#your not powerful unless you master at both science and magic

[sleepyminty]

Stephen ‘i have a phD but for some reason is a surpreme socerer’ strange

And

Loki ‘mastery of magic and illusion but still spend centuries to learn advanced MIT ’ laufeyson

[ellaenchanting]

50 Days of Fetishes Day 26: Almost-Telepathic Rapport.

Almost-telepathic rapport: Being so connected to the other person that it almost feels like telepathy. I know this happens in many relationships over time- me and my wife have some of it for example - but the quick, often overwhelming way that can feel like it happens with hypnosis play is both a fetish and a danger.

Everything we do while hypnotizing leans into that sense of telepathy- from the mirroring to the pacing and leading to the utilizing- all of it is to convey the impression that we're already in someone's head. With that intense focus on each other, both people are aping some of the mechanisms by which people fall in love in real life.

Actually being in trance together- whether through mutual trance or the hypnotist focusing to the point they are in uptime trance and kind of enter the subject's world-can be an especially potent love spell. Hell, even the very beginning stages of the most classic induction- look into my eyes- sends all our mirror neurons firing and is a bit of a biological love spell in and of itself. I know I have personal experience of developing quick profound crushes on good hypnotists- and this is partially why. (I also won't do mutual trance anymore unless I really, really want to fall for the other person because that's a magic that works too well on me.)

But aside from all of the science-y stuff, I really love learning into that impression that I'm in someone else's head and they're in mine. The hotness of being that known - even if it's an illusion- is intoxicating. The idea that someone knows you so well that you CAN'T hide, can't lie to them is scary and thrilling. It creates a sense of intimacy that's so romantic and so human- that need to be known by someone you can trust. I love that feeling of just resting with someone after a hypnosis scene and feeling like we're connected on some deep, wordless level- enjoying the closest thing to an easy telepathy that I'll ever experience.

On the flip side, there's a hotness of playing with the idea that I know you so well that I can change the way your brain functions. I know you so well that I can twist you and turn you and shape you how I like.

It's powerful stuff, and potentially destructive stuff, but so heady to experience with the right person

BONUS RECS

@h-sleepingirl actually inspired this entry with her story Spiral Crosses yesterday. Warning - it's an incest fic which is normally a big squicky for me- but I took a chance and the way she leans into the twin telepathy here hit me in ways I didn't expect. Darkly hot and well worth reading.

She's a master of writing about this so it shows up in other stories she has written as well. Open up for Me is a long time favorite of hers about intimacy and rapport.

I keep trying to capture aspects of almost-telepathic rapport in my stories- and I don't know if I've ever quite succeeded in the way I want to. My favorite one is probably Psychic

but there's some of it in Eyes https://www.readonlymind.com/@ellaenchanting/HypnovemberDay19Eyes/

and a friendly version in Hivemind- https://www.readonlymind.com/@ellaenchanting/Hypnovember2021/16/

I'd love to get any recommendations you have on this topic- either of your own work or someone else's! What should I check out?

[electronicdelusionstarlight]

Inscryption Spoilers

A very clever thing we should take into account is the region separation in the "Original" Inscryption game.

Leshy and Grimoria are on the western side, while Po3 and Magnificus are on the eastern side, and are permanently divided from one another by a broken bridge unless the player progresses with the story.

This division is also Thematic of course.

The eastern side is about the Cycle of Life and Death. Leshy deals in Blood, Grimoria in Bones. Once Leshy is Game Master, is Grimoria's mechanic the one he incorporates into his game, not just because he's slower at adapting mechanics or because of Flavour (Robots would be Ill fitting for the dark frontier folk tale he's trying to spin, and magic would damage the "realism" of it), but because that's the one Scribe he's been closer with.

At the same time, the western side is about Magic Vs Science. Po3, once it becomes Game Master, only incorporates Magnificus' gems mechanics into his game, while Bones and Blood are completely forgotten about. This is not due to Flavour as you might think it was Leshy's case, since Po3 cares more about the mechanics of its game than its lore, but because, again, Magnificus is his closest scribe.

However, both games, while relatively complete as themselves, still Lack something. If you play the "original" game of Inscryption, you'll notice how all 4 mechanics complement each other, both via the use of "Hybrid Cards," cards from one Scribe that however work well with another, and Via a simple gameplay loop.

This to say, the western cards are fodder, the eastern cards are to be fed.

Energy Cards work on a Hearthstone system of mana. You get 1 to 6 energy per turn, and play them as is. This means those cards can't be all that good or it would create a power imbalance. Case in point, their "Guard Dog" card (2/3, Moves to block the last summoned enemy creature) costs 6 out of 6 mana, the full extent of their range.

Blood Cards are, on the other hand, Tribute Cards from Yu-Gi-Oh. They are relatively strong given the fact they require one or more sacrifices to be played. Their Guard Dog card therefore requires 2 Tributes, which becomes incredibly easy if you can use any other scribe cards to sacrifice for it, but is also quite prohibitive to pull off without Squirrel Tokens.

Magic Cards have a surprisingly close affinity to Magic the gathering's lands. You draw Gem Mox Cards (lands), and you drop them on the field, and that gives you the colored mana to play cards of the appropriate colour. Most of their cards therefore are incredibly dependant on Mox Cards being alive in the field, and are also stat and effect wise pretty weak unless you get a perfect board. Case in point, they lack a "Guard Dog" card.

Bone Cards are based on a death token structure, which means you can virtually play nothing in the early game unless you have some of the weaker bone engines and then sack them. However, Bone Tokens are also incredibly easy to get under the right comp, both in Leshy's game, and in Inscryption proper, so their power, while not as weak as an Energy or Magic Card, is still weaker than a blood card. Case in point, their "Guard Dog" card costs 7 bones, which is pretty much 2 +4 Bones on death cards.

All 4 mechanics synergize with one another. The game is, therefore, incomplete unless all 4 Scribes are working together to give the player a good experience.

Because that's what ultimately they all want to do.

Leshy "kills" you and has you gauge your teeth and eye out not because he wants you to suffer. He knows this is a Videogame, he's not harming you, he's giving you an "experience," a creepy game with mysterious vibes and all that shit. He wants to spook you, and he wants to entertain you, and you realize this not just in your final, final battle with him, the no stakes game as the world is deleted, when he congratulates you for being a great player, and for all the experiences you've had with him, but in the very second you grab his camera and "Betray" him, with him getting, for the first time perhaps and not just for show, Genuinely angry at you, calling you an "Ingrate" after "All the things I've done for you."

Po3? He wants to create a mechanically challenging game, one that will be played by millions of people. Yes, he highjacked your computer to send his game through the internet, but he's doing this out of sheer self preservation, out of a desire to be played with, not just by you, but by everyone.

Grimoria herself, despite starting the deletion, also laments the fact she would have loved playing with you as game master. She also desired making a game, one to entertain you, and the only reason why she's not doing that? It's because there's OLD_DATA slumbering at the bottom of Inscryption, and she realizes that it needs to be erased, least something terrible happens.

Magnificus? With all his theatrics and abuse on his students? He didn't just wanted to create a game, one with him as the villain, the most overtly villainous of the 4 Scribes in the "original" game. He wanted to give you a show. He wanted grand battles on pillars with dueling disks, shadow games, anime shit. He wanted Drama. His methods were terrible and monstrous, yes, but they also worked. The Blob Disciple managed to survive TWO takeovers as a living being in the game room, not just as a prop on the game board or as a puppet for the game master. The Sensory Deprivation Disciple goes absolutely insane due to its torture, yet is also the ONE thing that survives both the game wipe and the destruction of the Disk, because he's used to work with nothing.

They all just want you to have a good time. They should just eat up their egos, and work together to achieve this.

Unfortunately, they don't realize it until it's too late.

[megamanrecut]

Since it’s…been awhile since I’ve posted anything, here’s a small snipit from the next chapter of Mega Man Recut Miniseries: Karma, the scene in Episode 6: The Incredible Shrinking Mega Man where Proto Man pretends to order Elec Man to destroy himself to test if Elec Man is capable of mutiny (also where the fic got its name).

Note: Admittedly, this scene was kinda dark? At least for Recut anyway, hahaha. I originally wrote it to address repeated comments asking if the real reason some Robot Masters were not reoccurring was because Wily sent them to Brain Bots’s ‘Robot Recycler’(™) when they failed (which is both super dark and a cool interpretation!). For Recut Wily? No, he’s basically a muppet and wouldn’t kill a Robot Master unless they were completely out of his control (like Ice Man, who fortunately got away >:D) and his actual reason for some Robot Masters only used in one plot then never again is, uh, he kinda forgets they exist. That’s also my personal head canon for why RS Wily’s schemes vary wildly in scope and scale, practicality, and yet sometimes repeat: one track mind, easily distracted (and Proto Man’s willingly along for the hilarious and exciting ride) /…end unexpected ramble 

Note 2: This wasn’t completely edited, the beginning is still copy/paste from the original episode :D  Snipit after cut:

Karma, Chapter 10:

“That man is insane.”

"Gee, really? The mad science hadn't tipped me off yet.”

Instead of reporting immediately to the hangar as Dr. Wily instructed, Proto Man had followed Elec Man out of the laboratory and was walking with him down the hallway that lead to the armory.

"Weren't you listening?" Elec Man asked incredulously. "He's making shrink rays powered by magic crystals. It's an insult to your intelligence and mine.”

"Maybe, but if it does work, wouldn't that be cool?"

"If Wily shrinks every major city, it'll destroy the economy, including the Underground which we normally trade with," Elec Man continued.

"Quit looking for holes in Wily's plans," Proto Man said dismissively. "Just go with the flow." 

The door to the armory at the end of the hallway was straight ahead of them. Proto Man looked over at Elec Man, and said in a casual yet low voice, "Hey Elec Man, do me a favor? Know our recycling room? Go to the scrap metal compactor, turn it on, and step inside.”

The words didn’t immediately register. Elec Man was so accustomed to abusing Wily in front of Proto Man that he had suspected nothing off about Proto Man accompanying him toward the armory instead of reporting to the hangar as Wily had asked. He glanced over at Proto Man’s face, which cheerful yet unreadable, the overhead lights shining dully off his visor, and lowered his own voice. "Is this another one of your jokes? I will be destroyed.”

Proto Man shrugged. ”Yeah, I think you will. That’s an order. Hop to it.”

Elec Man felt…stunned. Wily was inventing shrink rays and planning to auction off cities, and now, now, Proto Man had finally decided to act like a true second-in-command and dispose of the dangerous and defiant criminal within their ranks?! 

With no choice but to obey, Elec Man glared at Proto Man and was about to turn back down the hallway toward the recycling room—but before Elec Man had a chance to fully process a premature and unpleasant demise, Proto Man quickly stopped him.

"I'm just kidding, I'd never order you to hurt yourself, Wily'd have a fit. Just testing your loyalty, you're a good sport.”

Elec Man’s shock, indignation, and betrayal evaporated instantly. He couldn’t believe Proto Man had had him going there. It appeared Proto Man had picked up more about acting like a ruthless gangster than Elec Man had given him credit for. Though he felt annoyed for falling for the ruse, Elec Man surmised Proto Man’s motivation hadn’t been for a cruel laugh at his expense. "This has something to do with Ice Man's betrayal, doesn't it?"

"You know it. Of all the other Robot Masters Dr. Wily's reprogrammed, your personality and will have changed the least…and in your case, that could be a problem.”

"It gives me no pleasure following your orders. If I could disobey Wily, you'd both be dead.”

Proto Man laughed. ”See, that's what I'm talkin' about! Though no offense, if you were capable of killing me, you wouldn't be here.”

"So how do you justify keeping me here against my will?”

"Never said I did,” Proto Man said frankly, though he paused on the question for a moment. “…Do you believe in karma?”

"No."

"Well, while I can't go into the details of your past, let's just say maybe you had something like this coming.”

Being forced to work for an inept mad scientist as punishment for being a member of the Syndicate was a bizarre definition of karma. Elec Man cast an appraising look at Light’s prototype, who willing assisted Wily in unleashing chaos on an unsuspecting populace just for the fun of it, and asked, "And what does karma have in store for you?”

Proto Man smirked. "I don't believe in karma. Listen, I don't understand what you're unhappy about. I know you think working at Skull Fortress is slumming, but by this time next week, you'll be back on top. In the mean time, you've got important jobs to do, jobs too tedious for a human like Wily to do it himself. He's the creative architect, after all, which takes up all his time.”

Elec Man remained unmoved; he refused to see crime as a game like Proto Man did. ”A child can dream up a shrink ray."

"Yeah, but only a mad genius can build one. Wily specializes in impossible inventions. For example, you were reprogrammed by a gun made of vacuum tubes and price scanner parts. Isn't that amazing?”

Elec Man ignored the last jab as he crossed through the door into the armory and shut it firmly behind him. 

Keep talking, idiot. Your time will come—and it won’t seem fun when you finally face the harsh reality of crime.

[readermishok]

Top 20: my favorite interactive stories

Hello, guys!

Once I saw that one of my popular and mostly likeable posts was about IF, I decided to share with you my personal top of the best IF authors I have known. 

I read a lot of WIPs (work in progress) and finished novels since three long years, so I might recommend truly incredible stories. I apologies for adding pics and some additional info about my MC, but I wanted to bring spark of life into this top.

MC – Julia (deShanre), she|her.

I'll start with telling about quartet of works greatly affected on me. It was almost like… living my second life. It felt so real, so vibrant. In the darkest times it gave me the strenght to meet the next day.

1. Samurai of Hyuga, Books 1-4 by Devon Connell (WIP, planned 7 books). Patreon. Buy Book 1.  Buy Book 2. Buy Book 3. Buy Book 4.

Samurai of Hyuga is a brutal, heart-pounding interactive tale. Prepare to enter the land of silk and steel, where fantasy clashes against grim reality, and where the good guys don't always win in the end. It's a harsh world with tough choices at every turn. Good thing you're the toughest ronin around.

My MC: Ronin, the master of the Jigoku Ittō-ryū, The Sword Who Cuts the Heavens

Jigoku:

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2. Fallen Hero by Malin Ryden (WIP, planned 4 books). Tumblr: @fallenhero-rebirth​. Patreon. Buy Book 1.

Become the greatest telepathic villain Los Diablos has ever known! Once you were famous; soon you will be infamous. That is, unless your old friends in the Rangers stop you first. Juggle different identities and preserve your secrets as you build new alliances and try to forget the friendships you've left behind.

My MC: Sidestep Puppetmaster:

Jane (puppet):

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3. I, the Forgotten one by Bacondoneright (WIP, planned dilogy). No tumblr or Patreon|Ko-fi. Demo.

It has been five long years since the end of The Border Wars. Five long years without a purpose. Endlessly drifting around from one job to the next, serving your apathetic father only to receive no credit. Nobody in Kanton truly knows what you did. How you won The War, leading the armies of Kanton as a youth.

Nobody knows what it took out of you. Spending your formative years in war is not good for one’s outlook on life. Your emotions now lie behind a mask of stoicism. After all, all emotions do is cloud one’s judgement and wind up costing lives.

Nobody knows how much it hurt to be cast down from the throne and succession. To be disinherited, cast away from the family, and left aside to die.

My MC: The Marshal, the bastard child:

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4. The Exile by Pheo (WIP). Tumblr: @exilethegame​. Patreon. Demo.

You’re the ex-commander of the Kingdom of Plaithus, and your name is known by all. It used to be whispered in fear by your enemies, and the very mention of it could send men fleeing. Your people had cried it out in battle, swords raised in your honor as they faced death fearlessly. You were a hero, and to some, a legend.

Until you weren’t.

You can’t remember what happened. All that’s left are blurry faces, screams, and the feeling of blood on your hands. The only reason you still have your head is because of the pity of an old friend.

And now? It’s only been a year since the incident, and already things are going wrong again when a rather peculiar sorcerer offers you absurd amounts of gold in exchange for protection from… well, that’s the problem, isn’t it? You don’t know.

My MC: the Commander:

Ex-commander.

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Shepherds of Haven by Lena Nguyen (WIP). Tumblr: @shepherds-of-haven​ Patreon. Demo.

