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ashintheairlikesnow · 7 months

Text

To Unchain Me

@whumptober 24 & 25, Neglect & Storm

CW: Gender dysphoria, captivity, nonhuman whumpee...

One hundred and fifty-one years later...

The last thing Kiraya Losna did before she left the boarding house was a little bit of magic.

Standing before the mirror in her walking shoes in a blue casual dress and with her straight black hair caught at her neck and pinned in place with a small stylish cloche to top it off, she still had to swallow back the depth of unease she felt at her reflection. This body simply had never felt fully her own, without help.

So she took in a deep breath and drew a symbol on the silver-backed glass, crafting a spell that was sent back out and smoothed itself into her skin.

She did it every day, the way some women dressed using complicated undergarments to enhance busts and hips or layered cosmetics to make their lips look like perfect bows.

Kiraya Losna needed a little more assistance than that to feel at home in her own body.

It wasn’t an optical illusion, either, and this was what she was most proud of. It was a true modification, and it never felt like a waste of the power the spell took to cast.

She had painstakingly created the symbols for it herself during her time in apprenticeship, a spell that existed entirely for her and would work on no other. Even as she looked at herself, she watched the magic create a shift at the bodice of the dress and a corresponding change beneath - the slight change in weight and shape felt like slipping into her real body. She exhaled, then, a smile playing around suddenly fuller lips. She added new curves to her hips, removed the unwelcome between her legs. Her center of gravity shifted, the line of her jaw softened. She even took the time to widen her eyes and smooth the skin on her hands.

The Kiraya in the mirror now reflected the one within her mind, and she felt finally at ease.

The spell didn't last after she slept, so it had to be redone each day. One day her continued research would unlock the secret to permanence, but she hadn't discovered it yet. Once she did, though, she would offer the spell to anyone who wanted it, throwing happiness around like paper pieces in a parade, and her name would be known.

Once the spell settled, she leaned forward to check her teeth, then rechecked her hair and her hat just to be sure. Everything looked good, and she felt good, and today was going to be a very, very good day that ended with a handful of very good gold coins in the jingling bag she kept hidden in the secret pockets within her skirt.

Coin by coin, she was headed towards riches.

Already she’d gone from boarding in ramshackle homes where supper consisted of thin soup and hard bread to the nicer ones with new paint only just starting to peel in sea air, the kinds of homes that often had fresh vegetables alongside the main dish.

Kiraya took a deep breath, fixed her usual slight smile on her face, and stepped out of her room, giving the woman who ran the boardinghouse a kiss on each cheek before she walked out the door, down the steps, and into the hustle and bustle of the city. The streets were muddy, but her skirt was a little scandalously high and so her hem stayed clean. Her boots she could spell clean, once she made it to her destination - no point in doing so before that.

People nodded, sometimes, and she nodded in return. Butchers hung fresh cuts of meat in the window, a man set fresh fish on pallets of magicked ice to keep them cold. Two women argued over which one was truly married to their shared husband while a handful of children watched with wide eyes.

Why such a high-in-the-world man as her new employer would choose to live in the largest city on the Continent was beyond Kira’s understanding, but she didn’t have to understand it. She only had to do her job, take the incredibly large payout he offered, and then come back in ten years if she wished.

She caught a cab, the man pulling his horses up short when she raised her hand to get his attention. When she gave him the address she had been given, he whistled through the gap in his front teeth. “His Lordship? That’s a fancy place to be going for someone coming from this part of town, Miss.”

As always, hearing herself called miss made her feel warm in ways she could never have fully explained. It made her smile wider and she sat back against the padded back of the cab’s seat and inhaled the smoke-smell of the city air. “He’s a very fancy man, so I’ve been told.”

“That he is. What’s he calling on you for?” His voice held a note of suspicion, and she nearly laughed at the idea that he thought she - with her sensible dress and shoes - might be a woman of some impure trade out here at barely midmorning. "Not meant to offend, Miss, just curiosity."

“No offense taken. I am a magician,” She answered, closing her eyes and pulling the slight, curved brim of her cloche down to block the morning sun from shining right on her eyelids. “His Lordship requires magic, I require his money, and so we both benefit handsomely."

The driver hummed, but he slapped the reins down slightly on his horses’ rumps and they began to walk, picking up speed until the cab bumped cheerfully along at something slightly less than a trot.

Kira smoothed at her skirt, taking the occasional glance at the endless ocean of people they passed. Her look was maybe a little too casual for an audience with his Lordship, but those she'd spoken to when asking around had said Lord Wentworth was too preoccupied with his obscene wealth to trouble himself with such things as propriety, and she wasn't exactly going there to look and act like some simpering noble lady.

Kiraya Losna had work to do.

She was going to write magic into the skin of a vicious sea serpent, and she was going to drown in money as a result.

She couldn't wait.

Lord Guilford Wentworth - he was the fourth of his name, a family much given to repetition, Kira supposed - lived in an enormous manor house.

His grounds took up two entire blocks of the city, his estate larger than most parks. Supposedly, his own great-grandfather, the first Lord Wentworth, had bought up acres of land and simply razed the buildings already there to the ground, scattering the inhabitants to the winds so he could cart in new trees and bushes and flowers and builders. Even, supposedly, wild animals for him or his houseguests to hunt.

Kira could see, as the cab made its way along the winding, tree-lined lane - the damn thing was paved, not cobblestoned, and the cab ride smoothed out into new realms of comfort - towards the enormous house slowly rising before her, where the scars of what had once been busy city streets could still be seen, if you knew what you were looking for.

Magic wound in and out of it all, and her fingers twitched, itching to jump down and touch each and every tree. She wanted to read the signature of the magic used to grow them so quickly, so that each seemed centuries old, even if she knew they couldn’t be. There had been strong magic used here, it must have taken a whole team of magicians hard at work to make it happen. What sort of payment had the Lord offered, to make it worth draining themselves so thoroughly?

As they traveled, clouds had begun to gather, wiping away the warm sunlight that had met her this morning. She shivered a little as the wind picked up a chill, casting a spell of subtle warmth that brought her back to what comfort could be found in a cab with an open top on such a day.

Finally, the cab driver pulled his horses to a stop in front of a huge house. It had two stories, but it spread out on each side like a great bird spreading its wings. Kiraya swallowed back a sudden rise of nervousness, clutching the leather strap of her bag, and took a deep breath.

When the driver held his hand out, she took it, and carefully stepped down from the cab and onto a well-paved driveway. A few coins, plus an extra couple, ensured he would return before the evening meal to take her back home. He tipped his own hat to her and she watched the cab’s horses make their meandering way back down the lane, leaving her feeling oddly like someone who had been dropped alone in the middle of a forest rather than standing in a busy city whose inhabitants were only a few treetops away.

Funny, how quiet it was here, right in the heart of the city. If she hadn’t known where she was, she’d never have guessed.

Then she turned, her eyes moving up to take in her new place of employment.

The house was white, with columns in the classical style over wide, shallow steps. A man with his hands behind his back, standing tall and straight, met her at the bottom of them. “Miss Losna?” He asked, his voice rich but somehow still without warmth.

“Yes, sir.” She let her gaze wander, just a little. The door behind him was wooden, with stained glass insets that showed mermaids leaping from water. It was beautiful work, and yet something about it made her instincts prickle with unease. “I am Kiraya Losna, the magician."

“Excellent.” The man stepped slightly to the side. “I am Heinri Babbage, His Lordship’s head of house. His Lordship is working on some correspondence of much importance now, but if you would follow me inside, I can see to your comfort until he is available.”

Kira fought back a frown. He had been the one to tell her to come at this time, and now he could not see her without making her wait? It seemed like a rich man’s trick, something to make him at ease and her uncertain. Why he would bother, she didn’t know - she wasn’t another noble, she was just someone hoping to work for him.

Still, she smoothed out her expression into something blandly pleasant and nodded. “Of course. I don’t suppose I could see the creature I am meant to work with-”

“Not yet.” Babbage - the butler, she supposed the head of house would be a butler, she hadn’t had all that much truck with the wealthier families who had handfuls of servants doing all the work for them - cleared his throat. “Apologies for interrupting you, Miss Losna. It is only that… well… it took some time to find someone able to take on the task, and…”

Kira waited. Then, when he didn’t finish his sentence, she frowned. “Is there something wrong with it?”

“... in a manner of speaking. The creature’s welfare has been... neglected of late. The magic must be settled once every ten years, and it has been eleven since our last magician tendered her resignation… The creature has become… unpredictable.”

Thunder rumbled in the distance, and she held up a hand, looking up at the clouds, but no rain yet fell.

Her eyes narrowed, looking over Babbage’s stern expression. Whatever his true feelings were he kept them well hidden. She nodded, slowly. “I understand. I should still like to see it, Mr. Babbage. If His Lordship wouldn’t mind, of course. I can spell protection for us both, and whatever has happened to it, it cannot harm us.”

“He… might mind.” Babbage winced, but after a moment’s hesitation, something flickered in his eyes and he nodded and moved up the steps, Kiraya following him. The door swung open with hardly a whisper, and she took a step forward into the grandest entryway she had ever seen.

Before her, a double staircase wound upwards to the second floor, with a chandelier hanging in crystalline grandeur from the high ceiling. Beneath her feet was expensive black-and-white tile. Even just the entryway seemed like a ballroom in size and magnificence. The sheer amount it must cost to maintain such a home nearly took her breath away, and made her heart beat faster at the promise of just how much this man could afford to pay her for her work.

Babbage led her not up the stairs but off to the right, and she followed, hurrying along. Around her, servants were hard at work. Again, everything seemed normal for the home of a rich man, and yet something in her intuition was ringing alarm bells at high pitch inside her mind.

It was something about how damn happy everyone here looked, maybe. They were all smiling and chatting and walking as if heading to a happy holiday. It wasn't at all like they were working a hard, laborious job. Something… something was wrong.

They moved down a long hallway, lined with portraits of the various Lords Guilford Wentworth and their families. The Guilfords all looked more or less identical to one another, and only the names and faces of the wives and children seemed to change. The wives caught her eye first.

Eliza, Neandra, Liselle, Marguerite… All of them had the same identical, dreamy smile on their faces, and all the children seemed oddly solemn and unsmiling by comparison. Kiraya found herself pausing by the most recent of the family portraits, the one where the wife was named Marguerite. This showed a young Guilford Wentworth the Fifth, maybe thirteen or fourteen years old at most.

Magic, coiled inside Kiraya, sparked at the sight of the young man’s flat eyes. She inhaled sharply. “Do... any of His Lordship’s children live here?” Kira asked, hoping it sounded like idle curiosity.

Babbage smiled, a little ruefully, where he walked beside her. “Sadly, no. His Lordship’s children are prone to flights of fancy, and he is far too indulgent after the death of their mother. I believe the eldest, Guilford Wentworth the Fifth - he turned eighteen this past September, you know - is in the isles looking after his father’s financial interests in the colonies. Her Ladyship Miss Nathalie, sixteen, is staying at the Lord’s home in Yawnee City at the Howe estate, and the twins are just now eleven and are still away at finishing school. It is a large and very lonely home His Lordship lives in, if you’ll forgive me the sentiment, since Madam Marguerite passed away.”

“No forgiveness needed,” She murmured. When she glanced sidelong at him, Babbage had tears in his eyes. What hired man had ever cared enough to cry over their employer’s sad family life? Her sense of unease grew. “May I ask what happened?”

“She-...” Babbage’s voice caught. He swallowed, his throat bobbing. “She took terribly ill… She did not recover. Tuberculosis. It is a family curse, I think at times."

Her sense of unease grew. “And he has no interest in remarrying?”

“No, the Wentworth fortune requires that each Lord marries just once to bear children, and not again.”

“... Huh. I don’t believe I’ve ever heard of such specific standards for the inheritance of money, it’s quite common for men to remarry-”

“Not the Lords Wentworth.” Babbage stopped before a heavy set of double doors, locked with a chain and padlocked as well. “This is where the monster dwells. It has been too dangerous for any of us to step inside, it has become increasingly aggressive and prone to violence. Miss Losna, I must caution you against-”

“I want to see it,” Kira said, faking a strength she didn’t quite feel. Something about a locked door had always made her feel a stubborn need to see what was being kept from her. She’d been in trouble plenty as a child for learning to pick the lock to her father’s study, but eventually he’d learned if he didn’t lock the door, she lost interest.

“Miss, it could do you great harm-”

“It won’t.” She swallowed, and then drew a symbol over her own chest, pulling magic not only from within herself but from the very air around her. When it settled, she felt it - a film as thin as gossamer silk and impenetrable as heavy steel, yet equally invisible to the naked eye. “Open the door, please. I want to see what I am working with.”

“I am sorry, Miss Losna,” Babbage said, and he sounded so achingly sincere she couldn’t even be annoyed with him about it. “I… I must admit, I find the thing quite terrifying. We all do, none of us can bear to be in the room with it. If you go in…”

“I go in alone. I understand.” She squared her shoulders, reached up to set her hat just so again, and then folded her hands in front of her. “Unlock the door, Babbage, if you will.”

The butler paused, and then slowly nodded. He pulled a ring of keys out, searching through them until he found the one he was looking for. It scraped going into the padlock and took some serious fiddling - long enough, she noticed, for Babbage to flush with a hint of embarrassment - and then the padlock popped open. He pulled it away, rapidly unwinding the chain, and then opened the door. “Quickly, miss-”

“Of course.” She stepped inside, feeling humidity hit her like a brick to the face as soon as she did. The door closed behind her, the chain scraped back into place, and she exhaled slowly, heart pounding when she heard the click of the padlock closing again.

In front of her was an enormous swimming pool.

Well, no. It wasn’t a swimming pool - it was more like a perfectly rectangular pond, with lily pads and flowers, and dozens of ferns lining the walkway around it. Ferns, flowers, even small fruit trees in big pots, their fruits dropped to the ground, a little rotten. The smell made her nose wrinkle, but she licked her lips, looking slowly around.

There were windows, taller than she was and narrow, lining each side. They were fogged-over, and she saw nothing through them but a hint of light and shadows moving when wind blew through nearby trees. She thought there might have been a flash of lightning, and nodded when a few seconds later the rumble of thunder followed it.

The room was otherwise utterly silent and still.

“Hello?” She called. Her voice seemed swallowed by the greenery.

