and starts to drive there.

As he drives, you take a moment to look at him. He's wearing a dark green corduroy jacket over a white shirt and black shorts. He’s not wearing his mask, but you notice the mask box between your seats. He smells good, a pleasant combination of his shampoo, soap, and cologne. He always smells good, you realize.

The car ride is quiet but comfortable, the kind of silence that feels natural rather than awkward. As you approach the restaurant, you feel a mix of anticipation and nervousness about the conversation that awaits.

As soon as you arrive, both of you order avocado toast and coffee. You finish your breakfast first, then you start the discussion. “So? Where do we start from here? Do you have anything in mind?” you ask.

Sakusa nods. “I do. Do you?”

“Yes,” you reply. Then you start to run through your list. For the financial topics, Sakusa insists on paying all the bills related to your living place: housing, electricity, and water. But you're confused. “Then, what should I pay for?” you ask.

“Some of the groceries, I guess.” Sakusa replies.

“What? No. I can’t. At least let me pay for the water or something, too?” you protest.

“Please. Just let me pay for that,” he insists.

You have never seen him plead before, but seeing his face now, you think this might be as close to pleading as he gets. “I’ve told you, you can leave some of your jobs if you’d like. It’s better for your health, too, I guess…” you can hear a hint of concern in his voice.

You're silent for a moment but then accept his offer, albeit reluctantly. Maybe you should try to relax a bit more. Isn't that one of the perks of this marriage pact? You then move to the next part, which is the living place. He suggests you move into his apartment, and you think it's more reasonable since he has three rooms in his apartment, allowing you to have one as your own room.

“How about personal space?” you ask.

“What about it?” Sakusa responds.

“Do you have a room or place that you won’t allow other people, like me, to enter?”

He’s silent for a bit. “My room.”

You nod your head. You’re no stranger to his need for personal space. In fact, you remember some of his past girlfriends complaining about it. He's the type of person who’s quite rigid about his boundaries. You'll try your best not to cross any of them. You express this concern to him, asking him to please let you know if you ever step over any boundaries. He answers with a simple "okay."

Next, you start to discuss the chores. You both conclude that he’ll be the one who cleans around the house, and you offer to be the chef. You’re not the best cook, but you’re also not bad. You'll do this since you'll have more spare time after letting go of some of your side jobs. Laundry will be done alternately each week.

Then, you start to discuss the topic list that Tami has given you. You both agree that the only ones who will know about this pact are the two of you, Komori, and Tami. You already told him that you shared this with her, and he’s understanding about that. He tells you that he already informed Komori about this plan as well. You’re a bit surprised, wondering whether Komori has known since the New Year party or before that. If he knew, he seemed nonchalant about it. But, he will definitely tease you about this.

The love story for both of you will be simple. You know each other since high school, secretly liked each other, and have been secretly dating for a year before deciding to get married. That’s just perfect. Your parents also know each other, and your mom has teased you about him before. Quite early in your friendship, even though you clearly stated to her that you considered him just a friend. Well, she might be quite shocked and cocky, having her “I told you so” moment upon hearing this wedding news. It’s okay; you’ll just have to deal with it for a bit.

You then mention the wedding and tell him that you actually want to have an intimate one. He agrees and chimes in that he needs to inform his manager as well since there will likely be some media coverage for an athlete's wedding. You nod, remembering Komori’s wedding. You hope there will be no big commotion from the public. You know he has some persistent fangirls and just hope they won’t give you threats or anything. Fingers crossed, you sigh. This is for Kiyoomi’s benefit too. You remember he always says he struggles with rejecting gifts and random confessions; maybe this marriage will reduce those kinds of things.

“How would this marriage be? Can each of us date another person, or do we want to be exclusive?” you read from your notes. He stares at you. “I think it’s up to you.”

You nod at his statement, understanding that it’s also up to him. It’s reasonable. Why would this marriage stop him from getting any girl he wants? You don’t know much about his hook-up activities, never inquiring about them either. He’s very private about that. You sigh mentally, feeling a tinge of insecurity, which you think is stupid. You can’t be unfair to him. “Yeah, let’s just be careful about it. We can’t let people know, though. It’ll look bad on us,” you respond, staring down at your phone.

You don’t hear his response and see the notes on your app, deciding to skip some of the topics that you're not sure how to bring up. “Is there anything you want to add?” you ask him.

“Will you take my family name?” he asks.

You think for a moment and nod. “I will.” Then, you start to repeat your name with ‘Sakusa’ in front of it in your head. You kind of want to laugh, thinking that you used to call him by his family name during your early years of friendship. Now, that name will be yours too.

After that, you delve into detailing the aspects of your wedding. You had stated earlier that you wanted an intimate ceremony, so you emphasize making the wedding small and estimating the budget, aiming to keep it as economical as possible and split it 50/50. Sakusa interjects again, insisting he’ll just pay it all. You don’t mind the budget since it’s much cheaper compared to what some of your friends usually spend. You also have enough savings for it. After a bit of disagreement, you settle on an 80/20 split.

Your wedding will be held in mid-February with a garden party theme, which you suggest. All the preparations will be handled by a wedding organizer that you both found together. Sakusa is actually very cooperative, offering to contact the wedding organizer and jotting down some of the information you discuss together on his phone’s notes. You thought he’d be bored with such detailed discussions, but he had even done a lot of research beforehand and gave you insights about the wedding experiences of his relatives and friends. You heard from some of your friends that their partners didn’t really put in the effort and handed it all over to the woman. So, you’re very glad he’s not like that. After all, marriage takes two people to make it work.

You both then decide that everything sounds good and finalize the plans. As you’re about to stand up, he suddenly grabs your hand. You look at him and see him hesitating a bit.

“What? Is there something wrong?” you ask.

He then pulls you down, prompting you to sit again beside him. You stare at him curiously as his hand moves inside his jacket pocket, taking out something. It’s a box. A ring box! You realize, flabbergasted by his action. Your mouth falls open.

“Wait, wait. What?” you stammer, staring at the navy velvet ring box.

He proceeds to open it, showing a silver ring. You notice that the ring features a row of detailed Forget-Me-Not flowers running into delicate leaves on either side of the band. You’re totally speechless. You didn’t expect him to give you a ring right now. You thought you could just buy some matching rings together that simply show “Yeah, we’re married.” But this ring in front of you looks expensive as hell.

“I know this kind of marriage is something you never expected. I know this is not something you dreamed of either. But let me make this a bit proper. I want you to have this,” Sakusa says.

You feel like crying, touched by his sentiment. He then slides the ring onto your finger, and you can’t help but thank him and hug him, driven by your emotions. You widen your eyes, taken aback, and mumble a quick apology, afraid that you’ve invaded his personal space or something. But he hugs you back.

It seems like this marriage pact isn’t so bad, after all.

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samflir · 1 year

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What makes a good boot sequence?

A while ago, I had my first truly viral post on Mastodon. It was this:

You might've seen it. It got almost four hundred boosts and reached beyond Mastodon to reddit and even 4chan. I even saw an edit with a spinning frog on the left screen. I knew the post would go down well with tech.lgbt but I never expected it to blow up the way it did.

I tried my best to express succinctly exactly what it is I miss about BIOS motherboards in the age of UEFI in this picture. I think looking at a logo and spinner/loading bar is boring compared to seeing a bunch of status messages scroll up the screen indicating hardware being activated, services being started up and tasks being run. It takes the soul out of a computer when it hides its computeriness.

I think a lot of people misunderstood my post as expressing a practical preference over an aesthetic one, and there was at least a few thinking this was a Linux fanboy post, which it certainly is not. So here's the long version of a meme I made lol.

Stages

I remember using two family desktop computers before moving over a family laptop. One ran Windows XP and the other ran Windows 7. Both were of the BIOS era, which meant that when booting, they displayed some status information in white on black with a blinking cursor before loading the operating system. On the XP machine, I spent longer in this liminal space because it dual-booted. I needed to select Windows XP from a list of Linux distros when booting it.

I've always liked this. Even as a very little kid I had some sense that what I was seeing was a look back into the history of computing. It felt like a look "behind the scenes" of the main GUI-based operating system into something more primitive. This made computers even more interesting than they already were, to me.

Sequences

The way old computers booted was appealing to my love of all kinds of fixed, repeating sequences. I never skip the intros to TV shows and I get annoyed when my local cinema forgets to show the BBFC ratings card immediately before the film, even though doing so is totally pointless and it's kinda strange that they do that in the first place. Can you tell I'm autistic?

Booting the windows 7 computer would involve this sequence of distinct stages: BIOS white text -> Windows 7 logo with "starting windows" below in the wrong aspect ratio -> switch to correct resolution with loading spinner on the screen -> login screen.

Skipping any would feel wrong to me because it's missing a step in one of those fixed sequences I love so much. And every computer that doesn't start with BIOS diagnostic messages is sadly missing that step to my brain, and feels off.

Low-level magic

I am extremely curious about how things work and always have been, so little reminders when using a computer that it has all sorts of complex inner workings and background processes going on are very interesting to me, so I prefer boot sequences that expose the low-level magic going on and build up to the GUI. Starting in the GUI immediately presents it as fundamental, as if it's not just a pile of abstractions on top of one another. It feels deceptive.

There may actually be some educational and practical value in computers booting in verbose mode by default. Kids using computers for the first time get to see that there's a lot more to their computer than the parts they interact with (sparking curiosity!), and if a boot fails, technicians are better able to diagnose the problem over a phone call with a non-technical person.

Absolute boot sequence perfection

There's still one last thing missing from my family computer's boot sequence, and that's a brief flicker of garbage on screen as VRAM is cleared out. Can't have everything I guess. Slo-mo example from The 8-Bit Guy here:

#computers #opinion #boot sequences #computing history #meme

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coraniaid · 4 months

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🔥 about tara

OK, so for the record I like Tara a lot. She's definitely in my top ten favorite characters. I am still in the early stages of a (painfully slow) Season 4 rewatch, and one of the things keeping me going is the thought I will get to see Tara again soon.

I think Tara's death is very sad and I can understand why Amber Benson felt poorly treated by the way it was handled (especially with the stupid gimmick of adding Tara to the opening credits just for that episode). On balance -- and especially given the context arround her introduction and her relationship with Willow -- I think that it was probably a fairly significant mistake from a writing perspective for at least a couple of reasons. (It's not really a good look to kill off half of your show's groundbreaking lesbian couple, whatever the context, and the writers didn't really seem to have any sort of coherent plan for what to do with Willow afterwards.)

But it kind of irks me when I see it described as an obvious case of the Bury Your Gays trope because ... it really isn't?

Tara doesn't die because she's gay: she doesn't die shortly after coming out, she isn't targeted because she's a lesbian; she isn't, in fact, targeted directly at all. Her death is basically just a stupid random accident. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Neither is Tara treated as more expendable by the narrative because she's a lesbian. By the time Tara dies, Buffy (and the Angel spin-off) had already killed off (among other recurring and at least occasionally sympathetic characters) Jenny Calendar, Kendra, Larry, Doyle, Forrest, Joyce and Darla. By the time both shows end the writers will have also killed off Jonathan, Anya, Cordelia, Fred and Wesley. Buffy isn't quite a show where Anyone Can Die, but certainly it's one where anyone can die if they're not in the Core Four (and if they're not vampires Buffy has slept with, in which case they can die for a little bit but they'll get over it).

And nor is there some sense that Tara's death affects the rest of the group any less than any of the others on the above list. On the contrary, other than Joyce, who is the protagonist of the show's actual mother and had been a presence in the show for almost twice as long as Tara was, she gets mourned for longer and by more people than anyone else on that previous list. (Xander and Willow's supposed childhood friend Jesse gets mourned so little I couldn't even bring myself to add him to the list.)

Yes, the show is far from perfect. It definitely is, at various times, racist, sexist and homophobic, often in ways that cannot at all be dimissed as the show being a product of its time. I think you could certainly argue that Tara was a victim of the show's persistent narrative misogyny (Willow's first girlfriend, Giles's first girlfriend on the show, and both of Xander's girlfriends die, but neither Oz nor Riley die and neither Angel or Spike die in a way that matters).

But Tara's death isn't automatically an example of the Bury You Gays trope just because she dies and was a lesbian. Even though, as I said, it was a probably the wrong decision for the character and the show and I wish it hadn't happened.

Oh, also, a bonus hot take:

In a hypothetical Season 7 where Tara survived, I really don't think I can see her relationship with Willow lasting long. The show sort of forgets about it in favor of advancing the subplot in which Willow becomes a magic addict after her Evil Friend Amy takes her to see a drug dealer and then forces her to relapse, but .... Willow's supposed magic addiction isn't why she and Tara broke up. They broke up because Willow was messing with Tara's memories and consent, well before she'd ever met Rack or de-ratted Amy. Willow hadn't actually done anything to address the things that made her take Tara for granted and consider herself entitled to mess with her mind with magic at all. She'd been sad about the relationship ending, sure, and Tara missed Willow, but ... Willow was absolutely the same person who did this to Tara.

The show doesn't bother to address the actual reason she and Tara broke up, preferring the cheap shock death just when they'd gotten back together again. But after a while I think Tara would have realized this, and without the shock of losing Tara in the first place I think Willow would find it very hard not to fall back into her old habits. Habits which have nothing to do with Amy's supposed malign influence. After all, Willow was trying to use magic to change her best friend's mental state without his consent as early as Lovers Walk, a full year before she ever met Tara. And when she and Oz broke up that same season she very quickly started talking about wishing she had a way to "make [him] trust me". This is much more a part of who Willow is than any addiction to evil magic.

#btvs #asks #thanks #I have a horrible feeling I've posted something a lot like this before #sorry if I'm repeating myself #(rereading this before I post I just want to note that I really like Willow too despite what the last couple of paragraphs might imply)

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ordinaryschmuck · 5 months

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What I Thought About The Owl House Pilot

Huh. Never thought I’d get to do this again, but oh well.

Salutations, random people on the internet! I’m an Ordinary Schmuck! I write stories and reviews and draw comics and cartoons.

And, above all else, I LOVE talking about The Owl House. I have an entire masterpost dedicated to talking about every single episode of the show and I’m halfway through a six-part review discussing everything that I love about it (Part Four's coming when it’s done. Let’s say…late June. Early July at the latest). I figured that after I’d finished that whole deal, I wouldn’t have anything left to talk about when it came to this series. Then, out of nowhere, the show’s original pilot leaked online…Sort of. It’s just an animatic with the show’s original voice cast voicing MOST of the lines, but it’s very much the pilot episode. It’s just not a finished product and I won’t share a link because I don’t think it’s exactly…legal. BUT I will at least share my thoughts about it because, well…Look at my blog. The Owl House has become the BIG THING that I obsess over for a reason and I love that I got to see what’s basically an alternate version of the show that I love. What do I mean?

