#and then the entire celestial series as a whole is third

[comicbookhyperfixationtime]

I gotta big question for you: what would be your pitch an animated series based on the Mighty Thor? Spare no details

Oh boy, this is a really tough one. I just have so many different ideas for how this could go!

But let's say we're looking at a typical 21 episode TV series, and lets say we're not 100% sure we'll be getting renewed for a second season. We've got two options.

Safe Option: The series is set entirely in the Nine Realms and based largely off the Journey Into Mystery/Tales of Asgard stories. Think of it as a sort of Journey to the West format, where the whole season is Thor and cast on a grand quest and each episode/two part episodes are one challenge/encounter along the way. This would give us a chance to really do some worldbuilding and show off Thor's Asgardian supporting cast, including more obscure characters. It would probably be more of a fun, lighthearted adventure, I don't mind a bit of violence or dark themes but I'd keep it on the campier sword-and-sorcerer side rather than gritty or dark.

Less Safe Option: We start from Journey into Mystery #83, when Donald Blake first acquires the hammer. The first few episodes are standard faire for superheroes, with Thor's more minor Earth antagonists (like Gargoyle and Zaniac and the like) showing up as villains of the week. All that changes when Loki makes his first appearance. After that the arcs get longer and more complex, climaxing in a battle against Loki and his forces on Asgard. There'd be a more psychological bent to this, maybe even psychological horror, as Thor goes from Dr Blakes' superhero persona to another personality with his own thought patterns dominant personality. We'd really dig into Dr Blake realizing that he doesn't actually remember any of his past before medical school, including his family and origin, and how frightening and discombobulating that is.

Regardless of which idea, there'd be some common elements. Art style would be very colorful, Asgard's aesthetics will be a solid mix of sci-fi, fantasy and a heaping dose of surrealism. There's a direct-to-video animated movie about Thor called "Tales of Asgard" and I actually really adore how clever they were with the trippy geography of Asgard, I'd draw a lot of inspo from there.

Odin will be portrayed as the abusive jackass he is. I'm not going to soften him up whatsoever, especially in his treatment of Thor. I don't think I'll kill him off regardless, but both options will show Thor slowly working towards recognizing the toxic behavior. In Option 1 it will be revealed that Thor's quest was some gambit by Odin that would seriously endanger him and/or his friends. In Option 2 it'll be Thor not only learning that Odin brainwashed him into believing he was Donald Blake, but the reason why he did it (just like in the OG comics it will be extremely petty and more about Thor asserting independence against Odin that actually needing to learn humility or whatever, although he certainly does grow as a person either way).

If the show is renewed for a second season, it will be adapting Roy Thomas' Celestial Arc, expanding worldbuilding with the introduction of the Eternals, the Celestials and the Elder Gods. It will also be the climax of Thor's arc about his relationship with Odin. When it's revealed that A) Odin had him for the express purpose of making an Ubermenschen weapon for him to use, and, B) he had in the past had Thor killed for disobeying him, then resurrected and wiped his memories.

If the show gets a third season, that season will be a loose adaptation of Len Wein's various space epics mixed with the 90s storyline Blood and Thunder (and when I say loose, I mean loose). Basically, Thor cuts himself off from Asgard after finally learning the truth and travels through space having space adventures with various Marvel Cosmic characters. Meanwhile, there'll be B plots with Thor's supporting cast on Asgard and/or Earth working out their own issues in his absence. By the end of this season, Beta Ray Bill will be introduced, and just like in Walt Simonson's run, it will be revealed that the threat to his people he was scientifically modified to face is the rapid approach of Surter and his army. The season will end on a sort of cliffhanger as Thor realizes that Ragnarok is coming for Asgard, and will have to make a choice about going back to save them. After that will be a season with less episodes but longer episodes showing the epic battle and neatly wrapping up any character arcs that haven't been wrapped up yet.

I think the show will end with Thor's "death" at the hands of Jormungand, but how exactly this goes will depend on Option 1 or 2. Option 1 will result in Thor fighting Hela similar to how Walt Simonson's run ends (the plot point about Hela cursing Thor to be easily hurt but unable to die will also be there). Option 2 will result in a death of personality for Thor, he becomes Dr Blake permanently and lives out a happy existence on Earth (depending on whether that feels like a satisfying ending or not, I'll just go with Option 1 then). Either way there's an opportunity for The Adventure Continues but a nice finale and really no need to.

If they force me to make another season I'll adapt the Evil Future Thor story from Dan Jurgens' run, but with some major changes.

#if you need clarification on anything lmk #this was fun #marvel comics #thor #thor odinson

[bridgetotheskyyy]

Yearning | Ten. |

masterlist

Chapter Summary: Sometimes, Itachi just enjoys your presence. Chapter Warning: no smut, angst, suggestive in places. Word count: 1.3k A/N: I'll be crossposting this entire series over to tumblr over the next few days so please be patient with me!

Read on AO3 here.

Sometimes, Itachi simply enjoyed your presence.

And always had, for all it meant to him. Sweet, assuring, gentle. To be a shinobi was to live tense, awaiting pain and anticipating sacrifice, but your presence sent his insides uncoiling. Your touch, whether real or merely imagined, served as his balm. 

He was doomed to spend the remainder of his life alone, dissolute, and with few prospects. He had learned not to take for granted the presence of loved ones — especially when the number amounted to you alone.

And perhaps that is what always brought him back to you, despite what he knew, despite what must be.

Despite what he was now. 

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

It must be done.

Lord Third’s words rang in Itachi’s ears like the dull absence of sound, his words carrying a finality that sat stone heavy in his heart, dissolute in his mind. And he agreed — he obeyed. He would repress any dissent, he would do it. He would. 

Any objecting part of him would be suppressed, eaten, burned, killed.

It must be done. 

And yet the days turned to nights. He was a slave to fate, arriving everywhere in chains. The celestial bodies dragged him toward eventuality, assuring he would make due on that promise. 

It must be done.

Must be.

Must be.  

He had to get away, had to get away from It All. 

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

Lord Third’s voice waned, replaced by the soothing spate of the river. Itachi laid on the banks with you beside him, your hand grazing against the fishnet bedecking his collarbone, face in the crook of his neck. 

The river was a favorite place for the both of you but he came to you two-faced; no one would be traveling to the river, not on a weekday, and Itachi had managed to escape both the ANBU and the upper members of the clan with the same lie: I’ve other matters to attend to. A phrase always code for spying. 

That shouldn’t bother me; I should get used to lying. 

You propped yourself up, your hand brushing against his chest. 

“This is so nice,” Your voice was a mere whisper; the enduring murmur of the river was louder.

Still, he heard you. Itachi kissed the tip of your nose. You purred, fingers now fiddling with the ring of his necklace, and he kissed you again — your cheek this time, nuzzling his face against yours with a light chuckle he was sure you could feel in his throat. 

Here was where he wanted to be; no voice of the Third to haunt his daydreams, no inevitable horror to dread.

“Why the river?”  You asked he continued his gentle constancy of kisses

“Hm,” was Itachi’s only reply for a short while. He smiled against your skin, planting languid kisses at the cloverleaf of your jaw and neck. “You’ve always liked it,” he admitted. He kissed your forehead, a hand at the side of your hip. “And … we won’t be disturbed.” 

He enjoyed his answer because it hadn’t been a lie. Not a whole truth, but not a lie. 

A favorite place for you both … Because of what had first transpired here, at the mouth of the riverbank. It amazed him how little the day — with its azure sky, cloudless and content — resembled itself. The day now looked nothing like the one then.

Itachi was grateful for it, but the contrast was laughable; he remembered a bruised sky, thick with clouds, eager lightning traversing the sky. Ceaseless rain and deafening thunder. Itachi remembered it all, but despite the imagery painted in his memory, it still felt faint — and would only grow fainter; it would have to contend with you. The memory of your weight coming over him, loving pressure crushing him to the ground as your hands roamed, yanking, unbuttoning, ripping. Rain clinging to clothes. Him, stealing your moans with his mouth — 

You drew him from his thoughts by pressing down on his shoulders and for a second Itachi imagined himself there, again, on that night, this day melting into that one. He blinked, smiled, laughed at himself as his back crumbled the grass. 

“I was only joking; of course I remember. I can’t believe you,” You said, face inches from his, “forgetting the best part. Are you saying you don’t remember?”

“What?”

You narrowed your eyes but Itachi could tell you still felt playful. 

“My virginity.”

Itachi swallowed. Playful, but your voice carried so much sincerity.

“You don’t remember that?”

“I remember everything,” he said, a hand against the small of your back, smoothing circles into it, “especially ...” 

He didn’t finish, only lifted to kiss at your neck.

“One of your many attributes.”

Itachi smiled at your throat, lips lingering on your neck’s sweet spot. You hummed as he lied his head again the grass, eyes searching yours. You were outlined by never-ending blue. You were so beautiful. “Really? Is that so? And my other attributes?”

It was your turn to incline, to spoil his face with kisses. Your lips grazed one of the lines drawn down his face and kissed it. 

“You’re really kind,” You began. “Gentle, for a ninja and all … Handsome.”

Itachi chuckled. “Is that so?” 

 You nipped him on the lips and his breath caught. 

“You’re also a brat,” You giggled. 

“That’s a positive attribute?” 

“I didn’t say they were all positive,” You said.

Itachi laughed, turning you over until you were no longer on top, side by side him again in the grass. 

“But I like it,” You continued. “You keep things interesting, Itachi …”

Interesting, hm? 

He reached forward to place a piece of hair behind your ear. 