There was no answer, not at first, and she turned to look back at the door she’d come through.

She gasped as she realized the inside of the door was covered in scratches.

Kira swallowed, unease blooming for the first time into genuine fear.

The scratches dug deep, the marks of some animal having tried desperately to claw its way out. Old blood had dried here, too, in splotches and spots. When Kira followed the sight of the dried droplets down, she discovered there were stains beneath her very boots on the floor, leading right back to the edge of the pool.

She skittered to one side, staring at a bare footprint pressed in blood beneath her, gripping her bag of supplies more tightly.

What kind of sea creature was housed here? What sort of serpent had human feet and could try to break back down the door to get out?

There was a splash, and she spun back around, looking back at the pool of water. There was no movement, no ripple along the surface, no sign anything had been there at all. Kiraya took a breath, and then another, trying to calm her racing heart.

The water was utterly still, and yet she felt eyes on her like a heavy weight against her skin. Something, in here, was watching her - and yet she couldn’t see any sign of what.

“... who’s there?” She asked, and then winced. Stupid. Like it could, or would, answer her. She looked like quite the idiot being frightened of something that could do her no harm, not with the spell on her skin. What was the point of learning magic if she didn’t trust it?

Thunder rolled, and it seemed to last forever. Like kittens gamboling around the sky, playing with the ball of yarn that was the earth itself.

Kiraya steadied her voice.

“Come out, please. I want to see you. I am the magician here to care for you."

Plants rustled off to her right. She turned too quickly, tripping over her own feet and stumbling backwards, struggling to right herself. For just one second, she nearly had herself back in balance-

Then she slipped on a puddle.

There was a sudden pattering of footsteps on the stone.

She looked up as she fell backwards, arms thrown out to catch herself, to discover something leaping at her, its terrible maw was open wide.

She smacked hard onto her arse on the stone floor and threw her arms up before her face as she screamed. The sound echoed in the room, bouncing off the walls and around her mind.

It lunged at her throat and she jerked backwards, head knocking back against the floor.

The world around her spun, pain spiking where she struck, and she groaned. Clawed fingers closed around her wrists, not painfully tight but inevitable, and shoved her wrists back down at her sides. She tensed, head turned to the side and eyes closed tightly, waiting for the bite, the claws digging into her belly and pulling out her intestines for a meal, but…

But nothing happened.

She cracked open one eye, and then another. Some of her hair was stuck at the corner of her mouth and she had no hands to dislodge it.

The monster loomed over her.

Its breath came hot and heavy, panting against her neck, but her protection spell held.

Its rows of sharp teeth were an inch from her throat, but it could not bite. Its clawed, webbed fingers held her wrists but the tips did not even break the skin, they couldn’t break the skin. Its eyes were huge and dark, pools of ocean water too dark for light to penetrate. Its hair hung in tangled, matted clumps that reached past its shoulders.

It looked human, except for the parts that so clearly weren’t, and somehow that was more frightening than any sea serpent could ever have been.

It hissed in frustrated anger while Kira exhaled in slow relief.

“Let me go,” She whispered, voice trembling, barely audible. Her heart was in her throat, and she worried the creature could see her pulse fluttering, a whole new temptation.

Those dark eyes moved over her face, and she saw something about it changing. Something seemed to… smooth out, and the monster seemed even more fully a man. Its mouth closed and then reopened to show flat human teeth. She saw no rage or hunger in its face, but instead…

A kind of resigned and awful despair as it pulled away from her.

She saw now the magic symbols that ran down its neck, to its shoulder and arm and side, recognizing many of the symbols that had been so carefully painted into its skin. All the way down the right side of its body, fading with time and needing reinforced, to be sure, but still entirely visible.

She could see how they had begun to lose the crispness of their edges, bleeding back into its skin. It had hoped it could attack her, and it likely could have if not for her protection spell. Another year and those symbols would fade away entirely. Once that happened, the spellwork that kept any human safe from the creature’s teeth and claws would be gone with it.

Already, it could attack the defenseless, those without the magic to protect themselves. Another year, and even magicians would fall under tooth and claw.

And yet… she found herself caught by the look in its eyes. She saw one piece of this puzzle move into position, even if the rest of it was still a haze in her head.

“You’re afraid of me,” She whispered. "You’re not hungry, or dangerous. I mean, you are dangerous, but… you’re scared.”

It met her eyes.

She found herself looking at the single most beautiful man she had ever seen.

“Of course I am scared,” It said with a melodic, sibilant accent she had never heard before. When she jumped at the sound of its voice, it snorted, derisive, and looked away from her. “The monster speaks, hm? What a trick it can do. I know what you are. You have come to hurt me. Like all of them do.” She followed its gaze to the bag with her magic supplies inside. It looked at the kit with even more trepidation and disgust than it had looked at her. “They all come to hurt me, the ones like you. Every ten years… and yet you never let me die. Pain like that should end in death, but not for me.”

She hadn’t expected the creature to speak. But its voice was beautiful, thick and rich, mesmerizing, melodic. It shook its head - no. It was male.

He shook his head.

She thought of the portraits of the various Lords Guilford Wentworth, and the magic that crackled around her in the air, smelling like ozone as rain fell just outside the windows. How close they were to the ocean, and yet it was an impossible distance for something kept in a cage.

Even one full of water.

“What’s your name?” She asked. Names had power, names could be power with the inhuman peoples of the world.

“Areyto,” He spat, half-snarling the word. “He named me Areyto, because I dance to his tune. I had another name.”

“What-... what was it?”

“I don’t know.” There was a world of frustrated pain and rage and fear in his voice that she could hardly stand. She felt it shudder through her, and she found herself reaching her hand up to touch him without thinking.

Her fingertips brushed the line of his jaw, and felt warm, living skin beneath.

He flinched violently backwards as if she had struck him. “No!”

“Wait! Areyto-...”

“Don’t touch me!”

“Please, wait-” He scrambled away, and she tried to follow him - but pursuit only made him flee her more frantically. “Wait, whose tune? What are you? Why do you-... please, I need to know-... please! Areyto!”

He ignored her, and dove back into the pool as quickly as he had appeared in the first place.

He didn’t resurface, even as she stayed on her hands and knees, feeling the damp soak through her skirt, staring into the water, panting. The thunder cracked outside the fogged-up windows, and rain fell, slapping windblown against the windows as if the ocean itself had switched places with the sky to fall on them and drown the world.

“Miss Losna?” Babbage called, in a voice lined with panic, just outside. “Miss Losna, are you quite all right?”

“I’m fine,” She called back, getting back to her feet with some effort, smoothing at her skirts and staring at the place in the water where the creature had vanished. She had a sense, one that came from magic and not sight, that he lingered just beneath the surface of the slightly murky water, watching her right back. But she saw nothing. “Would you let me back out, please?”

She listened to Babbage hurriedly pulling at the chain and fled the room as soon as the door opened, cool air immediately making her skin tacky after her time in the humidity of the creature’s lovely, plant-lined and miserable cage.

She met Babbage’s gaze, some of her hair falling over her forehead. His look of concern seemed entirely sincere, and when he held out a handkerchief she gratefully wiped sweat from her forehead and used her hands to try and tuck her hair back into place. "Mr. Babbage, I was called to reset the spell on a sea monster,” She said, voice breathy. “A sea monster.”

“Yes…” Babbage trailed off, concern becoming confusion. “Did you not see it? When you screamed, I thought you most certainly had, it is a fearsome thing.”

“What? No, I mean. Yes. I saw him.” Kiraya went to shift her hat back into place, only to realize it must have fallen off her head when she fell and was still inside. She decided to leave it there, she’d have to go back in to work on him later. It wasn’t like he would have any use for a lady’s hat. “What I saw was no sea serpent, no monster.”

Babbage blinked. “Miss?”

Within the room, the creature screamed, thunder crashing around them, rattling the windows. Even the scream sounded like a harmony, as if even in his terrible rage and fear the creature kept here, who had been so frightened of merely a touch of her hand, could not be anything but song. They both jumped at the thud as he threw himself at the locked door. They turned to stare at the sound of scratching from the other side of the door.

The chains held. For now.

If those spells on his skin fully faded, and his full strength was something he could use again, she wasn’t sure that they would hold for long.

There was only one kind of sea creature the gods had crafted from melody. The children of the moon’s anger at men for trying to tame the tide. Kiraya knew all the old mythologies, the stories told to explain the way the moon pulled at the water and how sailors went down so often in deep water, never to be seen again.

She knew, now, what she had been called to work on.

Babbage’s mouth twisted with distaste and disgust at the noise, and he led Kiraya back down the hall the way they had come. This time, she let her eyes linger on the portraits of the Guilfords Wentworth.

They were all entirely identical-looking men. Only the style of their clothing and the family surrounding them changed.

Entirely. Exactly. Identical.

“Babbage, speak true to me,” Kira said, laying a hand on his arm. He stopped, looking back at her, and she saw - somewhere deep within him - a flicker of something other than the contentment that had been written on every inch of him. With the touch, she could feel magic wrapped around him, too.

She pulled her hand back as if burned.

“Miss Losna?” Babbage blinked at her. “Speak true about what?”

Kira would have run into the rain if it weren’t for the promise of the coins this job would give her, and the fact that she suspected if she did, the Lord Wentworth would only send men to find her, men driven by magical compulsion not to stop until she was brought right back for knowing too much.

Kira hesitated, trying to decide how to ask the question. “There has only ever been… one Lord Guilford Wentworth, hasn’t there?”

He swallowed. His eyes darted away and then back to her, tension rising in his shoulders. “I could not possibly understand what you’re implying, Miss. Guilford Wentworth is a family name…”

“Quite, because it’s the same damn man, isn’t it? What happens to his sons? There’s always a son named for him, what-... what happens to that firstborn son?”

A muscle twitched in Babbage’s jaw. “The lord’s eldest is away in the island colonies seeing to the management of certain properties…”

“Right, now he is. But… later…”

“I have no idea,” Babbage said smoothly, but he did. He knew exactly what would happen, and Kiraya knew it.

She pressed on. “That room I just came out of doesn’t hold a sea monster or a serpent, does it? It holds a siren. There are rumors about what you can do with a siren spelled to your willpower-... is that what he has hired me for?”

“His Lordship keeps a most fearsome serpent,” Babbage replied, and there was something strange and fuzzy about the quality of his voice. For a moment, his eyes seemed to cloud over, graying his brown irises. “Most fearsome… but His Lordship stands between us and the serpent…” Then he blinked, and the fog was gone. His calm and cheerful smile returned. “He does indeed. I should go and fetch him.”

Kira shivered with a sudden chill. “Mr. Babbage?...Heinri? Are you quite all right?”

“Of course.” Babbage simply walked away from her as if she hadn’t spoken. “I will go and see if His Lordship can see you now.” It was like she had never asked any questions at all. As if that flicker of some other man beneath the magic that wrapped his mind had never been.

As if she had imagined it.

Kiraya Losna had woken this morning in a lovely mood, knowing that things were going her way. Now, with the wind howling like the siren in the room behind her and her heart pounding, she thought about how the butler had mentioned the spellwork was done every decade, like clockwork, and yet this time it had been eleven years.

The spellwork, and what bound the siren, was fading fast.

Kira needed to find out why.

Tag list: @grizzlie70 @burtlederp @finder-of-rings @theelvishcowgirl @whump-for-all-and-all-for-whump @bloodinkandashes @squishablesunbeam @mj-or-say10 @apokolyps @wildfaewhump @shrimpwritings @there-will-always-be-blood

#whump #writing #captive whumpee #captivity #whumptober2023 #no. 24 #neglect #no. 25 #storms #nonhuman whumpee #monster whump #captured #magic whump #original writing #fantasy writing #trans oc

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lollytea · 1 year

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well lolly , since theres only six days left can we get some super wrong or super right predictions from you?

I'm a little late (4 days now!!) Anyways I'm not good at predictions. Here's some silly little wishes instead. I know I'm not getting any of this but I can dream. (Most of these copy n pasted directly from discord.)

- Gus casting a huge terrifying illusion around everything as he gives Belos one long "reason you need to repent for your sins" speech. He walks towards him, shifting into all the people he's hurt over the centuries. Then he turns into Evelyn, then Caleb. I want Gus to be Belos' worst nightmare basically.

- I've seen takes that Gus being the key against Belos and all the grimwalker lore wouldn't fit and has nothing to do with his arc and it shouldn't be his responsibility. But like

Gus has spent his whole life being deceived for being trusting and gullible. Gus going up against a man who has built his life on lies and deception. Oh it would fuck. And all the similarities between Gus and the Collector. Like this part of the story is practically tailored for Gus to slip into. If you know how to write it. And I just hope they know how to write it

Ohhhhh I know Gus already loathes Belos as much as anybody but ohhhhh. He learns the Collector lore and then turns to Belos, eyes glowing like "You lied to him. You said you were his friend but you lied to him."

- I'm not an Amity Blight expert so I'm probably far off. But I've been thinking about it. I'm wondering if maybe her puppetification is JUST her, rather than it being all of the kids. And maybe Odalia is directly responsible.

And considering Amity is overdue for her ✨️Moment✨️ I'm wondering if this might be it. There's a running theme in the owl house when it comes to puppets and puppet masters, and this is directly linked to the characters who suffered abuse and manipulation at the hands of their parental figures.

Hunter got his puppet moment in TTT. Maybe Amity gets something similar in WAD. I know she's HAD her big important moment of establishing her autonomy in EE and then again in COTH. But maybe its one final nod to it. I also find it interesting that in spite of being puppetfied her hand is moving. Like to symbolise this defiance and stubbornness to comply with what Odalia has demanded of her ever since EE

- I've been mostly thinking about the potential scenario of Belos!Luz and GG!Hunter from Luz's POV. Cuz idek if we're getting the actual Hunter or a dream version of Hunter.

But like. It's FUCKED. Because Belos was Hunter's blood relation. He was his family. A terrible twisted version of a family but the only kind Hunter knew.

And then came Luz, who reinvented the meaning of family for him. She confided in him, she trusted him, she loved him. She made that boy her family because she adored him.

So THIS is deranged. Its warping the relationship they've built together into this depraved disturbing thing. The merger of these two family dynamics into one sickening thing. Like Luz was his shelter. But now she's become the exact thing he was running from.