Shepherds of Haven is a dark fantasy interactive fiction game. In it, you play as a Mage living in a world where magic is outlawed and your people—those possessing supernatural powers—are oppressed and reviled. The world is ruled by humans who believe in science, technology, and industry: at best, you and your kind are nothing more than a fairytale, and at worst you are the state’s greatest threat.

My MC: Human Mage, gunner

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God of the Red Mountain (WIP). Tumblr: @friendlybowlofsoup​​​ Demo.

You are a spirit born of the Red Mountain–though you’ve run away from it long ago. You’d be content to stay away, too, if not for the mountain god who suddenly comes looking for you. But what purpose do they have? And what exactly is your end goal?

Based on East Asian myths and folklore, you play as a powerful, nameless spirit in a shifting world. As a being caught between death and life, you are connected to a stream of limitless power, and the more you are known, the more powerful you become.

However, your journey will not be so smooth. You have been cursed by powerful, malignant beings known as Foxes, and it’s only a matter of time before you fall from sanity yourself.

My MC: Owl spirit, human appearance

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The Bastard of Camelot by Rebelgirl (WIP). Tumblr: @llamagirl28​ Demo. Ko-fi.

Your child will be the undoing of Camelot. Born under an ominous prophecy, you are the incestuous bastard of King Arthur and Morgana Le Fay. Will you fulfill the prophecy, or rebel?

Be the villain they expect you to be, or the hero they don’t- be remorseful or unapologetic, make your destiny or be Morgana’s tool of revenge.

Arthur can’t have any more children, making you the sole blood heir, and sole other Pendragon. As a Pendragon, you have the power of dragons.

The Bastard of Camelot is a trilogy following Mordred as they become a knight of the Round Table, and save or destroy Camelot.

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The Seven Heirs of Ophaesia: Part One by (WIP). Tumblr: @fantasyfawkes​​​ Demo. Patreon.

The Seven Heirs of Ophaesia is a low-fantasy game set in a Renaissance-esque world where you play as one of seven heirs to a fictional kingdom rife with intrigue. As the King’s seventh child, you are a prince or princess of Ophaesia, a luxurious nation along the southern coast of Selanes. You are the first child of your father’s third wife, a woman hated throughout the realm due to the pervasive suspicion that she poisoned the previous queen, and her poor reputation taints your image in the eyes of the court and beyond. From your days in the palace nursery all the way to adulthood, you must navigate treacherous court politics and delicate foreign affairs while trying to find your place in the world — and your family.

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 Attollo by A.E. Jendryke (WIP). Tumblr: @attollogame Demo. Patreon.

After several years of radio silence, you receive a message from your younger sibling that carries a strange sense of urgency to it. Either out of familial concern, or boredom, you embark on a journey from your residence to your siblings apartment in New Hampshire to see what’s wrong and then get on with your life. Too bad it’s never so simple.

Deal with cults, interdimensional entities, and far too many people with superpowers (where, for once, you’re the odd one out) in your journey to bring your sibling back from an underworld far out of your control.

My MC: lawyer

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 Land of the Dragon (WIP) by Hilsee Foo. Demo. Last update was long ago... (crying)

Welcome to the Land of the Dragon! Here you shall experience an adventure in an ancient land, navigate court politics, forge friendships, and maybe even pursue romance if you so choose!

The Dragon Emperor sits upon the throne, as he inherited it from his father before him. But all is not well in the realm. In the provinces, an Uprising is gaining both strength and popularity. At court, the Elder Prince plots in secret to usurp his brother's throne. And within the Emperor's harem, the Empress and Imperial Consort vie for power.

As the Emperor and Empress' only trueborn child, you are at the centre of this power struggle. When all hell breaks lose on your 21st nameday, what will you do to find your place in this world?

All this, and more... In the Land of the Dragon.

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The Northern Passage by Kit H.J. (WIP). Tumblr: @northern-passage​ Demo. 

The Northern Passage is a horror fantasy CYOA, where you play as a hunter sent up north to investigate a series of missing people along the border and in the port cities of the Blackwater.

Working with your handler, Lea, you will travel north and discover that things are far worse than you ever could have imagined, and that there is something powerful lurking out in the deep, dark sea…

My MC: Hunter

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 The Nameless by Parker Lyn (WIP). Tumblr: @parkerlyn​​ Demo. Ko-fi.

The Nameless is a low fantasy WIP that is character and romance driven, with your race (sheevra) loosely based on stories about the fey and other myths. Where deals are a weapon and a name is the most intimate secret someone can offer. You play as a sheevra investigating the city of Renescen after the complete disappearance of one of four sheevra Clans in the world, running across a ragtag group of both sheevra and mortalis along the way.

Will you find out what happened before it comes for you?

Mortalis appearance

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Virtue’s End by Crimsis (WIP). Tumblr: @virtuesend-if​​​ Demo. Patreon.

In a dark world overrun by monsters from the shadow plane, you exist as a hybrid monster hunter called a helvling, a human whose very soul has been Bound to one such entity. Travelling from warded settlement to warded settlement with your surly Keeper, Shea, you have the thankless task of defending the common folk against these horrors from Hel.

Usually, a fate such as yours is only reserved for the lowest of criminals, as penance for their loathsome deeds… You wouldn’t know if your fate has been deserved, however, since upon completion of your Binding seven years ago, all former memories of your human life have been lost.

You’ve been moulded into a weapon by the Virtuous Order, trained to be an unfeeling and ruthlessly efficient hunter… But is that who you are? Who are you, truly?

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A Tale of Crowns (WIP). Tumblr: @ataleofcrowns​​​​ Itch.

A Tale of Crowns is a high fantasy love story with Middle Eastern roots, both on pc as well as mobile! It’s entirely text-based, with choices throughout to shape both your main character’s personality and skills as well as influence their relationships with others. There are four love interests for you to choose from, both female as well as male, each with their own stories and secrets for you to uncover!

Crown of Arsur

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 Wayfarer (WIP). Tumblr: @idrellegames​ Demo. Patreon.

When your mercenary work backs you into a corner, you take the only option available and accept a contract: to travel to the city of Velantis and steal an ancient artifact said to be blessed by the gods. Simple, right?

But Velantis holds more than you bargained for. Gathering a ragtag party of malcontents and renegades from across the city, you must navigate enemy factions, meddling guilds, and escalating political tensions. Your choices will ultimately determine the city’s fate – and the fate of every person who lives there. 

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When Twilight Strikes by evertidings (WIP). Tumblr: @evertidings​ Demo. 

You are a bounty hunter. Responsible for taking in rogue supernaturals, you work for IAOS—the International Agency of Supernaturals—where, alongside your best friend and partner, you two have quickly become the best hunting duo of the branch. After a particular tricky hunt, you brief your boss, Caine Atheron, and come back to work the next day to find that he has mysteriously disappeared overnight, the company is now in the hands of his best friend, Sebastian Mai. And though no one else seems to question it, something tells you that there’s more to the story.

With bounty cases rising at an alarming rate and a second mystery unfolding, you and your ragtag team of allies set out to find the truth.

But as you go further and further, the secrets you uncover begin to make you question: who… or what exactly are you fighting for? 

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Passanger by Pime (WIP). Tumblr: @the-passenger-if Demo. Ko-fi.

Do you like monsters? Do you think they are the best part of their respective movies, books, and shows? Then The Passenger might be the game for you.

The Passenger is a choice script work in progress in which you are an eldritch abomination that’s about to be devoured by another unthinkable creature. Good news is you are pretty crafty and know how to jump dimensions to escape your ghastly fate; bad news is, you’re now stuck on Earth, trapped inside a dumb human larva.

As years go by, you realize the amount of energy you need to leave this horrible dimension behind is a lot more than you anticipated. Not to mention the creature that almost ate you all those years ago never really stopped looking for you. But there’s no way it’ll pinpoint your actual location… right?

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Scout: An Apocalypse Story by Anya (WIP). Tumblr: @anya-dev​ Itch.

It has been over a decade since a worldwide natural disaster obliterated the natural planet and decimated human civilization. There are small groups of humans still alive, fending for themselves, trying to create communities amongst the rubble.

You are a 24-year old scout living in a small community on the edge of the Orange Plains. You lost your mother and your sister before finding your way here. You are primarily an academic, and you put your skills to use on regular scouting missions. With your best friend and your scouting team leader in tow, your small group is a pillar of the Community.

On your first scouting mission of the hot season, you meet the leader of the People Across the Orange Plains. Will you break from the Community you have known your whole life? Ask a romantic partner to join you? Discover secrets that your own people have been hiding? Become a leader yourself?

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Body Count by Nell Bolton (WIP). Tumblr: @bodycountgame​ Demo. Ko-fi.

Your life isn’t going how you’d hoped. Despite having big plans when you graduated, you’re stuck in a dead end job and a crappy flat with zero romantic life to speak of. All until a friend convinces you to join the cast of a new reality TV show.

The premise is simple: 12 singles are sent to a villa on a tropical island and they live there together for a month. After 28 days, the couple who is voted by the other islanders as being most likely to withstand the test of time will win £500,000. In addition, the couple with the highest body count will win £500,000. Total prize pool? £1,000,000.

In this context, “body count” refers to how many people you’ve slept with… right? Well, that’s what you think when you sign your contract. Turns out, though, that not all of your fellow cast members will be using that definition to get to the prize.

Fall in love, win big money, solve some murders and try to stay.

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Project Hadea by nyehilism (WIP). Tumblr: @nyehilismwriting​​ Itch. Ko-fi.

You play as an OPERATIVE of Scytha Industries, a highly selective private security company. As their most elite Operative, you possess many skills and talents, not to mention top-of-the-line equipment - including your very own AI module, IVI.

This, of course, puts a price on your head. An AI module goes for billions on the black market; carrying one around in your skull is, perhaps, not the safest idea. Sure, you’re more than a match for anyone who might come after you - but no-one outside the high levels of Scytha knows about it, so you should be safe anyway, right?

Wrong.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

I do want to thank all these tremendously talented authors for creating such complex and beautiful worlds. I love it with all my soul.

Thanks for reading, I hope you will find story for yourself. I’ll gradually extand this top! 

Stay tuned.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Conspiracy fantasy

When we talk about conspiratorialism, we tend to focus (naturally) on the content of the conspiracy. Not only are those stories entertainingly outlandish — they’re also the point of contact between conspiracists and the world.

If your mom is shouting about “Hollywood pedos,” it’s natural that you’ll end up discussing the relationship of this belief to observable reality. But while the content of conspiratorial beliefs gets lots of attention, we tend to neglect the significance of those beliefs.

To the extent that we consider why the beliefs exist and proliferate, the discussion rarely gets further than “irrational people have irrational beliefs.” This is a mistake. The stories we tell one another are a kind of Ouija board, with all our fingertips on the planchette.

The messages it spells out don’t describe external reality but they do reveal our internal, unspoken anxieties and aspirations.This is why we should read science fiction: not because it predicts the future, but because it diagnoses the present.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/26/meaningful-zombies/#oracles

Sf is an ever-mutating ecosystem of fears and hopes, and readers apply selective pressure to those organisms, extinguishing the ones that don’t capture the zeitgeist and elevating the ones that do, a co-evolution of our fantasies and our narratives.

http://locusmag.com/Features/2007/07/cory-doctorow-progressive-apocalypse.html

This is why Alternate Reality Games are so central to their players’ lives. They’re a form of narrative co-creation, with the players throwing out theories and the game-masters actually changing the story to incorporate the best of them.

ARGs are an environment where your coolest and most deliciously scary ideas become reality. It’s a powerful way to galvanize collective action.

As anthropologist Biella Coleman writes in Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy, it’s the organizing principal behind Anonymous.

Anon Ops begin life as victory announcement videos. If the vision of success captures enough Anons, they execute the op.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-anonymous-ghost-in-the-machine

In other words, the degree to which a shared fantasy of victory compels its audience predicts whether the audience realizes its fantasy. Long before the alt-right, Anons were memeing ideas into existence (no coincidence, as both were incubated on 4chan).

On the Conspiracy Games and Counter-Games podcast, three left academics — Max Haiven, AT Kingsmith, Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou — analyze “conspiracy fantasies” (as opposed to conspiracies, e.g. the Big Lie behind the Iraq War) for what they reveal about late capitalism’s anxieties.

As leftists, they naturally focus on the relationship between material conditions and people’s behaviors and beliefs. This is an important part of the discourse on conspiratorialism that’s often missing from liberal and right-wing analysis.

Conspiracists aren’t just “irrational” nor are they just “racist.” They may be both of those things, but unless you look at material conditions, then the surges and retreats of conspiracism are mysterious phenomena, strange tides raised by unseen forces.

A decade ago, then-PM David Cameron — the architect of a brutal, authoritarian austerity — dismissed the Hackney Riots as “criminality pure and simple,” and demanded a ban on discussion of the relationship between austerity and unrest.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/video/2011/aug/09/david-cameron-riots-criminality-video

But without that discussion, there’s no explanation. Even if you believe that “criminality” is a thing that is latent within some or all of us, what explains a rise or fall in that criminality? Is it like pollen that alights upon some of us, turning us bad? Or the full moon?

Likewise the “conspiracists are just racists” or “they’re just deranged.” Without looking at the material world, there’s no explanation for why that racism suddenly became more (or less) important to how conspiracists live their lives.

We can’t talk about conspiratorialism without talking about material considerations, and we have to talk about the form and substance of the conspiratorial belief. The ARG-like structure of Qanon is a hugely important part of its popularity:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/05/behavioral-v-contextual/#adrian-hon

Memeing things into existence in a game-like way is hugely compelling. You can tell when a D&D game is hopping when the players and the DM start co-creating the story, with the DM slyly altering the dungeon and the NPCs to match the players’ super-cool theories.

A recent episode of the CGACG podcast present a mind-blowing analysis of the interplay of the material conditions, mythology and structure of Qanon. It’s a two-part interview with Wu Ming 1:

https://soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/wuming-one-1?in=reimaginevalue/sets/unmanageablerisks

https://soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/wuming-one-2?in=reimaginevalue/sets/unmanageablerisks

Wu Ming 1 is part of Bologna’s Wu Ming Collective, the successor to the 1990s Luther Bissett net-art collective. Bissett did many wild, weird things,including publishing “Q,” an internationally bestselling conspiratorial novel in 1999 (!!)

https://www.wumingfoundation.com/giap/what-is-the-wu-ming-foundation/

The plot of “Q” involves a high-level government official, privy to top-secret info about a state conspiracy. It closely mirrors Qanon beliefs, right down to a call for a Jan 6 uprising (!!!!). The major difference is that “Q” is set during the Protestant Reformation.

In the interview, Wu Ming 1 talks about the proliferation of conspiratorial, ARG-like 4chan hoaxes that predated Qanon, and hypothesizes that the original Q posts were plagiarized from the novel.

The strange experience of seeing a novel turn into a cult prompted Ming 1 to write “La Q di Qomplotto” (“The Q in Qonspiracy”), a book that defines and analyzes “conspiracy fantasies.”

https://edizionialegre.it/product/la-q-di-qomplotto/

Ming 1’s interview digs into this in some depth, including setting out criterial for distinguishing conspiracies from fantasies (for example, a conspiracy doesn’t go on forever, while a fantasy can imagine the Knights Templar running the world for centuries).

I was taken by Ming 1’s discussion of the role that “enchantment” plays in conspiratorialism — the feeling of being in a magical and wondrous (if also anxious and terrible) place. He says this is why “debunkers” fail — they’re like people who spoil a magic trick.

Ming 1 and the hosts talk about replacing the enchantment of conspiratorialism with a counter-enchantment, grounded not in the conspiratorialist’s oversimplification and essentialism, but in the wonder of reality.

Ming 1 analogizes his “counter-enchantment” to the “double-wow” method of Penn and Teller: first they blow you away with a trick, and then they blow you away with the cleverness by which it was accomplished.

He describes how the Luther Bissett collective performed a double-wow during Italy’s Satanic Panic, creating a hoax satanic heavy metal cult and a counter-cult, promulgating stories of their pitched battles, then revealing how they’d faked the whole thing.

The action was taken in solidarity with actual Bolognese heavy metal fans who’d been framed for imaginary Satanic “crimes.” Luther Bissett wanted to demonstrate how a panic could be created from nothing, to reveal the method behind the real hoax with a fake hoax.