“I’m glad …” 

You inclined again — and for a second, Itachi was sure you were going to peck him, only for your lips to fall onto his. He startled, his hands cupping your throat to deepen the kiss. 

You managed to make your way back on top of him, something he didn’t notice, his thoughts so lost in the fog. Your hips swerved on his midsection, and a shuddered breath escaped his lips. 

“Would you like to …” You began, your lips reclaiming his seconds before they could disconnect. “continue …?”

Itachi recognized the heat of the word and considered it. What would he not give to entangle himself in you and never unwind — the only place where he had only ever been safe, truly loved, even … 

But he wanted you like this: soft and sweet, where there were no demands for either of you, no expectations. Just you and azure sky that never darkened. A snow globe with the two of you inside. A memory he could save and recreate whenever needed. 

I’m going to need it. More than you know, (Y/n) … 

“No, (Y/n),” his shuddering breath fell on your lips as he felt yours. “I don’t … not that I don’t want … just … not today …”

You pecked his upper and lower lip, peppering his face with soft kisses. But thankfully relieved the pressure on his abdomen. “Mm … I understand.” 

He turned you over, choosing to ignore the soft, telling ache below his abdomen. You raised to your feet and he followed you.

“We should …” You cleared your throat, “have some water, I think …” 

“That’s a good idea.”

He smiled at you, watching as you took the lead on the descent down the river’s bank.

The water glistened as though patterned with gemstones. The waterway outlined you with its glow. Itachi studied your diaphanous form, an ache in his heart to see you walk away. He studied it all, remembered it all. The river, the day, you. 

You. Youyouyou.

This was the memory, he decided. The memory he would pickpocket for himself and lock away in his mind. 

And he would bring it forth when …  

You knelt, cupped the water with suppliant hands, and brought it to your lips. 

“Mm!” You said. “Itachi, come on! It’s so cold!”

A chuckle. “All right.”

And because he could and did not know how long he would be able to, he followed you. 

#naruto #naruto x reader #itachi x reader #itachi uchiha x reader #itachi smut #itachi uchiha smut #naruto smut #Itachi uchiha #itachi uchiha x you #itachi x you #itachi uchiha x y/n #itachi x y/n

[thatfanfictiongirl76]

Lucifer / Chilling Adventures of Sabrina Rec

I know this is kind of a niche crossover, but lately I've been reading a lot of Lucifer and Sabrina fics, so I thought I'd rec my favorites. So here you go!!

Morningstar Family Values Series

By: SteerPike13713

archiveofourown.org/series/1561111

Summary: "... how did this-- How do you have a kid?" she demanded, knowing even as she said it that Lucifer was going to make some awful "birds and the bees" joke about this. She was not disappointed. "Well, you see, Detective, when a man and a woman love each other very much, but can't conceive on their own, they summon the Devil in a complicated demonological ritual and invite him to have a threesome with them, without letting him know that pesky little detail that the ritual was designed to allow for interbreeding between celestial and mortal beings."

My Comments: Instead of linking in each work in the series, I just linked the entire series up above. And the summary above is actually from the third work in this series. That being said, I absolutely love this series. I didn't know how much I needed parent!Lucifer, until I read this series. Not to mention that I think that they got Sabrina spot on. There are eight pieces in this series, so it is sure to keep you occupied. Down below I'm going to put the word count for the entire series, and the status will have the last update on the newest addition to the series.

Status: Incomplete

Last Update: 8/25/21

Length (Whole Series): 228,275 words

Nieces and Nephews

By: Theon_Lannister

https://archiveofourown.org/works/43715991

Summary: Lucifer calls Chloe after sealing away the Goddess, planning on revealing the truth. Except -- well, he gets teleported by a demonic ritual to Greendale, Mass. This is relatively good timing - because an Imposter is making a power play for Hell, with his daughter. Oh yeah, his daughter - Sabrina Spellman.

My Comments: I originally found this fic because I was aching for more after reading all of the Morningstar Family Values series. I’ll admit this series took a little while to grow on me. But once the author really picked up speed, I got swept away by it. If you love Lucifer and the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, then I recommend giving this one a read!

Status: Incomplete

Last Update: 10/15/23

Length: 69,394 words

Sabrina Morningstar I - The One in Which Sabrina’s Dark Baptism Summons Lucifer

By: HRRMeadows

https://archiveofourown.org/works/43752847

Summary: Lucifer was minding his own business when he suddenly felt something. Whenever someone signed a Book of the Beast, they would borrow some of his powers; he would take notice of it but otherwise he would ignore it. This time, however, something did not feel right. This sensation was new. 

My Comments: This is another CAOS/Lucifer crossover, but it takes a bit of a different spin than the ones up above. Mainly because it starts at the beginning of the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, instead of at the end of season 2. Which I’ll admit, puts a refreshing spin on things. The author did note that this may become part of a series. Which I desperately hope it does, because it leaves you aching for more.

Status: Complete

Length: 14,398 words

This Rage is the One Thing I Get from My Father

By: keeping_up_with_the_morningstars

https://archiveofourown.org/works/19803442

Summary: “After all, the Devil never left a favor ungranted. So in the end, I did give him a child.” Sabrina held her breath as the next words were softly uttered from his mouth. “I gave him mine.”

My Comments: This fic was actually suggested to me by a follower. It had been in my tbr for a while, but I finally decided to give it a go, and let me tell you that I wish I had read this sooner. It’s a brilliant fic that is a much different take than the other fics up above. I really love the direction it went with it, and I love how complicated Sabrina and Lucifer’s relationship is and how they slowly work through it. I highly recommend this fic if you love COAS/Lucifer crossovers and want something that shows the ups and downs of their relationship. I did cut the summary down a lot for the purpose of this rec list, just fyi. This fic is cross posted on ff.net, so I’ll link that down below. 

Status: Incomplete

Last Update: 9/16/23

Length: 107,917 words 

Ff.net: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13557772/1/This-Rage-is-the-One-Thing-I-Get-from-my-father

The Devil Didn’t Make Me Do It

By: shotgunkitten

https://archiveofourown.org/works/31717318

Summary: Sabrina Spellman grew up as Lucifer Morningstar’s best kept secret. But how much longer will the devil be able to hide the fact that she’s his daughter from the supernatural world when Sabrina turns 16 and it’s time for her to fully become a part of her coven?

My Comments: This is a delightful little read about what if Lucifer raised Sabrina. It mainly goes along with the events of COAS with a little bit of the Lucifer characters thrown in there. I have to say that this is a wonderful little read and the romance between Nick and Sabrina is just amazing. You do have to have an AO3 account to read this fic, which is why it took me a little longer to find it. It has been a couple years since it was last updated so I do think it’s abandoned, which is a shame because it left off at a bit of a cliffhanger. I still recommend giving this one a chance!

Status: Incomplete

Last Update: 9/9/21

Length: 72,174 words

Fiat Lux Series

By: Nesrin

https://archiveofourown.org/series/1268510

Summary: “Come now, Detective. Surely you didn’t think you were the only one with offspring? Just because mine lives across the country and can’t pester everyone for chocolate cake endlessly.”

My Comments: I shortened the summary (from the first fic) a bit, mainly because it was dialogue taken directly from the fic, which doesn’t really work for a rec list. Now, with this fic, unlike all the others above, Lucifer is not Sabrina’s dad. Rather he’s Nick’s dad. Which I thought was an interesting twist. I really like this series, especially the relationship between all the characters. I highly recommend it. 

Status: Incomplete

Last Update: 8/15/20

Length: 71,451 words

#lucifer morningstar #lucifer #the chilling adventures of sabrina #sabrina spellman #sabrina morningstar #chloe decker #lucifer fanfiction

[qqueenofhades]

did you watch lucifer season six and what are your thoughts pls and ty

Ahaha. Yes. Yes I did watch it. Then I cried for a literal hour and attempted to compose myself, only to start crying again when I lay down and kept on thinking about it. Then I had more feelings. Then I slept like the dead due to emotional trauma. Then I reblogged gifsets and had More feelings. Then @buffaluff and @flynnanimal watched it and also required emotional support due to drowning in their own tears. So, uh... we're all fine here now. How are you?

My main takeaway from the final season was the sheer amount of love for the characters, story, and fans that you could feel shining through all the episodes, and which made SUCH a refreshing change. I had feelings in my tags the other day about how a show about the devil was constantly goofy, hopeful, loving, and uplifting, rather than all the grimdark nonsense they could have easily done with it. (As I said, just imagine it as written by the GOT idiots?? NO THANK YOU.) The writing really loved everyone and wanted to give them a proper ending and emotional journey, and it wanted to show the fans that they weren't stupid for having invested six seasons of effort and emotion into this, and just... that is so much rarer than it should be? Compare all the movies and TV shows that treat their fans like the enemy, that want to outsmart them at all costs even if it means changing major plot elements, that ferociously guard spoilers and think that "shock value" means good writing, by throwing hackneyed cliche upon cliche and making everything Depressing, and just... Lucifer had its hiccups and slow points and missteps, of course, but I am SO glad they didn't do that. The entire show consisted of Lucifer slowly but steadily progressing toward being a better man, despite mistakes and setbacks and sometimes a little too much will-they-won't-they. (Season 3 was the only one where I got bored and skipped over the filler episodes with Pierce/Lucifer/Chloe in order to get to the end).