Having Hunter look at her with blatant fear, shrinking himself so he stands beneath her, the horrible emotions that must make her feel. Oh I HATE THIS!!!

And even getting this miniscule comfort of Hunter ripped away from her. Like he was her PERSON. The only one who was aware of the horrible things she's done and she doesn't feel judged by, for several months. Like if all else failed, at least Hunter didn't hate her.

And now THIS scenario which is like "maybe....maybe he should be the one to hate you the most."

- Want a scene where Willow and Hunter gotta split up and there's some kind of antagonist pursuing them. They've only got a moment of peace before it reaches them. And Willow's like "You go ahead. I'll hold them off." (Like she did in LR) and Hunter doesn't want to leave her. But the circumstances are dire and he knows he has to and he KNOWS she'll keep herself alive. But he still worries. So they promise each other that they'll stay safe and Willow turns her back to him after that, preparing herself for a fight and expecting him to hurry off now. But he doesn't. He lingers there for an extra moment, wanting to tell her something but unable to put it into words. Then he zaps himself to her side, hastily smooches her cheek and zaps away before she can recover from her shock.

And then Willow is just. Left there. Stunned. Staring blankly at the space where he once was. And then a smile cracks her mouth wide open. Whatever she's fighting catches up to her and Willow can only cackle giddily, her engine all revved up, and she's all like LETS FUCKING GOOOOOO

Willow gets one teeny tiny little smooch by Hunter and it makes her go all "I AM POWERFUL AND I WILL NEVER DIE!!!!!!!"

- Actually overall I believe in a Willow and Hunter comic relief. I think Gus and Amity are both having special spotlight in this episode. And Luz will finally reunite with Eda and King. And idk WHERE the fuck Camila is (smooching puppet Darius or smth). But ya Willow and Hunter are gonn be so cringe.

- Evelyn Clawthorne voice reveal and Irish accent.

- Belos dies an excruciatingly painful death

- Hunter Noceda

- If there is not a big dramatic scene dedicated to Willow and Gus reuniting with their dads I am fucking killing somebody.

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hellishere7980 · 11 months

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IMW Chapter 9

Life’s a roller-coster Marinette likes to ride

Next Week

“Let’s go get Nooroo and Duusu back.” Marinette almost didn’t recognise her voice, but as she spoke, she knew where that dark vengeful source came from as it bubbled up within her.

Turning back to the kwamis, she met their eyes as she silently summoned Tikki’s transformation and felt her power wash over her as they merged, her split doing the same with Plagg.

It felt different.

Momentarily, Ladybug’s mind faltered as she settled into her transformation. It was different, the way Tikki’s power spread through her, the Kwami’s power felt more protective as it joined with her, covering her in the suit as they merged.

Ladybug smirked back, inclining her head slightly before summoning a portal directly over Agreste Manor and jumped into it. Falling twenty meters, feeling Lady Noire not a second behind her, Ladybug closed the portal as they landed on the roof of the Manor holding Shadow Moth.

“Shadow Moth is mine.” Ladybug said coldly, turning to look at Lady Noire and she watched as she nodded in understanding.

“I’ll take Mayura.” Lady Noire’s tone was sinister.

Scanning the building below them she pulled up a hologram of it and began to study it. There was a crypt below the building, holding a number of generators and plants thriving in their own small echo system underground, including a tree where a pod rested at its base.

There were only two people within the house; a figure on the first floor sitting at a desk within the front entrance and one directly below their feet. The latter was pacing around what appeared to be an observatory. Glancing at Lady Noire, she smirked at her as she leaped off the dome, flipping as she did before disappearing into the shadow cast by the Manor.

From the shadows behind Nathalie Sancoeur Lady Noire emerged, the darkness clinging to her released her slowly as though they birthed her and he approached her from behind. Ladybug watched the woman stiffen, lean closer to her computer and pale as her eyes widened.

Nathalie reached for the intercom unit, no doubt about to alert Shadow Moth of the video but was intercepted. Lady Noire grabbed the woman’s hand before she could, snapping the bones of her wrist like a twig and covering her mouth to silence her scream of pain.

Turning off the camera footage and going back to the scan, Ladybug slipped in her own com unit and listened as Lady Noire began cursing Nathalie according to Court Law on misuse of the Miraculous and crimes committed while wielding one, muffling her screams so she didn’t alert Shadow Moth.

Checking to see if Shadow Moth had been tipped off or heard anything, Ladybug watched as the terrorist threw his staff, unaware that his reign of terror was drawing to an end.

Studying the scan of the dome below her, Ladybug realised there was a retractable metal door over the window that was designed to look like the roof when closed. It was designed to look like a butterfly.

Waiting for the moment Shadow Moth turned his back on the window, Ladybug moved, slipping down the dome and into the window. Landing silently on the ground, she cast a quick illusion to make herself invisible and blended seamlessly into the shadows as the man who had terrorised Paris for years threw a temper tantrum not ten metres in front of her.

He was tall, imposing and had both Nooroo’s and Duusu’s magic, ancient and powerful even when corrupted, rolling off him in waves as he hissed with unrestrained fury about some akuma attack. Shadow Moth appeared to finish his rant by throwing his staff. The noise was grating, Ladybug didn’t flinch, watching the man before her as his eyes, clouded with fury stared unseeingly at nothing, face twisted in a snarl, visible even with the ugly cowl before his head snapped to look at the window.

Shadow Moth growled out the detransformation phrase for both Nooroo and Duusu and Ladybug watched as he was covered in a blinding flash of blue and purple light before it faded, leaving Gabriel Agreste in his place.

Ladybug let out an inaudible breath.

This close, and now detransformed, Ladybug could feel the bonds with Nooroo and Duusu clearly and the amount of pain, fear and sadness she felt from them hurt her as they hovered closely together, cowering under the rage rolling off the man oppressing them.

Gently Ladybug dropped the illusion as she stepped out of the shadows and into the light streaming in from the large window.

The Kwami’s eyes flickered to her briefly before returning to Gabriel, not giving away her position or arrival even as she felt their awe, happiness and crippling relief.

The extent of their emotions only fuelled Ladybug’s anger as she approached the man silently, hearing Lady Noire finish cursing Nathelie. Lady Noire began to sweep the house for anything on the Miraculous, not wanting to alert Gabriel as she got closer and closer to him.

Grabbing the arm that was waving close to the Kwami, Ladybug snapped the bones under her hand and he spun to look at her, his scowl twisting to pain before his eyes landed on her.

It was satisfying, watching all of the blood drain from his face in a single moment. In the pale blue light that came through the window he looked ghoulish as he stared at her, wide eyed and frozen in fear as the dark promise of death rolled off her in waves.

“boo!”

Moving lightning fast, Ladybug reached with her free right hand and ripped both Miraculous’ off his chest, vanishing them to the Miracle Box the moment they were in her grasp, Nooroo and Duusu flying to hover closely behind her immediately.

“No!” Gabriel’s cry matched his expression as his face twisted with rage and manic desperation.

Swinging wildly despite the awkward angle, and how his arm was still in her hold, Gabriel tried to punch her. Catching it in her right hand, the crunching sound of his knuckles being crushed was drowned out by an agonised cry as his eyes filled with pain and fear.

Dropping his right arm, Ladybug twisted, putting all of her strength into her back, shoulders and arm as she threw Gabriel Agreste across the observatory.

The metal dome creaked loudly as his body collided with the wall before falling to a heap on the floor, struggling weakly as he tried to suck in air from having it knocked out of him.

Gabriel managed to sit up awkwardly; the fingers and knuckles of his left hand were crushed, and she had broken his right arm. His breaths came with difficulty as he raised his ruined hand in such a way she was unsure whether he was cowering away from her or reaching towards her for mercy. The man’s grey eyes were wide and his pupils were blown with terror and frantic desperation, fear saturating his scent as he watched her stalk towards him with the grace and power a predator stalks their prey with.

“Please, mercy. Please-” Gabriel gasped through short breaths as he tried to fill his lungs, “-My wife. I miss my wife.”

“The families of your suicide victims miss their loved ones.” Ladybug answered coldly.

“The Miraculous, it killed her.” Gabriel tried again, but it fell flat as his tone sounded accusatory.

Unprompted, Duusu and Nooroo told her, sending her memories from years ago of a woman with hair that shone like wheat under the sun and eyes the colour of grass. Of her selfish desire and dismissal of warnings given by both Kwami in favour of her desire to ‘be a hero’. How she did nothing but play with her powers behind closed doors of a Manor that became the Kwami’s prison long before her death.

“She was told. You both were.” Ladybug said, eyes flashing dangerously as she dared him to deny it.

“I’ll give you anything you want; I just want my wife back. I love her, please.”

“Anything I want?” Ladybug asked, stopping just out of reach, staring down at him and tilting her head.

“Anything, anything in the world. Money, fame, power.” Gabriel rambled, hope shining in his eyes as false promises fell from his lips; his mind whirling with ways he could twist this into his advantage.

“I want you to pay for what you’ve done.” She whispered.

Despite how quiet her words were, they carried with power and Gabriel’s face fell, terror overcoming his features as she let her aura, all that she felt towards Gabriel Agreste flood out of her along with her magic.

The smell of urine saturated the air as his bladder loosened but not a sound left his lips. Smirking, she watched how he shook violently at her feet, curling in on himself and away from her in horror.

Ladybug hadn’t even started yet.

“Gabriel Agreste, as Grand Guardian of the Mother Miracle Box, I judge you guilty of crimes against the Miraculous and the Kwami. I judge you guilty of using two Miraculous to terrorise, kill and destroy people and property without remorse. I judge you guilty of abusing the Kwami of Transmission and the Kwami of Emotion and I hereby deem you unfit to wield a Miraculous, now and forever more. You will forget all secrets and knowledge of the Miraculous, and I hereby curse you for your crimes and your misuse of the Miraculous.”

As she spoke, Ladybug watched as Gabriel screamed in agony, writhing around on the floor as the curse began to set in. Nooroo and Duusu watched from where they hovered behind her and she felt their glee as they watched the man who had abused and misused their Miraculous finally getting what he deserves.

Ladybug could end the curse there. She had completed what she had to, but it wasn’t enough.

Gabriel Agreste had caused too much pain, physical, emotional and mental, to be allowed to live. He had tortured the people of Paris over and over again without remorse all because he wanted his wife back. He didn’t deserve to live for all he had made akumas do, he didn’t deserve to live for the continuous cycle of dying and being brought back to life he made the people of Paris suffer through and he didn’t deserve to live when his suicide victims were not.

Gabriel Agreste didn’t deserve to live, but Ladybug wanted him to know the extent of pain he had caused millions of people. He was going to feel it for the rest of his life, and it was going to follow him in death.

“You will forever feel the pain you have caused the people of Paris no matter if it’s mental, emotional or physical. You will experience every moment of their torture and suffering at your hand for the rest of your existence, in both life and death you never escape what you have done to others. So I have said, so mote be it.”

As the last of the cold words layered with magic left her lips, Gabriel’s back arched, forming a perfect curve and his lips opened in a silent scream, eyes blown so far open they looked ready to pop out of his head before he went slack as he fell unconscious.

#maribat #alfred pennyworth #bruce wayne #jason todd #hellishere7980 #dick grayson #marinette dupen chang #miraculous fanworks #miraculous lb #bio!dad bruce wayne

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apparitionsxanonymous · 4 months

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Coffee

Apparition Anonymous is a collection of fictional stories told from the POV of the Grim Reaper as they guide newly departed souls to the Afterlife. Enjoy, and thank you for reading.

Read the previous part.

The man sitting across the table from me hummed to himself as he sipped his coffee. I watched him as he’d take a sip, peer into the cup, then take another sip. He didn’t pay me any mind. I looked over my shoulder to the left to see that the giant clock on the wall was still green.

Time wasn’t measured; it was an illusion. It was man-made in the physical world that everyone ran their lives by. Whatever position the sun and moon were in, whatever numbers the clock showed, that’s how they lived their lives.

It carried into the Spirit World, too. This clock didn’t have numbers on it, but it changed colors based on how much longer a session was. Green meant I still had much of the session to go. It normally didn’t get close to ending unless the spirit had learned something or felt better about why they’re here or felt better about their previous life.

When the man entered the room, we politely greeted each other before I offered him a beverage. He graciously took the coffee, but I couldn’t tell if he was enjoying it or not. At this point, he would begin to lose his sense of taste, so I assumed the coffee didn’t taste that great. Maybe he was trying to figure out why it didn’t taste great or why he could barely taste it at all? It was hard to tell without him speaking to me.

I didn’t think he was ignoring me on purpose. In fact, I didn’t think he was ignoring me at all. Sometimes the spirits needed some time to process things themselves at first.

“What brand is this?” he finally broke the awkward silence.

“Oh,” I hesitated, suddenly surprised at his question. “It’s um, mine.”

“I see,” he nodded, taking another sip before placing his mug back down on the table. “It tastes like… it tastes like the coffee my first wife used to make.”

I arched a brow. “Really?” I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not.

He nodded, smirking. “I was usually the one to make the coffee in the morning because she was terrible at it. She’d always add too many grounds into the brewer or not enough. So, the coffee was always extremely watered down, or you’d be crunching on grounds.”

He laughed, and so did I. I was sure the coffee tasted watery to him because he was losing his sense of taste. Regardless, I’d let him believe I was a terrible coffee maker.

“There were some mornings I thought my ex-wife did it on purpose. She’d always drink the coffee just fine. I mean, she seemed to enjoy it more whenever I made it, but she’d drink it no matter what if she made it. I never knew if she made it better for herself and tried to ruin my morning, or if she really was that bad at making coffee and only drank it because she was being stubborn about it.”

I nodded, letting the man talk. I didn’t know too much about a spirit’s previous life before they joined the Afterlife. I knew about how they died and what exactly happened, but as far as everything else in their life, I had no idea. That would be too much information for me to handle. Not to mention, that whatever they did in their physical form had nothing to do with the Afterlife, despite what some of them believed.

“I guess none of that matters now, though, huh?” the man sighed. “I’m here, and there’s no going back.”

I shook my head. “No, but you could revisit the living world if you chose to. You can still visit your friends and family and keep an eye on them.”