The double-wow method reminds me of Richard Dawkins’ manuever in “The Magic of Reality,” his excellent children’s book about the virtues of the scientific world, revealing how the numinous wonder of faith is nothing compared to the wonder of science.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magic_of_Reality

The idea that conspiratorialism is a leading indicator of capitalism’s anxieties is a powerful one, and it ties into other compelling accounts of conspiracy, like Anna Merlan’s REPUBLIC OF LIES, which discusses the importance of trauma to conspiratorial belief.

Like Ming 1, Merlan stresses the kernel of truth underpinning conspiracy fantasies — the real aerospace coverups that make UFO conspiracies plausible, the real pharmaceutical conspiracies to cover up harms from drugs that underpin anti-vax.

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/09/21/republic-of-lies-the-rise-of-conspiratorial-thinking-and-the-actual-conspiracies-that-fuel-it/

In the podcast, Ming 1 and the hosts stress the importance of identifying and addressing the kernel of truth and the trauma it produces in any counter-conspiratorial work — that is, a successful counter-enchantment must address the material conditions behind the fantasy.

I really like this approach because of its empathy — its attempt to connect with the conditions that produce behaviors and beliefs, not to be confused with sympathy, which might excuse their toxic and hateful nature.

It reminds me a lot of Oh No Ross and Carrie, whose hosts have spent years joining cults and religions and digging into fringe practices and beliefs in an effort to understand them; they laugh a lot, but never AT their subjects.

https://ohnopodcast.com/

But Ming 1 brings something new to this discussion: an analysis of the role that novels have played in conspiracy fantasy formation: not just the plagiarizing of “Q” to make Qanon, but things like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion plagiarizing Dumas.

The interview also brought to mind Edward Snowden’s recent inaugural blog-post, “Conspiracy: Theory and Practice,” which seeks to separate conspiracy practice (e.g. the NSA spying on everyone) from theories (what Ming 1 calls “fantasies”).

https://edwardsnowden.substack.com/p/conspiracy-pt1

Snowden connects the feeling of powerlessness to the urge to explain the world through conspiracies, relating this to his experience of revealing one of the world’s most far-reaching real conspiracies, and then becoming the subject of innumerable conspiracy fantasies.

Snowden’s perspective is one that has heretofore been missing from conspiracy discourse — the perspective of someone who has been part of a real conspiracy and then the central subject of a constellation of bizarre and widespread conspiratorial beliefs.

These different works, focusing as they do on the character of conspiratorial beliefs, the nature of conspiratorial practice, and material conditions of conspiracists, comprise a richer analysis of our screwed-up discourse than, say, theories about “online radicalization.”

As I wrote in my 2020 book “How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism,” the “online radicalization” narrative requires that you accept Big Tech’s unsupported marketing claims about its power to bypass our critical thoughts at face value.

https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59

Claims to be able to control our minds — whether made by Rasputin, Mesmer, pick-up artists, MK-ULTRA or NLP enthusiasts — always turn out to be cons (though sometimes the con artists are also conning themselves).

But there’s a much more plausible, less controversial set of powers that Big Tech possesses. By spying on us all the time, it can help scammers target people who are ready to hear conspiratorial explanations.

By monopolizing our discourse, it allows SEO scammers to create default answers to our questions. By locking us in, it can keep us using a platform even if the discourse there makes us angry and anxious.

And by corrupting our political process, it creates “kernels of truth” for conspiratorial beliefs.

As with Scooby Doo, the monster turns out to be a familiar villain in a fright mask: a monopolist whose abuses and impunity create the anxiety that make conspiracy plausible.

[ask-mortarion-the-death-lord]

cause ive always liked fire emblem, and cause the questions rested on my head before, the primarchs in fire emblem classes:

lion = paladin. its the most traditionally knightly class, and well the lions never really been depicted on horses or in relation to fast vehicles all that often, the paladin class is more so marked by balanced stats and a sharp increase to res so i feel confidant in giving him a mounted class like the paladin.

fulgrim = swordmaster. lightly armored very fast class, well its limited to just swords for the most part i feel that also suits fulgrims perfectionist nature since as a class its largely about perfecting that one weapon often getting special perks for doing so. plus in terms of outfits swordmasters are one of the more fashionable or exotic classes which also suits fulgrims tendency to extravagant dress.

perturabo = great knight. at first i thought general since its a very representative defensive class, heavy armour, used by enemy armies alot, best used in defensive roles, all that stuff. but on reflection great knight kinda works a bit better, since the iron warriors also notably use a lot of vehicles. this gives perturabo both high defensive properties but decent mobility like his copious tanks without being as high as say a paladin or bow knights mov to represent perts preference for terminator armour.

jaghatai = nomad trooper/bow knight. i specify nomad trooper because it better gells with the whole Mongol thing the khans got going on, but bow knight is also the more common variation of this class. regardless, its a more speed aligned mounted class capable of using swords and bows, that has the khans name all over it.

lemen = warrior. the russ is typically portrayed with axes, has a viking theme, and well hes 'uga uga barbarian' he also strives to try and be better then that. its another easy fit really, even if bows arent particularly fitting for russ but then that also does help to emphasize the sortta duality of the russ as a savage reveling in it whos also embarrassed by it to some extent.

rogal = hero. its not a defensive class like the general but it is the more defensive counterpart to the swordmaster usually, and rogals usually not shown to be wearing terminator armour. aside from that its something of a flexible class used by shady mercs and noble knights in equal measure, so it can work with both an air of practicality and luxury well.

konrad = trickster. assassin seems like the better choice since it jives more with konrad visually speaking, konrad also has psychic powers that let him see the future. thus trickster works a bit better i feel to represent that, placing him in a thief promotion well also giving him access to magic. i thought of dread fighter as well, but konrads not known for sending out warp bolts so the tricksters support magic works better for konrads future sight.

sanguinius = falcon knight. a female dominated class, ignoring that stipulation fire emblem pegasi have the unicorn thing where their atleast rumored to only accept the pure hearted as riders, and well i wouldn't call any primarch pure hearted neither are many of the pegasus knights in fire emblem so it works thematically without being a hard requirement. also, wings and a flying class thats focused on speed and has also at times had access to support magic. another obvious fit for all intents and purposes.

ferrus = blacksmith. thank god for fates giving me this out, well ferrus does wear terminator armour he also notably relies on his arms metal coating to protect that so i feel more confidant in giving him blacksmith which is a defensive class but not a heavy armour class if that makes sense. also, overlap of professions which putting aside the terminator armour stuff does make this the otherwise obvious choice for ferrus.

angron = berserker. the class is pretty much all attack and speed no defense, relying on high health to tank hits. well its usually locked to axes, angron usually uses axes to thats fine, and well its also a class mostly associated with bandits and barbarian and tribal looks its also a class that gets a lot of association with gladiators and arenas so it works in that sense as well.

roboute = hero, great lord. not totally happy with this one so im giving myself multiple outs on it. hero i feel works in a visual sense but its doubling up on rogals, well great lord works better in terms of who roboute is but its pushing roboute into the definitive protagonist class of fire emblem. settled on great lord eventually both because its the protagonist class, and because well its a class capable of defending itself their both usually not the best fighter and also need to be handled carefully or else cause a game over due to dying,

mortarion = oni savage. a defensive class specialized in using axes but which does have access to magic use. it fits in that mortarion prides himself on endurance and physical strength well shunning magic, despite having had training and education in magic himself and arguably because of who taught him. plus visually the class is designed to look intimidating and wears a mask, both vague enough applications to mortarion.

magnus = sorcerer. also called druid, dark sage, or dark bishop. i thought of maybe basara since its a class with access to physical weapons, but i decided sorcerer for two main reasons. first, magnus relies heavily on his magic over his physical fighting skills by primarch standards. second, darks magic which sorcerers specialize in have the narratively appropriate connotations in fire emblem for magnuses character. as dark magic in fe is both a dangerous dark force used by evil wizards to summon dark gods or cast curses, and a neutral force of nature that can be researched and understood like a science, used like a science to consume enemies in black holes even. it is the perfect magic to give the "its not a phase dad, its a science! -consumed by dark forces-" character in essence.

horus = general. perfect class for horus less because of its defensive properties or role as a defensive class, but more so because of what it arguably symbolizes and how horus is the primarch next to perturabo who wears the most terminator of terminator armour. namely that general is the class most frequently used by enemy bosses and commanders in fire emblem, often by one of the head honchos or a minion of said honcho. in that sense, its the perfect class to have the warmaster and arch traitor of the imperium in.

lorgar = war monk. religiously affiliated class that wields an axe, and already a perfect fit for that alone. the war monk class also has access to support magic with jives with lorgar unlocking psychic power through his studies of daemonology and the chaos gods, and also his own psychic visions. my only concern is that to access war monk regularly you have to be in the priest class beforehand [unless your a prepromote] which jives with lorgars history but is also a class locked to support magic, but for a primarch im willing to let it slide.

vulkan = wyvern lord. vulkans another character in terminator armour, but i feel wyvern lord works better. not because vulkans known for flying mind you, but more so because wyvern lords a defensive flying class, involves a a dragon, and because wyverns in fe are difficult to tame mounts but ones that are fiercely loyal and protective of their riders if said rider treats them well. which fits into vulkans friendly, by primarch standards, attitude.

corvus = assassin. well corvus also uses psychic powers to turn invisible, i felt giving trickster to konrad worked better because konrad was more active and constant in his use of psychic powers well corvus tried to avoid using his power as much as possible from what i remember. as such that left corvus with the more physically aligned thief promotion which i enjoy as a sort of 'delightful irony' since the assassin aesthetic better suits konrad.

alpharius/omegon = halberdier. feeling blessed that alpharius omegon have largely been presented as using lances cause it makes this a lot easier. well the ao twins are masters of a sneaky legion themselves, importantly the alpha legion favours infiltration and disguise over sneaking about. and what better disguise then as the promotion of the most generic of classes the soldier class. its a lance locked class, but i feel thats a good enough trade off for the inconspicuous murder angle. and the soldier class is if nothing inconspicuous/cannon fodder.

and bonus malcador and emperor!

malcador = sage. even putting aside that malcadors claim to fame is being a psyker, sage works in relation to the fire emblem trope of wise and crinkly old sages [the gotoh archtype as its referred to] which malcador fits on like a glove.

emperor = emperor, baron, master knight. the emperor class is indeed a thing, and im specifically thinking of the fe4 emperor class which could utilize every weapon and magic outside of light magic and dark magic. aside from that the emperor class was also a heavy armour class which... i dont remember if the emperors wearing terminator armour but it does gel with the emperor being fukin big. the barons an alternative thats basically the same as the emperor class if a bit weaker, and master knights the mounted variation that has access to light magic.

[thewidowsghost]

The Unknown Muggleborn - Chapter 4

3rd Person POV

"There, look."

"Where?"

"Next to the tall kid with the red hair."

"Wearing the glasses?"

"Did you see his face?"

"Did you see his scar?"

Whispers follow Harry from the moment he and Ron left their dormitory the next day. People lining up outside classrooms standing on tip-toe to get a look at him. Harry wishes they wouldn't, because he was trying to concentrate on finding his way to classes.

There were a hundred and forty-two staircases at Hogwarts: wide, sweeping ones; narrow, rickety ones; some that led somewhere different on a Friday; some with a vanishing step halfway up that you had to remember to jump. Then there were the doors that wouldn't open unless you asked politely, or tickled them in exactly the right place, and doors that weren't really doors at all, but solid walls just pretending. It was also very hard to remember where anything was, Harry thinks, because it all seems to move around a lot. The people in the portraits kept going to visit each other, and (Y/N) and Hermione were sure that the suits of amour would walk.

The ghosts didn't help, either. It was always a nasty shock when one of them glided suddenly through a door you were trying to open. Nearly Headless Nick was always happy to point new Gryffindors in the right direction, but Peeves the Poltergeist when you were late to class. He would drop wastepaper baskets on your head, pull rugs from under your feet, pelt you with bits of chalk, or sneak up behind you, invisible, grab your nose, and screech, "GOT YOUR CONK!" The only person that Peeves seemed to get along with was, strangely, (Y/N). When she would pass by him in the halls, he would ask how her day was going. The first time, (Y/N) was shocked, looking surprised at the poltergeist, then she nodded saying, "Uh, its going pretty well."

Even worse than Peeves, Harry thinks, if that was possible, was the caretaker Argus Filch. Harry and Ron manage to get on the wrong side of him on their first morning. Filch found them trying to force their way through a door that unluckily turned out to be the entrance to the out-of-bounds corridor on the third floor. He wouldn't believe they were lost, he was sure that they were trying to break into it on purpose, and was threatening to lock them in the dungeons when they were rescued by Professor Quirrell, who was passing by.

Filch owned a cat called Mrs. Norris, a scrawny, dust-colored creature with bulging, lamp like eyes just like Filch's. She patrolled the corridors alone. Break a rule in front of her, put just one toe out of line, and she'd whisk off for Filch, who'd appear, wheezing, two seconds later. Filch knew the secret passageways of the school better than anyone – except perhaps the Weasley twins – and could pop up as suddenly as any of the ghosts. The students all hated him, and it was the dearest ambition of many to give Mrs. Norris a good kick. Marvel, (Y/n)'s black and white kitten had taken to attacking the dust colored feline whenever she had the chance.

Then, once you manage to find them, there were the classes themselves. There was a lot more to magic, as Harry quickly found out, than waving your wand and saying a few funny words.

(Y/N) enjoyed Wednesday nights where they went out to the tallest tower and learned the names of different planets and stars. Three times a week they went out to the greenhouses behind the castle to study Herbology, with a little witch called Professor Sprout, where they learned how to take care of all the strange plants and fungi, and found out what they were used for.

Easily the most boring class, in (Y/N)'s eyes, was History of Magic, which was the only one taught by a ghost. Professor Binns hand been very old when he had fallen asleep in front of the staff room fire and got up the next morning to teach, leaving his body behind him. Binns droned on and on while the students scribbled down names and dates, and got Emeric the Evil and Uric the Oddball mixed up. Hermione had told (Y/N) that she actually liked the class, and (Y/N) looked down at her.

"Honestly, Hermione," (Y/N) teases, "I'm not surprised."

One of (Y/N)'s favorite classes so far had to be Charms. Professor Flitwick was a tiny little wizard who had to stand on a pile of books to see over his desk. At the start of their first class, he took the roll call, and when he reached Harry's name, he gave an excited squeak and toppled out of sight, (Y/N) rolling her eyes.

Professor McGonagall was again different. Harry had been right to think she wasn't a teacher to cross. Strict and clever, she gave them a talking-to the moment they sat down in her first class.

"Transfiguration is some of the most complex and dangerous magic you will learn at Hogwarts," she tells them. "Anyone messing around in my class will leave and not come back. You have been warned."

Then, she changes her desk into a pig and back again. They were very impressed and couldn't wait to get started, but soon they realized that they weren't going to be changing the furniture into animals for a long time. After they take a lot of complicated notes, they were given a match and told to start turning it into a needle. By the end of the lesson, only Hermione Granger, and (Y/N) (L/N)-Granger had made any differences to their match. Professor McGonagall shows the class how they had gone all silver and pointy and gives the two a rare smile.

The class everyone had really been looking forward to was Defense Against the Dark Arts, but Quirrell's lessons turn out to be a bit of a joke. His classroom smelled strongly of garlic, which everyone said was to ward off a vampire he'd met in Romania and was afraid would be coming back to get him one of these days. His turban, he told them, hand been given to him by an African prince as a thank-you for getting rid of a troublesome zombie, but they weren't sure they believed this story. For one thing, when Seamus Finnegan asked eagerly to hear how Quirrell had fought off the zombie, Quirrell goes pink, and starts talking about the weather. For another, they had noticed that a funny smell hung around the turban, and the Weasley twins insisted that it was stuffed full of garlic as well, so that Quirrell was protected wherever he went.

Harry was relieved to find out that he wasn't miles behind everyone else. Lots of people had come from Muggle families and, like him, hadn't had any idea that they were witches and wizards.

There was so much to learn that even people like Ron didn't have much of a head start.

Friday was an important day for Harry and Ron, the two had managed to find their way to the Great hall for breakfast without getting lost once.

"What have we got today?" Harry asks Ron as he pours sugar on his porridge.

"Double Potions with the Slytherins," Ron answers. "Snape's Head of Slytherin House. They say he always favors them – we'll be able to see if it's true."