That is an essentially simple premise, but they stuck to it, and they didn't try to create more drama by randomly wrecking what they had already established. I wrote a fic all the way back in mid-season 2 (In Nomine Patris) that ended up predicting quite a few of the future characters who had not yet appeared on the show at that time, including Eve, Michael, and Azrael, and several plot points, including the very major one of Lucifer returning to hell for the sake of his daughter with Chloe. And while this might mean that I am just that good at guessing TV shows (I would like to think this....) it also means that the writers set expectations, followed through on those expectations, and didn't suddenly derail everything or turn it totally on its head just for the sake of cheap shocks. As we can all attest, they certainly caused PLENTY of drama, anguish, pain, and suffering, but they did it in a way that remained faithful to the overall premises of the story and the characters, and wanted to see them become the best versions of themselves. I cried my eyes out at the end and then thought, "hey, I might want to watch the whole series again," which, if you ask me, is the mark of doing your job right. There have been so few TV endings recently where I didn't immediately swear off the whole thing or have to pretend that canon didn't exist, so yeah.

As I said, it was just refreshing to watch something that had that essential deep generosity at its core, where the message is that everyone is worthy of love if they make the hard and painful effort to change and become better, and that even if earthly things feel small next to all this messy celestial drama, they still matter, and that you are loved no matter what. I loved that Amenadiel became God and Lucifer returned to hell as a choice in order to help all the trapped souls be able to work through their guilt and go to heaven. There were obviously certain echoes of The Good Place in that ending; I don't know if it was something they had planned all along or if the success of TGP, another series asking deep questions about life, death, morality, and human nature within the framework of a goofy heaven-and-hell sitcom, influenced it, but either way, it worked so well. Even if it tore my heart out and stomped on it on the ground, it was fitting and oh so lovely to see Lucifer, once the most selfish being in the entire universe, following in Linda's footsteps and becoming selflessly dedicated to helping other people. Just. Chef's kiss.

And of course, Deckerstar. The Hades and Persephone vibes were IMMACULATE this season, and while it did take Lucifer and Chloe the best part of four seasons to get together, they never significantly backslid, never had third-party issues or cheap cheating storylines once they were officially a couple, and Tom Ellis and Lauren German REALLY killed it this season in particular. It was never easy for them and sometimes the drama went on a little too long over the course of said six seasons, but the love story was beautiful and incredibly meaningful and always true to the fact that the actors and characters and writers (not to mention the fans) all loved it so much. They were so much the emotional heart of this, and when they went to hell together in episode 6x03 (where they turned into cartoons because wHAT even IS this show), Joe Henderson said in an interview that this was to give the fans a view into Lucifer and Chloe's future (after) lives post-6x10, and to offer them a basis to write fanfiction. I mean... the showrunner saying to the fans "here, we love you, have something to write fic about!" is likewise pretty shockingly rare. It's again an example of how this show always audaciously poked fun at itself, never took itself TOO seriously, and was always welcoming its fans and the people who loved it to do so, rather than making them feel stupid or taking joy in wrecking beloved characters or plots.

Obviously, I loved Rory, the badass lesbian half-angel goth Deckerstar child straight out of My Immortal (seriously, she was SO edgy, it was amazing), because of the fact that Lucifer's entire arc was always about feeling abandoned by his father and that he was going to have to face it for himself. Dorky Devil Dad Lucifer trying his absolute HARDEST to bond with his daughter was simultaneously hilarious, adorable, and heart-wrenching, and yet again, the Growth. We all remember when he could barely tolerate Trixie touching him, and now we're here. Also, any variation whatsoever of "this is just a brief moment of time that we must be apart, love is eternal and stronger than death and we will never really leave each other" as a line is guaranteed to make me bawl my eyes out. So that was fun.

I got a big kick out of Ghost Dan running around and trying to get everyone to see him, and had feelings about seeing him in heaven with Charlotte and his beloved Pudding Pops at the end. I had feelings about how they handled Ella finding out the truth (or rather demanding to know why nobody had told her) and of course, I obviously loved Maze and Eve and their goth/femme wedding and the fact that they got a good three-season romantic arc (indeed, I wanted more of them). My god, Trixie is SO BIG, she used to be a tiny little nugget. I love that Linda was the moral and emotional rock all along, from the first episode to the very last, and that Amenadiel was Deeply Vindicated when Charlie's wings appeared at his first birthday party. I love how Lucifer in s6 is absolute thousands of light years from Lucifer in s1. And as ever, Chloe was Perfect. I am happy that I spent six seasons with these characters and saw them become better, and that I was never made to feel like an idiot for trusting the writers to end everything in a beautiful and emotional way. Because, well. They did. Sure, maybe I could go back and pick at a plotline here or a detail there, but I don't terribly feel the need to do so? It might not have been perfect, but it was perfect, and I am so grateful that it existed.

#lucifer #lucifer spoilers #deckerstar #anonymous #ask

[kaizokuou-ni-naru]

The Voyage So Far: Dressrosa (Part Two)

east blue (1 | 2) || alabasta (1 | 2) || skypiea || water 7 || enies lobby || thriller bark || paramount war (1 | 2) || fishman island || punk hazard || dressrosa (1 | 2) || || whole cake island || wano (1 | 2)

wild how this is upwards of 750 chapters in and yet i still get a big dumb smile whenever luffy declares he’s going to be king of the pirates. one piece is a series very much driven by its main characters and their goals and dreams- i don’t think it would be nearly as good if the main character was anyone but monkey d. luffy. 

personally, i always just feel kind of proud whenever he says this, because- yeah!! he is!! that’s luffy, he’s going to be king of the pirates, and we’ve known that since day fucking one. 

i really think there’s something to be said about usopp never taking credit for saving luffy and law from sugar. it’s arguably his greatest feat in the entire series thus far- an impossible, perfect shot across an entire country, with an angry mob inches from his back- and he never even tells anybody he did it. he’s come a long way from someone who tells tall tales about heroic acts he never did to someone who doesn’t even feel the need to take credit for ones he really did, so long as his friends are safe.

i really like how corazon’s introduction and characterization throughout the flashback is handled. at the start of law’s flashback, we know a few things about him already: that he’s someone law loved very much, and that he was killed by doflamingo. we know how this ends. 

but then cora is introduced as a clumsy mute weirdo who nearly kills law as one of the very first things he does, and we as the audience aren’t really sure how to reconcile that- and then the rest of the flashback is us, along with law, slowly discovering what a complicated and contradictory but ultimately good person he is. something very similar happens with the asl flashback- we know the endpoint of luffy and ace’s relationship, but the flashback is all about how they got there, from attempted murder to willing self-sacrifice. 

i think it’s really cool the way law and doflamingo’s backstories are layered together. they’re characters who exist with a lot of parallels and similarities between them already, which is something they’re both clearly aware of- i’ve mentioned before i think the only real difference between them is that law got corazon where doflamingo got the executives- and presenting their backstories simultaneously only makes that more obvious. 

i’ve always found it so interesting that we get what’s pretty much our only substantial exposition about the will of d direct from a former celestial dragon. it makes sense- cora’s basically the only character we’ve met who both has this information and is willing to share it-  but i don’t know, there’s something that feels very poetic to me about him having this information that’s clearly been suppressed and hidden by the dragons and willingly choosing to share it in order to help protect law, a D, who should technically be the very enemy he was once taught to hate and fear. 

i really like corazon. 

it fucks me up that we can tell the exact moment cora dies from the moment law starts making noise again. 

this might be a controversial take? i’m not sure. but i like baby five. i think her and sai’s relationship is really sweet, and people might complain about her getting off easy or whatever but i’m honestly glad she gets a happy ending after being thoroughly emotionally abused and broken her entire life. and on a lighter note, she’s also just a fun character to watch through the whole arc- the running gag with her crying whenever law glares at her is still one of my favorites in the whole series. 

the shot of robin’s bloody back is a favorite of mine, because it’s a reveal that doesn’t get lingered on at all, and yet at once it gives the entire proceeding scene a lot more weight when we understand just how much pain she must’ve been in the entire time. and yet she never even flinched or faltered while protecting rebecca. nico robin is very, very strong. 

there’s something so deliciously fitting about diamante’s final fall ending with him cracking his head on scarlett’s grave, and something so lovely about kyros and rebecca finally getting their proper reunion there, when neither of them ever really got a chance to mourn.

law’s line about the strawhats trailing nothing but miracles in their wake is one of the first ones i always think of when i think about the strawhats in general and luffy in particular, mostly because it’s so true. from the very beginning, the strawhats have been doing the impossible, from sailing to the sky to breaking in and out of the world’s greatest prison, and law saw that and staked all his hopes on it and they did not let him down. 

also i think it’s very cool of law to, when held at gunpoint and down an arm, grin, flip doflamingo off, and tell him to eat shit and that luffy is going to kick his ass. love that for him.

i think dressrosa does a very good job of making the victory against doflamingo equally law’s and luffy’s. they cooperate and trade off fighting him throughout the arc to great effect, and i think it’s pretty clear that neither of them could have tackled the massive challenge of dressrosa alone. 

while the final fight is luffy’s, it’s made clear that that’s only after law’s done absolutely everything he could and spent the majority of the arc distracting doflamingo, keeping him occupied, and even fucking shredding his insides with pure radiation before finally needing to tap out. i think it’s a good balance, given that luffy is the protagonist but law’s grudge against doflamingo is the driving force behind the entire arc. 

conqueror’s haki clashes are always very cool, pretty much regardless of who or where or why, but the one between luffy and doflamingo is a favorite. 

one of the things that’s always impressed me about one piece in comparison to other shounen series is how it handles its powerscaling- in that it does it well with a gradual increase and villains who vary widely in strength instead of every arc necessarily needing to be bigger and better than the last- and i think the way it handles powering up the main characters is a big part of that. 