Well, a pilot is MUCH different from a first episode. Where the first episode is meant to sell the show to the audience, a pilot is meant to sell it to a STUDIO. It can happen at any point of the story or act as the show’s first episode. Just as long as it shows off the characters, concepts, and tone, a studio can look at it, greenlight it, and allow the show to continue, BUT with some extra notes. Sometimes, those notes can change the rest of the series where others can keep the pilot good enough to stay canon. Some best examples off the top of my head are the pilots for Regular Show and Rick and Morty. You can tell that not much changed from the pilots of those shows and what was initially pitched, but there are clear changes in tone, animation, and even personality. Skips sounds a little more illiterate and Benson being more informed of the consequences of something as simple as rock, paper, scissors in the Regular Show pilot and Rick is noticeably more reckless and unprepared for situations in the Rick and Morty pilot. Nothing is set in stone with a pilot episode, even the ones that are canon. For the case of The Owl House, it’s pilot is no exception. A lot of it is just the same as “A Lying Witch and A Warden” at least in terms of plot and themes, but there are so many changes that show off what the series COULD HAVE been instead of what it was. How different? Well, let’s go through it all.

But real quick, I’m not going to do the “Like/Dislike” format I’ve done for previous reviews. Instead, I’m going to look through this pilot, note the changes it has, and share my thoughts on them. There’s also going to be a few spoilers to what happens in this pilot, so if you haven’t checked it out then I suggest giving it a watch wherever you can find it. It really is interesting to get a peak into what’s basically an alternate version of my favorite show.

With that said, let’s get into it.

Some Things Stayed the Same: Like I said, it’s basically an altered version of “A Lying Witch and A Warden.” The plot is that Eda uses Luz to get King back his “crown of power,” with some bits and pieces carrying over. Certain jokes that must have been too funny to get rid of, specific lines of dialogue that hit just the right notes, and some aspects of the characters’ personalities being just the same, proving that they're already perfect the way they are. It’s the changes, however, that makes for something more interesting. For one…

There’s More of an Emphasis on Comedy: As much as I love The Owl House, I’ll always admit that humor isn't its strong suit. It CAN be funny, really funny. But the jokes don’t land as well as something as Gravity Falls or Amphibia. I can say that a part of that could be because Dana Terrace wanted a more serious show, and we definitely get a sense of how serious it could be later in the series. Here, in the pilot, it definitely seems like there was more of an attempt to make the show comedic. King’s crown isn’t in a warden’s cell held within a magical barrier that only a human can get through. It’s in a Principal’s high school, locked in a human locker that Eda and King treat as something devious. Amity’s friends aren’t preppy mean girls who seem like they could cause conflict to Luz and her friends. They’re characters used for jokes who are amazed by Luz standing up to Lilith. There’s less of an edge and more of a lean towards cutesy fun, waiting until the very end to reveal something heavy. To me, it makes the pilot feel MORE like a Gravity Falls clone than the final product. Because while Gravity Falls has its serious moments, it makes it clear that it was a comedy first, both in the pilot and final product. Any moment of heart or drama was overshadowed by one hilarious joke after the other. Now, “A Lying Witch and A Warden” had a lot of jokes too, but there were also these moments that hinted at something more. You have the oppressive looking prison, the grand beam of light hiding human collectibles, a crazy chase from a threatening looking warden. And yes, the reveal that Warden Wrath was trying to go out with Eda was hilarious, but a warden who tortures a prisoner for speaking her truth gives a hint of how dark this world can be. Meanwhile, a principal sending a student to demon detention feels more like a joke, exaggerating how strict some principals can be.

And keep in mind, I’m not complaining about the pilot leaning more towards comedy. I actually laughed a lot more with it than I did with “A Lying Witch and A Warden.” I’m just trying to explain how the tone is definitely going for something different than the full series. It might have that darker twist in the end, but even that is nothing more than a surprise. I'll get into why later, but while it has darker implications, it doesn't detract from the fun times to be had. Not by much. From what I can gather from the pilot, it’s definitely going for a series with goofy, fun adventures with a bit of heart to it. It’s just missing that personal touch that’s in The Owl House. One good example of how?

There’s Not Even a MENTION of Camila: Before you say anything, this has nothing to do with me being Camila’s number one fan, to the point where I almost made a side-blog dedicated to her (I really should get on that, though…)

I bring up this change because Camila grounds the story in “A Lying Witch and A Warden.” She draws Luz close to reality and is the first thing that comes to Luz’s mind when in real danger, saying, “If I die, my mom will kill me!” More than that, though, Camila is the one real connection Luz has to the human realm. She has no friends nor adventures, but Luz always has Camila, with even the first episode hinting that. So when Luz starts getting herself into trouble or choosing to lie and stay in the Boiling Isles, it lets the audience get ready for the inevitable drama that could unfold when Luz finally tells Camila everything. By removing Camila, though, the anticipation of Luz telling her mom goes away with her. At least, it tells ME that there’s less of a worry about Luz basically running away from home. Either this version of the show is holding off from that for a future episode or that Luz and Camila’s relationship isn’t close enough where it matters. This is speculation, of course, but I still stand by that a sense of something personal with Luz is lost for the sake of having fun and epic fantasy adventures with entertaining characters. It’s still good and entertaining, and the pilot does offer something else that’s personal, but it’s not the same as The Owl House we all fell in love with. Though, it’s notable that our main cast stayed the same.

Luz, Eda, and King: Overall, I’d say that these three, personality wise, didn’t change much. King’s probably the least altered, being the exact same character he was in Season One aside from MAYBE having a design change (It’s hard to tell through storyboards). As for Luz and Eda, they’re more or less the same. There’s a BIG change with Eda (That I’ll get to later), but her devil-may-care attitude is very much the same, as well as her snark and soft nature towards Luz and King. It’s her magic that gets the real boost, being able to do more like teleport across the Isles and turn into a…softer version of the Owl Beast at will. It’s pretty cool to see the power that this alternate Owl Lady has. And then there’s Luz, who’s still the lovable weirdo we all know. Though, this version seems a lot more dim and I’m not really a fan. How does she mistakenly give a book report in geometry class? How did it take seeing Amity’s witch ears to realize that she belonged in the demon realm? Luz had her dumb moments in the show too, but not to this extent. There was still a sense of maturity and cognitive understanding that made Luz feel like someone that seemed weird but intelligent enough to think herself out of a situation. This Luz seems more weird and focused on using brute force on a problem. In a way, it makes Pilot!Luz more of an…emotionally driven Star Butterfly. A fun and capable character, but not the same kind I had made several posts and reviews talking about how much I love/personally connected to her. But, comparatively, I guess it IS the most minor change that could be done to this character. Now let’s move onto BIGGER changes.

The Boiling Isles: The look and feel of the Isles remains the same, but the fact that it’s more connected to the Human Realm is intriguing. From what I can tell, the Demon Realm treats traveling to the Human Realm like it’s going to a new country. You visit, make some memories, and, for some, send your children over to be a foreign exchange student of sorts. Except that racism seems to be encouraged in this regard as the demons and witches don’t see humans worth breathing the same air as them. And some think it’s more than okay to hunt down and kill if one human trespasses into their realm. And the reason for THAT is implied to be Belos’ doing. Er, I mean–*Checks the leaked pitch bible*--Emperor Pupa? Uh…I’ll just stick with Belos.

And that’s extra fascinating to me because Belos being a witch hunter was a major twist that spoke VOLUMES of the kind of people he represents. To find out that this version is more anti-human makes me curious of what kind of angle the show would have taken. Would Belos have been your bare-bones fantasy villain or would the writers find a different way to tackle his symbolism? And is the reason why the Demon Realm is more open up to the Human Realm because he hopes witches and demons can report about their enemies for a possible invasion? There’s no way to know for sure because that version of the story will never come to be, but it’s interesting to think of all the things we COULD have gotten. The same goes for other characters.

Amity: To think, Amity was considered important enough to be included in the original pitch pilot alongside our main trio. It makes sense. Dana Terrace has gone on record in saying that Luz and Amity’s relationship was something she wanted from the get go, so it’s smart to establish it as quickly as possible. Though the route they take is definitely different. Instead of being enemies to lovers, Lumity, in the original pitch, went for the friends to lovers trope…kind of.

Luz, in this version, is someone so desperate for positive attention and respect that she latches onto the first person in school that was nice to her. Except that Amity was looking for some quiet and just so happened to look like she was supporting Luz when telling everyone to leave her alone. It was an act of kindness, but not one done in generosity. It still meant the world to Luz, though, making her go ALL IN with friendship. Only to be a little too forward and creeped Amity out to the point where she was polite enough to say “Thank you,” but you could see the desperation in her eyes to be anywhere but next to Luz. Yet Luz doesn’t see that. She’s still too focused that someone was actually nice to her that she blindly follows Amity into a new world just to return a weird looking passport. Because Amity’s Luz’s friend now and friends do nice things to each other. Only for Amity to accidentally reveal that she couldn’t care less for Luz and shatter her hopes and dreams in one fell swoop.

In a weird way, I’d say Luz and Amity are off on a better first impression here than in the original series. There’s no attempted dissections or witch’s duels. Just…Amity trying to be polite in Luz’s presence only to act like your typical mean girl when she THINKS Luz isn’t around. Tossing away the drawing is harsh for sure, but here’s the interesting thing: Amity didn’t know she was talking to Luz at that moment. She didn’t even get rid of the drawing until someone drew (haha) attention to it. If anything, it’s worth noting that Amity still kept the drawing on her. Almost like, despite being weirded out by Luz, Amity felt as though the drawing WAS cute and only got rid of it when she thought someone would question her for having it. Can’t have that Little Miss Perfect status shatter over something some human gave her.

Am I reaching as a Lumity shipper? Oh, most certainly yes. But we all know the inevitable conclusion between these two. We know where they’re headed. Dana has been pretty adamant about wanting it from the start and this pilot sets the groundwork well. Knowing where these two will end up, it’s easy to make connections and hypothesize what means what. Plus, look at the face of shock and amazement on Amity’s face when she sees Luz standing up to Lilith. That looks like a girl who’s…feeling things for this human weirdo. They’re not off to a ROARING start, but I can see how things could improve between Luz and Amity. And who knows, maybe this version of these two might end up dating sooner with how quickly they seem interested in each other. Again, am I reaching? Most definitely, but I went without any new Lumity content for over a year so LET ME REACH!

The point I’m trying to make is that this version of Amity definitely seems a lot more chill and polite at the start, even though it’s likely she still has issues of even being FRIENDS with a human. But not everyone starts off polite.

Lilith: Crazy to think that Lilith started out as…basically a one-off villain like Warden Wrath. At least, that’s what I gathered from the pilot. The pitch bible hints that there COULD be more to her, but at the same time she gets sent to a fire dimension and loses a hand. That’s one-off villain energy if I’ve ever seen it. But if she is meant to be something more, I would love to see what differences could come of her being the headmaster of Hexside instead of Bump and how she could either develop into someone better through Luz’s influence as a student or regress into someone worse as she makes Luz’s school life a living hell. Whatever could come from her, it was kind of fun seeing Lilith act as more of a threat with her…out of nowhere ability to turn into a bat monster. It’s a pretty cool design and I love that it was brought out due to Eda’s constant pestering, proving that Lilith is still the same insecure nut that I love. And it is pretty great that this pilot confirmed that Lilith really did dye her hair to look more serious. You CAN’T tell me that’s not why the Lilith we know ditched the curly red hair.

But that’s about it when it comes to changes towards characters and locations. Let’s talk about the potential differences in the ongoing story.

Luz Stays Trapped Instead of Choosing to Stay: I mean, technically she chose to stay by breaking that key for no reason, but that’s more of a consequence of not thinking things through. She didn’t NEED to break the key, Luz could have just as easily pulled it out. Instead, she kicked the dang thing, leaving herself trapped in this new world. And it’s here that I would like to once again point out how this makes Pilot!Luz different and what’s lost by not including Camila. The Luz WE know would have been more careful. She always felt like someone who fought smarter, not harder, even in that first episode. Luz didn’t fight Wrath head on, she rallied a prison riot that distracted him long enough for her to hit a firework ball into his mouth. She’s intelligent and resourceful, where this one…kind of is? It was smart to send Lilith to the fire dimension, but again, not a great plan to break the key. Plus, without Camila, this doesn’t feel like as big of a deal as it could have been. Camila was the first person in Luz’s mind as she destroyed the portal door in the Season One finale. In the pilot, with no Camila, it feels like a non-sacrifice or even that big of a deal. She’s stuck, sure, but Luz doesn’t really seem to care that much. She feels happy being with Eda and King and doesn’t seem to be in that big of a rush to get home. Plus, it’s not exactly complicated to get back. There was a whole line of portal doors in the beginning that Luz could potentially sneak through and there’s not yet an established cannon that makes it seem like getting a new key would be difficult or even complicated. Once more, it gives the impression that this version of The Owl House would be focused less on personal stakes and more like giving Luz that fantasy adventure she’s always been craving for. It would make for a fun show, but not the SAME show. However, it is worth noting that there could be some potential drama. Especially for one twist that was a JOLT to my system.

EDA WORKS FOR THE EMPEROR?!: WHAT?!

I’ll admit, I feel like the reason why this is so shocking is because of the Eda I know and the Emperor I learned to fear. I mean, Eda, the woman who would sooner eat her own fist before even CONSIDERING helping Belos, even before the witch hunter business, was originally meant to HELP him. Of all the changes that the series could have made, this was by far the biggest. Everything that I thought to be constant turned out to be a lie and I was NOT prepared for it!

But again, the reason why I got that big of a reaction is because it goes against everything I knew about Eda. If this was my first introduction to her, it’d be less of a shocking twist and more of a…hook. Like how Invincible’s first episode (Don’t watch if you’re a baby) ends with a character you THOUGHT you could trust doing this intensely dark thing. The rest of the season is leading you to figure out WHY this was done and how the other characters would react, making you want to see more as the show inevitably leads up to this big conclusion that changes everything you once knew. The same applies here, with the reveal making me wonder why Eda would do this, how long she’s been doing it, how it will affect her relationship with Luz, and whether or not it’d be an easy fix. And much like the ending of Invincible’s first episode (Seriously, NOT meant for babies), this hook makes me interested in wanting to see what comes next. Except I never will know because that came from a version of The Owl House that will never exist.