"Wish McGonagall favored us," says Harry. Professor McGonagall was the head of Gryffindor House, but it didn't stop her from giving them a huge pile of homework the night before.

Just then, the mail arrives. Harry had gotten used to this by now, but it had given him a bit of a shock on the first morning, when about a hundred owls had suddenly streamed into the Great Hall during breakfast, circling the tables until they saw their owners, and dropping letters and packages onto their laps.

Hedwig hadn't brought Harry anything so far. She would sometimes fly in to nibble his ear and have a bit of toast before going off to sleep in the owlery with the other school owls. This morning, however, she flutters down between the marmalade and the sugar bowl and drops a note onto Harry's plate. Harry tears open the letter at once, and it says, in a very untidy scrawl:

Dear Harry,

I know you get Friday afternoons off so would you like to come and have a cup of tea with me around three? I want to hear all about your first week. Send us an answer back with Hedwig.

Hagrid

Harry, borrowing Ron's quill, scribbles, Yes, please, see you later on the back fo the note, and sends Hedwig off again.

(Y/n), who was sitting across from Harry and Ron, and between Hermione and Fred Weasley, had just received a letter herself.

Dear (Y/n),

My name is Remus Lupin. You mother named me as you godfather, and I was good friends with both your mother and Harry Potter's parents when I was at Hogwarts.

I left you a box of presents and letter in you Gringotts vault, in a large wooden box. I didn't know if you had picked it up or not, but I decided that it was time that I sent you a letter at school. I hope you're doing well.

Love,

        Uncle Remus

At the start-of-term banquet, Harry got the idea that Professor Snape disliked him. By the end of the first Potions lesson, he knew he'd been wrong. Snape didn't dislike Harry – he hated him.

Potions lesson took place down in one of the dungeons. It was colder here than up in the main castle, and would have been quite creepy enough without the pickled animals floating in glass jars all around the walls.

Snape, like Flitwick, started the class by taking the roll call and like Flitwick, he pauses at Harry's name.

"Ah, yes," he says softly, "Harry Potter, our new – celebrity."

Draco Malfoy and his friends Crabbe and Goyle snigger behind their hands. Snape finishes calling the names and looks up at the class. His eyes were black like Hagrid's, but they had none of Hagrid's warmth. They were cold and empty and made (Y/N) think of a dark tunnel.

"You are here to learn the subtle science and exact art of potion-making," the Potion Master begins. He spoke in barely more than a whisper, but they caught every word – like Professor McGonagall, Snape had the gift of keeping a class silent without effort. As there is little foolish wand-waving here, many of you will hardly believe this is magic. I don't expect you will really understand the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes, the delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins, bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses. . . . I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death — if you aren't as big a bunch of dunderheads as I usually have to teach."

More silence follows this little speech. Harry and Ron exchange looks with raised eyebrows. Hermione and Iliana were on the edges of their seats and Hermione looks desperate to start proving that she wasn't a dunderhead.

"Potter!" says Snape suddenly. "What would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?"

Powdered root of what to an infusion of what? Harry glances at Ron, who looks as stumped as he was; Hermione, Iliana, and (Y/N) had all raised their hands.

"I don't know, sir," Harry says.

Snape's lips curled into a sneer.

"Tut, tut – fame clearly isn't anything."

He ignores Hermione and (Y/n)'s hands, his gaze flicking between Harry and (Y/N)'s hand.

"Let's try again. Potter, where would you look if I told you to find me a bezoar?" Snape asks.

Hermione's hand stretched higher into the air, as far as it would go without her leaving her seat and (Y/N) leaves her hand into the air.

Harry didn't have to faintest idea what a bezoar was. He tried not to look at Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle, who were shaking with laughter.

"I don't know, sir," Harry answers.

"Thought you wouldn't open a book before coming, eh, Potter?" Snape taunts, (Y/N) frowning slightly.

Harry forces himself to keep looking into Snape's cold, dark eyes. He had looked through his books at the Dursleys', but did Snape expect him to remember everything in One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi?"

Snape was still ignoring Hermione's hand, still glancing between Harry and (Y/N).

"What is the difference, Potter, between monkshood and wolfsbane?" Snape asks, and (Y/N) and Hermione's hands remained in the air, Hermione standing up, her hand stretching towards the dungeon's ceiling.

"I don't know," says Harry quietly. "I think Hermione and (Y/N) know, why don't you try them?"

A few people laugh; Harry catches (Y/n)'s eye, and she winks at him. Snape however was not pleased.

"Sit down," he snaps at Hermione, "(L/N), answer the questions," Snape says, his head snapping to look at (Y/N).

(Y/N) straightens her back, clears her throat. "Monkshood and wolfsbane are the same plant, but they also go by aconite. A bezoar is a stone taken from a goat that will save you from most poisons, and asphodel and wormwood make a sleeping potion so strong that it is called the Draft of Living Death." (Y/N) rattles off, Harry and Ron exchanging shocked looks.

"Correct, ten points to Gryffindor," Snape says to (Y/N), before snapping at the other students, "Well, why aren't you coping that down?" There was a sudden rummaging for quills and parchment, and over the noise, Snape says, "And a point will be taken from Gryffindor because of Potter's cheek." At this, (Y/N) turns around from her place in front of Ron, and smiles sympathetically at him.

Things didn't really improve much for the Gryffindors as the Potions lesson continued. Snape set the first-years into pairs and set them to mixing a potion to cure boils, sweeping around in his black cloak, watching them weigh dried nettles and crush shake fang, criticizing everyone but Malfoy and (Y/N), whom he seemed to like. He was just telling everyone to look at how well (Y/N) had stewed her horned slugs when clouds of acid green smoke and a loud hissing fills the dungeon. Neville had somehow managed to melt Seamus's cauldron into a twisted blob, and their potion was seeping across the stone floor, burning holes in people's shoes. Within seconds, the whole class was standing on their stools wile Neville, who had been drenched in the potion when the cauldron collapsed, moans in pain as angry red boils sprang up all over his arms and legs.

"Idiot boy!" snarls Snape, clearing the potion away with one wave of his wand. "I suppose you added the porcupine quills before taking the cauldron off the fire?"

Neville whimpers as boils start popping up all over his nose.

"Take him up to the Hospital Wing," Snape snaps at Seamus. Then he rounds on Harry and Ron, who had been working next to Neville.

"You – Potter – why didn't you tell him not to add the quills? Thought he'd made you look good if helot it wrong, did you? That's another point you've lost for Gryffindor."

Harry thinks this is so unfair, he opens his mouth to argue, but Ron kicks him from behind their cauldron.

"Don't push it," Ron mutters as (Y/N) turn around to look at him, "I've heard Snape can turn very nasty."

As the first years climb the stairs out of the dungeon an hour later, Harry's mind was racking and his spirits were low. He'd lost two points for Gryffindor in his very first week – why did Snape hate him so much? At least (Y/N) had won those ten points for Gryffindor.

"Cheer up," Ron tells Harry, "Snape's always taking points off Fred and George. Can I come and meet Hagrid with you?" he asks.

(Y/n)'s POV

Hermione and I are walking up from the dungeons behind Harry and Ron after the end of Potions Class.

"I noticed something strange," Hermione says.

"What?" I ask.

"Professor Snape seems to like you a lot," Hermione says, looking at me with her brown eyes.

"That was kind of weird," I agree, looking forward, then back at Hermione.

"Maybe he was wondering how you got to be so good at Potions," Hermione suggests. "You were the only one of us with a perfect potion."

"Yeah, that must have been it," I say as we enter the Great Hall.

After lunch, the two of us walk outside to sit by the Black Lake. I see Ron and Harry walking down to Hagrid's Hut, and I hear a faint barking coming from the same direction.

"Hello (Y/n)," comes one, well two, voices.

I look up to see the Weasley twins standing above me and my sister.

"Hey Fred, George," I answer cheerfully.

"Whacha first years doing out here?" Fred asks.

"Well, the first week of school is over," Hermione begins, her frizzy hair blowing in the wind.

"So we're enjoying the last of the summer air," (Y/n) finishes for her sister.

"(Y/n), we have a question for you," George says.

"What?" I ask curiously.

Fred and George look at each other before saying in unison, "Do you like funeral marches.

Hermione bursts into laughter at the question, and Fred and George sit down beside the two of us.

"Well, of course," I say, grinning. "It's my favorite song," I begin to hum a slow funeral march, and the Weasley twins join in, Hermione exchanges a look with me, shrugs, then joins in.

Word Count: 2887 words

Well, I'll see you see on the next chapter.

See y'all!

Love,

           Kaitlynn ❤️😍

[marvelvsmarvel]

WandaVision Ep7 Speculation #2

Episode 7: Breaking the Fourth Wall left a lot to be digested and honestly too much for a single post so I’ll be doing a few topical breakdowns.

Wrong: So before the series premiere contrary to popular opinion I predicted that Agnes wasn’t Agatha Harkness and while I still have reason to hold out that she’s hasn’t been manipulating everything let’s just run with it. Not afraid to say I’m wrong and again I don’t go against the grain to be edgy I’m honestly glad to see she is a comic book character in Agatha but I just like to predict and fancast outside of the box so no need for I told you so’s.

Agnes: Was Agatha all along... I saw someone say that they don’t remember Agatha Harkness being a straight up villain to which I agree. So I’m gonna go with the many who believe she’s just a pond for a greater threat which would explain the scary mystical book. We saw another example of this with Kaecilius working on behalf of Dormammu in Doctor Strange where seemingly his dark dimension is where Kaecilius drew his magic from and used a page in a similar book to summon him to Earth. However we have reason to believe that she is not working for Dormammu because when anyone did use his magic their eye line would be burned or some type of physical indication would show on their face. Before jumping into guesses of who she’s serving there’s also the why Agatha would want to partake in any of this? Many would assume its “for the children” but she really doesn’t seem all that interested in them for herself but perhaps her magic backer does.

Prediction: I imagine it has something to do with Wanda’s ability to as Tommy said “fix the dead” to which she seemed *gasp* “You can do that?!” In MCU fashion I believe she’s a Wanda parallel where she lost her husband “Ralph” which explains why we haven’t seen him yet and is doing whatever it takes to get him back including serving a greater more evil master and meddling with the likes of Wanda aka Strongest Avenger.

Not Pietro: I would say not to hold your breath that Evan Peters still might be the Fox X-Men Quicksilver Peter Maximoff just brainwashed by Agatha. I also don’t believe he’s Agnes’s husband Ralph either but of course I’ve been “wrong” before. So naturally I don’t believe he’s the bigger bad of Dormammu or Nightmare or Mephisto. For the sake of being boring a wanting a more self contained Wanda and Vision storyline I believe he was just there for a mid season finale type thriller and he’s just a small time pond of Agatha’s.

Prediction: If you recognize the sweaty face above that would be Robert Coleman aka The Whizzer from Marvel Netflix Jessica Jones. Who dat? The “other” lesser known Marvel speedster who actually debuted in the comics in a Scarlet Witch title - the Whizzer Robert Frank that is. That would explain his super speed ability and would be a nice nod to the forgotten man PLUS apparently there was an Easter Egg for him in the Ep2 intro - blink and you might miss it. To be clear I believe Evan Peters is the actual Whizzer Robert Frank. Why he is doing any of this is beyond me but if anyone knows that comic reference of him or how it ended for poor Robby Coleman up there... Well it doesn’t end pretty.

Magic: I love just bringing this up because I’m sure it’ll come up later. Ant-Man established that energy can be pulled from another dimension (come to think of it the way Vision awakens people in the Hex is exactly the same way Janet Van Dyne manipulates Quantum Energy). Doctor Strange established that magic too is pulled from another dimension and manifested in our world. Then Thor way back when said that where he comes from science and magic are on in the same. We know that Wanda isn’t actually a witch doing magic and that her powers derive from the Mind Stone but for Agatha that book and wherever it came from is the source of her powers. For those wondering both Agents of SHIELD and Hulu’s The Runaways depicted the Darkhold to literally have it spelled out on the cover. So the book in the basement is not it unless Kevin Feige was just like “pfft Marvel tv” like he does. Others have predicted that it could be the Book of (insert villain). The library at Kamar Taj showed many books not explaining that any one of them were Books of Somebody. So take it that Agatha really is an old school witch with a book of spells and a cauldron but however she came to have that book means she seemingly could be messing with the multiverse more than she knows.

[nighttimedaydreams]

Sleep?  Who’s she?

Being up from 2pm to 6am is really feeling just like “I’ll vibe into the future and the past” and I mean really who’s gonna stop me?  The laws of physics?  The Time Force Power Rangers?  Please, as if a bunch of teenagers with attitude could stop me.  Actually I don’t think the Time Force Power Rangers were teens, but that’s beside the point.  The point is this:  No one can stop me from vibing into the future and the past.  Oh sure people can say “sleep” but what they gonna do?  Put me to sleep with alluring music?  Guess what none of the souls around me can sing insofar as I know, so checkmate there are no lullabies  I will not be lulled into bye.  I’m stay here awake talking to the void wondering if the void will talk about.  It stares back allegedly so like, I’m sure it can talk back to.  Who knows, maybe it has interesting things to say.  After all has anyone ever really tried to talk to the void or have y’all just screamed at it?  Maybe it didn’t want to be screamed at, but just wanted a nice little chat.  Maybe it wants to be a game master of a tabletop game.  Have its own podcast or radio show.  How would you  know unless you talked to it?  How the fuck would you know?  Unless you’re a telepath.  Which if you’re telepath, holy shit, the things you must accidentally over here, although I suppose that’s a bit of a tired trope ain’t it?  Or maybe you’re telepathy is somehow limited, which if so would, would it work on the void?  Please test and write down results for SCIENCE!  As an unlicensed practitioner of genre fantasy science, I am quite curious towards the result.  Wait are wizards just fantasy scientists?    Or would that be alchemists?  Or both?  Could it be both? What about artificers?  Or are they engineers? Do you think a world with healing magic would figure out germ theory or would just be like “Call your local wizard doctor and have ‘em cast “Cure Light Wounds” or “Purify” and all shall be good”?  Now you might think this was a tanget from my original point and you’d be write, this was written at 6:00am and it is now 6:18am, I have not slept, and now I want to know who the fantasy scientist is.  I hope you have been entertained, because my body may be slowly going into a rebellion to demand sleep from my mind.  Eyes heavy and such.  Words aren’t gibberish yet though.  I could keep going for another hour at least.  Oh hey I just remembered I have soda in the fridge! 

[snowflake-of-destruction]

A long one this time since I’m “cheating” again and posting a selection from a random old draft so I’m not empty handed.

The spray of hot water from the showerhead seemed like a blessing from a god who’d been listening to the appeals Hayner had made over hours of practice in the overcast and heavily damp--but not raining, naturally, since Roxas had promised to call struggle practice if it rained outright instead of misting on and off. Hayner adored his friend and could think no wrong of him usually, but he was beginning to develop the paranoid delusion the help of several hidden, trained water spirit monsters had been enlisted to soak up the water in the clouds and keep the rain at bay, since he knew from the pictures Olette had sent him that it had been storming heavily on the other side of town all afternoon. 

Roxas kept saying he couldn't control all the weird monsters that still periodically appeared in Twilight Town, but those white zipper mouthed haunted onesies sure seemed to answer to him, and that Vanitas guy who'd dropped by last tournament had conjured three demon bunnies that he ordered around like servants, so it sure seemed like monster training was part of the whole "keybearer" deal. Roxas had explained the different between Heartless, Nobodies, Unversed and the special situations in the latter groups--Vanitas's relationship with the Unversed and the lesser Nobodies attuned to different masters that had once been more powerful Nobodies-- but it all seemed like semantics, excuses, and gibberish. To be fair, Hayner had a hard time paying attention when it had been explained because Roxas had ripped off his shirt after practice, and was standing with his Twilight Town University Tanukis struggle jersey slung around his neck, hair matted in ways that shouldn't have been attractive but were, and arms crossed behind his head, making it difficult to focus on anything but the muscles in his arms, the progress of a bead of sweat rolling slowly down his chest, or the flex of his stomach as he spoke, especially when the warm sound of his voice was so much more interesting than words. 