The man cast a sad smile in my direction. “I was supposed to get married again. My wedding was in about a month. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to love again, not after my first wife. Not that my ex-wife was a bad person, don’t get me wrong. She was wonderful in her own way. But, somewhere down the road, we fell out of love. I had seen it happen before, but it was never something I thought would happen to me, you know?”

“It always happens to other people, yes,” I said in agreement, “but that doesn’t make us invincible.”

“Exactly,” he chuckled, “because we’re all other people to other people.” He took another sip of his coffee, making a face as though it was hard for him to swallow.

“I should point out that you’ll lose your sense of taste over time now that you’re here,” I explained.

He forced a grin toward me, and I didn’t know why he felt the need to be so optimistic. Then again, I’d rather him be in a good mood and polite than the opposite.

“Nah, it’s alright. Just a bit cold,” he said.

I flicked my wrist, adding more coffee to his mug and warming it up. He took another sip, sighing happily.

Maybe it wasn’t about the taste for him at all. His soul was growing cold, and he clung to that warm feeling.

“I guess everything happens for a reason, right?” he asked.

I nodded, even though that wasn’t completely true. Everyone was given a specific amount of time to live in their physical form the moment they were born. It was unclear, even to me, when someone’s life was longer than someone else’s. It was unclear why someone would die of a sickness, get into an accident, or get caught in a natural disaster. It was unclear when someone would join the Afterlife naturally or join at the hands of another, or sometimes themselves. If all of that had a reason behind it, I had no idea what it was.

However, if he believed there was a reason behind it, and that helped him find his peace, then I’d let him think whatever he wanted.

The clock on the wall had already turned orange, and I didn’t know why. How could our time already almost be over when we barely chatted? Could it be that he was already at peace?

I watched the man take another sip of his coffee, and he grinned again. “Do you know what this reminds me of?”

“Your ex-wife?” I questioned.

He nodded. “I know, I find it odd that it’s comforting me, too. Again, she wasn’t a bad person. We simply fell out of love. I don’t know why, I don’t know how. But that doesn’t mean we didn’t have great memories together. My divorce put me on the path to meeting my fiance. I’m sorry I’ll never get to marry her, but she made me feel again. Happiness, love, warmth. Much like this cup of coffee.

“The taste is bitter at times. Sometimes, it’ll leave a sour note behind. But if you find someone to warm it up for you, it’s easier for you to see the bright side of things.”

I opened my mouth to reply, but the clock turned red. I stood up, explaining that our time was up.

The man stood, thanking me. He took one last sip of his drink before leaving.

I stood alone while the clock turned yellow. Another soul was waiting for me to let them in, but I needed a minute. I thought I was here to help the souls find peace? But I guess I didn’t always need to have words of wisdom.

Sometimes, all you needed was someone to lend an ear over a comforting cup of coffee.

Thanks for reading. Apparitions Anonymous is updated every Monday and Friday. If you enjoy my work and would like to stay updated with my writing journey, please consider visiting my Ko-fi page.

Read the next part.

#creative writing #writeblr #writers on tumblr #short story #paranormal fiction

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demenior · 1 month

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I kinda missed wip wednesday so have some more of this scene i'm still working on.

Good owners provide their dogs with lots of enrichment

Jester’s horrible Xhorhasian accent returns, and she pretends to notice the pin in Eadwulf’s collar, “oh! Wait, I know this one. You’re Tusktooth’s Hound, aren’t you?”

Eadwulf can’t hide his grin, “you won’t get anything from me.”

“We’ll see about that,” and Jester turns to Fjord now, “he says he won’t talk.”

That is another one of Fjord’s prompts. He grips Eadwulf by the chin, craning his head back to expose his throat and observes the man like he’s looking at livestock.

“Not much use for a quiet spy,” Fjord muses, putting on what he thinks is a generic Xhorhasian accent, “but I suppose this one is nice to look at. We could make use of him after all. I hear Tusktooth makes other use of him.”

Eadwulf’s breath hitches. He makes only a small effort to try and pull away.

“I do like my toys,” Jester agrees.

Between the two of them Eadwulf groans with a notable full-body shudder.

When he does speak, his voice is breathy, “I can— I’ll do anything. I have to get back to them. My— my Masters. They’ll wonder where I’ve gone.”

Jester shares a wink with Fjord, out of Eadwulf’s sight.

She yanks on the lapels of Eadwulf’s coat to pull him from Fjord’s grip, and get his attention, “show us what you do for your Masters. And if you’re good enough, we might let you live.”

Jester extends a hand, and Fjord takes it to help her stand up. She keeps her face serene but her grip is tight and her ankles wobble in her tall shoes.

“We don’t have to bother with these disguises any longer,” she announces.

That’s another cue from her long list of notes. Fjord snaps his fingers and slips into another appearance. In the spirit of things, he’s keeping his features the same, but hiding his tusks behind the illusion. With darkened skin and pale hair twisted into a braid over his shoulder, he thinks he could pass for a Drow.

Jester casts the same spell on herself. Her skin becomes darker, and her hair black. Those appear to be the only changes.

“To the bed,” she orders Eadwulf.

He snaps to attention, scrambling to his feet.

Jester’s grip on Fjord tightens as she steadies herself, and she shoves Eadwulf with the toe of her shoe. He hits the ground.

“Dogs don’t walk,” Jester announces, “they crawl.”

#wip #im tagging this for the eadwulf crowd bc i know yall like the dog metaphors w him #eadwulf grieve #i think fjord likes disguise self-ing into people with long hair #bc he likes having long hair #but he keeps having anxiety spirals and cuts all his hair off lmao #a happy and healthy fjord will have long beautiful hair #anyways thats why he gives himself the braid here #thats meta that no one asked for!#a heart that howled fic

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tokiro07 · 7 months

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Cipher Academy ch.43 thoughts

[This Place About to Blow]

(Contents: Minor cast analysis, Iroha analysis)

Welp, Iroha's dead, series over I guess

So I'm admittedly disappointed that the dungeon doesn't seem to have monsters or enemies, just puzzles presented diegetically, though it's possible that Nisio just doesn't want to show his hand too early. For now, I'm going to assume that there's nothing fantastical until proven otherwise so I won't set myself up for further disappointment

I do really like that the aesthetic for the question boxes has changed to the glasses frames, that's a really nice touch and makes it feel like we're literally seeing from Iroha's perspective in that moment

I also like that even if there aren't enemies, the floors do have a pretty significant level of variety, including casino, mahjong parlor, aquarium, and overnight train. That last one in particular gives me hope since it means that the floors don't have to be stationary rooms. For all we know there could be a UFO floor or a floor the size of an entire town, but again, I'm getting ahead of myself

It's interesting seeing everyone planning their strategy, you need to have a clear approach when tackling a procedural game. Toshusai considering waiting for her group (strength in numbers) vs. speedrunning (getting experience, not sitting around) is the kind of question that only the frontrunner could have the luxury to consider. If she speeds ahead, she could get into trouble that she's not prepared for, but if she stays still, someone like Kubinashi could catch up and surpass her before her allies do

Speaking of, Yugata says she's planning to move ahead 25 floors to reach 175, where we know Kubinashi is waiting. Why is Yugata trying to get to Kubinashi and not Toshusai? I can't imagine she's plotting a betrayal, so if anything I'd wager she's either planning to snipe Kubinashi back to the first floor somehow or she has some pressing questions that she needs answered

Karigane notes that she can't leave messages behind or make any alterations that might help her trailing teammates, which implies that she was intending to do exactly that. Leave it to the mystery book fan to want to leave helpful codes behind

Meanwhile, Hanagoromo is checking to see if she can find any glitches or shortcuts, which makes sense for a member of the undercover ops Class E. Naturally, Hanagoromo's inclination is to check under the mahjong tables since she spends so much of her time under tables herself, but it also seems like a good place to look for glitches. Visual assets in games are often used to either obscure graphical errors (like Daisy's third eye under her hair in Melee) or to create optical illusions that give the impression that a visual looks how the designer wants, so in a room full of tables, there's a good chance that one of them is hiding some kind of unavoidable or possibly even deliberate error. I don't know if that error will be at all helpful for Hanagoromo, but hey, speedrunners break games in all kinds of novel ways, and I haven't got a single clue how they go about doing that in the first place, so godspeed to her

We cut to Nohime, Kogoe and Zakuroguchi acting as overseers of the game, each of them eating their signature food: Kogoe has a corndog with copius amounts of toppings, Nohime is sipping tea, and in the most shocking twist of all time, Zakuroguchi is eating a pomegranate (Zakuro meaning pomegranate). Man, this is making me want pomegranate...they're in season now, right?? Ah, but they're expensive...

ANYWAY!

We finally learn what Nohime meant went she said she lost her sight from a "dazzling code;" her vision was damaged while roaming the puzzle dungeon's prototype! The way they're talking about it, it sounds like they're saying that her eyes were physically damaged by the game, which implies to me that having the code projecting directly into her eyes by the glasses effectively fried her optic nerve or corneas the way that looking at the sun might. I can't imagine how much light is needed for a screen to recreate solar retinopathy, but I have to assume that the visual output of the glasses has been toned down to prevent that from happening again

Moving back to Iroha, he's joined by Koshibai who gave up her 100 floor advantage just so she'd be able to experience the entirety of the game. Even ignoring the fact that she just wants to have fun, I absolutely see the benefit in resetting: by skipping ahead so far, the player isn't just making up a lot of ground, they're being put in an inherently more difficult scenario without any clear baseline of what to expect. It's bound to be easier for a player starting at floor 200 to be killed by a lvl200 puzzle than it would be for a player whose had 200 floors to learn the ins-and-outs of the game as a whole, at least that's what I'd expect. Even if I'm technically smart enough to last at that skill level, I'd much prefer to work my way up so that I'm more familiar with the mechanics first

That said, we can be pretty sure that Iroha has the technical skill to be higher up, and yet he's having a lot of trouble on BF1, isn't he? He's getting way more flustered than he usually does, even considering that he has a ten second time limit. Hakanage's invisible ink puzzle was way harder than these ordnance puzzles, and he solved that quickly and calmly, but this is what's throwing him?

Well that's because, as Zakuroguchi points out, Iroha is already predisposed to having an aversion to ordnances. Astute readers may remember that Iroha told Yugata in the lipogram battle that he has an explosives handling license, which means that Iroha has experience with them. Despite having the license and skill to handle them, that doesn't necessarily mean that Iroha isn't afraid of them, and in fact is likely traumatized by them, either from a bad experience within the course he would have had to take to earn that license or from an event that prompted him to get his license in the first place. I still think some if not all of his cheer squad were killed in an explosion, hence why he also has trypophobia, and that trauma is giving him trouble dealing with this particular scenario

Koshibai encouraging Iroha to have fun with the game could be interpreted as her picking up on his insecurity, giving him the reassurance and grounding he needs to stop panicking and solve the final puzzle quickly. However, as we see with the explosion, it would appear that Iroha's newfound peace of mind did not allow him to find the right answer

Since Iroha was employing the right-hand technique to solve the maze (keeping your right hand on the wall to move along the perimeter and ensure you don't end up walking in circles), he missed the initial left turn that he was supposed to make. Because he took the wrong turn right at the beginning, it's hard to say how that affected the answers after the fact, but it's possible that they were trying to get him back on track, so maybe a few of the questions should technically be reversed?

Either that or the Xs don't refer to the shapes made by combining the arrows, but rather by overlaying the turns he was supposed to make themselves? If that's the case, then I think the answer should have been 3, as Iroha "crossed" over three times (1 to 2, 4 to 5, and 6 to 7, with 3 to 4 and 5 to 6 going in the same direction)

That, or Iroha DID notice something else (he did say "there's also this thing...") that gave him the hint he needed to solve the puzzle and the explosion we saw was what was supposed to happen, and Iroha and Koshibai are now moving down to the next floor through the opening created by the bomb

Honestly that's what I'm most expecting to happen, as knocking Iroha back to the start when he's at the start would most likely create needless padding, unless perhaps the stages change pretty significantly between visits. I suppose we'll find out soon enough, but that's my bet for now

#cipher academy #fouryearsandananime #4y1a reviews

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centaurianthropology · 2 years

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NY by Night S1E8 ‘Virtue Overthrow’ Recap and Thoughts

And here we are, at the end of a season. We pause our story with these four vampires for now, and the Camarilla vampires are left with huge shoes to fill, because this cast has been stellar. This story has been excellent, and it has danced on the edge of disaster for an entire season. Until tonight, when it all came to a head in an emotional blowout that will have ramifications for this coterie whenever we get to see them again. Read on after the cut to see my thoughts on this, the season finale of the first season of ‘NY by Night’.

We start with North Brother Island, uninhabited, chosen formerly as a quarantine hospital for severe illnesses. The Coterie approaches the island at Isaac’s invitation, but something is different about our favorite Tzimisce. He looks just a little different, specifically he looks like an idealized version of himself. Fuego uses Unswayable Mind, thinking he’s cast some sort of illusion, as she’s finding him distractingly hot suddenly. But he doesn’t change. Whatever has happened is genuine, physical.

This starts a conversation. Fuego, fresh off her emotional turmoil of last week, is setting out to clear the air and connect with this, her closest connection to kindred society. She asks Isaac about his appearance, which leads into her apologizing for being nasty to him the night at the Crescent. He in turn apologizes for being short with her; he wanted to impress on her the severity of the situation, but doesn’t actually care that she murdered someone. He more cares that they were sloppy and careless. She sets aside his general disregard for human life, something she has carefully guarded her own ability to care about, and instead accepts his olive branch, twisted as it is. After they’ve made up, he fills the coterie in on his mission to find the skull, including his encounter with a Camarilla vamp in Rafferty’s employ. Fuego reveals that he’s her sire, but she knows very little about him.

They arrive at the island. The tone is immediately surreal. It’s abandoned and ruined, but there are no animals, no birds, no people. There is nothing except the hidden haven of a single kindred: Isaac’s sire, Vaclav. Isaac urges them to let Vaclav take the lead in any conversation. He’s only ever interacted with his sire—who is considerably older than they are—one on one and doesn’t know how they’ll handle other people. As much as Isaac can be somewhat anxious, he is, because Vaclav is dangerous, and he’s old, an Isaac is walking a pack of volatile baby kindred into his domain. They spot a light, and Rey makes a Paul Revere joke that only Fuego gets. He feels old, and we find out that when Isaac said he didn’t finish school, he meant high school. Isaac is very smart and very articulate, but clearly has huge holes in his education.