The pilot is interesting because it shows me what The Owl House COULD have been. I wouldn’t say that it’s better than what we got or even that it’s a better first impression than “A Lying Witch and A Warden.” It’s definitely FUNNIER, I’ll give it that, but it doesn’t make the original pitch better, it makes it different. Everything looks the same and sounds the same, but the overall feel of this pilot makes it something that would have had a different story, tone, and ideas on how to develop these characters. Would I have liked it? Absolutely. It seems like a fun time. But that doesn’t mean I like the show we got any less. This was more like…getting a peek into an alternate universe where a show I already love would have been vastly different. And after over a year without any new Owl House content aside from stuff that fans have made, this was a very pleasant surprise that leaves me excited for the NEW fan content that springs from all this.

But that’s enough talking about a show that could have been made. Time to get back to a series that came into existence and I still love so much. See you all then as you all milk this gift that the internet has given you.

#the owl house #luz noceda #camila noceda #eda clawthorne #king clawthorne #amity blight #lilith clawthorne #the owl house pilot #what i thought about #the owl house reviews

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thenarator · 1 year

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AU of Bakugou has consequences but Izuku never gets OFA and becomes a vigilante

the vigilante thing threw me off for a bit, because i don't do a lot of straight vigilante aus, but then i remembered this one i came up with years ago when i was first getting into bnha:

bakugou does get into ua. actually, he gets ofa. once he graduates it only takes him a year to break into the top ten (not quite hawks' record but not bad either). by his second year as a hero, he's already on track to become the next all might. a lot of experts are saying its only a matter of time.

people have their misgivings about this. he's facing a lot of criticism for collateral damage and attitude problems, especially with younger fans. some reporters who don't make a habit of towing the party line worry about the example he's setting. bakugou doesn't care.

all might has his misgivings as well. he basically picked bakugou to be his successor after he won the sports fest his first year, thinking that his time was running out and he needed to make a choice. he was despondent and had given up on finding the ideal person he truly admired, but the more violent bakugou becomes, the more he feels he made the wrong decision.

izuku didn't immediately take up vigilanteism when he got rejected from ua. mostly he needed an outlet for his frustration with how unfair the world was, so he took up martial arts. when he was in college though, there were a lot of incidents in the area where he lived, and heroes didn't patrol there. he started going out on "leisurely walks" after dark, dealing with any crime he came across, and became some thing of a local legend.

that local legend becomes a not-so-local-legend when izuku accidentally stumbles on a huge trigger manufacturing operation and busts it wide open.

additional headcanons under the cut

look, it's not his fault the factory blew up. that isn't even what he got famous for. he was just trying to sabotage the equipment while he rescued a bunch of little kids that were getting used as test subjects. it's only because he got caught on camera leading them all out of the burning building, one particularly adorable little girl clutched in his arms, that anyone even knows he was there. the fact that he was silhouetted against an explosion in the background made it look like ten time more badass than it was. he was just trying not to drop her.

obviously, he gets arrested for vigilanteism, but he's been through that song and dance before. vigilanteism is classified as a form of illegal quirk use, and he doesn't have a quirk. ergo, he cannot be a vigilante. the police are still scratching their heads when they have to let him go, but he walks. the gaggle of reporters waiting outside are impressed.

the story spreads like wildfire. izuku becomes an overnight sensation. he gets given a hero name -- the green shadow -- and he has like four different fanclubs inside of a week. there's calls for him to be given a hero license, or at least some kind of award.

he keeps doing vigilante work, obviously. first some underground heroes ask him for help with a case, then a support company gives him a suit (for "cosplay purposes" obviously) and pretty soon he's doing actual patrols and meeting fans on the street. he thought giving a few radio interviews (on present mic's show! he's living the dream!) would make it all die down, but people are hungry for more of him. in just a few months, he's a household name. the calls for him to be legitimized increase.

the hpsc ignore all of that. quirkless people can't be heroes. izuku was probably just in the right place at the right time to be in that picture. they don't need to do anything, or acknowledge him in any way. that would be counterproductive, and send the wrong message to the public.

the public disagree.

the thing about the hero rankings is that not every individual person can rank every individual hero. there's thousands of heroes in japan, so even if approval rating data was gathered via website, it would be impractical for people to select from a list of choices. as such, the forms are write-in. people are given five blank spaces, and told to list the heroes they approve of most.

when approval ratings for the next billboard chart are being collected, the hero with the number one approval rating is the green shadow.

the hpsc are furious, but find that, according to their own rules, they can't actually do anything about it. they have to give him the ranking, even though he's not really a hero. a hero is defined as someone who works within the justice system and uses their natural abilities to stop crime and protect citizens, after all. technically, izuku fits that definition.

this is when bakugou becomes aware of what's been going on. he honestly didn't even register the green shadow as being a thing until he was told he got the second highest approval rating. obviously izuku isn't on the payroll, so he doesn't have a "cases resolved" stat, but being the number one most approved hero in japan is enough to get him to number 10. bakugou is pretty pissed.

he gets even more pissed when he finds out who the green shadow actually is.

bakugou does what he always does when deku gets to much attention: he goes to put the nerd in his place. unfortunately the only time he can find deku reliably is during a patrol, so he has to settle for a very public call out. he's fine with that, and fine with having witnesses while he berates deku for trying to be a hero without a quirk. he's fine being recorded while he picks a fight with deku on a crowded street. he's even fine when the cops who come to break up the fight let deku go after they drag him away. little punk's not worth arresting.

he's less fine when his approval rating takes a last minute nosedive, knocking him out of the number one spot he should have been claiming this chart, and relegating him to sixth place. lower than he's been since his debut.

it kind of goes from there. izuku keeps doing increasingly badass things. his approval rating keeps going up. the underground heroes he works with start listing him as a consultant, so he even starts getting paid and has a record of his resolved cases. over the next three charts his rank keeps climbing. first number ten, then number eight, then number seven, then jumping up to four. after two years walking the fine line between vigilante and hero, he's at number two and knocking on number one.

bakugou, meanwhile, continues to decline. he keeps getting into very public fights with deku, and while he considers himself the "winner" in each fight he notices that deku is focused not so much on him but on keeping people out of the way and minimizing damage to their surroundings. people are praising deku for "handling things so well" and "preventing collateral damage" and they're criticizing bakugou for equally stupid things. his approval rating keeps dropping. his resolved cases are dropping too, as he spends more time fighting with deku and doing public appearances to try and salvage his approval rating. his rank drops lower and lower.

the chart where bakugou drops out of the top ten is the same chart where izuku makes number one.

all might reaches out to izuku, at that point. he says he regrets giving ofa to bakugou, and that if he had the choice he would take it back. he says izuku is much worthier recipient. izuku says he wouldn't take it if he had the chance; he likes being a quirkless hero, even if he had to find a loophole to do it. however, the fact that bakugou has ofa, and is using it so recklessly, is becoming a problem. all might asks what they can do, and izuku says he has a plan.

all might throws his weight around to pressure the hpsc into giving izuku a hero license. honestly, it's kind of absurd that their number one isn't a real pro. they should be ashamed it took them this long. the hpsc cave and plan a huge public ceremony to make izuku officially a hero. maybe once the people are satisfied on that front they'll lose interest.

obviously, bakugou has to crash the ceremony and try to kill deku.

izuku does something pretty sneaky at that point. for the firs time in their professional rivalry, he gives bakugou his undivided attention. he starts talking trash, baiting bakugou, goading him to further anger. finally he drops his ultimate bomb: telling bakugou he's only worth anything because of ofa, and that if he can't win with the quirk he was born with his victory doesn't count. bakugou takes the bait, and hands ofa back over to all might like he's taking off his gloves.

bakugou loses, obviously.

after that, things wrap up pretty nicely. bakugou goes to prison for trying to kill someone, finally. izuku becomes number one, and a proper hero for all the world to see. all might gives ofa to someone who really deserves it, one of the kids izuku rescued from the trigger factory. izuku's first hero friend, eraserhead, introduces him to his student, logical ruse aka hitoshi shinsou, and it's only eighteen months before they're planning a wedding. everyone lives happily ever after.

except bakugou.

#Anonymous #bnha #quirkless hero izuku #quirkless hero deku #antibakugou #anti bakugou #bnha au

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thommi-tomate · 9 months

Text

Holger Badstuber Column

Hello football fans!

New Year's Eve is just around the corner and the Bundesliga presents us with a few nice surprises when we look at the table. Bayer 04 Leverkusen with coach Xabi Alonso in first place, VfB Stuttgart in third, Union Berlin close to the relegation zone, BVB 15 points behind the leaders - I watched a lot of games, I was at the Allianz Arena and visited my former club in Stuttgart.

I've seen good football, exciting football, thrilling football. This season offers much of what I have loved about this sport for decades. Time for an interim assessment with four highlights and three weak points, and of course I won't let the championship prediction get away from me. How do you think the race for the championship will go? You can read my assessment in the text below. First the highlights.

Leverkusen enjoys winning

First place for Leverkusen is no surprise in principle. Coach Xabi Alonso's team plays consistently and has not yet been defeated. The style of play is clear, structured, sometimes ruthless. It's well-rounded, harmonious. It shows me that the coach's idea is being implemented consistently.

What's more, they have slowly taken a liking to winning. They're really up for it! That makes them extra dangerous for the competition. With his skills, Florian Wirtz stands out for me among a number of top players such as Boniface, Xhaka, Hofmann, Frimpong and Grimaldo.

The star, however, remains Alonso. As a player, he used to have everything under control on the six, but now he has managed to impart his knowledge as a coach. He combines competence with authority. Xabi Alonso will be coaching a really big team sooner rather than later.

Soothing calm in the Bayern environment

The leak at Säbener Strasse seems to have been plugged. Hardly any disagreements or disputes have been reported. For the club, this is a welcome development after the constant unrest surrounding the club in recent years

A number of positions have been filled - the decision to bring Christoph Freund on board as sports director was absolutely the right one. He is a good man with a good eye for talent and experience in developing players. Together with coach Thomas Tuchel, whom I hold in high esteem, I trust him to set up a framework that is Bayern-like again. The seed has been sown.

Harry Kane: More than a 9

25 goals in 22 competitive games, plus eight assists: WOW, what a record! What makes Harry Kane so valuable is his versatility. Compared to Robert Lewandowski, for example, Kane is not "just" a goalscorer, but also a ten-man who often plays the decisive final ball.

Kane combines the numbers 9 and 10, which is what makes him so dangerous, he also lets himself drop at times and is therefore less tangible for defenders. Every cent of this immense investment has already paid off for FC Bayern. I can only congratulate him once again on this transfer.

VfB Stuttgart: A very strong block

I once experienced how much the region lives and shakes when VfB plays, both as an active professional and as a guest in the stadium this season. These fans, this club and its environment deserve a stable season. The people in charge speak with one voice, the squad has been super strengthened in terms of positions with Stiller, Mittelstädt and Undav. Coach Sebastian Hoeneß has established a gallant power football that perfectly suits this dynamic club.

The players also look fresh and fit. With keeper Nübel, the back four and the two back sixes, there is a very strong block, a real unit. That creates consistency and reliability and, last but not least, defensive balance. I hope that VfB don't lose any top players in the winter and simply see the season through in this constellation. Then at least fifth place is certain!

Squad gaps at FCB: Transfers are needed for titles

First of all, a big compliment from me to Aleksandar Pavlovic. I liked what I saw of him. He has potential. He'll get his chance to really gain a foothold at Bayern in the future. But he's not the solution to achieve the goals now. Experience is the trump card in this position.

If FCB still want to win titles, which I logically assume they will, they need to bring in quality reinforcements in the winter. A physically strong, tall, simple-playing six-man and a right-back are urgently needed. To a certain extent, the season hinges on the winter transfer window. I can't say whether Bayern will be able to close the gaps in the squad. We'll have to be surprised.

Too fast, too much at Union

It's a bit of a shame, but it was also a bit predictable. Triple the workload, mixing it up with transfers, that's what messed up the team. It even got to the point where coach Urs Fischer had to go.

I didn't expect that and that Union would slip so far down the table. I still like the club, it has established itself in the Bundesliga with a well thought-out style of play and unity. Recently, it seemed as if the "Irons" had regained their composure. Please keep it up!

Köln's fall from grace

It had already become apparent in the summer that coach Steffen Baumgart's energy-sapping philosophy was continuing to wear thin. Added to this were crucial departures such as Ellyes Skhiri. Now the team has not only lost its greed, but also its balance. The quality is no longer sufficient.

Baumgart is now gone and his successor will not get any new players because the International Court of Arbitration for Sport has confirmed FIFA's ban on transfers for two transfer periods. Fear of relegation is rampant in Cologne - and rightly so.

And who will be champion?

In January, many professionals from the Bundesliga will be at the Africa Cup and the Asian Championships. One team that will be particularly hard hit is Bayer 04 Leverkusen. They could be missing up to six players. At Bayern, Minjae Kim and Noussair Mazraoui are likely to be traveling. Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting was surprisingly not nominated for Cameroon's national team.

Depending on which team compensates better for the losses, the second half of the season will start with a boost. There will be a duel between Leverkusen and Bayern right up to the last matchday. But FC Bayern will always be my favorite to win the championship.

#holger badstuber #xabi alonso #bayer 04 leverkusen #harry kane #fc bayern münchen #vfb stuttgart #fc union berlin #fc koln #holger badstuber columm

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enlighten3d · 24 days

Text

i know i said id write this post four hours ago but i had to do the merge dragons event. anyway.