If it had been strategies for their first match of the upcoming season which included a face-off for Hayner against Dawn State's champion struggler, Edward "Edge" Geraldine, he could have retained it. That was important. The ins and outs of what legions of mutants could be trained and by whom? Unless Roxas was going to tell Hayner how he could master his own mutant army, or at least cop to being chief mutant wrangler himself, it was not nearly as interesting as wondering how likely he was to be able to pass it off as testing Roxas's reflexes or just seeing what what the look on his face would be if he kissed him right then in the middle of the struggle lot. Not that he would actually do it. He respected boundaries.

Hayner knew it was pathetic to still be crushing on his best friend when Roxas had been dating the same guy for “longer than he’s been alive” as Kairi had put it (however that worked). Axel had been a constant right from the start, already wrapped around Roxas--literally, hugging him from behind, arms wrapped loosely around him and chin resting on the top of Roxas's head while he wore a rather superior look that already knew Hayner wanted what he had and that reveled in rubbing it in, or so Hayner read into it at the time--when Hayner first awkwardly, unnecessarily introduced himself to him, handed him the picture of them from the fake Twilight Town Sora had given him that he was reluctant to pass on as much as he thought Roxas should have it, and told him, "I feel like I've known you my entire life." 

Hayner tended to write Axel out of that memory though, except when he was feeling especially masochistic, and only remember Roxas smiling so wide it crinkled the corners of his eyes and his voice warbling with emotion he'd rarely show easily in such force in times after, at least not directed toward Hayner, as he replied, "Please, can we pretend you have? I don't think my heart could stand it if we ever had to be strangers."

The friendship had continued like it had started. Roxas and Hayner were connected by invisible ties, instantly in sync, inside jokes about things that never actually happened already understood and able to finish each other's sentences. They challenged each other both to be better and, in other ways, so much worse than they were separately (The incident where they switched out the scheduled movie for the outdoor theater by Tram Common with a home video of various Twilight Town denizens not aware they were being filmed sprang to mind, as did the incident with Seifer and the feathers). 

Even so, it was always Axel who had Roxas's greatest devotion, and he'd go spiraling back to the redhead like they were magnetized, even when they fought, even the year Axel took off with his ex-boyfriend ("His best friend! Isa's just his friend like you're mine!" Hayner remembered Roxas's protestations well, and the shadow of doubt and pain in his eyes that Hayner had cursed himself for not being quite selfish enough to encourage. "And they're not on vacation. They're on a mission. They're looking for someone. Axel invited me to go. I was the one who said I wanted to stay here") and they only kept in contact by gummi phone. Roxas loved Axel more than his own life; he said as much, often and with vehement determination like he expected arguments.

It wasn't that Hayner didn't want to argue, but the injustice of Roxas being skateboard in the sky, face scraping the pavement in love with Got It Memorized the Former Kidnapper instead of him was matched by the fact that Axel wasn't a jerk, a cheater, or any of the other things Hayner had tried to paint him as in his mind in the beginning. Axel was constantly mocking him, that Hayner had been right about, but, other than that, he was, as much as Hayner wished it weren't so, a pretty cool guy, funny as hell, always had your back in a fight, and loved Roxas to the point of stupidity--and Hayner was forced to respect it...mostly.

Hayner tried to tell himself that he and Roxas were too similar in all the ways that would make them get on each other's nerves (too much to prove always, too impulsive, too quick to lose their cool, too used and turning everything into competition and too committed to always being the winner) and too different in ones that would leave them working up hill when it came to trying to carve out any long-term plans as well as soon scrambling for things to talk about other than taste in bands, boards, struggle, or what a dick Seifer could be--and even those sometimes failing after Roxas had shifted to offworld music rather than local, solar boards over skateboards, and had seen a "entirely different Seifer" during his brief relationship with Xion. Even knowing each other well enough to predict each other's thoughts was a curse when you thought about how hard it would make necessary white lies or trying to end a fight when you weren't yet completely sorry, particularly considering that, when Hayner reflected on it, he found he didn't regret any mean comment he had made in his entire life. 

Hayner also tried the tactic of reasoning with himself that he loved Roxas, but wasn't even really in love with him, or even consistently in lust as Roxas could ruin any effect he had with a single flash of self awareness, the kind that tended to solidify to outright conceit and smugness (gods Roxas could preen when he remembered he was pretty) that left a bitter edge in Hayner long after it faded. Even with all these tactics though, and every bit of good advice he could tell himself, Hayner couldn't shake that feeling he'd had since he first laid eyes on Roxas in the alternate Twilight Town's group photo outside the Old Mansion. He knew in his bones he was born to love that face as surely as if soulmate imprints had stepped out of science fiction and become real alongside the magic and aliens that had come to populate Twilight Town.

Hot water made everything seem better and brighter, loosening tight muscles and sweating out every problem until it existed no more. The memory of the fall he'd taken during practice, particularly brutal to his pride if not physically devastating, when he'd spun at a bad angle that made his left knee buckle, the ankle underneath it scream, and threw off his center of gravity swirled down the drain with dirt and grit picked up from the struggle lot pavement. Soon after it went the mud Roxas had smushed through his hair when he'd ruffled it after practice, laughing and ducking away as Hayner swung at him with the bat still in his hands and managing somehow to carry on laughing harder even while wincing in pain when the bat connected with a crack. A large purple splotched bruise had already been forming by the time Roxas left the locker room after the post-scrimmage strategy talk,  still covered in a layer of half dried sweat and with his hair sticking up more than usual on one side (Roxas didn't shower on campus after practice. Hayner only made the mistake of asking about it once. Roxas showered at home. Hayner had been informed of this with a wink form Roxas and a cheerfully lewd remark about how Axel liked him dirty). Hayner was sure he'd feel guilty when he saw the bruise in full form next time he saw Roxas, but, in the moment, Hayner had thought Roxas deserved it--and even more once he started questioning where Roxas had gotten mud in the first place and what implications it had for the theory Roxas was controlling weather. 

Lathering shampoo through his now mud-free hair and scrubbing harder at his scalp than necessary to also banish continued thoughts of his blond best friend, Hayner found himself startling and nearly slipping on the slick tile of the shower floor when he heard none other than the voice he was trying to banish calling out tentatively, "Hey! Hey? Sorry for bursting in on you."

 Hayner recovered, head snapping from side to side comically as if he'd find Roxas lurking in the corner of the stall when he should have known from the distance of the voice that Roxas was likely  on the other side of the locker room with the actual lockers and benches. If that was the case though, why was Roxas apologizing for bursting in? 

Hayner was still puzzling through it when Roxas continued shouting to him, this time something with a lot higher stakes in possible meaning. "Axel's already left for Wonderland and I thought you might still be here." 

Hayner let out a strangled noise of confusion that would have been him playing it cool and asking what he could help Roxas out with if his voice hadn't betrayed him. Shampoo dripped into his eye and it took him a second to even register the burn.

"I'll just sit out here and wait for you I guess, if you don't mind?" 

Hayner was concerned he had actually slipped in the shower and hit his head and was now suffering from a dying dream or concussion. 

"You're awfully quiet." The trepidation was back in Roxas's voice, and it caused an answering sympathetic flutter of nerves to tingle down Hayner's body and rest low. "I'm not talking to a stranger, am I? Or a ghost who turned on a faucet? That would be embarrassing."

"I'm here," Hayner found his voice but it refused to cooperate beyond those two words. His body was slightly more tractable, agreeing with his brain that he needed to wash the shampoo out of his hair and attend to washing the rest of him as swiftly as possible and not keep Probably A Dream Roxas waiting. He turned the water temperature up even higher. Maybe if he boiled himself until his flesh melted he might find a backbone under his skin and actually be able to carry on a conversation (and be able to follow through with whatever Dream Roxas was proposing so he wouldn't be left with a regret that would follow him until he died). 

“Do you have a cold? Your voice sounds a little weird.” 

“Weird how?” He squeaked and then overcompensated like a sitcom character, rumbling, “Weird how?” in a gravelly tone as he turned off the water and reached for his towel.

“Less like listening to a recording of my own voice,” the wry and completely nonsensical in Hayner’s opinion, reply came, Roxas’s voice quieter but a lot closer.

“I never thought we sounded alike.” Hayner finger combed his hair and wrapped the towel securely around his waist before performing a mental countdown to pysch himself up before stepping out of the stall to meet what turned out to be a complete stranger. Hair too long and a shade too light to be Roxas’s falling over the collar of a pale blue and  sunflower print kimono jacket Roxas wouldn’t be caught dead in. The absence of a tan and the addition of freckles were further confirmation of an eerie but imperfect doppleganger, but the dumbfounded look with lack of recognition in the eyes was the real cincer.

“You’re not Roxas!” Two voices chorused in near unison.

[twstdreams]

Thank you so much for the dorm match up! 😊 I am a bit of a chatterbox and I love to discuss on various things. I don't really care what, just as long it's interesting! With subjects I am good with English, History and Geography but I am really bad at match, physics, chrmistry, literally anything of that sort. I wear my heart on my sleeve and I am open with my emotions, if I feel like crying I'll cry, if I feel like laughing, I'll laugh. (1/?)

Also, I am really not good with technology either! I am an INFP and when it comes to people there isn't really a specific personality type I get along with. It's mostly kind of just "if we vibe, we vibe" thing. My friend group is very quirky and varies which makes things so fun! As a person I am quite cheerful, optimistic and bubbly but if I'm in the mood I am quite chaotic! Just really random which freaks some ppl out while others love it, pick your side 😂

I'm a sucker for sweets and yougurt, I can never get enough of that! I also have a passion for scary stories and when I go on walks I love listening to them! I love mythology, faries especially, and I daydream all the time! I get so lost in my world that I sometimes lose track of where I am! I'm generally nice to people I might, maybe a bit shy to some, but still pleasant enough for them to like me.

However I can be quite cold if I don't like some person. I give them the silent treatment and if I HAVE to speak to them I'm just really bitter and snarky. I strongly dislike arrogant people and people who bully. I can also be quite protective over the ones I love and my friends call me that mum of the group, although when the mood hits me I can be a child too. But yeah, mostly the mum friend who worries too much! Is this enough?

Happy Birthday, sweetie! I hope you enjoy this gift!

The shape of thy soul is ... Diasomnia!

You’re not good with technology? No worries, neither is Malleus. Diasomnia is founded on the Witch of Thorns who comes from the Valley of Thorns, a land where most things are magic-based rather than machine reliant. Therefore, no one is going to judge your lack of technical skills

You don’t encapsulate the elegance that Diasomnia students usually emulate. However, considering Sebek is shouting left, right, and centre, Silver is taking naps anywhere and everywhere, and Lilia is currently hanging upside down, it’s not enough to be a deal-breaker

It’s great that you get along with a variety of people because Diasomnia has a wide range of students as well and will help you overcome the aura that the other dorms feel make it hard to approach Diasomnia students

Even if other students don’t have the guts to point it out, Diasomnia, like most of NRC, has its own brand of chaos. Malleus is threatening to light people on fire, Sebek could not stop exalting his young master if his life depended on it, Lilia teleports as he pleases, and Silver has infamous “mad-free space.” You will fit in just fine with the chaos.

Your cheerful, bubbly, and optimistic nature will be welcome! There’s not a lot of sunlight as the dorm as it's modelled after the Witch’s castle, but you can be the designated source of sunshine! Lilia finds your bubbly nature so cute and Malleus finds your optimism refreshing

Your love of sweets will be indulged when there are tea parties! Ignore Sebek’s glaring and forge on, tea and sweets are a lovely combo.

You and Malleus are quite the chatterbox combo! Malleus goes on and on about gargoyles and the stories surrounding them and you adore listening to the ones about haunted ones. 

You love asking him about fae customs and he happily obliges given that you’ve listened to his gargoyle tangent. Lilia answers your questions too, but sometimes you wonder if he’s just pulling your leg. Sebek will answer inquiries too but be prepared for a lecture to go hand in hand.

Losing track of where you are? You probably run into Silver napping at random areas. If you decide to wake him up from his impromptu slumber, he’ll be very grateful

Diasomnia is filled with protective friends, so that aspect is easily accepted. What’s the use of all this power if not to protect that which is precious to you?

Your cold and feisty treatment towards those you detest is nothing new at Diasomnia either. Most people are scared of accidentally angering those from Diasomnia as they can’t be dealt with by normal means. There’s a reason others find people from this dorm hard to approach. The fact that you’re not throwing shotput balls fast enough to break bones as a warning already puts you amongst the nicer ones.

Dorms to avoid:

Pomefiore

Being bad at chemistry, and all the sciences in general, will already put you at a major disadvantage at the dorm where everyone excels at magic potions and sorcery

You may love sweets but you probably won’t like the vigorous exercise routine you’ll have to complete first to compensate for any and all desserts you consume

Vil can and will make you cry. Furthermore, he might not even stop his berating even if tears are streaming down your face

Daydream in the middle of Vil lecturing you and you will most likely get smacked right then and there

Not all of Pomefiore’s students are arrogant, some are kind and open-minded to a degree, but you’ll definitely meet people who you’ll want to kick off their high horse

Savanaclaw

You dislike arrogant people and bullies, which this dorm has in spades. 

Exasperated sighs fall from your lips as you nearly marvel at how Leona is both so incredibly lazy yet also arrogant.

Cocky upperclassmen who have no issue playing dirty and bullying others also infuriate you. Be careful because they’re not afraid to use magic or brawn to drive a point home

Daydreaming is not really a safe activity at the Savanaclaw dorm given how ready everyone is to fight, even a small slight like bumping into someone is enough to set off a brawl

Other possible dorms:

Heartslabyul

Your love of sweets is thoroughly sated at the Heartslabyul dorm. There are constantly a galore of high-quality sweets thanks to Unbirthday parties and you’ll get your fair share as long as you don’t upset Trey

If Ignihyde is known for little to no social interactions and sticking to itself, then Heartslabyul is the opposite. Like many other Heartslabyul students, you get along with a variety of people. Cater has friends from nearly every dorm, showing her personable Heartslabyul students can be

Don’t mistake this dorm as a cutesy pushover place because of the pretty parties and eccentric activities. Heartslabyul dorm is filled with people who have no qualms getting revenge or doling out punishment. 

Riddle screams “OFF WITH YOUR HEAD” at a moment’s notice, and especially if he catches someone breaking the rules more than once. Trey may come off as a serene brotherly figure but he’s ready to dole out fitting passive-aggressive punishments like any older sibling is. Deuce is ready to throw down at a moment’s notice if someone is disrespectful. So your cold and snarky treatment towards those you dislike probably doesn’t even have anyone blinking an eye unless it breaks a rule

Speaking of rule-breaking, having to memorize 810 rules and daydreaming are not two things that mesh well. If you were part of the dorm pre-overblot, it was rough. It probably still is, but you’re trying!

Bonus: Riddle ensures no students fail so even if you suck with anything science or math-related, you’ve got an incredibly smart, tutor

[casadefreewill]

So I sat down and read Howl’s Moving Castle yesterday and I had some ideas for a Zukka AU. The story would obviously have to change a bit but here were the basics of the idea:

Howl —> Sokka

Howl’s sister —> Katara

——> Wales is the South Pole/village

Howl’s sister is also kind of GranGran

Sokka’s Magic is very science/intellect based like Howl’s

Sokka is still a drama lama but way less so than Howl — this time is TWO drama lama’s living together and everything just imploded more

—> Sokka still gets all the girls,

Curse is from Hama

Hama is the Witch of the Waste (yeah, she seems fucked up enough to make a human puppet out of chopped up people) —> still wants to get Sokka’s head for her human doll - the curse is the same, to bring Sokka to the Waste so she can get his head.

Hama’s Fire/Star is Koh! Takes the form of Kuruk’s wife when seducing Sokka

Sokka’s Fire/Star is actually Yue

Hama curses Zuko with old age, she got her hands on Ty-Lee and LongFang, Ty-Lee thought of Azula when interrogated which brought Hama to the family shop to catch Zuko in a mood while attending the shop. He offends her, she curses him to be old to get him out of her way.

Martha —-> Kiyi

Lettie —-> Azula

Sophie —-> Zuko

Zuko - first born, doomed to fail first, feels as if they can never do anything right, whatever they do blows up in their face, wants to please their parent but may be being taken advantage of, kind of a little bit angry at everything - very explosive/destructive anger. Side note: second half of the book Sophie is kind of the definition of “aren’t you tiered of being nice, don’t you just wanna go ape shit”

Zuko’s Magic is still gives things life by rambling to them (emotion based magic).