through the entirety of one piece thus far, i’d say luffy has had three major power-ups- second and third gear in enies lobby, haki at the timeskip, and gear four here in dressrosa (an argument could also be made for ryuuou in wano, but i think that’s less major than these others). this helps prevent runaway powerscaling and also makes new power-ups feel like a genuine event, which i really like. 

i once referred to luffy as ‘hopebringer’ in a conversation with friends, and it’s a descriptor for him i think sums up really well how he manages to save so many people while insistently not being a hero. luffy inspires people, inspires whole countries, starting all the way back with coby in romance dawn. it’s one of the reasons i think it’s fitting how thoroughly he’s associated with the dawn. 

doflamingo is very, very scary. which is interesting, because he’s indisputably less powerful someone like kaidou, but at the same time i find him a much scarier villain, and i think it comes down to doflamingo’s gleeful, wanton cruelty. not that kaidou is in any way shape or form a nice person, but our first introduction to doflamingo is him forcing marines to attack each other just because he’s a little bored. he hurts people just because he can, and finds it funny. 

relating to my earlier comment about hope, i really like how the whole country comes together at the end to cheer luffy on and count down to his return. it makes it feel all the more triumphant when it does, especially for the citizens of dressrosa who’ve been suffocating under doflamingo’s rule for years and can finally, finally see freedom.

other people have put a lot more thought of the symbolism of doflamingo’s eyes and glasses than i intend to, but i’ll settle for saying that it’s the breaking of the glasses, before anything else, before the birdcage even vanishes from the sky and everyone is safe, that shows us that, at long last, doflamingo is well and truly defeated. his glasses break, and so does his power. 

i’ve written a longer post about it before (here) but it’s a recurring motif that one piece’s worst villains are those that steal people’s freedom, including, in the cruelest cases, the freedom to express their emotions openly. we see it with koala and the celestial dragons, with the failed smile fruits in wano, and here, too, with kyros. and, much like koala, triumph for him means finally being able to cry. 

i mentioned it back in the first post, but i’m so, so happy rebecca and kyros get the happy ending they deserve. they’ve both been fighting a war that they never should have had to for years and years, and they both deserve to get to just live, now, peaceful and quiet and together and surrounded by flowers. 

i really dig the note dressrosa ends on. it’s happy, of course, obviously, with the liberation of the country, kyros and rebecca’s happy ending, the creation of the grand fleet, even law getting some degree of closure through his talk with sengoku, but it also leaves this massive, gaping question- what now? 

in a way, doflamingo’s speech here follows up on law’s new era speech from punk hazard. luffy and law have just thrown a major wrench into the delicate power equilibrium of the entire new world, and we have all these characters out there who might be affected, who might want to take advantage, who might try to seize the throne. 

#the voyage so far #one piece #opmeta #arc: dressrosa #long post #not japanese

[thetimelordbatgirl]

I liked Endgame at first but as time went on I realized how not good the movie was. But even while walking out of the theatre genuinely moved I remember even then not wanting additional MCU movies because the series felt complete. I was worried that trying to add onto it would turn the MCU into a mess and sadly I was right. Honestly, I think phase 4 made Endgame worse - either but exacerbating the problems from that movie or retconning/rendering pointless many of the movie's good aspects.

Phase Four definitely reads as desperation to continue the MCU, honestly. Cause phase one and phase two built up to Endgame, aka end of Phase Three....well, kinda....Far From Home is somehow in Phase Three, but you get what I mean. But like, mentioning Far From Home....its definitely where problems start to show. Keep in mind, I am not a fan of MCU!Tony Stark- I'm more of a animated adaptions fan at this rate- but like, he died in Endgame stopping Thanos.....only for Far From Home to ruin any legacy he could have left with, "Actually, here's another villain he caused and him leaving a weapon of mass destruction to a child and said weapon can hack into everything-" And then of course, we got the whole, "Is the multiverse real?", cause Mysterio was said to be pulling it out of his ass and therefore, this makes No Way Home jumping straight to Multiverse kinda fucking jarring. And of course, as its the end of Phase Three instead of Endgame, Far From Home ends with a cliffhanger.....so we in hell still.

By not ending at Endgame though, what can they do? They basically concluded almost everything Phase one-three set up......so they basically pull whatever they can to excuse keeping the MCU going. Multiverse? An ongoing plot still as of Multiverse of Madness. Spiderman's ongoing problems? Rushed his third film to add it to Multiverse stuff and basically threw aside that Far From Home thing pretty much in favor off MCU's bootleg Into The Spiderverse. Eternals??? Don't....DON'T get me started on them. They introduced too late into the MCU, so their existence brings questions on WHERE WERE THEY during the entire MCU so far, and they also retconned the whole Celestials thing, so guess Ego didn't look hard enough! Black Widow??? Also VERYYYY late, like, was 2012 really a bad time for a Black Widow film???? Or even phase two at best??? Or before Endgame at least??? Cause it literally came out after she died in Endgame, so what happens??? Yelena gets introduced as replacement, but also leads us to.... Dark Avengers? I mean, so far they got John Walker and Yelena, so....but find it hard to believe, given in comics it was Norman Osborn involved in it.... Young Avengers? Basically already setting it up, since Billy and Tommy were in Wandavision and may return in Multiverse of Madness if the leaks are true, Miss America is also in Multiverse of Madness, Eli Bradley is in Falcon And The Winter Soldier, Cassie has been in MCU since Ant Man and Kid Loki was in Loki....though gotta grab him from the void likely, plus you got Miss Marvel coming out and Iron Heart is confirmed to be in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.....only missing a few members, but MCU will find them hard to set up unless they prepared to retcon shit....which, lets be real, they are.

Only good part of Phase Four so far has been Shang Chi really, everything else falls to we didn't need it but meh to why?. And its still ongoing. Like, we not even mentioning them about to ruin the Fox X-men and Fantastic Four, just to introduce whatever the fuck the MCU X-Men.....oh, I'm sorry, The Mutants, if they are actually going to call the film that.....will be. I ain't even a F4 fan and I dread MCU takes, especially with Doctor Doom. Like, the fact that they couldn't just end at Endgame....and now we stuck with ruined characterization with Wanda, Sam getting the shield is now being disrespected due to marvels sudden love for Captain Carter from What If...?, Spiderman's life got thrown to shit just because multiverse needs, the Eternals bullshit, the Loki bullshit, the What If...? bullshit, Black Widow's film coming out too late....like, was just making a whole new universe of films that hard??? Was it really???

#anti mcu #like come on comics reboot all the time to do new stuff #mcu could get away with it #instead of being the mess it is now....

[taaroko]

On the subject of Thanos torturing Loki...

Quick precursor: my automatic approach to a living canon (like the MCU or an ongoing book or TV series) is to treat new content like additional puzzle pieces to round out the image of the characters and worldbuilding. If I find the new material to be sufficiently bad that I can’t use this strategy, it tends to break my interest in the IP, either entirely (Game of Thrones after S8) or for the dumb material specifically (Star Wars, where RoS killed the already-on-thin-ice sequel trilogy for me but didn’t make me like the OT any less and Rogue One and Mando have earned enough goodwill that I’ll keep checking out new stuff, if without much urgency). Also, it’s nice when the writers’ intent lines up with the actual content, but anyone who’s been in a writing workshop knows sometimes good stuff happens by accident, so I don’t feel the need to take everything said in interviews as gospel.

My bad/incompatible content threshold in the MCU is located somewhere between Iron Fist and Inhumans, but all of the movies and Disney+ shows are handily on the right side of it. I love every bit of Loki content we’ve had since the first Thor (even though I gripe that many excellent character-establishing scenes for him were left on the cutting room floor in Thor), with the exception of using a dagger on Thanos, and I can still live with that if Loki’s goal was to aggro Thanos enough that he wouldn’t kill Thor. (Also apparently the TVA pruned Lokis who did anything more sensible than that. They seem to want Loki dead, downtrodden, and/or villainous, and I’m very curious to know why.) Now that I’ve written hundreds of thousands of words of Brodinsons fanfiction I’m probably going to be crankier about stuff that contradicts my headcanons, but so far nothing in the Loki series has bent any of them past the breaking point. 

One thing that has changed thanks to new information in Loki is my theory about what Loki went through in the missing year between Thor and Avengers. I am very much in the camp that believes he spent that year getting tortured and brainwashed by Thanos and the Black Order, but I used to assume that Loki himself would classify what he went through as torture and brainwashing. Now I think it was subtler than that, and he wouldn’t be able to view that period in such a light until he’s had some time for reflection. (His whole setup at the beginning of Ragnarok and the melodramatic plays about his “death” fit in very nicely with this, because being Odin and publishing his death widely is a pretty good way to stay hidden from a vengeful Titan—quite a brave and defiant plan considering that he had access to three different Infinity Stones between the end of Dark World and the beginning of Ragnarok, and he sent one to a Celestial in a different galaxy, kept another in the Vault, and left the third with the Avengers when he could’ve just handed them all over to Thanos to get back in his good graces.)

Thanks to Loki’s line in the show “I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve been killed” (particularly when paired up with “No more resurrections.”), the way his face drops when Thanos shows up in the time theater and his horrified shock when Thanos kills him, and the way he’s generally not acting very much like someone who believes he’s just spent a year being tortured and brainwashed, I now think that what Loki experienced with Thanos was presented as a brutal gauntlet, not explicitly as torture. Whether via simulations or some kind of creepy magic, he was tested to death over and over again before Thanos would let him take the Mind Stone to go retrieve the Tesseract. Maybe each test took him further away from “I never wanted the throne!” and closer to “I remember you tossing me into an abyss!” Loki is terrified of Thanos but I think he still believes he can maybe get the better of him until he sees the time theater.