WINGS ! how the fuck would they be treated on smps where theres pvp? (this is an au where Everyone has wings. and talons but well get into that Later. this is about the wings sdhkjgl)

(context post btw: here)

they are very much a weak point in combat, id saying. if you fuck someones wings up, they are done for. cant fly away, permanent damage. and theres not many ways to defend them (beyond putting armour on the flesh and bone part of the wing - which would do a lot more than it sounds like!). so i do think that it would be social taboo to go for someones wings in battle.

but even if it is social taboo.. accidents happen, and it works differently on different servers, right? and thats what this post is about ! focusing on smps where theres actual Combat (sorry hermitcrafters and kww collab fans)

first off, my beloved.. the dream smp. honestly! i think people would NOT go for the wings. there may be wars and actually genuinely fucked up stuff, but going for the wings in a fight is taking it too far. accidents have DEFINITELY happened tho, what with the sheer amount of withers and explosions. like phils wings being fucked up! yes i know thats a canon thing but im using it to prove my point here. the EXCEPTION to this 'people not intentionally going for the wings' thing is, well. c!dream. the fucker would INSTANTLY go for the wings whenever he has an opportunity. its a weak point, of course he'd abuse the fuck out of it, like. its impossible to expect anything otherwise.

lifesteal!! this ones fun to me because i think theyd have Concrete Rules on this. like they already do! from off the top of my head, i remember that netherite armour is banned, for example. i think going for the wings would just be... another thing thats banned. and no matter how deep into the Lore that people get, those rules are GEEENERALLYYYYY followed. the wings one for sure is. it may be the dEaDlIeSt SeRvEr, but theyre all there willingly. getting their wings fucked up is not something ANYONE wants. i dont know enough about lifesteal to pinpoint specific times that Accidents wouldve happened but! whatever. this is one rule that they always follow i think. (please dont kill me for this one if you disagree, i havent watched enough lifesteal)

now the life series... naturally, going for the wings is banned. ..but only nominally, really. all bets are off when youre on red, right? i really dont think there could be anything to stop people on red from going for peoples wings in fights. i mean, depending on your interpretation of the life series (as in, does being on red actually make someone Bloodthirsty like most common fanon, or is it just a Thing that lets someone attack others?), this can change, but i like the first one, so with that in mind... yeah nothing would stop people on red from going for the wings. this only gets MORE INTERESTING if you believe life series and hermitcraft to be connected in some way... with the inevitable wing injuries that would come from the life series, if they just... go back to hermitcraft and other servers afrterwards... if those injuries are permanent (which i do believe they are), then... oh that would be Something hehe. keeping this in my back pocket a fic idea, yall are free to yoink it.

and last but not least, bcs i dont actually watch that many smps (esp not with fighting) or whatever... unstable universe. pretty much what i said for lifesteal! like! i dont see any reason why itd be any different. yes unstableverse doesnt have Rules like lifesteal, but... theyre mostly the same people. if they can follow that Rule in lifesteal, combined with the social taboo thing, i think that they wouldnt really go for the wings. thats just a line you dont cross. (..also wemmbu did canonically yoink Most of the elytras on the whole server at one point, and in this context i think it would be funny if he just somehow managed to disable flight for a while, but thats a whole other thing unrelated to wings in combat lmao)

ANYWAY YEAH THATS THAT. I HAVE SOOOO MANY THOUGHTS ABOUT HOW WINGS IN COMBAT WOULD ACTUALLY WORK. might write a post about that.

this is all headcanons !! im making shit up, as always !! o7

#💥#mcytblr #headcanons

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xochilexart · 9 months

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Hello! I love your finished Jyuratodus mini a lot and was wondering how you applied the silver paint? The scales almost looked like bismuth, and I wanna try to emulate that

Thank you!

So for the scales, let's talk supplies first.

The main thing I used are color shifting metallic paints. These paints by Vallejo are neat, because the painted object appears to change color depending on the angle the light hits them. Here is a video showing off all the paints in Vallejo's line. Highly recommend at least skipping through to check out the effects!

youtube

There is also a brand called Turbo Dork with a lot of cool paints that have the same effect! Sword n Steele has another similar video going over some of the paints in the Turbo Dork line.

Finally you'll need gloss primer, or some gloss varnish. Shiny!

So in my specific case, I used these two colors (I think. I have many colors and I don't remember exactly lol).

So the key thing is that for these paints to work best, they must be applied on top of solid black. Ideally a glossy solid black!

Sadly I did not take progress pics, but I can describe the steps briefly. Note that I used an airbrush for each of these steps.

I primed the whole figure in solid black. I did not have gloss primer on hand, so I used a matte black

Then I applied some gloss varnish on the whole thing. Got it nice and shiny

I applied the Green Silver Blue to the whole figure. I made sure to get full coverage on the body, so we could see the color shifting from any angle.

Finally, I applied a few layers of the Orange Violet just from the top. I wanted a little more color variation, and I thought having another color just partially there would be cool. And I think the final result was pretty successful!

I then painted the rest of the non-metallic colors using some pretty common techniques, both with an airbrush and a regular brush. I did give the scales a gloss varnish at the end as well.

Now if you don't have an airbrush, these paints still work but you have to be a little extra careful. The main thing is you want to apply thin layers carefully and slowly. You want to avoid pooling in the recesses, because the particles that make the effect will get stuck there. Here is an example I did with a regular paintbrush

You can see how the mushroom cap is already having the blue to violet color shift effect. I want to say I did about three to four layers of the paint after painting it with a glossy black.

I can recommend this video by Dana Howl for another example of how to use these paints. I also found this video by Kris Belleau where he does a quick demo on applying a Turbo Dork paint with a regular brush.

Hope all that helps!

#mini painting #miniature painting #asks #xochiminis

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theghostpinesmusic · 5 months

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youtube

And now it's time for some music from the other drug band I'm obsessed with!

(To be clear, it's my impression that the Goose guys don't tend to indulge much while performing at least, and Phish famously almost stopped being Phish due to Trey's pre-sobriety drug issues. So it's not really either band that does the drugs, but...oh man, the fans definitely pull their weight.)

Anyway, darkly humorous, slightly misdirected pejoratives aside, I wanted to focus my next few jam band posts on Goose's Capitol Theatre run from April. These shows were a bit of a surprise, as they were announced two (three?) weeks before they happened, and they happened in the middle of a six-month break from touring that the band initiated after replacing their longtime drummer. I wrote about that and my thoughts about in detail awhile back so I won't rehash those thoughts now, but suffice to say these shows were 1) unexpected and 2) incredibly exciting to watch as they ended up being Cotter's first "live" performances with the band (i.e., not a prerecorded video shared online after the fact). I was particularly excited to see the band plan a four-night run in one venue, as that meant four shows with no repeats, which in turn meant getting to see Cotter really dig into the band's catalog for the first time.

I obviously didn't travel to New York to see these shows in person because I don't sleep on a bed of money, but, needless to say, I tried my best to watch all four of these shows as soon as they became available. I watched the first two live online (including the first one on the same night I got back from a snow camping trip that included a hilariously wild fifteen-degree night spend on an exposed ridge), and then watched nights three and four a few days after they first aired.

I suspect very few people read these posts to begin with (thanks if you do!) and I imagine even fewer of those people are actually interested in watching whole concerts from the bands I write about, but if you are interested, I believe all four full shows are still available to stream for free on the band's YouTube channel, and they're all really good, exemplary shows. I'd start with night one, though, if I had to pick.

So, to get to it: I'm focusing my posts about the run on some highlights that the band's YouTube as well as the Relix YouTube channel (the company responsible for the livestreams in this case) shared afterward. This first one is just sort of an excuse to ramble about the Cap run a bit, as it doesn't really contain any long-form improvisation at all.

I really love the "Seekers On The Ridge" suite, so much so that I've actually written a bit about it before. But I like this version and what Cotter adds to both songs, and since Relix uploaded this to their channel, I figured it was worth a share to kick off this next series of posts.

"Seekers" has two parts, but they're almost always (with a few memorable exceptions) played together. They're a great, collective example of a subgenre of Goose songs that I wrote a bit about in my previous post including these songs:

If you don’t already know, Goose has a whole pile of songs that contribute to a larger mythology/legendarium (think Phish’s Gamehenge, but less goofy). Of the ones I can think of off the top of my head, most of the songs that fit into this sub-oeuvre tend to be more prog-rock-style in their composition, and the lyrics vague, mysterious, and more than a little Joseph-Campbell-esque. I don’t write about most of these tunes because, with the notable exception of “Elmeg The Wise” (which I’m sure I’ll get to someday), they aren’t typically songs that get jammed out.

And yes, for some reason this Relix-sourced video is only in 720p, even thought the shows were definitely streamed in (at least) 1080p. Oh well.

Trevor sounds great on this video, and was one of my favorite parts of this run, even as I went in expecting to pay the most attention to the new guy. I don't know if they just have him up higher in the mix than usual, or if he's leveled up during the band's mini-hiatus. Maybe both?

Also, I've been curious to hear them play this a second time during summer tour because while the band has typically performed the "Seekers On The Ridge Pt. I" chorus with a sort of slow, epic feel (see how they play it the second time through here at 4:13), the first time they play it in this version (at 2:19) they keep the verse's shuffle going. When I first heard this, I (and a bunch of other nerds on the internet) laughed about how Cotter must have missed a cue and played the chorus incorrectly the first time, then "fixed" it the second time through. Watching this video again, now, though, it's obvious that the rest of the band plays this first chorus the same way as Cotter (Rick keeps the same strumming pattern, Jeff keeps shuffling, etc.) and there's no real break to indicate the rest of the band wanted to do something else while he's doing something "wrong." I think they might just play it this way now. Which is interesting, and...fine? Anyway, just a nerd thing I was thinking about while watching. Forensic music nerd-dom!

I've said this before, but the transition between the two parts of the song (starts at 5:55) is one of my favorite Goose musical moments.

I feel like the second part of "Seekers" in particular is a Goose song that Cotter's jazzy touch really stands out on.

Otherwise, as advertised above, this is a pretty standard version of a great song (or pair of songs). The next few posts will be both jammier and wordier, but I think I'll save those for another day. I should probably get some actual work done at some point today.

#goose #music #live music #videos #writing #tour journal #jams #jam band #Youtube

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lemonhemlock · 2 years

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I've been reading through the conversation regarding Aemond and 'unconditional love' and I could 100% see how Aemond could see his relationship with his mother as conditional. Alicent is shown to be struggling mentally, to be frustrated at times with Helaena and exasperated with Aegon. It would only be all too easy for little Aemond to form the opinion that his mother's affection is conditional on him being a prodigal son, on him behaving a certain way.

Not to start a fire, just my thoughts

Hello & don't worry, I'm not going to bite your head off. Different perspectives are welcome! It's good to be able to talk about this universe without going on a rampage every time someone develops a divergent take. Sadly, oftentimes people block each other or become catty whenever someone just as much as deviates slightly from a particular set interpretation.

The main reason I think why Alicent fans get so defensive about her is because society has a really fucked-up, unhealthy obsession with criticizing mothers over every single thing. People who have traversed motherhood constantly complain about the pressure of being perfect and not being able to rise up to society's expection, of the hurt they feel at being regularly castigated and condemned. For a child bride and victim of marital rape, Alicent is shown very little empathy from large swathes of the fandom. She is a bad mother who hates her children and is guilty of setting them against Rhaenyra. That's a very, very uncharitable view, to say the least.

It does my head in to think of how these people actually interact or judge mothers in real life. For example, a lot of them look at young!Alicent desperately trying to comfort a crying Helaena and see that as proof that her daughter hates her or that she hates her daughter. Do they really have the same reaction if they see a desperate mother on the street, close to tears because her baby won't shut up and she doesn't know what else to do to calm her down? Seven hells.

Alicent is obviously in over her head as a child herself with four young children. She is overwhelmed by her new responsibilities as queen and mother and hasn't been allowed to finish her own development as a person. To top that off, she is afraid for their lives. She is going to make mistakes; who wouldn't? Rhaenyra is allowed to interact with motherhood on a vastly different level - she is allowed to explore her sexuality, conceive children on her own terms and is oblivious to the dangers that surround them because of their bastardy. She is, no doubt, going to be a calmer, more indulgent mother overall.

To return to your question, I do believe Aemond has a huge chip on his shoulder and is struggling with self-confidence issues already. To add to his precarious social position, he is also disabled and disfigured. That does a lot of damage to a person's self-esteem. He's not going to have a positive outlook on life and assume the best of people. I can see him sinking so low as to view himself as unbefitting and valueless.

Can that feeling project to his mother? Perhaps. He may very well come to subconsciously believe that, as wretched as he is, he has to overcompensate and become the perfect son & heir in all other aspects, so as to secure everyone's admiration, yes, including his mother's. This can happen no matter how much Alicent assures him that she loves him (she obviously has problems verbalizing this, but doesn't mean she doesn't feel it).

There can also be an element of competition with Aegon - who craves his parents' approval above anything: Aegon gets everything handed over on a platter anyway, but the one thing Aegon can't get (but Aemond can) is Alicent's approval. So he's going to work as hard as possible to ensure that he never loses it and never becomes like Aegon in her eyes. Which is ironic considering what happens with Luke.

But this is all very nuanced stuff and there is a lot more to it than the merciless characterization of Alicent's love being dependent on Aemond doing his homework or something equally trite. Of course there are limits (for all for us!) when it comes to gaining a parent's approval - it's normal human behaviour, not evil or reprehensible. No parent would want their child to drink themselves to death and sleep with nigh every sex worker in the city. Aegon is a very extreme example for someone supposedly not living up to Alicent's exacting standards.

The comparison to Vhagar comes into play here, but is that truly supposed to be a good thing? Vhagar is a dragon, she goes roar, eats people, dracarys. She is not a complex person in a difficult social situation. Of course she doesn't care whether Aemond performs his duties or not, she's a dragon. Does that mean that Aemond should be allowed to act in society in any old way he wants, just because Vhagar would still consider him her rider? Alicent shouldn't be viewed as an evil/person for wanting her children to behave and trying to discipline them when they don't. Equally, it's very understandable why Aemond would find Vhagar's indifference for his level of social conformity very, very attractive and escapist.

We can have debates about the breakdown in communication between parents and children and about what the lack of mental health awareness does to these relationships without vilifying a mother trying her best (and who, herself, is a victim of abuse). Alicent is not wandering around the Red Keep with a university degree in child development and psychology, after all.

Thanks for dropping by!

#ask #anon #alicent hightower #aemond targaryen #alicent & aemond #alicent & her children

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duhragonball · 1 year

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Dragon Ball Super 125

Life comes at you fast.

Man, Vegeta Blue looks way better than Goku Blue. I just want to see Goku get to UI again so we won’t have to put up with this teal color anymore.

Anyway, last time Gohan sacrificed himself to eliminate Dyspo. Now, on the bench, Beerus gives him an attaboy, and at first he calls him Goku’s son, then he corrects himself and calls Gohan by his name.

Gohan stands up and bows to Beerus in appreciation. Everyone stands up an claps for the show of respect... is what I would be saying if this were happening in front of a wrestling crowd. The Mutal Respect Pop is always a classic. Well, I’m marking out for Beerus and Gohan, even if this group is just sitting on their hands.

Oh, right, Goku spares a moment to mark out too. Everyone who says Goku is a bad dad is a big poopie-head. He’s in the middle of a hellacious battle with an unstoppable opponent for the fate of the universe, and he still can’t help but check out his son getting a compliment.