Azula - is strong willed, doesn’t feel uncle knows what is best for her, decides to make her own way in life becoming powerful under her own power, she will not bend to the “fate” of a middle child. Is actually really good at magic.

Kiyi - doesn’t want the burden of a great destiny of the youngest child. Just wants to have fun, meet someone nice, and settle down. Cares deeply for her oldest sibling and just wants them to make good life choices that center on themself for once. Kiyi is aged up in this so it’s not like a bunch of guys crushing on a 5 year old.

Fanny —> Iroh, he does love the children, he’s just kind of also really into living life to the fullest. Both Kiki and Azula bad mouth him to Zuko who isn’t sure how to feel about him at that point.

Iroh is still the only one to recognize Zuko on sight, hug him, and then threaten to beat the shit out of whoever cursed him (good parallel to the terrifying protective aunt thing they have going in the books)

Ozai and Ursa are the original parents - Ozai dies first, Ursa remarries and has Kiyi, Ursa and new Husband (Noren) die and Iroh comes to help with the children and the shop.

Character Summary:

Sokka - Howl Jenkins

Katara - Megan Jenkins

Hama - The Witch of the Waste

Yue - Calcifer

Koh/Kuruk’s wife - Mss Angorian

Long Fang - Prince Justin

King Kui - The king of Ingary

Bosko - Princess Valeria

“Wang also says he won’t do it unless he gets your child’s hand in marriage!” The king gained a look of confusion, “my . . . do you mean my bear?” At that moment grunting and shuffling could be heard from under the table, a bear’s nose jutted out from beneath the table cloth, soon followed by the rest of the furry glory that was Prince Bosco. “Oh” said Zuko weakly, suddenly feeling very foolish.

Ty-Lee - Ben Sullivan

Azula - Lettie Hatter

Kiyi - Martha Hatter

Zuko - Sophie Hatter

Iroh - Fanny Hatter

Master Piandao - Mrs. Pentstemmon

Aang - Michael Fisher —> he’s still into Katara not Kiyi in this, Sokka is less, ‘I’m separating my two lives’ in this one, he lets them visit his home more than the one time and Aang just fell head over heals for his sister, she thinks he’s cute and funny and is kind of into him too. This does however make it easier for Hama to locate her.

Lo and Li - Mrs. Annabel Fairfax

Mai - another apprentice of Lo and Li

Ozai and Ursa - the parents

That’s what I got so far.

[grailfinders]

Fate and Phantasms #16: Arash

Welcome back to Fate and Phantasms, where we’re bringing every servant in FGO to life in D&D 5e! Today we’re building Arash the Archer, a.k.a. that guy that you use for exactly one turn while farming hands. For this build, we have two goals in mind.

High burst damage.

You need to be tough. You wouldn’t know it thanks to his NP killing him most of the time, but Arash is a pretty beefy guy. He easily has the highest HP of all the 1 star archers.

We would  include the whole “killing yourself” thing in this build, but it turns out D&D doesn’t appreciate the fine art of disposeability like FGO does. The only options for self damage I could find were Berserkers, which don’t mesh with ranged builds, and Blood Hunters, which don’t do enough damage to be all that applicable.

As usual, a quick rundown of the build can be found here, and a more detailed explanation will be below the cut.

Background and Race

You are a Variant Human, because we need that feat, giving you +1 Dexterity and +1 Strength, as well as proficiency in Persuasion. For your feat, grab Sharpshooter, letting you attack without disadvantage at long range with your bow, ignore half and 3/4 cover, and especially important for this build, take a -5 on ranged attack rolls for a +10 to damage.

You are a Soldier, fighting for  King Manuchehr (or whoever your DM decides is lore-appropriate). This gives you proficiency in Athletics and Intimidation, the latter of which doesn’t really fit you as a person, but we’ll just have to live with that. I mean, you won’t, but w/e.

Stats

As always, we use the standard array here, but feel free to roll if you want to. I’d say make sure you keep multiclassing in mind, but if you mess this up that would mean you didn’t roll a single stat over 13, so you’d probably just want to start over at that point. Put your highest stat in Dexterity. You’re more buff than nimble, but D&D doesn’t play like that with bowmen. Next is Constitution, you’re tough and resistant to poison. Not mechanically resistant, but... anyway then get Strength, because I mean look at those biceps. Follow that with Charisma, because you managed to convince multiple people that Arash Airlines was a good idea. Put Intelligence next, you’re not dumb, but not smart either. Finally, dump Wisdom, because you also thought Arash Airlines was a good idea.

Piety

With the new Theros book, WotC introduced a more in-depth Piety system. just pick a god and pray! Obviously you’ll have to hash out details with your DM about how this will work, but if you can talk them into it base your god of choice on Pharika. At 3+ piety you gain the option to use Ray of Sickness a number of times equal to your wisdom modifier (minimum 1) per long rest, using your Wisdom as the spellcasting ability. At 10+ piety, we get to the real reason we’re here, an advantage against being poisoned, and immunity to disease. At 25+ piety you can pick one of two options as a touch action, either healing someone for 1d8 + wis modifier and curing them of one disease or poison, or inflicting a dc 15 constitution save, causing their weapon attacks to deal half damage for one minute on a failure. The target can repeat their save at the end of each turn. You can use these touch abilities a number of times equal to your wisdom modifier (minimum 1) per long rest. Finally, at 50+ piety, you can add 2 to either your dexterity or wisdom, and increase your maximum by 2 as well for the chosen stat.

Since this is a new feature, and requires a bit of worldbuilding to work in a game, we won’t include this in the final writeup of the build, but it’s something to talk to your DM about, and tying your character into the world is never a bad thing.

Class Levels

1. Fighter 1: As a fighter, you gain proficiencies in Perception, Survival, and Strength and Constitution saves. You also gain a fighting style, pick Archery for a +2 to ranged attack rolls, and Second Wind, letting you heal yourself as a bonus action for 1d10 + your fighter level once per short rest.

2. Fighter 2: You get an Action Surge, giving you another action in a turn once per short rest. It’s almost an extra turn, but not quite.

3. Fighter 3: You become a Champion of the people, giving you an Improved Critical that doubles your odds of getting a critical hit.

4. Fighter 4: Use your first Ability Score Improvement to grab the Medium Armor Master feat. Technically you could use heavy armor, but medium armor fits your spirit origin better, and now you don’t have disadvantage on sneak rolls because of it, and you can add 3 instead of 2 to your AC if your dexterity is high enough (spoilers: it is).

5. Fighter 5: You get an Extra Attack, giving you two attacks with an attack action, and meaning your chance at critting each turn has been quadrupled.

6. Rogue 1: Rogue doesn’t really fit your character that much, but that sneak attack damage is just too good to pass up on. First level rogues get Expertise, doubling the proficiency bonus of two skills (Athletics and Survival), Sneak Attack, adding extra damage to attacks made with advantage or with other party members standing next to the target, Thieve’s Cant a secret language between thieves, and proficiency with one skill from the rogue’s gallery (Insight) and Thieves’ Tools. 

7. Rogue 2: At second level you get a Cunning Action, letting you dash, disengage, or hide as a bonus action. A growing amount of your damage is tied to sneak attacks, so being able to hide is useful if you’re trying to snipe someone all on your lonesome.

8. Rogue 3: Third level rogues pick a specialty, your’s is as an Assassin. This gives you proficiency with the Disguise and Poisoner’s Kits. (Again, there’s no mechanical use for the latter, so maybe you could use it to make antidotes?) You also get the power to Assassinate. You have advantage on attacks against creatures that haven’t acted in combat yet, and if you hit a surprised creature it’s an automatic critical hit. Assassinations are not really your thing, but dealing a ton of damage turn 1 and then being way less useful afterwards absolutely is.

9. Rogue 4: Use your Ability Score Improvement to empower your Dexterity for better bow attacks.

10. Rogue 5: You gain an Uncanny Dodge, letting you react to halve damage from attacks you see coming.

11. Fighter 6: Use your next Ability Score Improvement to grab the Tough feat, adding 2 hp per level and adding an additional 2 hp each time you level up. Your body isn’t weak, your bow arm is just that strong.

12. Fighter 7: As a champion, you become a Remarkable Athlete, letting you add half your proficiency (rounded up) to any physical check you aren’t already proficient in. Also, your long jump distance in increased by your strength modifier. Remember: Initiative is a dexterity check!

13. Fighter 8: Use your next Ability Score Improvement to max out your Dexterity. This means your bow is almost as deadly as it’s ever going to get, for both you and your enemies.

14. Fighter 9: You get one use of Indomitable per long rest, meaning you can reroll a failed saving throw.

15. Fighter 10: You get another fighting style. Grab Defense for one extra AC point.

16. Fighter 11: You now have a third attack attached to each action, thanks to another Extra Attack. I’m not a mathematician, but more arrows = more crits = more dead. It’s just science.

17. Fighter 12: Use your Ability Score Improvement to beef up your Constitution for some sweet, sweet, retroactive HP boost.

18. Fighter 13: Grab a second use of Indomitable per long rest.

19. Fighter 14: Use your last Ability Score Improvement for some more Constitution.

20. Fighter 15: 15th level champions get a Superior Critical, meaning every attack roll crits on a 18, 19, or 20 for a lot of crits and a lot of damage.

Pros: You have very high physical saves, high AC, and a lot of health, so you’ll probably be able to stick around in a fight for quite a while, especially as a ranged fighter. You have a +8 to initiative, so you’ll usually be high on the list, and when you go first you’ll be able to do quite a bit of damage. Unfortunately sneak attacks are only once per turn, but 3-6 crits in the opening round of combat is nothing to sneeze at. Assuming you use sharpshooter and your action surge you’ll be doing an average of over 150 damage in a single round of combat. That feels pretty Stella-ish to me.

Cons: Your soft skills could use some work, especially your int and wisdom. It’s a good thing you have indomitable, because you’re probably going to need that a lot. You also don’t have any innate magical damage, so higher level enemies will give you a lot of trouble, unless your DM gives you a break.

In short: Wreck shop the first turn, then mop up the stragglers in the second. Try to avoid any evil bards and you should be fine.

[turquoisephoenix]

Perfect Chemistry

A Skylanders one shot

Dr. Krankcase/Mags. All it takes is a slip of a tongue and before you know it you're accidentally admitting that you have romantic feelings for your best friend from Inventor's School.

The sun was already setting in the cloud-filled horizon of Skylands, distant clouds on the western horizon glowing like fresh coals in a burning furnace.

Just this morning, Skylanders Academy - beacon of hope, symbol of virtue and peace in a turbulent magical world littered with monsters and villains - held a giant celebration to welcome four new Skylanders into the fold. While it was common for someone courageous enough to be made a Skylander (Master Eon was never considered very picky about who he granted the title, provided the recipient had proven themselves worthy of the title) was what made this day special was that it heralded the end of an evil chapter. The end of a nightmarish era.

Four of The Doom Raiders have given up crime.

After several years performing community service and training under the watchful eye of Master Eon and his most loyal followers, Wolfgang, The Golden Queen, the Chompy Mage, and Dr. Krankcase were now all considered fit to rejoin society and were all awarded new jobs as both Skylanders and teachers at the Academy. The Doom Raiders as a villainous organization had now ceased to be.

Some of the members of the Academy wished that it was all of the awful criminals - Chef Pepper Jack, Dreamcatcher, and The Gulper were all considered to be at large and major threats to the peace that the Skylanders upheld - but this was still considered a major victory to celebrate. It proved that evil could change, even if it took several years of sorting through books at a library to do so.

And with their newly awarded freedom - and their declaration that they would never use their powers for evil ever again unless they want a life sentence in Cloudcracker Prison - the Academy threw a party in their honor.

And boy, what a party it was. Even as the sun was setting and the hours were winding on, the party showed no signs of slowing down and looked to be rising to a fever pitch, with everybody in the Academy taking advantage of the excuse to eat as much food as they could, dance until their feet felt ready to fall off, and talk to the new members of the Academy staff while under the influence of caffeine and various snack products. The enchilada sauce flowed freely, as did the music from several local bands. The kitchen fires burned around the clock just to supply enough refreshments to everyone who showed up.

One ex-Doom Raider, however, wanted a break from the celebrations. Dr. Krankcase, tray of party favors still in one hand, kept glancing out the window and at the setting sun as if searching for an exit. That isn't to say he had fun today, of course not, but while his former partners in crime were still taking the center stage, either through queenly proclamations that they declare their powers to be a rightful force that will make all the bad guys tremble or through unprompted guitar solos that shook the dust off of the Academy's foundations, Dr. Krankcase was now just hanging back near the back of the party with Mags and her friends. Mags was the only non-Doom Raider he knew at the party, after all.

Mags had noticed that Dr. Krankcase was giving subtle hints that he no longer wanted to be there anymore, even if he refused to say so out loud. She had known him for so long that she was able to pick up on the tiny cues that he gave when it was obvious that he was no longer having fun at a social gathering, especially one that was filled with questions from future coworkers. His jokes became just a little more forced, his body language became tight and more hesitant, his eyes kept searching for possible escape routes, and his smile had turned from something bright and cheerful to something that had the grimace of a caged animal.

He seemed too afraid to leave on his own, possibly in fear that someone would somehow find it suspicious and immediately take away his recent accolades and throw him back in Cloudcracker Prison (anxiety was funny like that) so when Mags suggested they head over to her workshop, he practically jumped at the opportunity.

That's what friends were for, right?

"Man, thanks for saving me back there, Mags. I'm not used to so much festivity and merriment thrown in my direction." Dr. Krankcase said as he entered Mags' workshop, breathing a sigh of relief as his legs clicked noisily across the floor.

When the ex-Doom Raider had last visited her workplace, there was so much stuff on the floor - wrenches, half-finished blueprints, cans of oil, that sort of thing - that he had such a hard time getting around and instead stood awkwardly in a corner. Now, there was a clear path cutting through the place, the organized chaos instead being pushed off to the sides where they couldn't get caught on his spider legs. He appreciated the gesture. With how well his cybernetic wooden legs worked, a lot of people forgot that they were still considered mobility aids and that he couldn't stand in places that people with two legs could.

"Aww, it's no big deal!" she said, hanging her silly stovepipe hat on a stand near the door. "Although personally I think ya were doing a great job with all them questions and-" Mags stopped herself the moment she saw her partner follow her lead and also remove his hat. "...Cranberry, are you wearing a toupee?"

The mad scientist looked up, radiating a similar aura of a dog caught with a stolen bagel in its mouth, and smiled sheepishly. There was an unfortunate blue hairpiece perched on her froggy companion, several shades darker than the actual hair sticking out on the sides of his head. His face began to turn pink as he looked away from her.

"Well...you know, I wanted to be prepared in case some accident knocked my hat off during the party! You know how it goes. I didn't want my new coworkers to see my massive bald spot, and...well..."

He trailed off, realized how lame he sounded, and ripped the hair piece from his head as he immediately gave up. His massive bald spot, normally hidden by one of his many tall hats of choice, now glistened in the workshop's lighting.

"So yes, yes, I'm wearing a very bad toupee," he held it away from him between two pinched fingers in disgust. "A very damp one at that!"

Mags put a hand against her mouth to stifle a giggle as he unceremoniously chucked the hell toupee in a wastebin. "Ya wanna relax while I get yer gift ready? It'll take a couple minutes to get it set up and ya look like death there, buddy."

Thankful for the invitation, Krankcase flopped on a dusty old couch that Mags kept in her workplace, his legs curled up like a dead spider as some of the legs pierced the worn out arm rest. His modified body shape was good for standing but not so much for more leisurely poses; couches were now the preferred method of relaxation over a chair. He stretched, his back and neck audibly cracking, as a lazy smile spread on his face. "Don't need to tell me twice, Mags."

He listened to her leave into the next room and allowed himself to gaze around the area. He loved that Mags' workshop was like an extension of herself. Most of the space in her workshop was dedicated to her profession, with wrenches and blowtorches and screwdrivers hanging on the walls, but on occasion he'd spot something like a kitten poster or a little ceramic puppy hanging out alongside cans of oil or belt sanders.