(Also, not super relevant, but it just occurred to me that the invasion happening in NYC, whether Loki was aware of it or not, might’ve been intended to eventually overwhelm the Sanctum so Thanos could get the Time Stone too. Ebony Maw clearly has no doubt about where the Time Stone is in IW, so that tracks.) 

To an outside observer, this training, just like Thanos pitting Nebula and Gamora against each other and punishing the loser with bionic upgrades, definitely qualifies as torture, but thanks to subtle application of the Mind Stone (which Loki might’ve though himself immune to, if his dismissiveness of Sylvie’s enchantment attempt is anything to go off) and his own rock-bottom self-worth (what with being fresh off an existential crisis, psychotic break, and suicide attempt), Loki might have bought into it being necessary to make him worthy. It seems to me that getting the God of Mischief to believe something as absurd as “freedom is life’s great lie,” which he enters the show still wholeheartedly believing, must’ve taken some pretty thorough brainwashing. 

I think Loki’s behavior in the show tracks with being confronted with a seemingly omnipotent bureaucracy that insists his purpose was to be a villain who inspired others to become great, nothing more, as well as the knowledge he now has of how he and his parents die and the destruction of Asgard. The anger that drives him in Avengers breaks against the indifferent beige wall of the TVA, and he doesn’t have much to replace it with. That’s how you get Loki being miserably introspective, gleefully yelling “Nothing matters!” in Pompeii, and doing an extremely bad job of getting off Lamentis-1. It’s “you lack conviction” all over again, but now he’s got a purpose and might be getting past his existential crisis and self-loathing. I’m eager to see where that goes in the finale. 

#loki series #avengers #loki #thanos #marvel #loki spoilers #meta

[zombieheroine]

Burdens of the old

Rating: G Pairing: MegOp

Summary: Optimus is grieving, and Megatron seeks to comfort his ancient conjunx. A/N: For @bonnini, because we have been apart for too long and I haven’t written megop for too long.

*

When the two moons and the sun were in the sky together, Megatron took it as a sign to return home. It wasn’t any special time nor was it an actual sign, but whenever he had been gone long enough for a celestial event to take place, whether in reality it was a century or two solars, he tended to feel like he had been apart from his conjunx too long.