Anyway, let’s move on to the real meat of this story, which is Top fighting 17 and Frieza. Staring off, Top is just fighting 17 alone, and he can’t get past 17′s force field. It’s interesting, because this arc has done a lot to cement the idea that 17 is a green force field specialist. It’s not his only trick, but he does this one a lot in the Tournament of Power, and it’s clearly meant to be his unique thing. Meanwhile, I don’t think we ever see 18 do it, even though a number of video games give her a pink force field, implying that she has the same ability.

Anyway, 17 returns fire when he gets the chance, and Top can’t get clear without eating a hit. From the bench, everyone wonders what 17 is up to, since this appears to be a stalemate. 18 suggests that the stalemate might be the point. 17 won’t tire out, so he can literally do this for the rest of of the tournament. If he can keep Top pinned down, he can run out the clock and Universe 7 will win, since they have four fighters on the stage and U11 only has two.

This is the first real talk of Universe 7 trying to leverage that advantage. We never learn for certain if 17 is seriously considering this, although he probably likes the idea of shaving some second off the clock, if nothing else. After all, Goku tried to ring-out Jiren with misdirection instead of power last episode, so the desperation seems to be setting in with these guys.

But it’s all for naught, as Top manages to see a pattern in 17′s shots and gets clear without being hit. Then he does something really extreme...

Yeah, drink it in, folks, it’s Top’s mouth. Not a big fan of this.

Top sets up a beam struggle with 17 and seems to have a clear advantage, until who should happen along but...?

Frieza’s here, and he’s going to enjoy shooting Top in the back while he struggles against 17. It’s an impossible situation for Top, and Frieza’s savoring every moment.

Finally, Top is overwhelmed, and Frieza takes some more time to gloat. He’s really laying it on thick considering he only met this guy less than an hour ago. It kind of makes me question all the stuff he said to Vegeta on Namek. There’s an implication that he was genuinely hurt or at least offended by Vegeta’s betrayal, but now I get the sense that he just plays mindgames with everyone, even when they’re already beaten down. I’d use Top as an example of this, except...

...Top isn’t down, and he’s far from beaten.

He begins to power up, and it’s so impressive that everyone starts to notice...

Even Jiren is like “So, he’s finally made his choice,” or words to that effect.

From the bench, Belmod explains everything. Top isn’t just the leader of the Pride Troopers. He’s also a God of Destruction-in-training. This was a weird time to reveal all of this, since up to now the show really hadn’t addressed this process. Whis and Beerus have occasionally mentioned the notion of Goku or Vegeta replacing Beerus as Destroyer some day, but neither Saiyan wants the job, so it never really goes anywhere. Top is the first guy to demonstrate this in practice. So now we see that the Hakaishin aren’t immortal, and they replace their dead with other mortals who have undergone special training to ascend to godhood. This is why Beerus has an angel guide, Whis. Once upon a time, Whis must have trained him the same way Top was trained, and then Beerus took the job and continued to need Whis to show him how to do it properly.

The manga spelled all this out before the Tournament of Power, when Belmod introduced Top as his successor. Also the manga had Belmod explicitly state that he was planning to retire soon. I kind of wish the anime would have given us the same information. As it is, it just seems like Belmod is training other Destroyers for no real reason.

As far as the timing goes, I can see why the anime chose to wait. They introduced Top as Kahi’s “bodyguard”, which is a clever way of hiding Top’s true potential to the competition. Not that they expected Top to pull this off during the tournament, but they were aware of the possibility. So it’s a great twist. The problem is that they never explain why Top has been preparing to take the role. It just sounds like they snuck a god on the team without telling anyone.

I think the narrative is fairly clear, though. Whis had said that there were rumors of a mortal defeating one of the Destroyers, and that almost certainly had to be Jiren, who must have beaten Belmod at some point. And maybe that defeat convinced Belmod that it was time to hang up his clown shoes. He probably offered the job to Jiren, who must have declined, so he asked Top, who accepted.

From the way Belmod and Khai describe it, it sounds like Top learned how to tap into this Destroyer power some time ago, but he never truly embraced these abilities until now. And Top himself declares that he no longer fights for justice, as that concept no longer has any meaning for him. Instead, Top says he now fights for the survival of his universe, as he has become an arbiter of what shall be and not be. So it’s kind of like he had to let go of his mortal life as a Pride Trooper to get this power-up.

It seems like the only one who doesn’t understand the gravity of this development is Frieza. His ki blasts simply vanish when they hit Top, because he’s wrapped a field of destruction energy around him like armor. Then Top shoots a big ball of destruction energy at Frieza, and he still laughs it off, because he easily neutralized a similar attack back in Episode 95. He thinks this will be just as simple.

Yeah, it doesn’t go so well for him.

There’s a big explosion and even the spectators have to shield their eyes.

The sky even changes color, which is great because I was getting sick of that green background. Actually, this may have nothing to do with Top, since the last time the Null Realm changed color, it was when the tournament was half-over. This might be another response to the timer.

The blast wrecks a huge chunk of the ring. I don’t seem to have a good shot of the aftermath, but I’m pretty sure half of it is reduced to rubble. I guess that doesn’t matter much, since there’s only six people using it. Half the space is still plenty.

With Frieza MIA, 17 can only try to carry on the fight as best he can. This time when Top uses his Justice Flash, 17′s barrier begins to shatter. Even his conventional ki attacks are stronger than before.

Fighting back is useless, since energy blasts don’t even slow Top down anymore. They’re just obliterated against the destruction energy around his body.

Hiding is nearly impossible, since Top can just destroy all the obstacles in the ring and come straight for his target. It’s suggested that if you tried to punch Top in this state, you might lose your arm.

But Frieza still comes back to try again. He’s dropped out of Golden mode, but he still survived the Destruction Energy Top fired at him. My guess is that Frieza was able to neutralize it like he did in Episode 95, but it took a lot more out of him this time around, which is why whole ring didn’t get annihilated. And yet he still acts like Top isn’t any big deal. I don’t know if Frieza is just delusional here or he’s just so used to being like this that he doesn’t know how to be desperate or worried.

Top doesn’t mind taking a moment to show him.

Yeahhhhhhh, crush his dumb little head! Grape juice for everyone!

Well, actually Top explains that he can’t destroy Frieza, since he would just get disqualified for that. But when he tries to chuck him out of the ring...

17 spoils the shot, and Frieza lands in some crevice somewhere. So he’s still in the tournament, for whatever that’s worth. So is 17, although his prospects are looking mighty dim...

I mean, he was having trouble with this guy at the start of this episode, and now the situation’s only gotten worse for him. What’s he gonna do now?

Here’s KISS with “Heaven’s on Fire.”

youtube

#dragon ball #dragon ball super #2023dbapocryphaliveblog #tournament of power

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seriously-mike · 1 year

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So You Want To Use AI-Generated Images Commercially?

Fuck off. And keep fucking off until you're out of my sight. Not because of any moral issues, but because whatever the marketing goons tried to sell you, they're ripping you off and bullshitting you with a straight face.

First, the generators, despite being merely large-scale statistical models, have no concept of consistency. The level of human interference into generation process to keep everything consistent between images is large enough at the general level to have you hire an actual artist who will do it by hand instead. At specific level, it's outright hopeless.

I saw a good example in a Facebook reel today. Some goth chick fed the frames from a five-second video of her getting up and walking towards the camera into an image generator with what I assume is the same prompt and the result was a jittery mess with details being drawn completely differently every frame, even despite the Image-To-Image process trying to stick to the original concept at least a little bit.

Another one was a guy trying to have the generator draw the portraits of four public personalities: Ralph Baer, Shigeru Miyamoto, Andrzej Sapkowski and a fourth guy I forgot. Not just every one was in a different style, but Miyamoto's likeness went off the rails like an absolute motherfuck. It added some twenty years on top of his current age and made him barely recognizable, if that.

Second, time spent on refining the prompts, yanking the lever and binning failed attempts is time wasted. Particularly to those even dumber than you who have no idea how the entire shitshow works, but demand Results (With A Capital R) in less time than required to load the model and run a render with enough steps to get something barely convincing. Look, even I don't exactly know how it works beyond mathemagics and fairy dust.

Third, 3/4s of what you read about image generators online is complete horseshit. That includes positive and negative prompts. If you know how the original datasets were built (read: a web crawled bot scraped images and their alt texts off Google Images and made them into a database), it becomes obvious. A lot of folks bang terms like "4k photoshopped trending on artstation" into positive prompts like fucking apes, thinking it will yield results - it won't. Particularly thanks to the nature of alt-text, which is widely used by screen readers for visually impaired people, so it needs to be short, sensible and to the point. And negative prompts are magical thinking as well. Realize this: when the datasets were built, they did not include any of the typical AI-generated fuckups like distorted torsos, too many limbs etcetera. This becomes obvious when you get the thing you explicitly asked the generator to avoid over and over again. And finally, you need to remember that StableDiffusion asking you to set the image dimensions as multiplies of 64 is there for a Reason. The Reason being, 64 by 64 pixels is the smallest area the model can render, and even then it's often a part of a larger element described in general terms.

Fourth, online generators themselves are a scam, more or less. Some defend themselves by having their own, custom-built datasets, like Leonardo AI - these guys dared to build a Stable Diffusion 2.1 datasets when everyone else sticks to 1.5 version. Others, like mage.space, are bullshitting you - when I went through the list of the generators they want you to pay ten bucks a month for, I found nothing but stuff available for free on HuggingFace and CivitAI, based on SD1.5. Half of them I already had downloaded. Not to mention, online generators usually don't have the fancy plugins you can use with your local machine install (I do know that LeonardoAI lets you use ControlNets, and that shit is next-level even despite the general wonkiness described above). That, of course, is true for StableDiffusion, but Dall-E is just as shit and Midjourney might do a couple of things better, but it still wipes out in a good few areas.

Image generators are good only for memes, shitposts and Tijuana bibles. And you'd need a special kind of schmuck to pay for any of those.

#ai generated images #ai art generation #mike's musings #stable diffusion #ai image generation

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dongiovannaswife · 2 years

Text

sperare

Masterlist.

cw: sickness, mentions to meds, pregnancy mentions, mentions to past childhood trauma.

collab with the lovely @softlimefluff!! ty for your patience and care, aribaby uwu

Knocking on the studio door, Ari doesn't wait for a response and walks right in, phone clutched tightly in her palm. Rohan sighs in frustration, pulling his pen away from the panel he’s inking and glares over. Frowning, Ari waits by the door, cheeks puffy and eyes red.

“I hate to barge in, Han, but there’s an emergency.”

Taking his glasses off, Rohan rubs his hands over his face, pushing his headband up.

“What. What’s wrong?”

“The. Twins...”

Ari grips her phone tight again, sniffing back her runny nose. “They’re starting to go through the stand virus. Lena and Gio asked if Dr. Louis would be willing to come consult, but...”

Taking a few steps forward, Ari sits on the floor next to her husband, slumping up against his desk and looking up at him. “I think we need to be there. We would want the same thing if…” She looks towards the studio door into the hallway. “When Ellie goes through it too.”

Rohan puts a hand on top of her head, petting gently. “Is it that bad?”

She nods, looking back at him. “They’re feverish. Not waking up much.” Ari pauses, tears welling up. “Lena’s really worried about them. So am I…” Small, warm tears finally fall down her cheeks and Rohan catches one with his finger, rubbing over her cheek.

“Alright. I’ll check in with Izumi and see if I can get time off. I already have two weeks in advance prepared since I got time off for Ellie’s birth. I can use those, and if GioGio and Lena have a desk I could work there.”

“Can you ask for time off? Please... We can do research there or something, but I think you should leave work at home for a few weeks.”

Rohan balks at first, ready to protest and list all the reasons he could keep working and that it’s important to set a good example, before Ari interrupts his thoughts.

“You rarely ask for it. No one would blame you since it’s an emergency. And I’ll still be getting paid for working with the Foundation. I’m sure Gio will accommodate us too. We haven’t had a vacation for a while.”

Sighing, Rohan nods. “Alright. You win, Ari.” Lifting his arms up in a stretch, Rohan’s stomach peeks out, then disappears back under the fabric. “I’ll get everything settled with the manga then get packing. Any word on tickets?”

“I’ll call the main SPW branch and let them know about the situation. See if I can get permission for leave and tickets for us. I’ll have to make sure our branch has everything set before we leave.”

Rohan chuckles. “I forget how much we’re part of this town until we have to leave…”

Ari smiles back. “You’re right. Easy to take for granted.” Standing, she leans down to steal a kiss and wraps her arms around his neck. “We’ll have to get Ellie ready too. Her first big trip.”

“I didn’t even think of that. We missed the comic convention in France and traveling for Christmas last year… Big girl.”

“At least she has a passport already!”

“She does. We’ll have to make sure she’s dressed comfy for the flight. And bring chimera-san. She cries without him.”

“I’ll make sure, babe. Maybe we should bring our Halloween stuff just in case we stay a while?? When the boys are better all the kids could wear their costumes together.”

Looking at the date on his smart watch, Rohan nodded. “I know Tomoko wanted to take her out with us, but we can always do something when we get back.”

“Right. I’ll get started.” Stealing one more kiss, Ari finds Sunnie’s number on her phone, starting a call to get everything rolling.

***

Golden rays filtering through the window in the hall and reflecting the window's frame in the floor of the twins bedroom, silence and sunset come together.

The Giovanna household remains quiet, haunted by tension and waves of distortion in the environment —halls that stretch like rubber, doors that double their size, gardens that become mazes— as the first twenty-four hours of stand fever go by, keeping the two little boys in bed.

Standing from the chair at the other side of the room, Dr. Bocelli Enzo sighs, feeling his bones hurt and his spine scream for rest: still, holding onto his cane, he makes his way over slower than usual, eyes glued to the floor.

Reaching Jovi's side, his hand reaches out, softly landing on the skin of his forehead. There, the temperature he can feel seems the same as a few hours ago: and pressing his lips, he finally looks up into the monitor, feeling his heart sink inside his chest.

Reaching out to Dante, he repeats the motion —and after getting the same result, he sighs again, closing his eyes as he speaks out loud, intending to let the boys' parents know of the critical situation. “I'm afraid we haven't had any significant process.”

When silence is all he gets, Bocelli's eyes snap open and his heart races —looking back, the couple remains sitting in the couch: Giorno's arm still behind her shoulders and her head laying against his chest, but now Giorno's head is thrown back against the backrest and Lena's hiding into his chest, both asleep.

Overlooking the sight, Bocelli presses his lips, turning to one of Type O Negative's nurses. The small green being shrugs but does point back at the monitor.

Eyes scanning over the vitals displayed there, Bocelli hums after a moment, whispering to himself. “Heart rate normal—” he then turns back to the nurse, “Any signs of organ failure, shock…?”