They enter the haven, and get their first glimpse of Isaac’s sire. The haven looks like the 19th century so perfectly that it could be from a movie, and Vaclav himself (he is presenting male at present) awaits them in equally antiquated clothing. He greets them with courtesy (and a quote from Dracula, which is hilarious and none of them get it, which disappoints him a little, making him immediately more interesting and loveable than I expected him to be). They all sit down and get refreshments (some suspiciously fresh blood, one imagines from some unfortunate fleshcrafted couch). Vaclav is courteous and charming, and the coterie, amazingly, manages to be on their best behavior. Fuego is excited and honestly charmed by Vaclav. Rey is polite and as even-keeled as he can be. Serif is the only one who seem to twig that there is a sense of creepiness about this whole thing, that there is something off about this old man, but even she seems to find him charming in spite of herself.

Isaac reveals that he wanted them to meet Vaclav because they all have poor relations with their own sires, that they have limited information, and no one older except him to help them. He wanted them to meet his own sire, to see that relations can be good with that sire, even if it’s uncommon, and he wanted them all to see an older vampire who wasn’t openly trying to push them around or use them so they could gain some perspective.

Vaclav is clearly enjoying playing host. He gets information from these young kindred, yes, but he also just gets visitors, and gets to impart wisdom to the new friends of the childe he is clearly quite proud of. Isaac and Vaclav have a polite but definitely warm relationship, and Vaclav extends that warmth to Isaac’s coterie-mates. He invites them to ask him questions. He has been in torpor for some time, and while he’s been awake for about a decade, he hasn’t entirely adjusted to the new world. Still, he will answer what questions he can, and he proves to be a wealth of knowledge.

They discuss the Camarilla, its pros and its cons, and how the Camarilla did not always control New York. This segues into a discussion about the Sabbat. Vaclav seems to have been in torpor at the time of the battle, and seems distant from both parties involved. Alone on his island, Vaclav seems to be avoiding politics, with no close ties to any faction, and so he can judge all of them. Fuego uses the opportunity to ask why, if the Camarilla need numbers to keep out the Sabbat, they still exclude certain clans. It seems counter-productive. While there are many possible reasons, the largest is old prejudice. While Fuego would be welcome, Serif and Isaac would not.

Serif has her own continued focus, and a seemingly friendly source of information, so she asks how to un-ghoul someone. She is open with Vaclav about why she wants to know. She tells him about her mother’s situation, an in turn he offers her honest options: she can kill her mother, turn her into a vampire, or cut her off from blood. That last option sounds good, but that has one major drawback: the twenty-five years Serif’s mother has been a ghoul will rapidly catch up with her, possibly damaging her permanently. Serif realizes she has no good options for saving her mother. Even making her into a vampire is not an easy answer. Few sires and children get along well, and having it be her own mother that she turns has added complications.

This leads to a new discussion of sires and children. Fuego admires what Vaclav and Isaac have, but feel that what she has with Rafferty is entirely different. She barely knows him, but still finds herself loving him to an extent that she feels like something has to be wrong. It’s too much, not warmth but more. Vaclav speculates it could be a blood bond, but when Fuego says she only drank from Rafferty once, Vaclav chalks it up to an unusually intense reaction to the embrace, that will likely fade with time and separation. She intellectually wants this, but emotionally …

Rey also has a question about sires, but his question is more about why certain vampires choose those they embrace. He wants to know if his sire chose him specifically, or if his embrace could be random chance (that he wasn’t meant to be Gangrel). Vaclav says there are many reasons to embrace someone, and that any number of reasons could account for Rey’s embrace, or any embrace Rey chooses to give to someone else. Rey is disappointed, but Vaclav encourages him to realize that the Gangrel have what he calls a ‘desperate power’, that they are often underestimated. Rey’s weaknesses could be strengths, if he only embraced and harnessed them. Rey doesn’t react to that, but it may have been the first time someone told him that in such an open way, an it’s definitely the first time someone has implied that he should embrace his power and Rey didn’t immediately snap at them. It seems like Vaclav even has his respect.

Serif wonders about the power of the Tzimisce. If Rey has power, and Fuego has power, and she has power, what exactly do the Tzimisce do?

The anwer, after Isaac beats around the bush a bit, is of course flesh-crafting. Isaac can now change himself, as he revealed before, and Vaclav adds that more powerful Tzimisce can change others as well. Fuego covers her shock quickly, asking for wings when Isaac figures that one out, but there is a clear moment of fear. This is a power none of the others have. A potentially horrible power, and even vampires as young as they are recognize that.

The conversation quickly shifts to wights. Vaclav confirms Isaac’s suspicions about what wights are, and after its revealed that it’s a sabbat project gone wrong, Vaclav gives them more information about why so many Sabbat become wights. The Sabbat reject their humanity and walk different paths to maintain balance with the beast, but that makes them more vulnerable to losing control and losing themselves. Those who can’t walk their chosen path become wights.

Vaclav knows a lot about the Sabbat, not just their external structure, but about the Paths, and about their structure. He doesn’t say it, barely even implies it, but I have to think he was Sabbat at one point. However, it also seems that he broke with them long ago enough that the Anarchs don’t mind him, and he is treated as a free agent.

Their conversation draws to a close, and Vaclav offers them all one more question. Rey asks why the Camarilla want to get rid of unclaimed childer. Vaclav offers several possibilities, but concludes that the Camarilla are simply short-sighted and prejudiced, and have a lot of old ideas that don’t work as well as they should. Rey is disappointed, but sometimes these simple answers are the correct ones.

Serif asks if he met any previous Ravnos. Vaclav discusses one who was well-traveled, well-read, capricious, intelligent, but dislikable. Serif asks if it’s Argus, and Vaclav not only confirms that it was, but that her revealing that Argus is alive, has her mother as a ghoul, and sired Serif is important information to him. So much so that this old vampire offers Serif a boon, which is no small thing in kindred society. We don’t know why this information is so important, but something tells me that we will eventually find out.

Fuego and Isaac forego a final question. As thanks for the hospitality, Fuego offers Vaclav a nearly-dead Kindle filled with books. While Vaclav doesn’t touch the new tech, he of course accepts the gift. And with that, this meeting—which went shockingly well for this group—ends. Questions are now answered, there is something going on between Vaclav and Argus that means Serif earned a boon from an elder vampire, and Vaclav actually likes the whole coterie, which is great for all of them, even if their newest, best ally is an elder Tzimisce on a creepy island.

They return to the Bronx to find that Isaac’s vehicle has been run-by tagged. Serif investigates the tagging and finds that it’s a commonly used warning amongst local street-gangs: ‘GET OUT.’ Isaac brushes it off, thinking that it has something to do with his association with the Midnighters. Serif is less convinced, but they drop it for the moment in favor of a wight-hunt. They need to take care of that, and fast.

Isaac asks Angela for a knife, and Rey jumps in to tell him not to start cutting bits off himself just because he found that he can alter his body. Isaac is surprised; he meant the knife for Serif so she can defend herself. Everyone is thrilled that Rey is getting protective of Isaac—a new development and further evidence of their bond—and Rey is just embarrassed.

Isaac still has Annabelle’s stake as well. He wants to keep it, of course, but it is prudent to have in a fight with a kindred. Isaac also has his own new abilities, which everyone is slightly horrified by as he mentions altering his bones (there’s also a great dirty pun about bones from Fuego, who is clearly still dealing with the fact that she now finds Isaac hot, and doesn’t quite know what to do with that. It was one of my favorite lines of the night, and delivered with some great comedic timing).

They drive off, trying to locate the wight with Serif’s abilities to sense the beast. It takes them hours, but they do manage it. Serif manages to rescue its intended victim, then takes off after it, leaving the others to catch up. Isaac uses a brief moment to extrude the bone from his forearm to create a blade across his fingers. The scene is like something out of a horror movie, and both Rey and Fuego are disgusted and fascinated.

In the meantime, Serif reaches the wight alone. It easily throws her down, but she comes back at it with the knife. She fails to get the jump on it, and it tears into her, trying to eat her just as Isaac arrive on the scene. He gets the first good hit on it, scissoring his bone knives into either side of its neck. Then Fuego and Rey arrive, with Fuego trying to spray her blood around enough to gets its attention, and Rey trying to grapple it to force it to look at her. He fails, but decides to at least prevent it from running. He tackles it to the ground, but with a messy critical the wight grows serpentine fangs and bites into his face. Rey has to make a frenzy check, but manages to keep it together by the barest margin.

Fuego runs in, trying to beat at it with her flashlight. She doesn’t put a dent in it, but Isaac grabs the stake he stole from Annabelle, and tries to drive it home while the wight is distracted. He get close, but doesn’t manage to hit it in the heart. It isn’t until Serif helps that they manage to paralyze it.

Isaac warns them that it’s not dead, and they have to take care of it. He gets ready to behead it, but Rey insists that they don’t kill it. Everyone is shocked, asking him why. He tries to dance around his reasons, but that just makes everyone more suspicious. Fuego manages to mesmerize him and compel him to give his real reasons.

And the coterie learns that he needs it to prove to the Camarilla that he’s worth their time. To say that the others are disgusted is an understatement. The others immediately tell Isaac to proceed with whatever he was going to do, and he beheads it with his bone knives while Rey frantically tries to grab bits of it. Serif snaps a photo of it before Isaac puts it down, and even texts it to Rey with the message ‘hope it was worth it’, but he’s too distraught to even notice.

There are people coming and they have to go. They all pile into the minivan with tension in the air. Michael makes a fast getaway, and they tend to themselves in tense silence. Isaac has to essentially treat aggravated damage to put his weapons away, showing that there is a big cost to his newfound abilities. Rey decides not to heal, given his poor rolls. Serif heals her own wounds, but the failure of one hunger roll puts her at four hunger, inches away from frenzy.

It’s in this atmosphere that the confrontation about Rey’s Camarilla connections comes to a head. Rey insists that he needed the wight in order not to give up the coterie to the Camarilla, which raises all their hackles. Angela wants to shoot Rey. Fuego threatens Angela, and Isaac threatens Fuego right back, forever protective of his people. Threats escalate amongst all of them. Secrets have been kept on all sides, yes. Fuego didn’t tell them about Rafferty. Serif changed her accent to hide her origins. Isaac doesn’t want anyone on the third floor of his home, apparently less because it contains some terrible secret and more that he wanted one place that was solely his, where he could do his art in peace.

Despite these secrets, Rey’s threats to turn them into the Cam are something more. This isn’t just something personal. This is something that could get Fuego blood-bonded worse than she already is, and get Serif and Isaac summarily executed. Rey insists that this is why he needed the wight. If he could provide more than the Camarilla asked for, he figured they wouldn’t ask him to turn on his coterie.

Isaac snaps that the Camarilla doesn’t work like that. They will demand everything from Rey forever, and they will still never accept him. He will always be less than them. Rey tries to counter with the Camarilla accepting Lasombra, but Isaac replies that the Camarilla will accept the Lasombra, but they will never accept an animal.

It’s brutal, but it starts to open people up to some real honesty. Serif checks Rey’s personal pity with her own reasons why she needs the coterie. All her life someone has just wanted something from her, never just liked her for her, but always only accepted her as a possession or something to extract value from. This group is the first to offer her something like friendship without obvious strings. She needs this. She needs to be free, and the Camarilla are the end of that freedom for her.

Fuego remains quiet. In her family, people yell and fight, and that’s okay, because they get somewhere in the end. She says that Rey will trust them, or he won’t, and her saying anything wouldn’t change it.

Then Angela speaks up. This is a tactical problem. Rey wants to be able to go into Manhattan without a stake in his back, not necessarily join the Camarilla. He cannot do this on his own, but might be able to if he works with the coterie rather than lying to them. They have to rely on one another, and maybe even like one another for a while. It’s the only way they’ll survive.

Rey has a choice, but he refuses to make it yet. Not tonight.

So we are left in limbo, with three of the coterie more or less pledging to one another out of necessity and the beginnings of something like affection. Rey is on the outside. He wants different things, and even the suggestion that they could help him not get staked is anathema to him, as he insists on doing everything on his own. Could he accept this group? Would he turn on them? Will he try to go alone? I suppose we will find out what he decides, and what becomes of our band of Anarchs in season 3.

Thoughts

What a finale. Again, light on large-scale plot, but this was heavy on paying off the interpersonal and emotional threads of the season, while giving us a conclusion to the wight that was satisfying and a difficult combat encounter.

We also finally have the coterie with at least most of their cards on the table. They know what Rey has done, and what he wants. They know more about Serif’s life, and what she needs, and why they are the closest she’s ever had to people who like her for her. We know Fuego loves her community, has a complicated relationship with her sire possibly involving a blood bond or something similar, but has little interest in truly joining him. And we know Isaac is actually the closest to the Anarchs in terms of philosophy as well as circumstance of all of them. Yes, the Camarilla would kill him, but he also wants his freedom. He wants his space and his things and his territory and his third floor which apparently just as his art in it (so far). And they would all accomplish these things better together, if Rey can accept that and embrace it.

So we leave this wonderful, messy foursome driving together, taking the long way home. We end not with a tight conclusion, or a definitive end, but instead we end on an ellipsis.

With that, I’d like to discuss where the characters are emotionally, and why, to my mind, they need one another. Serif is the most open about it. Despite her misgivings, she cares about them all. Francis still looms in her background, a Sabbat-shaped danger that none of them—even her—know about. But he’s a less tempting thing now, because she may dislike some of the choices her coterie has made, but they’re hers. Isaac is protective of her without asking anything in return. Fuego laughs with her. Even Rey has tried to be there for her. These people have acted more like her family than the fucked-up reality of her blood family ever did.

Fuego’s great catharsis was last week. The hardest-hit she was tonight was when Isaac claimed they would all lose their humanity eventually, if they lived long enough. That’s the one thought she can’t stand. And so, even if she didn’t express it as loudly as Serif did, this coterie is a totem for her, a proof of her own humanity. As long as she needs them and likes them and doesn’t stop caring about them because she’s lost too much of herself to care, she’s still Fuego. She’s not Margot or Rafferty’s childe. She’s Fuego, with her humanity hard-won and her friends at her side protecting her. And she does care about them. She tries to defend Rey when Serif and Isaac go after him for his betrayal. She likes Serif a great deal, even if she can’t quite understand her. She finds Isaac intriguing and powerful (and now, apparently, hot). She can’t have her old family like she used to, even though she clings to them. She needs community, and this is what she gets. Four fuck-up Anarchs on their own in the Bronx. And she’s holding onto that, and by extension her humanity, with all she’s got.