There were almost no hints that Mags had originated from the Underlands - a place where vampires, werewolves, and zombies lurked in dusty ol' crypts and mansions - except for one aging photograph that showed her standing next to her parents and five other siblings. Even in the photograph, her parents looked like they were glaring in disapproval at the legless amphibian laying on their daughter's sofa.

But then, as he was left to his thoughts and as he studied Mags' knickknacks and workshop decorations, the butterflies in his stomach returned anew, this time bringing forth the bubbling feelings he kept suppressed. His smile slowly morphed into an uneasy frown as he began to fiddle with one of his bottom tusks. Ah yes, that was a problem. He wasn't sure what caused it - what made his brain flip the switch and change his thoughts into something more potent - but lately he's been having feelings for his best friend. Somehow it almost felt criminal.

'No, don't make it awkward...' he told himself, dragging a hand across his face. He couldn't say it out loud, but he loved Mags. He loved everything about her, her bubbly, positive personality, her immense knowledge in everything science. He loved her accent, the way she would crack a silly joke even in the face of danger. He loved how excited and loud she would get when she was getting close to a breakthrough in an experiment. He loved the way she smiled, the way she still was friends with him even after all the awful, evil things he's done in the past. He even loved her stupid hat, even if he thought his taste in headwear was far superior.

And he was absolutely afraid of ruining all that by saying the wrong thing. What if his tongue betrayed him in the worst possible moment and he said what he was really thinking? Would she hate him? Would he lose his best friend over some stupid emotions?

"Here it is!" Mags cried suddenly, jolting him from his thoughts. Almost guiltily, Dr. Krankcase scrambled to his feet.

Nothing could prepare him for what he saw.

"Mags..."

Standing before him, next to a very excited Mags, was an exact double of the wooden legs that were holding him upright. He slowly walked over to it, his arm outstretched like a sleepwalker, until his fingers grazed the top of it. It was made from the same wood and everything, and all the bolts and joints were at the exact same size. She got the measurements down exactly, when he didn't even build a working blueprint for his wooden spider legs.

"You...you built a replica of my legs?" he asked, leaning forward to examine it even more closely. He lifted a leg up and started testing the joints, then he moved one of his own legs next to Mags' gift and eyeballed the two inventions together, admiring Mags' handicraft. There was absolutely no difference, beyond the fact that only one pair of legs had a Dr. Krankcase sitting in them. It was unbelievable.

"They're not functional, before ya ask. You're still the only one who can bring this type of wood to life. But this has been a little pet project o' mine that I've been fiddling with over the months. I'm slowly learning how yer legs work so that, if something...you know...were to happen while you're out on a mission doing heroic, dangerous things, I could help repair them. It just seems like something to ease your mind just in case something terrible happened."

Krankcase was speechless. After spending an entire day keeping up appearances and trying to play it cool, he lost his composure.

"Mags..." he paused to take a deep breath. Words were suddenly catching in his chest. He ran a hand down his face as tears caught in his eyes. "No one's ever offered to help me like this before."

Mags elbowed him playfully, grinning from ear to ear.

"Aww, it's such a small gesture for the man I love."

Time seemed to stop for both of them. It was the tiniest slip of the tongue - something that Dr. Krankcase thought he misheard - but, like the wrong ingredient thrown into an alchemist's pot, there was an immediate explosive response and suddenly everything in the recipe changed.

"I MEAN-" Mags began, her face instantly turning beet red. She began to gesture wildly with her hands, emotions suddenly flaring up. "Aw shoot, I meant that in a platonic way! I didn't mean it like as in LOVE love, that would be real awkward ta just spring that on ya just now, aw diddly-di-darn, I mean, some things just slip out, boy howdy, I've been working so late and I'm tired andand-"

"Mags! It's okay!" he shouted. Inwardly, as he watched her fidget nervously, he noticed that Mags' accent got even thicker when she was flustered. It was adorable to him, one of the many quirks that made her beautiful in his eyes, and something about it made the ex-Doom Raider feel bold.

He was a Skylander now, after all. Skylanders were supposed to be flexible and adapt to any situation.

"To be quite honest, I love you too."

It was a shot in the dark, one that made his mind scream out in anguish for letting such an important secret out, but it had the perfect effect. Mags didn't tell him that their friendship was now over, she didn't react in disgust at such a display of utter pigheadedness from some frog with a doctorate degree. Instead she froze in place and stared at him blankly like a newborn fawn.

"Wait, you...you do?"

He nodded.

"...Really?"

Her voice sounded so small, so fragile, so unlike the Mags he's known for so long. That's when it hit him. Gears spinning in his head, his eyes fell back on the replica of his own mechanical legs, the result of months of studying his own handiwork just so he would never have to worry about an injury making him unable to repair his legs himself. He wasn't the only one hiding secret affections for a best friend, too afraid to speak up in fear that it'd just alienate the other person and their long-term friendship would be ruined forever.

Dr. Krankcase and Mags were the two smartest scientists in all of Skylands, capable of bending the very fabric of reality with their inventions, and yet both of them were unable to see what was developing between them.

Without thinking, he wrapped her in his arms and pressed her close, burying his face in her bright purple hair. He felt her flinch, but then her hesitation vanished and she relaxed in his embrace and put her arms around his waist.

"Really." He replied back, trying to imitate the dashing hero in a romance novel. His attempt at being suave failed instantly however as his bottled-up emotions overwhelmed him. His voice ended up trembling and the tears he was holding back began to fall on her head. A weak sob escaped his lips and his body shook. He wasn't sure if this was real or not.

"I just didn't think..." he paused as words were getting harder to use. "-you'd want someone like me."

Mags didn't respond as she rested her head against his chest and listened to his heartbeat flutter anxiously. She didn't have to ask what he meant. She had frequently checked up on him while he was doing community service and on occasion he'd tell her that he was afraid that them continuing to be friends would tarnish her reputation. After all, she was a hero of Skylands while he was a disgraced criminal. She helped people, he hurt people. She saved the world from destruction, and he once built a doomsday device. Their friendship persisted, but lately, he was voicing his doubts more and more.

'Because he was falling in love with me,' she realized as she remained pressed up against him, breathing in the wood chip and hint of acid smell that lingered on his clothes. Dr. Krankcase's hug lingered; he was so touch-starved that he was almost afraid of letting go, in fear that this golden opportunity would slip through his fingers.

He was always like that, she mused to herself. Doubting himself and his ability to live up to her achievements despite looking outwardly prideful. Even when they were alumni at the most prestigious inventor's school, Krankcase was afraid that becoming friends with her would reflect badly on Magdalena Sibylla-Bronwen Soulstealer the II, daughter of one of the most famous vampires in the Underlands.

"Of course I want to be with you. I'd be fine living the rest of my life with you if I had to." she said softly, arms still around his waist.

She loved Dr. Krankcase, she could finally admit that to herself. She loved everything he was, every little piece of his maniacal personality, his talents and strengths as well as his flaws. She didn't mind at all that he had creepy spider legs. He was a cunning scientist just like her, a man of alchemy and engineering, and also a fearsome warrior. She almost felt a little guilty for admitting this, but she even loved his time as a villain, if only because it made his current achievements that much richer. He was once evil, but he also had the strength to realize what he did was wrong and pull himself out of his wicked mindset.

At those words, Krankcase's mind started to ponder the possibility of spending the rest of his life with her - would they get married? would they have kids? - and something about it activated his deep-seeded anxiety and his body went into fight-or-flight mode. He instantly pulled away from her, an action so swift that Mags nearly fell over, as he tried to slowly walk backwards out the front door. Everything was happening too fast.

"You know, Mags. I should...I should get going." he said, panic flooding his voice. "T-Thank you for the present, it was...I'll be real, it was the best thing I've ever received in my life-BUT I think I've stayed too long, I'm kinda making things awkward right now, I don't want anyone in the Academy to get any ideas and start talking-"

Mags approached him swiftly, her hands gently resting on his shoulders, stopping him from running away. They made eye contact and for a brief moment, neither of them spoke as they both gazed into each other eyes. Without realizing what he was doing, Krankcase leaned forward until both of them felt each other's breath on their face. Two of his spider legs adjusted themselves so that they were on opposite sides of her own, gently framing her with his own cybernetics.

Mags drew herself to her full height. Now it was her turn to be bold.

"Let them talk."

And with those words, she pulled his face towards her's, fingers caught in his fluffy blue hair, and gave him a kiss. It was clumsy, a sloppy first attempt from a scientist so inexperienced in romance that most of her experience - save for the time when she dated Cali for a brief couple of months - came from TV shows and crinkled paperbacks.

But like most of her science experiments, it had the desired result. He leaned into her kiss and they both melted into each other, savoring the moment. Dr. Krankcase put a hand behind her head, running his fingers in her purple hair. When they finally pulled away, both of them needed some time to catch their breath.

"Wow..." was his only reply. It snapped him back to his senses; the panic was gone and he was back to his charming self.

Then, his mouth curled into a wide grin, his bottom tusks framing his lovely set of fangs.

"Well? Did it work? Did I turn into a prince?"

It was a dumb joke, but it also broke all of the tension that was hanging in the room. Mags immediately started cackling like a hyena like it was the funniest joke she's heard in her life, leaning her head against Krankcase's chest as he too started laughing.

"Sorry! Sorry! It was the perfect moment-" he tried to explain, but he was cut off when Mags jokingly punched him in the arm.

"You're such a dork!" Mags shot back.

Krankcase quietly embraced her again, leaning his chin on her shoulder. Even without his face visible, Mags could feel the grin that was spreading across his face. She smiled back. To both scientists, everything outside of the workshop was now forgotten. The party was forgotten. All fears of gossip were forgotten. All that existed now was their beautiful romance blossoming between the two of them like the most wonderful result of an experiment.

"Yes but I'm your dork."

[iillusiionary]

&. Because I have now seen the same damn movie 4 times, I have fucking decided to build on what should be built on. AKA Mysterio’s backstory and Beck’s backstory, AKA I’m gonna do some world-building/character-building on Mysterio’s and dig in somewhat to Beck’s real mindset/history. All of this is under the cut and will eventually be dragged over to the about page because all of this will become very very influential to how I play Beck. I present to you, under the cut, The Big Post, 5172 words and hours of my time, The Lie and The Truth. Y’all can come and talk to me abt this later if you have any questions but I wrote it this way and I AIN’T CHANGING SHIT.

MYSTERIO’S BACKSTORY, AKA THE LIE:

Quentin Beck is a 35-year-old soldier on Earth-833. He is from Canada, East Canada. When the Earth was still forming its continents, it was shaken with an array of earthquakes that left it looking somewhat different from our Earth. Many continents are the same in relative shape but with large chunks taken out of them or splits down the middle. North America finds itself with a large split from the upper point of Canada straight down to the halfway point of the USA. It’s like someone was trying to pry apart the continent into two halves and gave up. If you want to give more specifics about where he’s from, he’s from Toronto, Ontario, but spent a two-year stint in Halifax in his early childhood before moving to The Globe (still in Canada). On 833, there is a global phenomenon where some people are born with powers. Magic. Sorcery. It can be a bit of a random process, kinda like how in Harry Potter there are human-born wizards and wizard-born ‘humans’, although science shows that chances are greater of your child being born with magic if you also have magic. There are different forms of magic, different types, sometimes a family/clan will specialize in a specific group of magic because of their genes. Many of the magic powers can be summed up into different groups (and, of course, there are subtypes to them). Elements (power over 1-2 elements (anything, smoke to fire to ice), typically), telekinetics (moving things, people), energies (common knowledge on this is just lasers and some potential domain over robotics/electronics), shifters (shapeshifters), boosters (those who can enhance their strength/speed/jump ability/etc through magic), porters (teleporters), sounders (those with some control over sound), and a few other domains but these are the most common. Quentin was one of the unlucky few born with a powerful set of powers that was very useful to what could be described as 833’s version of The Avengers, but was something that wasn’t very Avengers like at all. Training took place at The Globe, a large spherical building in the middle of the ocean between West and East Canada. The worlds greatest in their respective domains of magic were assembled, trained and placed into battalions, platoons or squadrons to fight off any threats, regardless of whether they wanted to or not. Most units were composed of magic users of a single domain (fire element users with fire element users, telekinetics with telekinetics, etc), some were of mixed domain users who worked well together during initial training (creating mini-Avengers-eqsue groups). Quentin’s magical powers fell under a domain with no name, or at least, one that no one cared to know except for the science division. They always had their names, but they in the domain called it Experimental magic. It was a grab bag. Most magic users could only use one domain, some under the Experimental banner had telekinesis and energy, or any other duo. But that was rare. Others could have a trio, but that was very rare. A quadruple was rarer still, only one was known. Anything larger than four was unheard of. A writer would look at them and think, huh, that’s a Mary-Sue/generally overpowered hero right there! And yet, there was Quentin.  Quentin didn’t show any sort of powers in his infancy, the time when most people show their powers. He lived up to the age of ten without showing the slightest sign of powers. Nights, when he was young, were spent sneaking out to the roof of his house with his sister, Elenore, and her using her fire magic to create something of a little fireworks display. His mother, Anne-Marie, would use her fire powers to cook instead of using the stove. His father, Gregory, would use his telekinesis to move around Quentin’s toys when telling him a bedtime story. Video games were played and he played outside with the neighbourhood kids. Quentin ‘made up’ for his lack of powers with his intelligence, learning anything and everything that he could. Looking up to the battalions of The Globe and wanting to be a part of them, if not in with their soldiers, with their science division. Years seemed to pass by, Quentin spent all his time trying to be one of those genius kids on TV who knew everything and was in university by the time they were ten. This didn’t happen for Quentin, although he did skip quite a few grades, never making any permanent friends from school, only the neighbouring kids. His parents were scared for him, but he didn’t mind. All was good! And then there was a car accident. Nothing bad came of it, don’t worry. Unless you consider the government taking away a seven-year-old from their family to The Globe to be trained because they not only saved everyone in both vehicles with some strange form of telekinesis, but put out the fires as well. And, not only did he save all those people, but he nearly ripped himself in half in the process since he had no experience using his powers. Quentin was found to be one of the Experimentals, he was a grab bag of grab bags. Smoke magic, telekinesis-of-the-self (since flight was split up between the air elements and telekinetics), had the lasers and power containment of energy, health enhancement of a booster, and, unbeknownst to him or anyone else, a very rare form of porter magic. He had five magical domains under his belt. Unheard of. Unspeakable. Insane. Overpowered. The Globe needed to train him, make him the strongest magic user on their Earth or any other Earth, make sure that his powers were in good hands. Not in the hands of the enemy or any nefarious rogue magic users bent on world destruction. Time passed. He learned that getting numb quick was better than being emotional about it. He didn’t talk to his family as much, didn’t have the time to. He went through his training and found difficulty in mastering his magic. There was too much and too little time, there wasn’t enough time to master it all. And, in order to graduate and move into a battalion or, in his case, the platoon of 30 Experimentals working under The Globe, Quentin needed to train harder than any other recruit before to ‘master’ his powers. It took him ten years. Longer than any other recruit, but, then again, most recruits only had one power to master and were older, more mentally equipped with the burden of having to work for The Globe. Yet, two years per power, funny how that worked out, huh? But, he still didn’t know about the ability to port, so it was more like 2.5 years per power. They ended up having to build him a special containment suit to keep him from ripping himself apart with the strength of his magic. He was placed into his platoon and tried his hardest to make friends, but he wasn’t the best at it. Not only because he only had a few friends before, but because all the team were way past their 20s, he was only 17. He felt isolated, but it wasn’t like he could leave. Once you work for The Globe, you don’t leave. It’s the unspoken law, it’s how it worked. He was sent on the most dangerous of missions with the rest of the team. They were the last resort. Always the last resort. They all had their own styles of fighting since none of them had the exact same grab bag mix. They were less cohesive, but they could do a lot of damage. And sometimes damage was better for defeating a threat than not. He was stressed out, he was scared beyond belief. He was just a lonely kid being made to save the world from the strongest of threats by some governing world safety force. He just wanted to go back home to his parents and never use his powers again, go back to learning everything under the sun. And then came Dottie. You never knew who was being trained in The Globe, but Quentin found out she started being trained three years after him. She was the ‘other’ only four domain experimental, a wind magic user, a sounder, a speed booster and a shifter. She was a year younger than him and her powers came in later. She arrived in their team when he was 20 and she was 19. They immediately attached to each other, it wasn’t like anyone else was jumping at the chance to be their friends. They became close friends. They backed each other up, they gave each other the courage to move on. And, like a cheesy rom-com plot, they fell in love. They got married when he was 22. They knew what they were in for, they knew that at any moment, they could lose each other. So they found a way to fight together, as a duo, that complimented their fighting styles. When the leader of their group retired due to age and injury, Dottie put Quentin forward for the next position to their supervisor, claiming that he would be a good leader to the team. His powers alone sat him ahead of the rest of the candidates, and so he soon became the team lead. From there, he began making friendships with the other members. Were they just sucking up to the boss? Maybe. Was he going to ruin it by calling them out on it? No, no he wasn’t. A son came the next year, and that really set all of it in perspective for Quentin. If he couldn’t protect his world, if he failed at any step, he’d be leaving the world open to destroy the one thing he loved most: his family. He stepped up his game, he became the leader that the team needed, that the world needed. He was going to protect his world, his work, his team, his friends, his family, his Dottie, and his son, Peter. Time seemed to fly by for a few years. Quentin was extraordinarily glad that Peter only seemed to exhibit wind powers, and only small ones. That was good, that meant that he would probably never get drafted into The Globe, that he’d never have to deal with the same pressures to save the world that he did. He went to every one of his son’s parent teachers, all of his gymnastic competitions, was proud when he came home with straight As, was there for him when he was sad. Quentin was a good father, and Dottie was a great mother. They were a perfect family, nothing could break them apart. Not even the new monsters, the Elementals, that were showing up across the world. The science division, those smart bastards, figuring out not only that there were parallel universes, but that some of them shared enough quantum symmetry that those from their Earth, Earth-833, could inhabit other Earths, but that the monsters and gods from their mythologies… some of them were real. They were born in stable orbits within black holes, creatures formed from the primary elements: air, fire, water, earth. The science division had a name for them, but the Experimentals team just called them the Elementals. They started materializing on 833 and the battalions mobilized and fought them. But, with each battle they grew, got stronger. All they did was delay the inevitable. Quentin was 35. The world was ending. He was part of the last battalion, a mixed bag of magic users, some from previously fallen battalions, squadrons and platoons, all mobilized to and went to Prague to fight against the last of the Elementals, the strongest of the Elementals. Fire. Quentin took on the lead, he created the strategy that he thought would destroy the fire Elemental once and for all. But, when people start to go down, people get hasty. They stop following orders. He’s in the backline only because he’s so used to being the last resort option with his wife that he can’t help being in the back. The Beck family stands and watches and fights against the fire Elemental, shocked and horrified as they watch the Earth be swallowed up and dissolve around them. The monster started drawing power from the Earth’s core, they’d lost. The family of three began flying away. But they weren’t fast enough. Peter and Dottie died, the son in his mother’s arms, swallowed by lava, and Quentin watched as it happened. He couldn’t move. He was in shock. The one thing he had that he actually cared for, the one thing he had that he loved, it was gone. How could he handle that? How could he have let this happen? He was a failure. He was the last surviving member of the last battalion and, when the fire Elemental swung its arm to kill him, Quentin didn’t move. He just tensed up, closed his eyes, anticipated the hit, hoped he and his family were good enough to get them all to Heaven or something along those lines. It didn’t come. He opened his eyes to a back alleyway in Prague. No fire. No death. No destruction. He didn’t know what was going on, and then he looked back, back behind him. A rift, a dimensional rift. He created one and he slipped through it, his fifth power, the one he didn’t know about, dimensional teleportation. In the rift he could see his Earth, his home, falling to pieces, crumbling and burning. He failed. But, he was on another Earth, he could start anew. How could he? He was a failure, he was a fish out of water, he didn’t know this Earth’s customs or traditions or anything, if magic was a thing in their world or not. He was panicking, he didn’t know what was going on, but he knew he couldn’t go back. And so, he closed the rift. Too bad for Quentin Beck, the fallen hero from another world. The man without a family, the man who was getting very good at hiding the bags under his eyes for lack of sleep, the man who’s Earth was gone and he blamed it entirely on himself. But, he couldn’t act like that. No, no he couldn’t act like that! There was no time. The sensors on his suit alerted him to another Elemental activity hotspot, and it was in an area that was struck before. The cyclone, the wind Elemental, it was here. It must have followed him through the rift. If the cyclone could come through, there was no doubt that the others could as well. He needed to stop them. He was the last member of the last battalion of a fallen Earth-833. He was on Earth-616, he needed to protect them. They didn’t know what they were up against, they didn’t want any part of this. He didn’t either, no one did. But, if he didn’t step up, who would? If he didn’t step up, Earth-883’s sacrifice was all for nothing. His family wasn’t nothing, his friends weren’t nothing. Eight billion lives were not ‘for nothing’, and although they were gone, he would fight for them, and everyone else on this new Earth. To avenge and to save was his new goal.