Forming an 'x' with its little arms, the nurse shakes its head. Seeing this, Bocelli opens his mouth to reply when someone stands by the door.

“Dr. Bocelli, Arroyo from the SPW Guadalajara branch sent someone.” The gunslinger Guido Mista shifts his weight from one foot to another, sealing his mouth with a gesture once he realizes of the sleeping couple. With big eyes, he stands there, watching Bocelli while he thinks, nodding after a moment.

“Lena asked for support. Where are they?”

“Uhm,” scratching the back of his head, Mista smiles nervously. “Akashi's a bit paranoid, he doesn't want to let them in unless the bosses or you are there.”

A grunt resounds through the silence. Shifting, Giorno's neck cracks right as he straightens his position, moving from under Lena's body and, after he's sure she's comfortable, he rises to his full height, turning to Mista.

“Let’s go.”

Nodding, Mista turns around, waiting for him in the hall. Coming to a stop beside him, Giorno reaches out, setting his hand on Bocelli's shoulder. “She asked for someone to help you with this. We know you need rest, so… I'll make sure to bring them over as soon as possible.”

Bocelli smiles —a smile so soft and tired it might be his soul the one smiling at Giorno. His face, though full of wrinkles and liver spots, keeps that peaceful aura Bocelli Enzo carries with himself. “Don't worry, son.”

Giorno's lips curl up into a small smile that doesn't reach his eyes nor makes his dimples stand out.

Leaving the room, he trails behind Mista, who keeps his guard up as they walk downstairs and cross the main garden that leads to the main doors —huge and imposing, the two doors remain closed before the SPW truck outside. There, two men wait, furrowed eyebrows and confused looks thrown his way.

Stopping beside Akashi, and knowing this is the Speedwagon Foundation waiting to be let in, Giorno looks back at the pink haired man, eyes hard and cold as stone —a silent question, demanding and equally annoyed.

Akashi looks back, a grin spreading through his features. Shrugging, the hand that had been resting against his katana raises up to show the keys, “I get it, I get it, let them in.”

Walking forward, Akashi fiddles with the keys for a moment —then, as he holds one of the doors open, Dr. Joshua López comes in, approaching Giorno.

“Good evening, Don Giovanna. Director Arroyo sent me here to help with your sons' case. I was not informed of all the details, but I'm grateful for your trust.” offering a handshake, Dr. López smiles, all formality and politics —the trembling of his hand doesn't go unnoticed by Giorno, who takes his hand in a firm handshake.

“Yes, Dr. Bocelli will give you the details.”

Nodding, Giorno looks back at Mista. “Take Dr. López there,” then, turning to the SPW foundation worker, Giorno motions forward. “Need a break?”

The man shakes his head, retrieving the truck keys from his cargo pants, “I’m okay. I was ordered to wait until he was allowed to come in.”

Waiting until the engine starts and the truck leaves, Giorno gestures back at Akashi. As the swordsman closes the doors and goes back to his position Giorno turns around, looking back over his shoulder: “Don't make me come here again. You know your orders. Next time someone comes in, ask Fugo. He's in charge for a reason.”

Coming back into the mansion followed by Westwood, Giorno's thoughts drift to the report about Dr. López: born in Mexico City, he completed his medical degree in the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, joining the SPW Foundation right after. His motives were still a mystery, but according to Fugo, he had a vast experience.

If his wife trusted Director Arroyo and Fugo had already confirmed he could be helpful, then all Giorno could do was trust and hope.

***

The sun dies in the horizon, bringing the moon and the stars along —as the dark skies settle down for the night, Giorno stands up from the couch, glance lost somewhere in the garden outside.

Setting his eyes on Akashi and Abel as they keep their positions by the front doors, the Don doesn't look back: only a whisper leaves his lips. “Lena, you should go to bed. It's getting late.”

Looking back, Lena shakes her head softly even if Giorno's not looking, eyes closing slowly, fighting back the sleep —running a hand through Jovi's hair, she finally mumbles back. “I can't go to sleep knowing they're… Like this.”

Watching the muscles of his back tense upon her words, she hums, slowly standing up and walking up to him, her arms slide around his middle. As she leans her head between his shoulder blades and presses a kiss there, Giorno relaxes, hands coming to rest on his wife's arms.

“I know.” he whispers, “But… I won't move from this room. I will make sure they're safe.”

She steps back and he sighs upon the loss of her warmth —circling him, Lena stops before her husband, soft eyes and pink cheeks. “I know," she quotes him, smiling oh so exhausted, “I know you are the type of man to set the world on fire for us. But… I'm just so worried.”

Reaching a hand out, his palm cups her jaw, letting his thumb rub over the tattoo on her neck, “They will make it, love. They need time, like we all do.”

Leaning into his touch, she twists her head to kiss his palm, watching in delight how his eyes light up. “Just like you need time to rest.”

“Well,” he smiles, a smile so small that doesn't light up his whole face, but does show the tiniest of peace. “You're the one pregnant. You need the sleep more than I do.”

Shaking her head with a soft chuckle, she finally gives in: “Alright, but promise you will take a nap in the morning.”

Nodding, Giorno chuckles, soft and deep —laced with hope. Hope for a better morning where the sun shines and his sons start running around the house again, painting the walls and doodling on his books.

“Of course, Lena.”

Leaning down to receive her kiss, he sighs against her lips, letting her wrap him up in her arms and sway him from side to side. When she leaves and he sits in the bed, his hand reaches out to Dante, letting his palm cup the infant's face.

The door opens —and the steps that resound through the silent and dark room make him look back, tense and ready to move.

“Uhm, sorry Don Giovanna. I need to take their vitals.” Standing by the door, clutching his aneroid sphygmomanometer and stethoscope, Dr. López gulps down forcefully.

Nodding, Giorno stands up, crossing his arms under his chest. As Dr. López comes in, he watches over his movements —the trembling of his hands does not go unnoticed by him: in the end, he knows why. Víctor Arroyo had met Lena back when she was still a student: back then, the rumors of their relationship had spread like a wildfire.

He could assume Arroyo had warned Dr. López about him and, counting down Akashi's behavior, the poor man must be scared.

Leaning against the wall by the window, Giorno overlooks the room, letting his words flow out slowly and calmly. “Whatever Arroyo said back there, will not happen, Dr. López.”

The man tenses, and through rushed handwriting, he finishes his notes turning to him with big eyes and his glasses sliding down his nose. “I'm sorry, Don Giovanna. I was, uh, I… Guess I was jumping to conclusions.”

Humming, he barely smirks, “Let me guess, stereotypes?”

Dr. López chuckles nervously, rubbing the back of his neck. “I guess.”

Nodding, Giorno looks aside, hearing someone's footsteps down the hall. “That's what I thought.”

The door opens and Agosto 'Westwood' Carvelli comes in, holding two cups of coffee. Giving a nod to Dr. López as he leaves, Hysteria's user comes in, swiftly closing the door with his foot. “Lena said you're not sleeping, so… Here,” passing one cup, Westwood sits down. “I'm keeping you company.”

Taking the cup from him, Giorno chuckles, shaking his head: “Did she ask you for this?”

Nodding, West takes his mask off, rubbing his temples. “She's worried about you and the boys, you know?”

Taking a sip, Giorno nods. Feeling the warm liquid down his throat. “I know. But I can't let her stay here in her state.”

Chuckling, Westwood leans back against the couch. “Well, love's weird.”

“You're the one cosplaying Kato on a daily basis.” raising his cup, Giorno takes another swing of his coffee, watching in delight Westwood's frown, followed by:

“God, I promised her I would stay the night here. With you.”

Shrugging, Giorno grins. “Others would kill to be in your position, Carvelli.”

“I will pretend I didn't hear that, Giovanna.”

After a moment of silence, Giorno's smile vanishes —and Westwood, sensing his worry and sadness, takes a sip from his coffee, runs his tongue over his lips and finally, he mumbles: “Every member of the Joestar family I've met so far has proven their strength,” Giorno looks back, and Westwood keeps going, confident.

“Dante and Jovi will make it, Gio. They're your sons, after all.”

October 13, 7:37 AM.

“Giogio,” Guido Mista calls as he opens the door, head poking from the small gape. “The Kishibes are here.”

Blinking slowly, Giorno looks back —bloodshot and dark circles under his eyes, furrowed eyebrows and dry lips— and with a small nod, he seems to take a little bit longer to process Mista's words before nodding and, standing up, he stands there, squeezing his eyes shut for a second when dizziness kicks in; then, he looks back, a hand rubbing at his temple, voice low and awfully tired. “Give me five and I'll be there.”

Mista nods, shutting the door again, leaving the Don and Westwood alone for the time being. Walking back downstairs, patterns of light dance on the staircase as sunlight glimmers through the stained glass rose window above the front door. Mista joins Fugo and Akashi at the front entrance, welcoming the Kishibe family in and letting them know Giorno will be there presently.

Bundled up for the weather, Ellie tosses her cat-shaped beanie onto the ground, giggling. Rohan sighs, picking it up and keeping it in his arms, giving her a little frown. “Eliana, we’re guests. We can’t throw our clothes on the ground. I’m going to keep this…”

Wrinkling up her face, she lets out a tiny cry, sniffling as Ari sets her down on the ground and kneels down to talk. “I know it’s a little scary being in a new place, but it’ll be okay. You’re going to see Auntie Lena and you did so well on the long plane ride…”

Ellie keeps sniffling, letting out big crocodile tears and quiet sobs. “Ahhh, sweetheart, it’s been a big day… I know you’re hungry. I know” Ari hugs her close, standing again and rocking her gently, finally noticing Giorno at the top of the stairs.

Tucking Ellie’s hat into his pocket, Rohan walks to meet the Don, greeting him with a firm handshake and a hug. Both of them have dark circles under their eyes, Giorno’s clearly more noticeable.

“You look like crap, Giovanna.”

“Nice to see you too, Kishibe.”

They both laugh warmly, walking over to Ari and Ellie. Having calmed a bit, Ellie peeks up at Giogio, then hides into Ari’s shoulder, shy.

“And how is my favorite girl, hmmm?? Other than Lena, of course~”

Ari laughs, patting her back gently. “She’s tired from a long flight or she would be asking everyone to pick her up. It’s good to see you again, Giogio. Is Lena around?”

“Yes, of course, she went to bed last night while I watched the boys, so she is likely getting ready. Westwood is still up there keeping watch.”

Fugo interjects, looking outside. “Can we get your luggage? Your rooms are already prepared. Is Dr. Louis with you?”

“She needed a bit more time to gather supplies for the twins, but she should be here soon.”

“Very well. Akashi? With me.” The two exit to the car, Mista keeping watch over the entrance as they work.

“Ah, Ellie fell asleep again…” Ari glances over at Rohan, eyes soft and tired. “She needs to eat, but I know she didn’t sleep very much on the flight.”

Walking over, Rohan kisses Ellie on the head, putting his hand over Ari’s. “I’m sure the Giovannas will let us clean up and rest a little before we help keep watch.”

“Oh, that’s not neces–” Giorno starts, but gets interrupted.

“We’re here.” Rohan says firmly. “Ari reminded me… We would want the same if. Or when Ellie gets sick. We’re here as your support.”

The Don’s shoulders finally relax, letting out a deep sigh. “I am grateful. Other than my team, you know there’s no one we trust more with our family.”

Thinking back to their conflict earlier in the year, Rohan knows without a doubt that his words are sincere. “I do know… Now. Breakfast? Then maybe a nap for you and Ellie.”

Gesturing vaguely, Gio shakes his head, blinking slowly. “Sorry, I'm not hungry.”

Someone else's voice comes from the top of the stairs, “Oh no, mister. You are having breakfast.”

Turning around, Gio chuckles, seeing his wife there. Smiling softly, she walks down slowly —her dress follows her movement, flowing along until she stops by the end of the staircase, taking Giorno's hand to finally reunite with her friends.

There, Lena's gaze lands on Ari, eyes softening as she smiles, approaching her friend.

”Ariiii,” wrapping her arms around Ari, she's careful with the way she does so, pulling back after a few seconds.

Glancing down at Ellie, Lena hums, grinning now. “Hi, Ellie,” and looking back, she nods, “She's so pretty, just like her mom~” Turning to Han, she reaches out, pulling him in for a short, friendly hug.

Now, standing before the couple, Lena nods, hands resting around the baby bump. “Thank you for being here, it means a lot.”

“I said this before,” Rohan nods in Giorno's direction, then looks back at Lena. “But we would want the same when the time comes… For Ellie.”

“We'll be there.” with a firm nod, Lena gestures aside in the kitchen's direction. “Breakfast should be ready, please make yourself at home.”

“Thank you.” Rohan bows while Ari nods, both close their eyes in a signal of gratitude.

As they walk into the kitchen, followed by Giorno and Lena, the table lays ready, displaying a variety of ricotta pancakes, cannoli, brioche, fruit and coffee.

The chef nods, giving one last salute before he leaves, walking past Giorno with a quiet nod —which Giorno replies with a simple “Thank you, Giuseppe.”

By the time Giuseppe has left and Ariel and Rohan sit by the table, Giorno turns back to them, lending a hand to help Lena sit down. “We usually cook breakfast ourselves, but… As you can see, food hasn't been our priority.”

“It’s alright, we understand… Can I take Ellie to the bathroom first?”

“Do you remember where it is from the party?”

She smiles, nodding. “Yes. We’ll be right back.”

Finding the espresso machine on the counter, Rohan gestures to it, glancing over at Gio. “Care to show me how it works, Giovanna?~”

“My pleasure~”

Lena watches as the boys use the machine, chatting idly, reminding her of better days.

If only this visit had come under better circumstances…

She reaches a hand to her stomach, rubbing gently to calm herself and gasping as she feels a faint kick meet where her hand is pressing. It’s earlier than with the twins, but exactly the same feeling.

“Giobaby.”

The Don glances over his shoulder at his wife. “Hm?”

“She’s moving.”

His tired eyes light up instantly and he’s already walking over, leaving Rohan to customize his coffee how he likes. Kneeling down, the Don lays his palm on the bump, resting his head on his wife’s arm.

Rohan notes the use of she for the little one, but keeps to himself, turning to let the Giovanna’s have their private moment. In a second, Ari pops around the corner with a less-bundled up Ellie, who is finally walking by herself now that she’s more awake.

“Papa!” Running forward, Ellie grabs onto his leg, holding tight and hiding her face into the fabric of his pants. He chuckles, leaning down to scoop her up and cover her small round face with kisses, getting a bevy of giggles from her as she holds her tiny palms up to his face. “Papaaaa!!! Noooooo!!!”