Isaac needs them too. We still don’t know the extent of his problems. He has remained the biggest black box of the group this season. But he needs them because he’s weak on his own, and his clan is reviled, and the Camarilla would execute him in a heartbeat. And he does care, in his own weird Isaac way. He cares about Serif, who is in a similar boat to him. He cares about Fuego’s desperate bid for her own humanity, even if he doesn’t quite understand it. And he cares about Rey, because he wouldn’t be so angry if he didn’t. He wouldn’t feel as betrayed as he does if he didn’t already sort of trust and sort of like this man. Isaac is walls within walls and masks within masks. He is the anomaly, the one of them with a good sire, and two friends (who he ghouled), but no real connections to kindred society. Whoever he was before, high-school dropout and gangster, he is reinventing himself, and he both needs these people to keep him alive, and to keep him grounded.

Rey has brought the Camarilla to their doorstep, yes, but the Cam already knew about them; Angela was right about that. Julia didn’t dangle the pronunciation of Tzimisce in front of Rey because she didn’t know how to say it. It was a test. She wanted to see if Rey would give her Isaac; she wanted to play the good cop and see how far he was really willing to go for the Cam. And at this point, that’s still a dangling question, and one I don’t think even Rey knows the answer to. He’s trying to play all ends to the middle, and he got his coterie caught in the middle with him. Isaac was cruel, but he was probably right that the Camarilla would never accept Rey. They would use him up and throw him out. If he wants respect, the only people likely to give it to him are these four, at least until he’s powerful enough that the Anarchs will respect him too.

What this episode drove home is how much they all do need one another, and how unwillingly they’ve come to care about each other. ��There isn’t actually much of a power differential between them. They are all young, all vulnerable, all overwhelmed and scared and becoming something new. And at least three of them are now committed to doing it together.

I will miss these four characters and their actors fiercely. I am doing my best to be open to the second-season coterie, because I’m sure they’ll be great too, but I have liked this foursome more than almost any I’ve seen in live play TTRPGs in a long time. They have such good chemistry, such great conflict, and such intense moments of real honest interaction and catharsis.

I want to congratulate all the players and Jason Carl on a great first season. Aabria Iyengar brought such verve and such fun and such passion to Fuego that her emotional scene last episode was a phenomenal moment of real character growth for her, setting her up to be the voice of reason, humanity, and understanding in this final episode. Joey Rassool has been phenomenally dedicated to being the wildcard, to playing Rey to the hilt even when—and perhaps especially when—it’s the wrong call, making him a breathless thrill to watch. Mayanna Berrin plays Serif with such heart and fierceness and need to be free and valued and all the things everyone else craves but is too afraid to admit. And Alex Ward brings a creepy stillness coupled with an incredible intensity to Isaac that makes him electrifying to watch in every scene he’s in.

I adore these characters and their story and this weird little coterie in their shitty part of the Bronx. I will miss them tremendously, and can’t wait to see them again. Thank you all!

#NY by Night #recap and thoughts #Fuego Walker #Isaac Brooke #Serif #Reyes Malcolm #what a great end to a great season #I am going to miss this cast immensely #and I can't wait for them to return in season 3

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boltlightning · 11 months

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For the drabble meme: Elizabeth & Norrington, 5. "Seeking Solace"? Please and thank you!

ok. hello. i wrote one and realized it was over the sentence limit so i just wrote another one instead of cutting a sentence. it's my blog i make the rules here's both

5. seeking solace

The Black Pearl has sailed only a few days out from Tortuga, and Captain Jack Sparrow has the new crew members feasting like this meal shall be their last: while Elizabeth can stomach the overdone goat, stale bread, and vinegary wine, she cannot and will not stomach the raucous and unfocused conversation accompanied by Mr. Gibbs’ shrill attempts on the fiddle. She pours two tins of hot coffee and slips out onto the deck. The skeleton crew casts dark looks her way as the sounds of revelry within the cabin are swallowed up behind the doors once more; Elizabeth readily ignores them and approaches the one tall figure leaning against the gunwale, gazing out at the bright and endless sea. Coffee in hand, skirting a party, gazing at the scenery with James Norrington — it brings Elizabeth back to most every dinner party they both attended (and escaped) back in Port Royal, though the slouched man before her only barely resembles the dashing officer so beloved in her household. She offers him the cup, and James accepts with a quiet word and fleeting eye contact and nothing further; he only turns back to the waves. When Elizabeth turns to go, slighted and silent herself, James’ hand brushes her elbow and he says softly, “I'm — Elizabeth, stay with me, please.”

---

At first, Norrington thinks his imagination has become too active and too cruel after weeks of restless service aboard the Dutchman — surely, that cannot be Elizabeth Swann being dragged by two redcoats from the captain’s quarters of the Empress. Norrington forces himself to think rationally and move slowly down the deck, as though the illusion will break if he believes it too readily, as though the deck will shatter beneath him if he dares to hope. When Elizabeth spots him, she breaks free of her captors and runs for him, calling his name; he pulls her fully into his arms the instant she is near. This is no dream: she is real, she is so desperately real, and she is here and alive and there is hope for her and himself and Governor Swann to escape yet. “Your father will be overjoyed to know you’re safe,” Norrington breathes, his smile half-formed and tentative — just as Elizabeth’s shoulders tense beneath his touch, and the light in her eyes becomes hard and fierce.

send me a prompt, get a drabble ✨

#you never realize how short your sentences are until you've only got five of them lmao. semicolons are putting in WORK here #i would love to write something more sweet and less bitter for these two one day. alas #thank you dear friend!!!!!!!!#i was pretty loose with the word 'solace' here so hopefully this works <3 #ask prompts #tortoisesshells #*fic #pirates of the caribbean #james norrington #elizabeth swann

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strangertheories · 2 years

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As a comic fan it pains me that most viewers aren't picking up on the X-Men connections. S4 often parallels the iconic Dark Phoenix Saga- which Will tells Dustin he wants an issue of back in S1. Dark Phoenix hinges on Jean Grey, a telekinetic telepath, being possessed by a malevolent psychic entity and turned into a supervillain. Obviously there's already the theory going around that Vecna intends to use Will as a host, but make of that what you will.

The protagonist turned villain element makes me think of how the cast described this season with the word "traitor". But the thing that keeps tripping me is that Jean wasn't a traitor. She was just the host, acting against her will. A traitor is willing. So I think there IS both a host and a traitor among the S4 group here- but I don't think they're the same person.

Thanks a lot for this ask, as I'm using this as a springboard to a theory about Eleven and Will having a villain arc in S5.

So this is the point where I confess I've not read any X-Man comics or watched any of the movies. I do enjoy comics but I've never really gotten around to X-Men yet. However, I did look up a plot summary for X-Men 134, which if I recall correctly is the one Will wants to take from Dustin, as well as looking on the wiki for a summary for the dark phoenix saga, so whilst this may not be interesting to the anon, hopefully other people like this.

The description for the comic reads as following:

The Hellfire Club has transformed the phoenix into their black queen! Are the X-Men to late to save her?-- or themselves?!

I don't think the Hellfire Club are meant to be like our Hellfire Club as they're evil and are working for the villain, Mastermind. I think Eddie or whoever founded the group thought it sounded cool and was a reference to the X-Men and possibly the satanic panic as well. And for those of you who don't know, Phoenix is a telepathic and telekinetic girl called Jean (which is very similar to Jane) and considering she was referenced, they're obviously doing these parallels intentionally. It's also important to note that her mentor figure let her suppress her memories and trauma so she wouldn't have to deal with it, which sounds like Brenner to me. Also, Mastermind is an evil villain who has illusion powers and the power to warp your memories of vulnerable people, which sounds more like Henry Creel/Vecna.

Anyways, at the start of the comic, the X-Men are seemingly defeated. They have lost a psychic duel with Mastermind and it seems pretty hopeless for them. One of the gang, Cyclops, has collapsed as though they died, but ultimately survived. There is a draw to the dark side in Jean as a result of Mastermind and she can feel herself giving in to this urge. She successfully kills Mastermind but she succumbs to the darkness and becomes the Dark Phoenix. This begins the Dark Phoenix saga, which leads to Jean's eventual death as she sacrificed herself to save the X-Men.

Now, I feel like some parallels here are pretty clear. Them starting off defeated because they lost in a psychic duel? Someone going unconscious as if dead but living? To me, this sounds a lot like the end of Volume 2. The draw to the dark side from the Mastermind within Jean could parallel Eleven with Vecna's psychological manipulation and her whole monster/superhero thing. But I also feel as though this could apply to Will, which I'll talk about after I explain what this could mean for Eleven.

Firstly, Eleven has similar powers to Vecna as they are both numbers. When Vecna has a strong psychic connection to someone, he absorbs them after he kills them. So what if the season has a twist beginning? Eleven kills Vecna early on in the series, but by doing so she absorbs his essence. This means that she's feeling this evil inside of her that she's not able to escape and ultimately becomes the villain of the season, working with the hive mind in the Upside Down. The group then have to fight her and Eleven, realizing her mistake, sacrifices herself to protect them. They did say the season was going to go full circle to S1, in which Eleven sacrificed herself for the good of the group.

But on the other hand, this could apply a lot to Will. In terms of having Vecna and this darkness inside of you, Will is already experiencing that. He can sense Vecna and his evil at all times as if it's his own. So imagine if instead of Vecna being the villain, Will caves in to this darkness and becomes a whole new monster. Maybe this could somehow serve as a way to unleash repressed powers and abilities in Will.

There are more parallels between Jean and Will as well, such as her intense empathy and her ability to literally feel other people's pain, which reminds me of Will's intense empathy for others and how he's constantly described as more 'sensitive'. Plus all of the repression stuff (Will repressing his true feelings) and trauma (all the Upside Down shit). Maybe it wouldn't even be Will's own power, but Vecna manifesting his power through Will. However, Will is then able to break from this and claim these powers as his own and become evil. He deserves a villain arc anyways. This villain arc would also fit in with all of his Henry Creel parallels.

Somehow, Will gets talked out of his villainy though because I doubt the show would just end with him being evil. Maybe Eleven infiltrates his mind with her powers and within all the darkness, she's able to find Will and get him back into his own body. Possibly Mike is able to reach him, which I'd love being a Byler shipper. Will loves both of them (in different ways!) so if this was to happen, I feel like they'd be most likely.

I hope this wouldn't be a one to one parallel though because I really don't want Will to die or sacrifice himself. They said this season is going full circle to season 1, so I feel like it's more likely that we see Eleven sacrificing herself for him instead of the other way around. Her locating him within the mindscape and trying to save him would be a nice throwback as well, not to mention all of the action being centered around saving Will again. They did say he'd be a main focus and that his issues would be supernatural as well.

Don't know if this is what you wanted, anon. I didn't really address your point on the traitor thing, although I feel like the giving into the dark forces thing is kind of a betrayal. But I think the traitor thing Caleb said was more about Lucas betraying the basketball guys by lying to them about Eddie or even the abandonment of the D&D game thing (which I don't think was a betrayal at all). Thanks for the ask (:

#stranger things #byler #st4 #stranger things theory #stranger theories #will byers #stranger things analysis #byeler #will byers has powers #eleven hopper #henry creel #001 #011 #st5 #st5 theory #st5 speculation

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illmamnim · 1 year

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As propaganda for Shahar in the @original-character-championship , here's some history

Back in 2014, I've created a set of characters that would later become our main cast: Shahar, Peter, Omer and Gil.

I won't go into each of them in this propaganda but I'll show them off once I have proper character sheets.

The world

In this world people have different abilities and those can be distinguished via eye colors.

Those without an ability have gray eyes, and are called and treated differently in each culture.

A brief of each major character:

Omer has Charisma, Gil has Illusions, Peter has Earth, Miss Basir has Plants, Shay has Wind, and finally Shahar:

Shahar

Shahar has red eyes because her ability comes from her grandpa - heat regulation. She can control her body temperature, from not producing any heat at all to burning like a well boiled soup.

Her story starts when 3 teens (Omer, Peter, Gil) start looking into her dad's old clinics after their parents have gone sick. Her dad asks her to go with them and make sure they don't find him and aren't suspicious of it.

She joins our group after they've found miss Basir- a traveling gardener who rides with her daughter in a van across the F.U.E (The country name (ish)(may change)). Shahar tags along without much contribution, only pointing out wrong paths and misinformation to make their journey come to dead ends.

However, after spending weeks with people on the road you're bound to find yourself attached to them, to some degree. Omer wasn't as annoying as he used to be, Peter seems to know everything and is always happy to answer her questions, Gil loves the same comics she does, Miss Basir knows just what to say to calm her down, and her daughter, Shay... Makes her feel things she never have before. They all do, in their way.

Shahr is full of guilt and shame over her father's actions, and her own. She's still leading them away from her father, this time not for him, but for her. What would they do once they find our she's been tricking them? What would they say if they knew that she's related to the man who almost killed their parents? They don't even know the purpose of all this. They still think Dr. Rephael is a good guy who can give their parents medicine.

As much as she tries, the crew still manages to find the doctor. Shahar tries to think of ways to discourage them from going, but it doesn't go as she planned- as any of them planned.

The doctor opens his door with warm hospitality, not at all surprised to see them, and offers them cookies and drinks. The kids explain their situation to the man, as Shahar seems to shrink into herself more than ever. The man listens politely, with that familiar expression of a doctor listening to their patients, and finally opens mouth to reply.

See, healers aren't people who can mend all wounds. Their ability helps your body heal itself by giving you ease, comfort and peace of mind- it feels just like talking to a loved one after weeks of being alone. So when the doctor finally tells them that he knows, that it was all a part of his plan and that their parents don't matter, it sounds fake. More than fake- it's surreal, as if they've finally managed to unlock the door but it's 15 feet in the air and they are seconds away from crushing into the hard asphalt ground.

The doctor explains his plan, Shahar's involvement and how he finally came to the conclusion that, to continue his plans, it's best to just poison this group and continue on. The crew looks down at the crumbs of sweets on their shirts and feel the taste of warm tea on their tongues, and nothing felt more bitter.