The templar grounds were large. They weren’t technically tamed environment and they weren’t strictly wilderness either, but the great Temple of Primus was located deep in the heart of the wilds of Bad Lands, and there was a way there but built with as little intervention with nature as possible. The wilderness hadn’t been tamed but it had been pleaded with. Large rocks had been removed from a path and sometimes a mountain had been tempered to make a pass. There were small settlements of homes here and there, an oil house here and an energon station there. The plateaus had been worked so that there was a secure path leading across them and road sings regularly so that a pilgrim wouldn’t lose their way. The wild fields of crystals had been combed into neat rows and a path cleared through them. A Cybertronian of any size could wander through them without disturbing the perfectly straight rows of glittering diamonds and shining rocks in every colour, and on the edge of the field there was a smoothed boulder that had directions carved into it. The Temple of Primus lied ahead, and a carving of a map with a golden arrow marking the right path would take even an illiterate pilgrim to the destination. After the fields of glimmering magenta and shimmering black came the crystal woods. Sun storms, wind and thunder before the atmosphere had formed eons ago had risen up structures of metal and glass and frozen the elements into tall, splintering forms that reached towards the sky, and now that Megatron had visited Earth the structures reminded him of forests. Tender little pieces of glass, crystals and fine silver, copper and gold clung to the branches like leaves and sometimes came loose in the wind and fell to the ground, shattering into fine dust that’s glimmer covered it and crunched like snow under your pedes. It was dark in those woods, but gently a path had been cleared through them, some of the structures cleared out of the way and the ground worked fit for pedes and wheels alike. Megatron didn’t need the map, he knew the way home by now and could have walked it with his optics disabled without stumbling over a single step. If he were there for the first time, he wouldn’t have noticed when he entered the actual temple grounds. There was no wall and no sign, simply a small, modest well that serves as Their altar by it. Megatron stopped out of a habit more than anything else, picked up the mining bucket by the well’s side and threw it into its depths. He listened to its banging on the walls until no sound came, then pulled the bucket up from the well again. Of course it was empty, it was empty every time, but Megatron still paid attention to the subtle ache in his elbow joints and the feel friction the thick metal wire left on his servos and reminded himself of the work he had done so long ago. Briefly he considered what he had pulled out of the well this time or was it simply a reminder of the miracle of life he couldn’t bring about, but soon put it out of his mind. He wasn’t a religious mech, not even in his old age with a conjunx prone to reflecting on various philosophies out loud. There were more inhabitants about the temple, almost like a small, nameless town. There were rings of streets now, libraries, record stores, small homes, and shops of crafters lining them, but Megatron walked the widest straight one directly to the temple. The massive, multi-tiered building of stone and steel was weathered as it was supposed to be, surrendered to the elements of the wild just like the rest of the pilgrimage there was. There were large blossoms of rust and dark clusters of crystallized elements on the bricks and pillars making the temple, which was no wonder since its large windows and arching doorways let everything inside. Megatron was just another memory of one ancient storm. The inhabitants knew him and thus no one tried to sell him a prayer bell or a crystal statue or souvenirs, simply let him move through the grounds. Up the stairs he went and inside the temple, the maze of wide halls and corridors as familiar to him as the road there. When he got further inside, the bite of the elements and their marks grew rarer, the walls clearer and the floor cleaner. Very few wandered inside the temple, only clerics and devotees, and the ancient mechs actually living there. The ancient ones were only two. The further towards the inner sanctum Megatron walked, the clearer the floor became. Towards the outer rooms, the floors were heavy brown stone and metal, engraved with beautiful designs but still the material sturdy and rough against the wind and rain that were allowed to blow through the halls. Here, behind many turns and stairs, the floor turned into glass, laid on so thick and heavy that nothing could break it, and through the glass run the bright wires and circuits of the intricate systems of the central computer system. It was a closed system, nothing came into the temple and nothing left it, and to gain access one would have to make the trip. The knowledge of Primus, millions and millions of terabytes of knowledge and memories, art and stories, all to be witnessed by anyone if one only made the journey. The floor glowed with the lifeblood and light of that system, but Megatron had seen it so many times already that he hardly even noticed it. He wasn’t the type of mech to wonder at sights and displays over and over anyway, not when the truest, most sacred treasure in the entire temple was somewhere deeper inside. It took him a while. He located the innermost library and the central computer module, but it was the third interface to the system where he finally found Optimus. He was exactly where he had left him, cordical psychic patch connected into the back of his helm and his servos moving across the keyboard while before him three screens flashed with images and a matrix of massive amount of data streaming, reorganizing and processing as it was recorded and finally fed into the memory banks of the temple. Megatron approached him carefully and laid a servo on his shoulder. “My one,” he spoke to him, low and gentle so that he wouldn’t startle him out of the stream, “that is enough.” Optimus seemed to sense more than see him there. His vents took in a deep gulp of air and a moment later puffed it heavily out. Megatron could feel the heat of an overworked system in the sigh, and Optimus’ servos stilled and his helm turned towards him. Megatron leaned his helm to meet him, their helm guards connecting so gently the metal barely made a sound when they touched. “Come now,” Megatron spoke. “I have been away for three weeks. Have you been connected the entire time?” Optimus’ optics were unseeing, shining white with the current from the system and his visual feed most likely showing only the stream of memories and the matrix and none of his surroundings, but Megatron knew he heard him and felt his helm against his, the servo on his shoulder and his presence by his side. Optimus sighed and closed his optics, and the busy stream on the screens came to a halt. A series of links were carefully being disabled, and Megatron stared at the lights on the cable of the patch, waiting for the moment it could be unplugged. “Has it been three weeks already?” Optimus muttered, his voicebox activating itself obviously for the first time since their parting. “Yes, it has,” Megatron said, the slightest scold in his tone. He nuzzled his forehelm against Optimus’ and was calmed by the easy response he got, how even blind and disoriented his conjunx reached for him. “You have been here the whole time, haven’t you? You old fool, your joints will rust stuck.” Optimus took another deep, laboured invent and let it out. There was a slight smell of burning dust in the air around him. “I’m sorry, dearest. I haven’t been… Focusing on myself lately.” “I can see that,” Megatron commented drily. There was a heavy gloom in the atmosphere around Optimus, a burden he was being crushed under and didn’t know how to ease. Finally the mean, purple lights on the patch went dark. Before Optimus could lift his servo, Megatron went in with his own and closed his claws around the plug. He twisted the fastenings loose, then pulled the plug out of the port. He didn’t appreciate one bit how hot the apparatus felt and wondered how many circuits that thing would have burned from a lesser mech, and in a spark of anger towards the inanimate object that had preoccupied his conjux he simply tossed it on the floor. Optimus clicked his glossa in displeasure. “Those are expensive,” he reminded in the overtly patient tone of his he used when in his opinion Megatron didn’t act his age. Since Optimus’ optics were still blind, Megatron grinned to his face. “I do not care,” he said, his now freed claws easing the lid on the port shut. He gently rubbed over the surface to make sure the sealings were in place and the port secure. Optimus didn’t argue him anymore, simply grunted at the comfort, his helm tilting in his touch. He turned towards him in his chair and lifted a servo to wrap around Megatron’s elbow. Finally, his optics blinked open again, the light dimmed into their regular blue once again and he turned them to look at Megatron. He smiled. “Welcome back, dearest,” he said. Megatron didn’t answer. Still, after millions and millions of times around the sun of their system, having Optimus’ attention and his smile felt too sweet, and he had to lean in to kiss him. He had never started to take those for granted, and the press of lips against lips was slow and careful and the kiss lingered, savouring that connection. When Megatron pulled back, he cradled Optimus’ helm with his servo. “Come, you should move around. I’m dusty and you have started to gather rust, we could both use a bath and fuel.” Optimus was heavy to pull up from the chair, and not just from sitting still for such a long time. He gave a pained groan when he straightened up and leaned on Megatron, and not purely out of affection. Megatron let his conjux rest against his side, listened to the faint screeching of his joints and linked their arms. A mech of Optimus’ age had a strong EM field, but it was subtle and hard to read, mostly affecting others unknowingly. But Megatron wasn’t just anyone, and he didn’t need anyone to point out the heavy shroud of grief that lingered around Optimus. It had been there for a while now. “Come,” Megatron said again instead of acknowledging the heaviness in the air around them, “I will scrub your back for you.” They strolled slowly through the temple, its many corridors and wide staircases towards the lower levels, heading underground. Even though it was a small eternity ago, underground spaces still triggered an echo of memory in Megatron that told him to expect a battle or watch out for spies, and he knew that even a Cybertronian wouldn’t live long enough for the glittering caves underneath the temple to outweigh the memories of old Kaon. It was of no importance though. The clittering caves with their fountains of oil had been turned into a bathhouse in the same, subtle negotiating way the terrain from the urban centres to the temple had been worked. The floors were smoothed and the baths were tiled so that bots could step in and sit on the steps while bathing, there were lanterns here and there to light up the darkness, but the large dripstones full of glimmering minerals and jewels in the roof had been left as they were. It was a space gently cleared into nature, and as such a sign of respect towards their life-giving planet, the sacred ground they treaded with every step. They moulded it when they had to and no more than that. The baths were empty when they got there, and without much fuss Megatron helped Optimus into a large pool of hot oil, following after him. Optimus let out a deep sigh when he relaxed underneath the hot liquid and rested his back against the poolside. This time the noise was relieved, the weight of grief shifting aside for a moment. Megatron sensed pain from him, old joints and struts having grown too smooth into their slots, having been ground permanently raw and not fitting together as perfectly as they had when he was still new. He suffered from the same pain himself, but he had carried poorly welded battle scars for so long that pain was nothing but a constant thrum in his life, one he could not only stand but to find meaning and pride in. But he was old. He had gotten slower, his parts also slipping and less precise. He didn’t mind it so much, but the vastness of his age was starting to be felt in his spark. “Feel better now?” he asked Optimus, who graced him with a smile and a nod. Megatron hummed with approval. “Come here then,” he called, reaching out his servo. “I promised I’d scrub that rust off you.” “Such attentive lover you are,” Optimus crooned, still finding joy in this side of him that he got to enjoy. Megatron just clicked his glossa at his old fool of a conjunx and instead of waiting on him, pushed his pedes against the wall and kicked himself across the pool closer to him. The thick liquid made his massive frame feel light and the heat eased the pain in his limbs, and he hoped it was having the same effect on his conjunx.   “Someone has to take care of you,” Megatron said and reached to the pool side towards the pile of fresh washcloths. He would never get used to the little pieces of luxury in the grand, wild temple. The washcloths were not like the rags they had made do with in the Pits, but thick, plush material that soaked up oil and scrubbed off just about any sort of grime metal could gain. Even in Megatron’s large servos, the cloth wasn’t a rag but a towel, and even if he clicked his glossa and scoffed at the notion, when he dipped the cloth into the pool and then brough it against Optimus, he felt like the worst kind of indulging conjunx and didn’t mind one bit.   Optimus let out a deep hum and dimmed down his optics when Megatron rubbed circles into his armour plating and scrubbed over his spinal strut. For a while they simply sat there, side by side in the steaming, shimmering bath and enjoyed each other’s touch and silent company. Megatron kept working the washcloth over Optimus’ back and shoulders, over his hip plating and down his arms. It was more than was needed and more than he had promised, but neither minded it. Optimus leaned against the pool side as well as against Megatron’s chassis and rested his helm on his shoulder. If his EM field was heavy with grief, it must have felt like a lead core inside his own chassis. Gently, Megatron took Optimus’ servo in his and rubbed the cloth carefully over each digit of his, lingering on even when he was definitely fully soaked and perfectly clean. “I can feel your grief,” Megatron mentioned. Optimus’ servo squeezed shut then, closing around his. He said nothing, and Megatron didn’t see the point of pulling either his servo or the washcloth free, so he simply held on and rested the side of his helm against Optimus. “Will you speak to me?” “What’s there to speak of?” Optimus asked in a weary sigh. Megatron hummed, lightly shrugging. “What do you wish to speak of?” “What is gone is gone. There’s nothing more to it,” Optimus said, unusually harsh. “And still you labour for weeks at a time. It’s not for nothing even if you claim it is,” Megatron pointed out. Optimus made an unhappy grunt that he did whenever they argued and he knew Megatron was right. The little sound made Megatron smile to himself, but he didn’t say anything. “It is not the same thing,” Optimus argued, fully knowing it was futile. “What is it then?” Megatron pressed gently. “Speak to me, my one. If someone understand you better than yourself, it is I.” Optimus groaned, this time in a defeated way. When so long ago Megatron had learned a new tactic for the first time in eons and switched from rage and fury into pacifying gestures and softer words, Optimus had been defeated and he had never quite learned what to do with that, only that he would respond in kind. “I grieve too much. I don’t know how to speak of it,” Optimus said quietly, his helm nuzzling deeper into the crook of Megatron’s neck. Megatron didn’t think he noticed it but sought out that comfort subconsciously, and even after all the years between them and millions and millions of gestures like that, Megatron’s spark gave a bright pulse at it. “But you are speaking of it right now, even if you don’t know what you want to say,” he said. Optimus made a vaguely agreeing noise, and they fell into comfortable silence again. Their servos still held each other, and in a minute slowly and in an almost shy move, Optimus sought out Megatron’s other servo under the surface. His digits squeezed his servo tightly, and slowly as if he had to coax Megatron into it he pulled them both to his chassis, effectively wrapping himself into Megatron’s arms. Megatron let him show him what he needed, then shifted them both into a more comfortable position, pulling Optimus’ back flush against his front and arranging his conjux securely into his embrace. Optimus sighed, deeply pleased, and something in the atmosphere between them lightened. “I just can hardly believe the humankind is gone,” Optimus confessed. “Gone, all of them. All of their colonies, their homeworld, the entire species. It’s like… It’s like they were never even there, and I…” “Death humbles even us,” Megatron spoke gently. “It’s understandable.” “Perhaps,” Optimus begrudgingly agreed, “But still… Still, I don’t know what to do with this. Or even why I’m… It’s been millions of years. Millions.” Megatron turned to press his faceplate against Optimus’ helm. “You want to honour something you loved. You want to witness it and put it on record so that others won’t forget. You want to remember. That is a noble way to grieve,” he said. “Can you love an entire species over millions of years from across a galaxy?” Optimus asked. He sounded disbelieving, as if it was ridiculous to even suggest. Megatron didn’t laugh. “If someone has such love in them, that is you. I have felt it, my one. You have been always been defined by a love so great it is a fault.” Optimus fell into an embarrassed silence, and Megatron felt him curl up in a coy manner while the grief around them became heavier again. But if Optimus was love, Megatron was strength, and that grief could have kept growing all it liked, and he would still bear its weight. He held his conjunx tighter for a moment, letting him feel that strength. “I am here to contain that love now,” Megatron spoke against the smooth arch of his cheek. “Like you are here to guide my fury.” Instead of arguing, Optimus tilted his helm towards Megatron and captured his mouth in a kiss. It was one of those almost reflex like gestures, when all their words and grand ideas fell through and all there was left to do was to kiss. It was like there was a special wire in both of them, a circuitry that when shocked sparked them to lean towards one another and kiss. Megatron kissed back with indulgence, letting his conjux speak his mind with that gesture. When Optimus pulled back, he rested his helm on Megatron’s shoulder again, and Megatron relaxed back into their embrace in the same breath as well. When Optimus spoke next, his voice was grim but the words seemed to come easier. “Do you ever think it is a curse to live this long? To outlive entire civilizations? Worlds? Our home as we knew it?” Megatron considered it. They had indeed lived long, even for Cybertronians. Back when they had lived as if they were mere cogs in a well-oiled machine, barely anyone had reached their age but had been become obsolete and broken down into parts long before. Even in Cybertronian sense, they were ancient. Their frames were stiff and starting to fall apart on their own, their colours faded and new paint simply refused to stick anymore, their biolights dimmer and some permanently darkened. Even their sparks felt like dying suns, burning up and paling at the same time. They were obsolete as well, too great and old to take on new names or roles anymore. They simply walked here and there, speaking to those who were brave and determined enough to speak to them first, and focused on entering their overburdened memories into the library banks across the planet. Megatron hadn’t ever dreamed he would live this long, or that he would even want to. When he had been sparked he had been nothing, a nameless cog, not even a drone, and after that a gladiator living for glory and constantly on the edge. Even the great war felt like an exciting adventure now, a million years in exile and their kind nearly dying out. All that time, he had waited for his swift end and he had been still perfect, strong, sharp and powerful. But no more. The answer was easy. “No,” he said, “not together with you.”  