He grins, giving her one last smooch on the cheek and turns back to the coffee. “Ari, do you want some? Gio taught me how to work the machine.”

“Yes, please.” Giving him a kiss on the cheek, she turns to Lena, leaving Ellie content in Rohan’s arms. Seeing Giorno kneeling next to Helena, Ari pauses, her mouth falling open.

“Is it…?”

Lena nods. “She’s kicking around. First time we could feel her.”

“IT’S A GIRL???”

Grinning, Lena nods. “We were going to tell you soon, but this is as good a time as any.”

“Ahhhh!!!!” Putting her hands up to her face, Ari’s eyes sparkle, her whole face lighting up. “So exciting!! Congrats!!”

Cheeks warming up, Lena nods, laughing quietly. “Thank you, Ari.”

Standing up, Giorno turns to Ellie, gesturing at her to get her attention. “Guess what, Ellie? You'll have a friend soon.”

Tilting her face to the side, Ellie looks back at her dad, then back at Gio. The Don chuckles, adding:

“Her name will be Esmeralda, Ellie.”

“Oh?” Setting his cup on the table, Rohan sits down with Ellie in his arms, smiling as Ari sits beside him. “Esmeralda…?”

Lena hums, “It means emerald in Spanish and Portuguese, it comes from a Greek word.” feeling her cheeks warm up further, she grins, barely hiding her flushed expression behind her hand, “I've always liked that name so, here we are.”

Sitting beside his wife, Giorno hums, extending a hand out to rub her back as Ari speaks up.

“Esme. It's such a beautiful name.” Looking back at Ellie and Rohan, she laughs softly. “I can definitely see the girls being best friends.”

“Right.” Giorno reaches out to his cup, raising it to his lips to take a sip from his coffee and hiding a smile. ”Please make yourself at home, eat all you want.”

Taking a cannoli, Lena pauses midway, looking back at her friends with kind, soft eyes. “Thank you for being here, really.”

Reaching out, Ari sets her hand on top of Lena's free hand, squeezing gently. “It's okay, Lena. Really. We wanted to be here. For you. For everyone.”

Tears welling up in her eyes, Lena chuckles, nodding. “I mean, yeah… But you left your home,” she looks back at Rohan, blinking and finally letting a single tear stream down her face. “Your work and life for us. I'm just…” setting the cannoli down, she reaches up to wipe away her tears, leaving back an angry trail over her skin.

“I'm really grateful for your support.”

Eyes softening, Rohan nods, deciding that maybe, accepting her words will make her feel better: with a silent hum and a bow, Rohan looks over at his wife, who seems to think the same. Imitating her husband, Ari bows, giving one last smile and reaching for a plate of pancakes to cut up for Ellie.

Breakfast goes by through silence and a few moments of conversation —catching up on Ellie's milestones, Rohan's work, Ariel's work at the Foundation, Giorno's law firm and Helena's foundation: by the end, Ari stands up with Ellie asleep in her arms, taking her to their bedroom.

Rohan stays back, finishing his coffee, before Westwood guides him to the twins' room (not without turning around and reminding Giorno to take a nap with the most dangerous expression he can put on –the gesture makes Giorno laugh wholeheartedly for the first time in hours, though it hides an ounce of pain).

As Rohan leaves and Giorno's laughter fades into silence, Lena looks through the window, sensing something, the type of omen that makes her stomach turn with excitement and her heart to fill with joy and hope for a new day.

But the second Giorno calls for her, it all blends back to confusion and worry.

“Lena.”

Turning to face him, her breath gets caught in her windpipe upon the realization of his true state: from his bloodshot eyes, dry lips, disheveled hair, his tie hanging around his neck undone and his shirt tucked out his pants to the absolute and raw desperation behind his eyes, barely held back by his will.

How —when— did it end up like this? A few seconds ago he was laughing and joking with Rohan. And now his mood had shifted instantly.

His question cuts off the silence. “Do you think… Do you think this is a punishment?”

Lena blinks once, twice, three times in a row before a quiet whisper leaves her lips. “What?”

Giorno leans back against the kitchen island, water bottle tightly held in his massive hand: rephrasing his question. “Like, karma. Is this some kind of karma? For what we did to the Dallas Board? Have we brought pain upon Dan and JoJo just for the sake of my pride and ego?”

Slowly standing up and walking around the island, Lena gets closer, standing on her tiptoes to reach a hand out to him. When he leans into her touch, lip trembling and green eyes clouded by pain, she mumbles out: “Baby, no. This is not about karma or… Divine retribution.” Affirming her hold on his face, she presses herself against him, trying to ground him somehow, anyhow —any possible way.

Slowly, she speaks up, giving him time to process her words, “We're born stand users. Our genes carry the virus. This is just biology; statistics.”

A tear rolls down his cheek, “But,” a sigh, broken and tired, eyes closed. “I can't stand seeing them in pain.” Opening his eyes, Lena's lips tremble, feeling her own eyes start to sting. “If I could I would swipe places —If I could endure their pain I would.”

Voice tiny, Lena shakes her head, “We can't. No matter how much we try, Giogio —we can't do that. We can only wait.”

“Wait and bleed,” a chuckle escapes him, both deep and broken as his arms circle her. Leaning his chin into the top of her head, Giorno mumbles. “You're right.”

Rubbing over his back, Lena twists her head to lay a kiss against the place his heart beats, “Get a nap, Giobaby. You need it.”

Humming, his arms let go slowly, reluctantly, reaching out to wipe his tears. “If something happens, wake me up.”

“I will. Rest, honey.”

Tilting her face up with a finger on her chin, Giorno mumbles, tired. “I'm serious, Helena. We're together on this, hm? Wake me up if something happens.”

Nodding, she sets her hands on his arm, squeezing back as her eyes bore into his, “I will.”

Leaning down without letting go of her face, Giorno presses his lips against the tip of her nose, her cheeks, forehead and lastly, lips, sealing his promise with the quietest of signs: a stare, hopeful and full of trust on his wife.

Staring back, Lena's lips curl up into a smile after a moment, relaxed and calmer now: “Goodnight, Giogio.”

Giorno chuckles, shaking his head as he leaves the kitchen, turning around at the last moment to blow her a kiss —one she catches and keeps close to her heart.

Standing alone in the middle of the kitchen, Lena sighs, dropping her hand to rest on her stomach.

“M'Lady,” Abel Agreste clears his throat as his stand, Blinding lights, allows him to materialize by Lena's side, earning a gasp from her and making him chuckle, nervous.

“Sorry, Donna. Didn't know you were having a moment.”

Rubbing the back of his head, Rome's Capo gestures forward, “Dr. Rebecca Louis is here. Akashi brought her here without incidents.”

Sighing, Lena nods, “First off: don't do that again. Second: don't scare me like that. Third: why did you let Akashi do that?”

“Eh,” Abel scratches the back of his head, looking up into the ceiling. “He was bored.”

“He's always bored.”

Sighing, Abel drops his hands at each side of his body, “I mean, yeah, but I wanted to make sure our surroundings were truly safe. Their stands are messing up with the systems, Fugo couldn't access the cameras for a while.”

Pressing her lips into a tight line, Lena sighs. “I'll talk to Fugo later. Where is Dr. Louis?”

“In the living room.” Abel gestures forward, intending to let her walk before him.

***

Coming into the twins' room, Giorno stops in the doorway, pausing to feel the soft, warm and smooth sensation of Ares' tail as the cat walks between his legs and into the boys' room.

“Ares.” He calls in a whisper, leaning down to pick him up and pointing a finger at the twins, “They can't play with you right now, hm? But there,” he then points at Rohan, who had been sitting in silence watching over the interaction. “There 's Rohan-sensei, hm? You might want to give him ideas for his manga.”

Rohan chuckles, shaking his head —raising a hand to comb his hair and fix his headband, his voice comes out tired, but equally enthusiastic: “An enemy with cat-like abilities?” Taking a close look, he hums, noticing how much Ares has grown both according to his age and breed, “And maybe a giant.”

“See? Told you.” Coming into the room, Giorno smiles and sets Ares down, letting him climb on Jovi's bed — and, trying to keep his eyes open forcefully, he takes a seat on the little one's bed, leaning to press a soft kiss to his forehead, mumbling a few words Rohan can't figure out.

Then, Gio repeats the motion with Dante, mumbling the same words: by the end when he's standing in the middle of the room he looks back and straight into Rohan's eyes.

“Thank you, Han.”

“No need to thank me. Get some rest.”

“Yes, yes, everyone’s telling me that.”

“Then I won’t say it again… But.” Rohan looks up at the twins, looking at their feverish expressions and exhausted faces. “Do I have your permission to use Heaven’s Door on the twins if necessary? I know Dr. Louis will be here soon. If I can help with any diagnostic work, I want to.”

“Just don’t write anything in them without both me and Lena here, Kishibe. I trust you, but I don’t want you making any rash decisions that will affect them permanently.”

“You have my word, Giovanna. Now, sleep. You’re going to fall over soon if you don’t rest.”

Walking to the doorway, he muttered something like “going, going, I’m going,” leaving Rohan and Ares behind with the boys.

***

“Mrs. Giovanna, it’s a pleasure.” Dr. Louis removes her glove, extending a warm hand in greeting. Helena grasps it firmly, giving her a welcoming smile.

“We’re glad you’ve made it here safely. May I take you upstairs to see Dante and Jovi?.”

She nods, gesturing to the packages in Mista’s arms. “Yes, of course. I made a supply run when I got here, so we should have what’s necessary to begin treatment of the stand fever.”

“Walk with me.” Lena heads for the stairs, chatting as they make their way up. “I’ve heard your specialty is stands, children of stand users, and the stand fever?”

“That’s right. I used to be a part of the main Dallas SPW branch… I had seen too many unexplained things in my life–spirits, ghosts, call it what you like. But when I was the victim of a stand attack, representatives from the Speedwagon Foundation had to step in. That’s when I learned all about the world of stand users.”

Intrigued, Lena listens carefully, walking down the hallway.

“I had no idea what that meant at first, or that you could be born with one… I had a daughter at 18. Single mom, already a year into pre-med, but I was always ahead of the curve when it came to academics. Turns out it was my stand helping. I don’t have a manifested form for mine, but I’m still a stand user. And that transferred down into my daughter as well…”

Waiting outside the door, they stop to finish the story.

“Did she go through the stand fever?”

Dr. Louis nods, “I was already in residency when it happened. The Foundation had taken me under their wing as a stand user and helped fund my education… I had to take a leave of absence to help care for Rosie, but they continued supporting me. Back in undergrad, I had specialized in biochemistry and had always kept up to date with new research. My special interest, I suppose. So when the Foundation told me that they thought it was the result of her stand awakening, I partnered with their research team to find out what cells activated during the process and how to make that transition slower…”

Lena’s eyebrows raise, hopeful.

“We were able to slow the process and make it more manageable for her body. Her stand is similar to mine, in that it doesn’t have a physical form, but that’s often easier on her… I’m rambling, forgive me.”

“Not at all.” Lena smiles, glad for the companionship of another stand user parent. “We would do anything for our children.”

Dr. Louis smiles in return, taking a deep breath. “We’ve been keeping an eye on Ellie in Morioh. When the new position there opened up with the research opportunity of two arrow user parents, I couldn’t resist… It’s such an unexplored field. Being a pioneer into new scientific discoveries is something everyone in the medical field dreams of.”

“I agree.” Lena reaches for her hand, squeezing it in affirmation. “My background is medical, so I understand the feeling.”

“Is there anyone else responsible for their medical care already here?”

“Yes, Dr. Enzo Boccelli is here, part of our Naples branch with his stand Type O Negative. You’ll meet them soon. We also have a representative here from the SPW Guadalajara branch, Dr. Joshua López. My husband, Giorno, is taking a nap, as he was up all night and about to pass out. Kishibe-sensei should be in the room now as well. Our guards Mista, Fugo, Abel, and Akashi will all be around in shifts, should you need anything.”

“I’m Mista.” The voice from behind them pipes up. “And while I’m riveted by your story, these boxes are heavy. Can I put them in the room, boss?”

“Ah, yes. Our apologies. Go ahead.”

Kicking his foot on the door to knock, Mista waits for the door to open, a surprised Rohan staring out.

“‘Scuse me Kishibe, we got some supplies.”

Rohan nods and walks to the windows, watching things unfold quietly as Lena and Dr. Louis enter the room as well.

Setting the boxes down by the desk beside Jovi's bed, Mista groans upon the sound of his bones cracking —rolling his shoulders, the gunslinger excuses himself quietly, leaving the room with a faint, pained look at the twins.

“Dr. López?” Lena calls, noticing the lights from the bathroom turn off and the door slowly opening: there stands Dr. López, rubbing his temples and fixing his glasses but quickly nodding and composing himself once he notices the Donna there.

“Excuse me, I needed to freshen up.”

With a small nod, Lena smiles, brushing it off with her hand. “Dr. Louis from the Morioh branch will be helping —maybe you both can set shifts and take breaks? There's a room for each of you.”

Blinking, Dr. López looks aside, quickly finding Dr. Louis by Lena's side, standing there with the same smile he's known for years now. Slowly, his lips curl up until he's grinning, bright eyes and all. “Becca? How long has it been?”

“A year, maybe? Last time we saw each other was back at that convention.” Stepping forward, Dr. Louis gives him a small, welcoming hug, pulling away from the embrace then looking towards the boys. “Care to update me with everything you know, Josh?”

He smiles slightly, grabbing up a notebook from nearby. “I’ve been recording symptoms and side effects of the stand virus as they occur, trading off with Doctor Boccelli in our observations.” Flipping through the pages, he reads off different entries to her, “We've been monitoring the fever without changes,” Josh pauses, taking a look at Rebecca: “We haven't been able to make it decrease from 102°F.” with a sigh and pushing his glasses up his nose, he goes back to his notes, “There are no signs of shock or organ failure, we've been monitoring blood pressure, diuresis, shock signals and… we were thinking of running some tests, to make sure infections aren't making their way into their systems.”

Dr. Louis nods, thinking of the information received —and taking a look at the twins, her brow furrows, noting their pained expressions. Though the picture brings back memories of her own daughter, she still hums, turning to ask; “What treatments have you administered so far?”

Putting the notebook aside, Dr. López looks back at the boys. “Acetaminophen, we've been giving them doses every six hours. Nutrition has been given by Type O Negative, Dr. Bocelli's stand.”

“I see..” Rebecca steps back, turning around to take a look inside of the top box in the desk. “Then we need to make sure infections and bacteria aren't making it harder. We should also consider swapping over to ibuprofen and giving them extra doses of vitamins and minerals.”