Now, a bit of an immersion break, because this is the end of season 1 and is yet to be fully constructed. But this story is intended to have 2 seasons at least (with either a movie special or a short season 3), and those characters has a very long way to go, with more people to meet, more challenges to overcome, and more talking and listening to do.

I really want to make this story into a comic and hopefully in college I'll even make an animated short with them. I still have a lot to learn to make this story what I want it to be, but I'm getting started, I'm building the plot and i have way too many google docs to prove it.

I hope this was a taste to get people interested. If so, send asks! I would love to talk about those little meow meows with more than just my 2 friends lwkzkws

#tinstuff #ocs #original characters #shahar #Aielet HaShahar Eshed #her full name is so funny looking in English kwnskw #it looks like a mess

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skyward-floored · 1 year

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Alright here we go:

Time: Malon. Time seems to have found stability and healing in his life with Malon, and she’s the one person who knows EVERYTHING about him and believes him. Cia would make threats against her, probably even make a portal and pull Malon through to show she means it. Time isn’t sure if it’s an advanced illusion but it’s too real and he’s not taking chances. Later, when they’re free and back at the ranch, Malon has the injuries from before, proving it was real.

Sky: Cia would use his Zelda against him, but differently. I’m not exactly sure of details here, but she would mess with his head by making herself a wedge between Sky and his loyalty/devotion to Zelda.

Twilight: Two things: Midna and dog. For one, I think she would say and do things that Midna did that she KNOWS Twilight will recognize to mess with his head. She would also quite literally treat him like a dog, and constantly tell him that he’s more beast than man and will be treated accordingly, etc. to the point he wonders if she’s right.

Wild: Silence. If he says anything or makes any noise he is punished, and she threatens to hurt the other Links as well. She’s already hurting them anyway but he doesn’t know that. If she hurts him and he makes a noise, that’s cause for even more punishment.

Legend: Marin and Koholint, obviously. “Why cling to the memory of some pathetic wet dream when you have something REAL right here?”

Hyrule: Loneliness. Hyrule has always been alone. She is actually very sweet with him, basically love-bombing him and making him want more time with her. She visits him once, promises to visit him more, and deliberately never does. Later when they’re free he’s upset because he really liked her but everyone else hated her and he’s mad that he’s once again apparently the weird one who doesn’t understand things about people.

Four: His height. We know that he’s pretty comfortable with his height, but she’s able to put some doubt in there. “You should be grateful for my attention. You’ll never have another woman as beautiful as me be interested in you. Women don’t like short guys, no one else would consider you. And you know a princess can’t marry a blacksmith, no matter if he’s the hero. Be real—do you think the royal family, the nobles, the people, would be proud to have a ruler that was as tiny as you? It would look ridiculous.”

Wind: His age. You know, “are you a boy or a man?” “You don’t want to be treated like a child? Then prove you aren’t one.”

Warriors: The other Links. Cia keeps him with her at all times, and anytime he doesn’t do exactly as she wants or tries to escape, she threatens to harm the others as punishment. She follows through on this promise, which is where we get the above.

Oh man this is evil

I like how a lot of the things you chose it’s like, aspects of themselves they’ve accepted already, or are at least comfortable with, but Cia just rips in there and casts doubt on it all and aaaggghhghh ouch

#very thoughtful and very painful aaaaaaa #if you’re still planning to write this I’m eager to read it #answers from the floor #lotrreactionmemes my beloved #linkeduniverse #linked universe #all the links #tw manipulation #maybe?#ask to tag

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bracketsoffear · 1 year

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These ones I submitted didn't get in, so I'd like to give them shout-outs so people can appreciate how creepy they are:

Baron from the Baronies (Dimension 20): creepy mannequin boy who is the living embodiment of a Girlfriend in Canada lie--being a living falsehood about a made-up person is very Stranger. Represents his creators’ fear that he will never fit in with “normal” people because he’s acearo, which I think is Stranger coded because the Stranger is about the “almost human” and identity, and asexual and aromantic people are often regarded as almost but not quite people because of their orientations.

Spamton G. Spamton (Deltarune): creepy little puppet guy with odd speech patterns that sound like he’s constantly interjecting advertisement snippets into his dialogue. Also, he is a spam bot, which is a computer address that pretends to be human to advertise.

The Lady (Little Nightmares): An ethereal humanoid who's MUCH larger than a human should be but more human-looking than any other humanoid inhabitant of The Maw (her luxury hotel/restaurant ship) except for the human kids. Wears a creepy white mask to hide her face, which is apparently a flabby mess reminiscent of melted butter (unless it actually does look normal and her perception is warped), and being shown her reflection in a mirror is harmful to her. Turns human children into Nomes, who are little gnome creatures. The Maw is saturated with not-rightness for Six (and by extension the player) because everything is proportioned for people much, much bigger, making the human feel out of place in a monstrous world instead of the other way around. In a metaphorical sense, could be considered Stranger because the "Oriental" aesthetic of herself and the Maw's guest rooms reflects the uncanniness of Orientalism--Asian-ness warped and twisted beyond recognition for popular consumption (i.e. the Guests, who are all dressed in fancy Western fashion, making them reminiscent of rich white people seeking exotic delights).

Megan Tarash (The Reckoners Trilogy): Pulls in shadows of alternate universes to create illusions and eventually warp reality. Like most Epics (ppl w/ superpowers), she took on a new identity ("Firefight") and cast aside her human name, then she started pretending to just be an illusionist instead of a dimensionalist, and then she used her powers to pretend to be a pyrokinetic man who is actually herself from another dimension and also called Firefight. After that, she pretends to be a normal human going by Megan again, so that's a lot of layers of false/hidden identities. Apparently, her abilities are a source of fear for other Epics: "My powers frightened them. Other realities? Other versions of them? They hated that they couldn’t define limits to what I could do,'" so she had to lie about the true extent of her abilities. On top of that, she loses her recent memories when she reincarnates, and she's convinced that said reincarnation is just her powers summoning another Megan from another world who didn't die, leading to this quote: “‘I keep wondering […] ‘Is next time going to be the time? The time I come back and am obviously different? Will I be reborn with a different hair color? Will I be reborn with a different accent, or with a sudden distaste for this food or that? Will you know then, once and for all, that the one you loved is dead?’”

The Doll (Bloodborne): A doll and a copy of Lady Maria, a masculine-presenting Hunter, who is dressed extremely femininely and acts extremely passively and demurely. This creates an extremely uncanny contrast between the real person and the warped, artificial imitation. Initially appears to be an inanimate object when the Hunter has 0 Insight, but is tapping her finger. In the real world equivalent of the Hunter’s Dream, she is also an inanimate object, but her finger is still tapping. Seems mostly human, but has abnormal height, bleeds silver, and cries a weird opalescent stone. Implied to have a connection to her counterpart—she feels relief when Maria’s spirit is released. A creepy almost-human looking doll that looks exactly like but dresses, talks, and acts drastically differently from a real woman and was apparently created out of a desire to possess a more palatable version of that woman is peak Strangercore.

The Doctor (Little Nightmares 2): Looks like a creepy-ass caterpillar man thing who can inexplicably crawl on the ceiling. The Stranger is associated with medicine (St. Bleedings Centre for Wellbeing and the Anatomy Students); therefore, the Doctor turns people into mannequins with fleshy bits and various parts grafted onto them as a treatment for his patients' boredom and/or because they were "looking in the mirror and hating what stared back" fits right in.

The Teacher (Little Nightmares 2): inhumanly large woman with skin that looks stretched across her face that makes her look like she’s always smiling when her mouth is closed (and when it’s open, the smile is even worse). Has an EXTREMELY long stretchy neck that she uses to hunt intruders. Runs a fucked up parody of a school full of doll children and death traps. One of the sequences where you have to hide from her involves her apparently preparing for an anatomy lesson, which is associated with the Stranger (Mag 34: Anatomy Class)

In conclusion, Little Nightmares is an extremely Stranger series, and I put way too much thought into how public perception of marginalized identities intersect with the Stranger, which is to say exactly the right amount.

#asks #Stranger Poll #not!character propaganda

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abookishdreamer · 10 months

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Character Intro: Pandia (Kingdom of Ichor)

Age- 13 (immortal)

Location- Elis, Olympius

Personality- Much like her divine symbol, she's quite strategic in making sure certain things remain obscured in darkness. Responsibility comes naturally to her with being the oldest while being cautious, conscientious, & reliable.

She has the standard abilities of a goddess except shapeshifting. Her other powers/abilities include tidal wave manipulation, umbrakinesis, teleportation (herself & others through natural/"created" moonlight, limited gravitokinesis (gravity manipulation), being able to manipulate moonrock, temporarily being able to cast an illusion of a full moon (lasting five minutes), and menekinesis (the ability to absorb, redirect, & manipulate moonlight and lunar energy). She's significantly weaker during the day & during lunar eclipses. She's at her most powerful during a full moon.

Pandia is the eldest daughter of her parents Selene (Titaness of the moon) & Endymion, an Elian mortal man. Her and her 24 other younger siblings live in the state of Elis. Her bedroom is on the first floor down the hall from her parents. The bedroom has a celestial theme with most of the walls being covered in starry wallpaper. The ceiling has various constellations painted on it with glow in the dark paint which glows silver. There's many string lights strewn about & there's baby monitors on top of her vanity dresser so she can keep an eye on her youngest siblings (that are babies and small toddlers). The flooring is silver mink carpeting.

She's a proud night owl, only catching a few hours of sleep before the morning officially starts. Even though her mom has employed maids, nannies, & night nurses, Pandia likes to sometimes use the time to clean and straighten things around the house. She'll also catch up on homework, watch TV, read, enjoy a late night night swim, or tend to the immortal silver horses that used to pull her mother's majestic chariot. Their names are Lunae & Celeste. If she notices one of her baby sisters fusing on the monitors, Pandia is quick with a wet cloth, warm bottle, or diaper. She'll rock them to sleep while singing soft lullabies.

A go-to drink for her is lavender lotus tea that she brews herself, a cup every morning & night. She also likes blueberry cola, iced tea, and a cup of warm evaporated milk seasoned with cinnamon (that her mom makes). A usual for her from The Roasted Bean is a large blueberry açaí splash. She also likes the cookies n' cream milkshake from The Frozen Spoon.

She sets up several alarms in her room to make sure she gets up in the mornings. Pandia enjoys sleeping in during the weekends well into the late hours of the afternoon most of the time.

Pandia feels like as the oldest, she has a special relationship with her parents. She's happy every time her father has enough energy to push through the lethargic aftereffects of the curse that used to plague him all those years ago. It's as if he becomes a different person- engaged and involved in his daughters' lives. He helps out with their homework, cook, bake, & spend family time at the observatory which is located at the highest level of the mansion. Most of the time when he doesn't have the energy to do much of anything, Pandia will check on him in his bedroom to make sure he has plenty of blankets & a fresh cup of tea or water. She'll sometimes climb into bed to join him watching trashy soap operas. With her mom, Pandia feels like she's often the "other parent" helping Selene with lunches, laundry, homework, and school drop-offs. She can't remember the last time she had one-on-one time with her mom. Pandia does look forward to when she and a few of her other sisters will do embroidery with Selene. Pandia has even designed her own saree (that she'll wear to her aunt's upcoming wedding)- dark blue & shimmery silver silk and satin with swirling patterns of embroidered stars & moons.

Her favorite snack is chocolate pudding. She'll often put crushed chocolate sandwich cookies (that has a creamy white filling) on top!

She always wears a simple gold ring with a moonstone gem at the center on her left pointer finger. Pandia bought it herself with her allowance money online, the brand being Stella Ferrea. Another piece of jewelry she always wears is a necklace that has a full moon charm that was given to her by her mother when Pandia was a baby. It was crafted from Astrean Silver!

She loves the small patsas soup along with a blueberry cucumber salad (topped with feta cheese & toasted pecans; drizzled in teriyaki dressing) from The Bread Box.

Pandia sees herself as the protector of her younger sisters. She may be a little uncompromising & bossy when it comes to her leadership role, but it comes from a place of love. Lately her and some of the older siblings have been having fun choreographing a kathak dance that they're gonna perform after her aunt's wedding at the reception. Pandia loves all her sisters, but finds herself closer at times to Achelois (goddess of the moon & comfort), Cressida (Cress) (goddess of the crescent moon), Esmeray (Esme) (goddess of the half moon), and Mona (goddess of the new moon).

Two of her favorite desserts are her father's baklava and the cookies n' cream rolls from Hollyhock's Bakery.

She's currently on break from school. When it resumes, Pandia will be an eighth grader. At school, she's not exactly antisocial, but she prefers to keep to herself. She speaks to a variety of students & she knows of the godly kids in her grade like Anaideia (goddess of ruthlessness, shamelessness, & unforgiveness), Epidotes (god of purity), Telete (goddess of prayers), Thespios (god of acting), and Calocagathia (Aggie) (goddess of nobility & goodness), but Pandia surprisingly doesn't mind the company of Pompe (goddess of rites), especially since she was a BIG help to her when they were partnered up for a project for their religious studies class or Dysis (goddess of the sunset). Outside of school, Pandia's been getting to know Sereia, a mermaid that lives in the Underwater realm as part of the school's student mail messaging program. They e-mail & video chat twice a week while they also keep in touch through text messaging. Pandia may or may not have a growing crush on her. Recently, Sereia invited her for a week long vacation to the Underwater realm in time for the Blue Moon Festival, but Pandia hasn't asked her mom's permission yet.

Eclipse, Pale Blue, M9, and O are her favorite music artists to listen to. Eclipse's album Insomniac is a frequent repeat.

Her relationship with the rest of her family is fairly good. Pandia has hung out with her cousin Circe (goddess of sorcery) a few times and she has also visited Thrinacia to help tend to her Uncle Helios' farm of immortal oxen & horses to hang out with her other cousins Lampetia and Phaethusa. Even though she adores her "Titi", Pandia feels uneasy about how she really feels about her father when Pandia overheard a conversation her grandparents were having where Theia refered to Endymion as a "hapless bum."

Her TV guilty pleasures are the late night talk show The Godly Hour hosted by Pheme (goddess of fame) & true crime programs hosted by Kakia (goddess of vice & moral wrongdoing).