#megop #maccadam #tfp #transformers prime #transformers #Megatron #Optimus Prime #kapteenin raapustus

[sinnamonrolle]

Looking at Leviathan

Leviathan character thoughts and what I hope counts as character analysis lol

Thinking about his character got me depressed LOL (you'll see why)

Levi is the third strongest. It seems like he’s good with magic, but I’m not too sure about his physical strength. Being a sea serpent probably also gives him an advantage in water. He even has defined abs!! Although, his physical stamina...

Levi is also the Grand Admiral for the Devildom's Navy (confirmed in a chat). If he's the Grand Admiral, then he's gotta have the stuff to back that up. He's smart enough for the role, considering how sharp his memory is when it comes to TSL, and he has the power to match it, being the third strongest in the Devildom aside from Diavolo.

But why does he hate himself so much? There's that card titled "Resentment Runs Deep" but I've never seen the Devilgram for it so my theory may or may not be accurate.

Levi calls himself a "yucky otaku" or an "otaku" like it's a horrible thing. He hates "normies" with a passion maybe because he feels like they don't understand him or perhaps... someone betrayed or hurt him.

Levi's whole thing is about friendship. He absolutely loves the friendship between the Lord of Shadows and Henry.

(He's called the Lord of Shadows because shadows are always following someone or something, and their entire existence is dependent on something else. Shadows only exist because the light was blocked by something. Shadows are caused by an absense of light.)

Levi's been a diehard anime fan since he was in Heaven. It's been thousands of years since his fall, so it's been a long time since he's been a fan of anime. His passion likely started off like normal, and like anyone with a passion, it's very hard to not talk about the things you're passionate about.

Levi has never particularly hide that he's a big time nerd, but he's also never explicitly shouted that he's an otaku (without being prompted to do so). Levi as an angel would probably be about the same, but I'd imagine much less bitter. He was even buying merch.

This might have happened at some point. Due to his passion for anime, he got bullied by other angels for it, to the point that he thinks being an otaku is a bad, unwantable thing, that he is unwanted and unlovable. Even if angels are depicted as these saintly beings, there could have been angels more extreme than Luke (I love and cherish Luke, nothing against him). They might not have bullied him, but they could have shunned him.

It would make sense why he seeks the friendship between the Lord of Shadows and Henry. They have an unbreakable bond and they're always there for each other, no matter what happens. And they understand each other, despite one being human and one being something else entirely. They come from completely different worlds yet they understand and accept each other, something that Levi desperately wants as someone with nothing to hang on to but his passion.

It would also make sense why he wishes he could have Lucifer's charm and influence. He's envious of Lucifer, the Avatar of Pride. He's not proud of who he is (yucky otaku) but he's proud of the results of his passion and hard work, because it was his, he made it, he himself did it. Having Lucifer's charm would make him desirable, someone who would be envied, and having Lucifer's influence would also mean that Levi has power that would be envied, power that he would also be able to use to his own liking regarding his passions.

Levi wants to be wanted, he wants to be envied because being envied means that he has something that other people want, that he is someone other people would respect. He lacks self worth, and I doubt his brothers caused him to lose all his self worth, which leads me to my next (conspiracy) theory.

Levi made a mistake during the Great Celestial War.

He slipped up, messed up, and he blames himself for it, thinking that he's worthless and undesirable, that no one wants him around, that he can't do anything right because he's just a nerd.

And when compared to his siblings, does he even matter? Lucifer, the pride of Heaven. Asmodeus, the jewel of Heaven. Mammon, who has such fine control over his powers, who's strong both physically and magically. And then there's Beel, Belphie, and Lilith, who were the tightest of threes, the twins of light and darkness, the beloved sister with a heart of gold. But what about Levi?

What started as doubts and teasing turns into something much darker, much more rooted and thorny than he could ever thought it could get.

When Levi got jealous at the MC for "being a bigger TSL nerd than him," he wasn't just jealous. He was angry, he was furious because how could one night of marathoning beat the many years Levi dedicated himself to TSL? How could someone just come up to him and his years of hard work, dedication, and love and tell him that his effort was not enough? How could he deal with knowing that he really is worthless, that there's nothing he can pride himself on even when he's worked so hard?

He may not be proud of himself, but he's proud of knowing that he tried harder than anyone else in loving and supporting TSL and his other series.

When he debated over which band to follow, it's because he doesn't want to betray them. He's put in love and time and effort, and just like Henry and the Lord of Shadows, he doesn't want to turn his back on someone. His resolve is real, and that's the one thing he can pride himself on.

That also means that since he followed Lucifer and rebelled against their Father, Levi never thought of their Father as a friend or as a family. He has resolved himself to Lucifer. And when Levi resolves himself to something, he never does it sloppily. He gives it his all.

He's also not used to touching and affection. With someone as touchy and affectionate as Asmo in the family (as well as being in a family of seven), it's quite hard to avoid being touched or to avoid being given affection. Maybe Levi thinks that he doesn't deserve their affection.

He's touch starved, yet he refuses to seek out other's touch because why would anyone want to touch something as disgusting as him? Why would someone as unworthy as him deserve the kindness of someone else? It's a self served punishment for what he has done, for what he is.

Levi has pets because he wants to take care of something living, and Lucifer lets him because he knows. It's both from guilt and from a desire to have a friend. It's also a reminder to himself that if he can't even take care of a pet, then what is he even good for?

#obey me #obey me swd #obey me shall we date #obey me levi #obey me leviathan #avatar of envy #swd levi #swd leviathan #l3vi #om! leviathan #leviathan #character analysis

[gagosiangallery]

Desert Painters of Australia at Gagosian Hong Kong

September 11, 2020

DESERT PAINTERS OF AUSTRALIA Two Generations Opening reception: Thursday, September 24, 5–8pm September 24–November 7, 2020 7/F Pedder Building, 12 Pedder Street, Central, Hong Kong __________ Whole lot, that’s the whole lot. Awelye (my Dreaming), Arlatyeye (pencil yam), Arkerrthe (mountain devil lizard), Ntange (grass seed), Tingu (a Dream-time pup), Ankerre (emu), Intekwe (a favorite food of emus), Atnwerle (green bean), and Kame (yam seed). That’s what I paint: whole lot. . . . —Emily Kame Kngwarreye Gagosian is pleased to announce the first-ever exhibition in Hong Kong dedicated to work by contemporary Indigenous Australian artists. It is the third in a series of critically acclaimed exhibitions presented by the gallery, following New York and Los Angeles in 2019. Desert Painters of Australia: Two Generations is organized in collaboration with D’Lan Davidson, a leading Melbourne-based consultant in the Indigenous Australian art market. Indigenous Australians constitute the longest surviving civilization in human history for more than 60,000 years. While affinities may be perceived between remote Indigenous Australian art and other modern art forms, the individual practices that are developed in relative isolation stem from the oldest continuous art traditions in the world. This exhibition is designed to introduce the local audience for the first time to rare works by some of Australia’s most renowned Indigenous artists from remote regions of the continent. The intergenerational selection includes the late Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Makinti Napanangka, and Bill “Whiskey” Tjapaltjarri, and living artists such as Yukultji Napangati, George Tjungurrayi, and Warlimpirrnga Tjapaltjarri.

After the forced displacement of the Pintupi, Luritja, Warlpiri, and Arrernte people to the Papunya settlement in the Northern Territory from the 1950s, tribal members began collaborating on site-specific paintings. Deriving from ancient rituals of body decoration, sand drawing, bark carving, and ceremony dance, these collective expressions eventually evolved into autonomous works on canvas by individual artists. To protect the rituals of their culture from disruptive forces, the artists veiled their sacred iconography and knowledge in dynamic abstract patterns, decipherable only by initiates. Their intense focus and rhythmic mark making produced compelling works of great optical complexity—pointillist constellations, free-flowing linear formations, concentric swells, topological geometric fields, and hypnotic ripples—representing the Dreaming, a worldview that provides Indigenous Australians with an ordered sense of reality, a framework for understanding and interpreting the world and the place of humans in that world. This priceless knowledge of human life includes survival strategies, ancestral histories, and narratives of the earth and the cosmos.