Dr. Louis holds up IV bags of specially mixed medications, the ones she had acquired just before her arrival. “The stand virus doesn’t respond to usual medications –it’s literally changing and activating their DNA, enabling the genes that create Stands. It’s too late to slow the process down, but we can help them fight. We have to monitor them until it reaches its end point and give them enough bodily resources to draw on to complete the transformation. Our priority is the protection of organs and vital functions.”

Dr. López steps up, holding one of the bags in his hand. “Hopefully that will happen soon, the environment has been shifting a lot.”

Rebecca stops, looks back and blinks twice in confusion. “Shifting? What do you mean?” she turns to Lena, who's now sitting by Dante's bed. “How long has this been happening, Mrs. Giovanna?”

Looking back, Lena presses her lips together, thinking of her response for a minute: “Around an hour after it started. When it happens, clocks stop or your environment morphs. It's like your perception is getting twisted for a second, and then goes back. It's pretty, well, weird and extremely powerful: it made two grown men kneel and gasp for air.”

Rohan stands up, eyes the size of dinner plates —amazed and horrified at once, but mostly curious. “...Who?”

Lena looks back, lips tightly pressed into a line for a moment before her lips part and her reply comes out in a whisper. “Gio and West.”

Gasping, Rohan turns to look at the boys, thinking back to the prophecy: cautious, he eyes Lena through the corner of his eye. “Does Dr. Louis know about that, Helena?”

Closing her eyes and shaking her head softly, Lena turns back to Rebecca, gesturing her over and out of the room. As they stand back in the hall, the Donna guides her towards Giorno’s studio.

Letting Dr. Louis first, Lena comes in after, letting the door open for Westwood to stand under the doorway. “Excuse me, Dr. Louis. I forgot about that. Please have a seat.”

Doing as she was told, Dr. Louis sits down before the desk, eyebrow raised in both confusion and wonder. “What’s the matter, Donna?”

Leaning both hands against the cool wood, Lena sighs, taking a deep breath before she starts. “Did you read the report on the first soul extraction, Dr. Louis?”

Dr. Rebecca Louis nods.

“Then you might already know what happened. My stand extracted the patient’s soul, his stand, technically. The source of his sickness was his stand, which was actively attacking its own user.”

“You mean Chrono Trigger.”

“Exactly,” pulling her phone out, Lena keeps talking while she seems to look for something in the device. “Chrono is under my command. It gave us a prophecy back then. About the twins and this exact moment.” Sliding her phone across the table and before Dr. Louis, Lena’s eyes hold a strange haze, one between worry and calm.

Taking the phone from her, Rebecca takes her time reading over it —and when she’s done and her eyebrows arch, amazement, horror, and wonder blend back into a second glance, then a third and a fourth: there she looks back, big eyes full of questions: “Mrs. Giovanna, do you realize the real meaning behind this?”

“Their stands are far too powerful, yes.”

“I mean,” giving the phone back, Dr. Louis looks aside, as if trying to see through the walls and into the twins’ room. “The magnitude of their strength affects the stand awakening process. The virus… It must be aggressive. If that’s what their powers will be then…”

She takes a moment to compose her thoughts, silently musing over everything, then replies again. “We haven't had cases like these before, at least not documented: you’re both born stand users with requiem stands. Yours came after, but Don Giovanna has had his for a while now, which adds to their predisposition for strong stands… The cellular mutation they’re going through is taking a toll on their bodies because it’s such a sweeping alteration of the genetic structure. We have no other explanation.”

“Right.” Sighing, Lena rubs her temples, letting her phone aside. “I know this should take two or three days, but… At the moment, I can’t imagine it will ever end.”

Eyes softening, Dr. Louis reaches out, laying a warm palm over Lena’s cold hand. “I understand, Helena. No mother wants to see their child hurt. Now that I’m here, I’ll make sure to provide the best care possible.”

“Sorry to interrupt,” Westwood speaks up, slow but calm. “Donna, Dr. Bocelli is here.”

Looking up from the desk and back at the door where Westwood stands, Lena nods. “Let him in, Dr. Louis needs Dan and Jojo’s patient history.”

Standing aside to let him in, Westwood waits until Dr. Bocelli walks in and sits by Dr. Louis’ side, setting his cane between his legs so he can offer a handshake.

“Good morning, Dr. Louis. It’s a pleasure.”

Taking his hand, Dr. Louis smiles gently, “I’m glad to finally meet you, Dr. Bocelli. Your paper on the stand fever was truly amazing.”

“Oh, thank you. May I give you the details?”

Standing up and taking her phone, she makes her way to the door, stopping by Westwood’s side and turning to them, adding: “I’ll let you have your meeting, okay? I need to see how everything is going in our surroundings.”

“Of course, Lena.” Dr. Bocelli nods, a warm smile her way. “Don’t tire yourself out, okay?”

She hums and, as she walks down the hall, Westwood gestures at Akashi, who’s quick to follow her.

***

Pannacotta Fugo has been awake longer than this. For him and his insomnia, more than twenty four hours up is not a big issue.

But this time is different. The twins don’t show signs of recovery, their parents are too worried to care for their own needs: he’s used to seeing them strong and imposing, nothing has ever had this effect on them before.

Leaning back against his chair, a sigh passes his lips right as his next thought crosses his mind and his eyes scan over the security cameras, watching Abel and Paolo take turns to have breakfast.

Giorno and Helena are strong. Together they’re undefeatable. But the twins are their kids and everything that happens to them will always worry and stop their whole world, because that’s how parents are supposed to feel. Just because his parents didn’t, doesnt mean others’ parents can't or don’t feel that way.

Parents, what had happened to his?

Were they still alive, wealthy and equally judgmental?

What about his butler, the one who used to bring him snacks during his late night study sessions? Had anything changed or was it still a broken and empty home? Were the halls of that house haunted by his suffering? Had they moved out after that incident…?

The truth was he didn’t miss them —his father did not deserve to be called that, and his mother was not someone who should be missed in the first place. After all, their treatment had killed his ambitions and passions for years until he settled down with the new Passione… And only there, under Giorno’s command, had things started to change for him. His will to live instead of just surviving had emerged finally in the shape of his passion for science and occultism, something he refused to let go, holding onto it through his toughest challenges.

The door opens and he, startled, almost knocks over his coffee cup. Lena’s voice brings him out of his daydream when she calls out to him, gently, like she always does: a gentle soul. “Good morning, Panni. Have you had breakfast yet?”

“Lena.” Standing up, he quickly offers his seat to her, insisting until she gives in. Only there he rubs the back of his neck, holding his coffee mug with the other. “I’ve had coffee. I’m not, uh, hungry.”

Turning around, Lena smiles, revealing the cannoli wrapped up in a napkin that she holds carefully, almost like she’s afraid of dropping it. “I thought so. Please have this, and make sure you eat something later.”

With a nod, he takes the pastry, sitting on the couch at the other side of the desk, pondering on his question for a while —from time to time, his eyes fall on the Donna, who’s busy looking at the different cameras displayed around the mansion.

His voice surprises him when it comes out, taking him off guard. “Helena.”

She hums, giving him a short, curious look.

Clearing his throat, Fugo asks: “I…” He hesitates, swallowing hard, then tries again. “Will they be okay?”

Her lips seal into a line: looking around his dark office, the Donna thinks about his question for a while, only stopping when the room around them becomes bigger: the walls grow like trees in a haunted forest and the computers are suddenly tiny little objects in the desk: the distortion lasts a second before it goes back with a thump.

Lena then looks back at him, a smile grazing her lips. “I think so. I want to believe they will make it.” She looks back at the cameras, watching Abel and Paolo freak out after switching places during the distortion.

“It’s just that you and Giogio are always so calm and collected… I think this is the first time I’ve seen you two so worried. Not even back when you took over the Dallas Board.”

“That was a different situation, yes. We never thought this would happen so soon.”

Fugo hums, looking at the monitor where the boys lie sleeping, faces feverish, but hands reaching towards each other, drawn subconsciously together even now… Throwing the napkin into the trashcan and taking a bite from the cannoli, he listens to Lena while she walks out. “Even so… I can assure you, Panni, the sun will shine on us again.”

A warm sensation blooms in his chest right after her words have registered on his brain —hope shines, even if the room goes dark when she closes the door behind her.

***

Laying on his stomach with both hands tucked under his pillow, Giorno stirs awake upon the sound of his phone. The device, set by the bedside table, vibrates and the screen lights up displaying 'fully charged' at the bottom of the screen. After a few seconds, the screen goes black, vibration stops and he's left there, one green eye peeking through the mane of blond hair that fell over his face while he was sleeping.

With a quiet hum, he rolls on his back without moving to the other side of the bed. Running a hand up to get his hair off his face, his free hand carefully pats his side in hopes of finding someone there --however, all he can feel is the mattress and silk sheets under his warm palm.

The twins.

Memories flash behind his eyelids fast: from his wife's worried expression, Westwood driving him home, to Dante and Jovi's feverish expressions. It makes him stir awake completely and as he sits up by the edge of the bed and reaches out to his phone, the darkness around him does not help soothing his mind.

10:39 AM.

“Three hours?” he mumbles to himself, unable to find out how much he slept —but feeling better now.

Standing up and throwing his phone on the bed, he walks up through the familiar bedroom until the pads of his fingers find the light switch, flipping it.

Warm light bathes the room —there, he takes a moment to look around, eyes scanning over the decorations: from his and Lena's CD's collection, to the empty side of the bed, where her sweater lays folded on top of her pillow.

Sighing, he turns around and gets into the bathroom. Stripping off his boxers and getting under the shower head, letting the cold water run down his body.

Stepping out, a towel wrapped around his waist, Giorno throws his hair back, feeling some water drops run down his back in the process. Coming into the closet, his hand rests above the towel holding it in place while he looks for something to put together a decent outfit.

Finally dressed in black pants and a black turtleneck shirt, Giorno walks around the closet, looking for his shoes until he finds them by Lena’s side —he’s not sure how they got there— and puts them on, turning to pick his black trench coat from the hanger. Letting it drape over his arm, he comes to a stop by the mirror, making quick work with his hair, simply combing it back loosely, with two stubborn pieces of short hair falling on his forehead and putting on his barrel piercings, rings and the arrowhead hidden beneath the fabric of his shirt. Taking one last look in the mirror, his brow softens as he nods to himself, putting on his trench coat.

Exiting the bathroom and standing in the middle of the room, his eyes fall on Lena’s sweater atop her pillow: walking up to the bed, he tucks it under his arm, slipping his phone inside his pocket before leaving the room.

The hall is empty, he notes, and the silence in the mansion is something he’s grown unfamiliar with. As he rounds the corner, Akashi comes into view. The swordsman is sitting at the top of the stairs, talking to someone in the lobby.

As he keeps walking, Akashi seems to sense his presence and, turning to him, the pink haired man grins, standing up. “Goooooood morning, boss!”

“Good morning, Akashi.” Looking down, Abel’s already waving from the lobby, grinning and excusing himself when Mista calls for him from outside.

Akashi walks before him, gesturing him forward, “C’mon, Lena’s with the boys! Dr. Louis is here, too, and she’s already working to get your mini you’s up and ready to run around!”

Humming, Giorno follows him, quietly listening to the story he has to share now —Akashi has been alive for about 400 years, and he’s admitted openly how bored he truly is: to Giorno, listening to his stories seems like the best way to help him get rid of his boredom at least for a while. The man is also impatient, intolerant to getting interrupted with a quick mind: and Giorno, ever the patient man, has no problem listening to him. After all, Akashi has been alive through historical moments and always has something to share.

“Anyway, I’ll tell you about Tesla and Edison later: just keep in mind Tesla was right and Edison was a bitch.” Coming to a stop before the twins’ room, Akashi looks up to declare that right into Giorno’s eyes. The Don, with a nod and a smile, replies: “I’ll remember that, Akashi.”

“Good.” opening the door, Akashi lets him in, closing it behind his back.

Four pairs of eyes fall on him as soon as he steps in and the door closes.

“Well, good morning, Giovanna. You don’t look like crap anymore~” Rohan is the first to greet him, waving from his seat on Dante’s bed, where Dr. López stands holding his clipboard and pen.

Chuckling, Giorno walks in, patting Rohan’s back a bit too hard, and pressing a kiss to Dante’s forehead. Then, he walks around, kisses Jovi’s forehead and offers a handshake to Dr. Louis.

“Thank you for being here, Dr. Louis. We’re grateful for your support.”

“Of course, Don Giovanna.” Dr. Louis nods his way, turning back to check Jovi’s blood pressure and write down notes on his breathing.

Looking on, he makes eye contact with Lena, a warm smile spreading through his lips when her cheeks turn pink and her smile reaches her eyes: she’s sitting on the couch, overlooking the procedures. Walking up to her, he sits by her side, wrapping an arm around her shoulders, feeling her nuzzling her face against the side of his face. By her side Ares meows, purring and climbing on her lap to get his attention.

Pulling back, he reveals the sweater under his arm, laying it gently over her form with a soft whisper of, “Your nose is cold, dear.”

She smiles, taking the garment from him and pulling it on. “Not as cold now~”

Rohan glances around at the room, filled almost to capacity with visitors. “If it’s alright, I’ll go check in on Ari and Ellie… Now that Giovanna is back.”

“Yes, of course, re-join us when you’re ready.” Giorno offers a warm smile, gesturing to Akashi. “If you’ll show him to the Kishibe’s room??”

Jumping up from his seat, Akashi grins. “I’ve actually been waiting for a chance to talk to you, Kishibe-sensei!” Walking over, the two exit the room, Giorno shaking his head.

“Kishibe may have a hard time getting him to shut up now that he’s started.”

Lena smiles, leaning into his chest. “Rohan can handle it, I’m sure~”

Lowering his voice to a whisper, the Don focuses his gaze on the twins. “How are things going? Did you make any progress?”

Whispering back, Lena replies. “I think so. Dr. Louis has more experience with these kinds of situations, so I have more hope now… More confidence that we have the best team possible here.”

He kisses her forehead, noticing she’s warmer than usual herself. “Have you gotten enough water, baby?”

She shakes her head no, but reaches for a bottle nearby. “We’ve been so busy getting everyone up to speed, I haven’t had time.”

Giorno reaches gently for the bump, resting his hand there. “You have to take care of yourself. For us. And… For Esme.”

She nods, tearing up a little and taking a sip from the bottle. “I know…”

#the Giovanna twins #reborn and rebuilt #AriHan #GioLena #*snv's tesla voice* SCIENCE

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