In the pantheon she obviously dislikes Zeus. Pandia likes and admires Artemis (goddess of the hunt & moon), Nyx (goddess of the night), Hecate (goddess of magic & witchcraft), Urania (muse of astronomy); is a dedicated member of her stargazing club, The Pleiades, Neféloma (goddess of space & dark matter), and the "Silver Titaness", Phoebe (is a HUGE fan of her mystery novels).

Her grandfather Hyperion bought her the spherical celestial themed jeweled clutch from Diamond Ave. for Pandia's 13th birthday a few weeks ago, which was a festive occassion in Rhodes, complete with a fireworks show!

Her favorite thing to get from Olympic Chef are the BLT loaded fries (covered in a garlic mayo aioli and spicy barbeque sauce).

In her free time Pandia enjoys napping, reading, basketball, watching TV, archery, football (soccer), embroidery, listening to music, stargazing, indoor ice skating, charting constellations, knitting, sewing, and painting.

Her all time favorite meal is her father's skordostoumbi.

"Everyone's a moon. There's a dark side which is always hidden."

#my oc #my oc character #my character #oc character #oc intro #character intro #oc introduction #character introduction #modern greek gods #modern greek mythology #greek myth retellings #greek goddess #greek goddesses #greek mythology #greek pantheon

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fancoloredglasses · 2 years

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Puck’s Saga (Oh, what fools these Gargoyles be) [Part 1: The Mirror and Future Tense]

[All images are owned by Disney. Please don’t sue me]

One of the great things about Gargoyles is the depth of its supporting cast. I’m not just talking about the many recurring characters throughout the series, but how fleshed-out they are and how they interact with the main cast. As a small sample...

-Elisa’s partner Matt Bluestone, who is determined to expose the Illuminati

- Elisa’s brother Derek, who was transformed into a Mutate (a man/beast hybrid)

-The Cybernetic Gargoyle Coldstone, who has three Gargoyle souls residing within

-The immortal MacBeth, whose fate is bound to Demona’s

And then there’s the subject of this deep dive, the Faerie trickster known as Puck (voiced by Star Trek: the Next Generation alum Brent Spiner) Puck officially appeared in four episodes (including a two-part episode), but it’s the first three this deep dive will cover. This review will cover the first two, while a future review will cover the third (the two-part episode)

As one of the Fair Folk, Puck is able to alter reality to his whims (within reason), as well as cast realistic illusions. If someone is able to bind him within iron, he is subject to their wishes (or rather, his interpretation of their wishes. Puck is the epitome of “malicious compliance” when he chooses to be)

And now, without further ado (and there is much of it) onto Puck’s debut ”The Mirror”. This episode takes place some time after the events in Deadly Force. If you would like to view the episode, it’s available on Disney+.

PREVIOUSLY ON...

Demona has become increasingly furious at the Clan and especially their human ally, Elisa Maza. The Clan continues to live in the clock tower over Elisa’s precinct.

We open at a museum, where a pair of security guards go over their nightly security checklist before making their rounds.

One of the guards takes a moment to pose in front of a mirror on display. Suddenly, a familiar shriek is heard as Demona attacks the other guard! Demona enters the chamber to steal the mirror when...

It turns out Elisa is undercover, expecting trouble from Demona (how did she know Demona was coming here?) Demona starts hurling threats and insults at her until Goliath shows up and gets her full attention. Demona leads Goliath and Elisa on a merry chase through the museum, with Demona toppling fragile displays (that Goliath saves before they become expensive rubble), while in the meantime...

...a couple of human thieves steal the mirror during the commotion.

Later, the thieves show up at a mysterious mansion and do a blind drop at the front door in exchange for payment (how did Demona get a hold of enough cash to pay them?)

After bringing the mirror inside, Demona wraps it in chains and behind chanting. Suddenly, the image on the mirror wavers until...

...Puck flies out, suddenly bound by the chains (and not looking happy about it)

Later, Elisa checks in with the Clan, asking about the mirror. Hudson announces it’s Titania’s Mirror (as in Queen of the Fair Folk), and as such possesses great magical power (and apparently one (1) Puck)

Speaking of Puck, Demona lets him know who’s in charge of this arrangement and tells Puck to use his powers for her benefit...

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(Thanks to Nerd Entertainment System)

So while Deadly Force showed that Goliath (and the Clan) cared for Elisa, this is the point that their relationship status switched to “It’s Complicated”. Meanwhile, Elisa is horrified that all the Gargoyles in Manhattan had been changed into a human (that spell is really messing with your head, Elisa!) Hudson spots the spell being cast from the rooftop of the World Trade Center (remember this is pre-9/11) and the clan glide off to deal with Demona (they haven’t yet learned about Puck), but...

...Elisa can’t bring herself to do so yet.

On the rooftop, Puck has passed out from the exertion as...

...the Clan attacks! Demona throws the Mirror off the roof as she escapes, leaving Hudson to catch it before it hits the pavement (and who knows what would be unleashed if it shattered) As Demona flies to her sanctuary, she sees...

...exactly what Puck’s spell had done, and isn’t too happy about it. She ducks into a nearby subway station and takes the train before the Clan can catch her.

Later, Demona is furious, as she wanted the humans destroyed, not changed. She demands that Puck...

Can anyone else see the loophole Demona left for Puck to exploit?

At the clock tower, Elisa explains who Puck was in A Midsummer Night’s Dream...

Yes Elisa, but that was around drunk humans who didn’t know about him. Now he’s in the employ of a genocidal maniac with anger control issues.

Goliath suggests gliding over the city to find him, but Elisa’s still scared to glide...

...so Goliath does his best to reassure her. At that point, Puck’s spell is cast through the Mirror.

Oh shit!

Elisa glides down to catch Goliath, returning him to the clock tower rooftop. But it’s not just Goliath...

Thanks to seeing some glaring holes in the spell’s logic (like “We’ve never needed wings to glide before!”), everyone realizes they’ve been transformed thanks to Demona’s “arrangement” with Puck. Hudson covers the Mirror so nothing else can emerge from it

Speaking of Demona and Puck, Demona is still furious (when is she ever not these days?) because Puck changed the Clan to human instead of returning the humans to normal. Just as she’s about to make sliced Puck...

Puck reveals his silver tongue, reminding Demona that Goliath and the Clan are currently weakened due to no longer being Gargoyles.

Meanwhile on the street, the Gargoyles are terrified of the human monsters (i.e. the Clan) walking around. However, Goliath insists on forcing Demona to fight at their level where they’ll be on somewhat equal footing. Once they are ready, they uncover the mirror...

...and right on cue, Demona and her pet Fae emerge. As Demona attacks Goliath, she orders Puck to deal with the others. Using his magic, Puck alters the younger Gargoyles’ weapons, turning them on their wielders, while gluing Hudson’s legs to the floor.

Unfortunately, there was one Gargoyle Puck’s spell. missed. Oh well, easily rectified!

Gotta say, Bronx looks good as a wolfhound.

Meanwhile, Demona has a definite strength advantage over Goliath in his current state. However, before she can finish him off...

However, a few passersby see Demona being attacked by the human monsters and rush to her aid...

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(Thanks to Friday Wiggly)

The Clan use the Mirror to return to the top of the World Trade Center and offer Puck his freedom in exchange for reversing the spells he cast this evening. Upon casting his spell and being freed, he escapes through the Mirror with Demona...

...taking the Mirror with him.

Later in Demona’s sanctum, Puck announces before he leaves that he has granted Demona her original request: to not turn to stone when the sun rises.

Of course...

...Puck’s “gifts” are never what the asker intended!

Meanwhile at the clock tower, Goliath is about to declare his love for Elisa, but...

And Elisa knows (and feels the same way), but given biology it could never work. (OF COURSE it could! After all, magic can accomplish a lot...and even without magic, you don’t need sex to have a relationship!)

This would be the last we’d see of Puck until Goliath, Elisa, Bronx, and Angela make their return journey from Avalon. This episode takes place after the events of M.I.A. If you would like to view the episode, it’s available on Disney+.

PREVIOUSLY ON...

Goliath, Elisa, and Bronx have been brought to the mystic island of Avalon (where time moves much more slowly than in the mortal world), where they discover the Gargoyle eggs from 1,000 years ago have hatched and grown up, including Angela (Goliath's daughter. Three guesses who her mother is) After taking a number of magical artifacts (to ensure they are not used for evil) including a time-traveling device known as the Phoenix Gate, the group (along with Angela) are taken on a journey via the Mists of Avalon to wherever the island thinks they are needed.

For 19 episodes, the four are brought through the Mists to locations that are definitely not Manhattan. Along the way, they discover that Gargoyles have survived not only in Manhattan and Avalon, but England, Japan, and Guatemala as well!

After returning to Avalon to keep the King and Queen of the Fair Folk (Oberon and Titania) from destroying the Avalon Clan and the survivors of Castle Wyvern, Oberon makes peace with the mortal interlopers and decides to call the Fae home and the travelers continue their journey.

As the boat emerges through the Mists, Goliath and Elisa talk about how much they miss Manhattan (of course, given how long Elisa’s been gone, it’s unlikely she has a job to return to) when...

...Goliath is hit by a bolt of lightning, but it only stuns him. Then they spot...

...the Statue of Liberty! They’re home!

...oh shit!

Suddenly, a spotlight shines on the boat, declaring they've violated the waters of the nation of Manhattan. Shortly after Xanatos’s robotic Gargoyles show up and the travelers abandon boat as the robots destroy the boat! The robots capture Elisa and Angela, and would’ve done the same with Goliath, but...

...a speedboat comes to his rescue. Goliath climbs aboard to see it manned by...

...a much older Matt Bluestone, who says Goliath’s been missing for 40 years! Matt brings Goliath back to his secret base. Along the way...

...Xanatos (who hasn’t aged a day) declares soon will see the dawn on Xanatopia. Goliath sees the streets being patrolled by robotic gargoyles and Mutates in Xanatos’s service.

Eventually, Matt brings Goliath and Bronx to the headquarters of the Resistance where we have a reunion with the Clan.

...and it’s not a happy one. Brooklyn has assumed leadership of the Clan and hates Goliath for leaving, Hudson had fallen in battle with Xanatos, Broadway was blinded, Lexington has become a cyborg, and...

...OK, that’s a bit much! I mean, I can sorta-kinda get Brooklyn and Demona getting together, but things must truly be dire if she’s trying to save the humans! (though it could be she’s playing a long game and intending on taking over once Xanatos is dead)

Suddenly, Brooklyn asks if Goliath has the Phoenix Gate (now how would he know that, since Goliath acquired it in Avalon?) He says they can go back in time to stop any of this from happening. However Goliath knows that won’t help, since time is immutable (If they go back, it’s because they always have and wouldn’t change anything)

Lexington announces they’re getting a transmission from Xanatos’s son, Alexander (who is secretly part of the Resistance), who transmits the location of Xanatos’s command center. Big surprise, it’s inside the old castle.

Unfortunately, Xanatos found out about Alexander’s loyalties and dealt with him appropriately. Brooklyn plans an assault on Xanatos and the Resistance moves out.

While the Clan waits for the signal to start the attack, Demona implores Goliath to give their daughter (wait, how does Demona know her relation to Angela? Goliath only found out a few episodes ago!) the Phoenix Gate once she’s rescued so she can hide in the past. Goliath says it wouldn’t help the here and now. At that moment...

...Matt sets off explosives on Xanatos’s building, signaling the attack has begun!

Unfortunately, they pay for it with their lives. The Clan land on the outside of the castle...

...and are quickly surrounded. The Clan quickly dispatch the guards...

...but Lexington is captured...

...and Broadway is mortally wounded.

The remaining members of the Clan force their way into Xanatos’s inner sanctum, but there’s no Xanatos. Goliath calls for Xanatos to show himself, but instead they get the Tron treatment.

youtube

(Thanks to ptvnxs99)

Upon entering cyberspace, the Clan sees...

Elisa and Angela being held captive. Then Xanatos explains that his body died at the hands of Hudson as he also died. The “Xanatos” that’s been running Manhattan is a computer simulation, that’s about to take over every computer worldwide!

And just to show he’s in complete control, he cues the sun...

...with expected results (except...how can a computer sun affect REAL Gargoyles?!), except Demona...

...who’s still under Puck’s spell (so his spell works on the internet as well?)

With the Clan helpless, Xanatos fires on Brooklyn and Angela, destroying them! Demona then throws herself at Xanatos, while calling to Goliath that Cyberspace can bend to his will so he doesn’t have to remain stone (OK, so that explains how the Gargoyles became stone: it was what they expected. But that doesn’t explain why Demona’s still human)

Goliath hears Demona’s words and breaks free (sorta: he’s still stone, but can act), but...

...a bit late for Demona.

Goliath charges Xanatos, but her transforms into a spinning bladed top, disarming Goliath. Xanatos charges in, finishing the job.

However, Goliath isn’t defeated yet, as he wills the rubble that was his body together, engulfing Xanatos...

...and emerges triumphant! However, Xanatos is a sore loser. Goliath grabs Elisa and wills himself back to the real world. But there is little time to mourn...

...as it’s revealed that Lexington is the mastermind behind it all, and has been since Xanatos’s death. His final victory will be when the Xanatos program finishes uploading!

In his fury at this betrayal, Goliath kills Lexington and destroys the control center, but too late. Elisa says the only chance to fix this in through the Phoenix Gate.

Goliath pulls it from his pouch, but is too weak to hand it to Elisa. However, Elisa refuses to pick it up, insisting that Goliath hand it to her. Goliath then tells Elisa to pick it up if she wants it. When she refuses to do so, Goliath knows that “Elisa” isn’t who she appears, and demands to know who’s wearing his friend’s face.

Well, this review centers on him. You know he’d have to show up eventually.

Puck reveals that Oberon is calling all of Faerie back to Avalon, but he doesn’t want to go, so he was planning on trading the Phoenix Gate for his freedom. With his plans thwarted...

...Goliath is returned to reality. Realizing Puck could try again...

...Goliath casts the Phoenix Gate into the time stream, forever lost without a mind to guide it. With that, Goliath once again guides the boat into the Mists, hoping this journey takes than home.

Thus concludes part one. Stay tuned for part two, where Puck’s big secret is revealed!

#gargoyles #puck #brent spiner #Fan Colored Glasses

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