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BECK’S BACKSTORY, AKA THE TRUTH:

William Beck is a 35-year-old tech genius from Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He spent a two-year stint in Halifax in his early childhood because his father’s job required a move, but moved back to Toronto before finishing high school. He was the youngest of two siblings, his older sister Elena is three years older than he is. His mother used to play CDs of musicals in the car on drives anywhere, especially road trips. Elena never favoured musical theatre too much, usually groaned when their mother, Marianne, tried to ask them which one they’d like to listen to next. George, their father, didn’t care too much as to what his wife played in the car. He didn’t care too much of anything. Marianne didn’t like that. William, however, found entertainment in the musicals and found himself listening to them in his spare time. The drama, the theatrics, the beauty of it all, he wanted to be a part of that. Musical theatre was not the career he wished to pursue, however, he enjoyed it as a hobby. Theatre in general became his background, acting something he took lessons in, drama clubs came and went as he went through school. Yet, instead of this being what he followed up on, he found himself fascinated with technology and machinery ever since his parents bought them a family computer. He got very invested in going out to junkyards, snatching up whatever usable pieces of tech he could scrounge up and then putting them together into little robots. Nothing fancy, nothing too over the top, but he made impressive technology with car parts and old computer bits. Childhood went by with minimal known disastrous events. He made friends with the neighbouring kids, he made friends with the kids at school. But, William most often found himself either building, acting or learning. He taught himself complex concepts, quantum physics, complex math equations, read high-level literature. Outside of what he was known to do, William had some habits that could have ended disastrously if found out by his parents or teachers. He was a bully, a rude child to the other kids, but because of this, he was popular. Think Heather Chandler with a JD streak, violent, but the kid you need to know to get anywhere. He didn’t care if he hurt someone, he just didn’t care. If he was the most popular or most well-known kid in the class, he was alright with what was going on. He was always bouncing in and out of class- not because he didn’t want to learn, but because he already knew what they were teaching. And then he started skipping grades, and he lost most of his ‘friends’ because they didn’t care to care for him after he was gone. Childhood-onset conduct disorder, but he was good at hiding it. He was good at making it seem to adults like he was some golden child. But, he lied.  He ended up graduating high school far earlier than he should have and going off to university. His parents kept fighting over whether it was the right decision or not, shipping him off like that with no second thought just because he was smart and he wanted to learn. Because he wanted to be the next Tony Stark. The fights started spreading out and becoming more and more about the things they always had problems with but never wanted to talk about. They divorced when he was fifteen. William didn’t care. He had a feeling it was coming. Pushing people out of his way that made any sort of negative impact on his life or mood, William found himself trucking through university, getting his graduating with his bachelors at the age of 18. With his high marks, and want to get paid a hell of a lot, he decided to skip getting a masters and went for his PhD in electrical and computer engineering. In the meantime, he became an expert liar. If he was good as a child with keeping things under wrap through lying, William was great as an adult by manipulating things to line up for his benefit. If it was for his gain, he didn’t hold back. He would manipulate and deceive through a facade of wit and superficial charm, and if that didn’t work. He’d lash out. Most people listened the first time. He became more arrogant, he was so young and so smart! Hell, dare he’d say it, he was smarter than Tony Stark. Dare, why dare? He WAS smarter than Tony Stark! He was just… humble. Yes, that was it! He didn’t want to be a showoff, like Tony Stark. If someone disagreed? That frustrated him, because he was smarter, goddamnit! His temper, definitely his mother’s temper since she was always the more emotive of her parents, got the best of him and he’d go berserk. The attachment he had to his girlfriend, Dorothy, was fragile at best and it wasn’t like he had any real feelings for her anyway. They broke up before he got his doctorate. He never recognized his symptoms, and it wasn’t like anyone who knew what he was like was going to point out that he was being an ass because of that right hook of his. What someone in the psychology field may have diagnosed as Antisocial Personality Disorder went unchecked and untreated. William finished his stint at university at the age of 20, getting his PhD in half the time. He moved to New York City, got hired on at Stark Industries as an engineer. He may be starting at the lowest point, but Tony Stark was his boss. Iron Man, the smartest man alive (besides himself). He found a love in hologram technology and became quite good at engineering technology to his liking. He proposed an idea to create what could essentially be labelled as ‘illusion technology’. Projecting layers of holograms onto a surface in order to make it appear as if something else is really there. He was approved to start developing the technology and was promoted to ‘illusion specialist’, a big jump from his lowly spot as an engineer. Work took up a lot of his time, but he tried his damn hardest to get out there and do what he needed to relax or face the consequences of being bored as hell. He did some plays and musicals at a small local theatre to satisfy his need to act, a part of him knew that he could totally, certainly, most definitely make it onto broadway if he wanted to… but he was too humble for that. He bought himself a very expensive motorbike, since he’d always wanted to learn how to ride. He had a few dates, but nothing that ever lasted, nothing that he ever wanted to last. He spent five years of his life working on the illusion tech and then, when it was finally revealed, not only did Tony say that he spent 611 million dollars on a SELF THERAPY PROJECT, but he named it… BARF. He named William’s life work, BARF. It hurt him, it made him feel worthless, less than worthless, and he was NOT worthless. No, he was smarter than Tony Stark. He could do whatever he wanted to do with HIS illusion tech. Hell, he had the whole programming on his own home computer (with some much better modifications that he’d never give to work) because he didn’t fully trust the company, not with Stark at the helm. When William confronts Stark about this, he gets shot down. He then starts going on a rant about how the technology can be used for much, much more than a self-therapy project, it can be used in battle, it can be used in war, it can be used for decorating buildings, putting the CGI in the movies so that actors can see what’s around them instead of the green/blue screens, it has so many more applications than what Tony intends to use it for! And then, Tony fires him. Then and there. On the spot. Calls him unstable. He knows that nothing will change his mind, so Will turns on his heel and leaves Stark Industries behind. He gets to talking with William Ginter Riva, who created the Stark Industries Combat Drones and quit working with Stark after the whole event with Stane and the arc reactor. They both had grudges against the company and Stark, but they knew that they could do nothing against him since he was the richest man alive and they were just ex-employees. They became friends, if only through their mutual dislike of Stark. Beck was in need of a new job, became a software development engineer at a NYC-based non-Stark company to fill his time and bring in the money he needed for his apartment. Years passed, he had his promotions, his friends, his ups and downs. He kept on trucking, and that hatred he had for Stark that was kept on low heat started boiling when the Blip happened. People started disintegrating all around him, it was like the world was ending! Did he care, though? Well… was he alive? Yes. Okay, cool. He didn’t care then. His boss was blipped though, he ended up getting promoted to his position, which was nice. He cared about that. Still, the hatred he had kicked up when he realized that Tony Stark, the ‘saviour of our generation’ couldn’t stop this from happening. Wow! What a SHOCKER. It wasn’t like Tony wasn’t just a liar in a very expensive suit flying around boozing it up, being an ass to his workers. Five years passed. Everyone comes back (he still kept his job though, which was nice), and Will finds out, to his delight, that Tony Stark is dead. But, to his dismay, THE Tony Stark sacrificed himself to save the world and everyone who blipped away. And he was pissed! Oh haha, great, TONY GETS TO BE THE HERO YET AGAIN. Oh, shut up, who cares, old news. He starts realizing that there is now a void where Tony was, where Cap was, where Black Widow and Vision were. Their absence, the disbandment of the Avengers, has left the world without heroes. People were scared. People were horrified. What would the world do? He starts talking with other disgraced ex-Stark employees, and they realize that they all kind of want revenge against their boss’s ‘excellent, selfless legacy’ when they all know that he wouldn’t be there without him. They pool their funds, their experience, their talents, their tech together. They figure out what they have to do. Become the next hero. Although, it’s not like all of them can be a hero. That’s way too many non-super-but-incredibly-smart people trying to be heroes. They’ll dilute the need for them. They need one, and that one is William. He volunteers to be the hero because he has the most acting experience, he can fall into a role that needs to be played, and he can lie through his teeth. They start working. They mash together both William’s technology, the illusion tech and the weaponized drones. Beck and Guterman develop the backstory so that Beck can have a more intricate knowledge of the character, Quentin Beck, that he was playing when asked about some really in-deep questions once he got famous. They made the costume. They had the electromagnetic pulses. William was now Quentin. They found out that Tony Stark was leaving the EDITH glasses, the key to the world defence system, to a teenager. Despicable. Yet, nonetheless. They had it all set up. They just needed to perform their little show. They create the cyclone, the wind Elemental in Morocco. He shows up on the scene, no coverage, but he knows that Fury knows that he was there. The earth Elemental, the sandman, shows up in Mexico. Fury and Hill are there, good. Once he ‘defeats’ the sandman, he teams up with Fury and Hill, tells them of his story and he is so damn glad they believe him and his bullshit on magic and parallel Earths or else he’d be dead. And nobody wants to die, right? Right? And then they go to Venice, Italy. Quentin is out with the team and they need some extra money so he goes and gets money at an ATM and sees the very teenager that Tony was going to leave EDITH to. Spider-Man. He quickly adds a son to his fake family so that if Peter gets intrusive, as teens tend to do, he can pull that can of worms out and distract him with it. The hydro man, the water Elemental shows up and Spider-Man is there to help fight. He has to manually manipulate his illusions and stray from the choreo for a few seconds to make them more believable. Once the Elemental is gone, they meet again later that night thanks to Fury. A team-up is in the works. Good, a better chance to get the glasses, especially since Fury is incredibly agitated towards the kid. Prague happens, he has to console the kid. Sad, but that's life. They fight the fire Elemental and they ‘win’, Fury loses his mind, Peter cries, Quentin consoles him and actually gets the EDITH glasses. A win! Yes! NO. Peter finds out about the illusion tech and the lies. Quentin then sets out to kill the kid so that any and all loose ends are gone. His temper creeps out, he gets mad at his crew, he is on edge, he is losing his mind. He directs the blame for him having to go and kill Peter at William Riva, but only says William when referring to him, and a voice in the back of his head knows that he doesn’t mean William Riva, he will blame Peter’s death on William Beck, himself. And then he switches back on a dime, sounding cool and confident when he tortures Peter with a (‘beautifully executed’) illusion sequence that ends with him getting hit full-on by a high-speed train. The kid is gone. Quentin has to kill his friends. He sets up the London event and fails. He fails, but not fully. He has to die to fulfil this character, but does he actually? No. What, you don’t think he had a bulletproof vest under that mo-cap suit? You think he’s an idiot? No, he’s a ‘genius;. No, he’s intelligent. No, he’s losing his mind and he’s paranoid and he can’t die because a hero can’t die. A hero will always rise from the ashes and rise from the dead. So, if he has to play dead for a little while and let the kid think that he’s won… well, what an arc that would be. When everything is over and it’s safe for him to get up, he leaves the tower and meets up with the rest of his group for a debrief. Some of them think that they’ve failed, but, as he’d said before, he has contingencies. The main one being in the form of making Peter Parker, 16-year-old Spider-Man, heir to the Stark throne, look like a murderer and a terrorist. They sent out edited footage to any news station they could, with the Daily Bugle, God bless JJJ’s heart, releasing it first. The world now knows their truth, that Peter is the worst person on Earth, and Earth believes him. Now, the Mysterio crew sits in waiting, upping the ante from the previous attacks, getting ready for Quentin Beck, Mysterio in all his glory, to return from the dead and defeat that monstrous Spider-Man once and for all.