Emily Kame Kngwarreye, affectionately known as “Emily,” was a revered elder of the Utopia region and one of the most celebrated artists in Australian history. Throughout the brief ten-year span before her death, she painted freely and prolifically, moving confidently through an astonishing range of style and expression. Anooralya—My Story (1991) is a key example of Emily’s early “fish-eye” pointillist technique, where she engaged her entire body in making countless individual marks on canvas. In this painting, rarely seen in the last thirty years, these delicate dots coalesce into grainy pools and sinuous streams, recalling at once the macrocosmic systems of the galaxy and the microcosmic root structures of the wild yam, a symbol of fertility and Emily’s Dreaming. When asked to describe her inspirations, Emily’s response was consistent: “It’s everything.” In other words, each painting represents her entire culture, encapsulating her intimate relationship with “Country,” the physical land and the spirits that inhabit it, as well as the people and their traditions. Makinti Napanangka’s paintings commemorate Pintupi women’s performative and ritual traditions. The flowing stripes of paint in amber and violet recall the nyimparra (hand-spun string skirts made from human hair) and the rich natural ochres with which the women adorn their bodies during tribal dance ceremonies. Makinti’s pulsating compositions draw from Pintupi epics, especially the travels of Kungka Kutjarra (two women ancestors) who created the landforms at Lupulnga. In the featured works, expressive lines of color evoke the energetic movements of the hair-string skirt dances and the fleeting desert mirages that glaze the hot earth where they are performed. For generations, the land and the many stories it contains have inspired the creativity of the Desert Painters as seen in the dizzying labyrinths and energetic fields by George Tjungurrayi and Warlimpirringa Tjapaltjarri. Transmuting into paint on canvas the customary mark-making techniques with which they decorated their tools and their bodies with ceremonial designs, these Pintupi men trace sinuous lines into charged and tensile optical compositions. While Tjungurrayi’s paintings are generally flame-colored to evoke sun and earth, Tjapaltjarri uses restrained gray pigments to evoke the sensations of cool desert nights from Tingari epics. Many of Tjapaltjarri’s paintings evoke Wilkinkarra (Lake Mackay), a vast saltwater flat visited after dark by ancestral women to perform sacred celestial rituals. Yukultji Napangati, sister to Warlimpirringa, was also born near Wilkinkarra at a water hole called Murruwa. In her highly refined paintings, she layers thousands of tone-on-tone vertical strokes to generate oscillating fields of dark and light sensation that recall the shimmering grasslands, the fractal patterns of sand dunes, and the textures of animal pelts from her Country. Bill “Whiskey” Tjapaltjarri, a Pitjantjatjara artist from the Western Desert, used a unique cartographic approach to paint works of sweeping scale that are reminiscent of drawings his elders once made with crayon on butcher’s paper to map the vast lands of their Country for white anthropological interlocutors. Two of Whiskey’s largest paintings, both titled Country and Rockholes near the Olgas (2006) depict the areas around Uluru (Ayers Rock) and Mount Olga. The subtle palette of these works, which ranges from deep aqueous blues to vivid corals, and their complex contouring, reimagine the striking hues and topography of the geological phenomena that surrounded Whiskey throughout his life. THE ARTISTS: Emily Kame Kngwarreye (c. 1910–1996), an elder of the Anmatyerre tribe and arguably the most famous Indigenous Australian artist, began painting at a late age in the Alyawarra community of Utopia. She is celebrated for her rapid and systematic exploration of different styles and formal inventions, largely identified with women’s ritual activities. Her early dot paintings drew on her experience with traditional batik fabric production; over time, her paintings became more and more gestural, reduced in their detail and liberated in their formal qualities. Emily has been the subject of major museum surveys in Australia and Japan, and her work featured prominently in the 56th Biennale di Venezia in 2015. Makinti Napanangka (c. 1930–2011) was born at Mangarri, near the Kintore community, on the border of the Northern Territory and Western Australia. She lived in the Haasts Bluff community before moving to Papunya, where she began her prolific painting career. In 1999, Napanangka underwent a cataract operation, which led to the evolution of the thick expressive lines and more vivid hues that characterize her mature painting style. Yukultji Napangati (born 1975) left her traditional hunting-and-gathering life in 1984 as a member of the “Pintupi Nine,” one of the last Indigenous groups to move into contact with modern Australian society. Drawing on ancestral narratives or Dreamings passed down to her through generations, her distinctive style involves intense and refined mark making on large canvases to produce astonishing optical sensations related to natural phenomena. George Tjungurrayi (born c. 1947), a member of Papunya Tula, is deeply invested in his Pintupi heritage, particularly the stories of the Tingari cycle from his Country. Tjungurrayi has developed an abstract language that sublimates the details of his relationship to these sacred places and their information into dynamic linear compositions painted in simple and precise lines, rather than fused dots. He has been represented in solo exhibitions in Australia and the Sydney Biennale, where a suite of his paintings was exhibited both on the ground and on the wall. Warlimpirrnga Tjapaltjarri (born c. 1958) is a member of the “Pintupi Nine.” He started painting in acrylics in 1987, after observing his relatives painting in the remote community of Kiwirrkura in Western Australia, where the cooperative of Papunya Tula artists had become well established. Tjapaltjarri’s earliest paintings were purchased and donated to the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne. Since that time he has also participated in such major exhibitions as documenta 13, in Kassel, Germany. Bill “Whiskey” Tjapaltjarri (c. 1920–2008) was a renowned ngankari (healer), nicknamed for his abundant whiskers. He was born at Pirupa Akla, near the Olgas, and lived in the Haasts Bluff community near Mount Liebig in the Northern Territory. He began painting at eighty-five and continued until his death four years later. His paintings have been exhibited throughout Australia as well as in Europe and Asia. ABOUT D’LAN DAVIDSON: Working as a private dealer and an auction house expert for fifteen years before opening his solo enterprise in Melbourne five years ago, D’Lan Davidson has produced exhibitions and catalogues of exceptional remote Indigenous Australian art in Australia and the United States. D’Lan Contemporary operates under a strict ethical policy, exhibiting all works with a clear line of community art center provenance and assisting economic growth for Indigenous Australian communities with the establishment of his Voluntary Resale Royalty initiative, which invites sellers to contribute 2.5 percent of their resale proceeds back to the respective artist or estate and then matches their contributions. _____ Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Anooralya–My Story, 1991, synthetic polymer on linen, 48 × 84 inches (121.5 × 213 cm) © Emily Kame Kngwarreye/Copyright Agency. Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, 2020

#Desert Painters #Gagosian

[alienbeamed]

If you’re expecting some kind of tragic backstory…  this is not it…

The biggest tragedy of Moonbeam’s life was that she was born to parents who were well into their fifties which meant that they were keenly aware of every embarrassing thing she managed to do throughout her entire life. Every goddamn thing. It probably didn’t help that her parents ran the local vape shop so everyone knew she was the girl with connections.

Maybe it would’ve been more of a tragedy if it actually bothered her. But Moonbeam? Her parents ran a fucking headshop. How cool was that? AND they let her test the merchandise? The only tragedy that came out of that was the fact that she eventually had to start working at the shop to pay for whatever she wanted to sample. And even then? It was only tragic when her shift fell in the middle of a Grateful Dead tribute show.

Tragic backstory? Don’t know her.

Moonbeam was the definition of an oops baby. Daisy and Rowan Noble had done the whole parenting thing twice. Had watched both of their kids grow up, embrace normal society, and move on with their lives. They were good with that. They didn’t need more than that. They had succeeded. And according to every medical professional in their lives, they were too old to even worry about an oops baby.

But then again… Moonbeam had never been one to follow the beaten path. Not even when she was half egg and half sperm, apparently. Because there was something magical about a night visiting Roswell, New Mexico for their anniversary that left them parents for a third time. Parents to a little girl who would fully live up to the fact that she was conceived in the alien conspiracy capital of the fucking world.

Her parents had thought to give the little girl a name that commemorated the cosmic miracle of her birth, but worried that like their first two children she would lean towards conformity, they gave the little girl the most normal middle name they could think of… Josie. Moonbeam Josie Noble. Paperwork for Pre-K and kindergarten insisted that her name was Josie, insisted that they didn’t want their little girl to be embarrassed. But Moonbeam? By the time she was in kindergarten, she was correcting anyone who dared call her Josie. She was proud of her celestial beginnings.

The youngest of three, Moonbeam Josie Noble was finally the child who embraced the life of the hippy, the life that made sense to her parents. Not that they weren’t proud of Star and Atlas, because they were. Star was some hot shot lawyer out in Seattle, Washington and Atlas was the chef at his own restaurant. They had plenty to be proud of. But knowing that their youngest was becoming a free spirit like her parents? Well, there was a special kind of pride in that.

At the age of 18, she found her first bus. Her first bus came with the retainer she’d received after submitting the first manuscript of her first novel. She was a big time writer, wasn’t she? She could get the coolest fucking home on wheels money could by. That first bus wasn’t much… a small activity bus converted to a studio apartment parked in her parent’s backyard. But she was proud of it. And it gave her a cute little place to record her music for youtube that probably went a little further than it should have.

Once that manuscript turned into a book and royalties started coming in, she took to the road. Her first bus quickly traded in for her second bus. And her second bus for her third. And eventually she had a cool ass double decker painted while high. Home. And somewhere in the middle of it all she ended up with a best selling young adult series about a lost little alien under the pseudonym Stella Luna.

No one knew that the books following the adventures and misadventures of Astrid Scott were written by a stoner from Idaho who traveled the United States in a double decker bus fit for the true queen of the aliens.

#☆･ﾟ: * META ↳ every dreaм нaѕ a naмe and naмeѕ тell yoυr ѕтory

[thatfanfictiongirl76]

Lucifer Multifandom Crossover Rec

Lately I’ve been reading a lot of Lucifer crossover fics, so I thought I’d just make a rec of them all. This rec is made up of a bunch Lucifer crossover fics from a whole host of Fandoms, from popular fandoms like Marvel, to some rare fandoms like The Umbrella Academy. I hope you give all these fics a try, they are definitely worth your time.

The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina

Morningstar Family Values Series

By: SteerPike13713

https://archiveofourown.org/series/1561111

Summary: "... how did this-- How do you have a kid?" she demanded, knowing even as she said it that Lucifer was going to make some awful "birds and the bees" joke about this. She was not disappointed. "Well, you see, Detective, when a man and a woman love each other very much, but can't conceive on their own, they summon the Devil in a complicated demonological ritual and invite him to have a threesome with them, without letting him know that pesky little detail that the ritual was designed to allow for interbreeding between celestial and mortal beings."

My Comments: Instead of linking in each work in the series, I just linked the entire series up above. And the summary above is actually from the third work in this series. That being said, I absolutely love this series. I didn't know how much I needed parent!Lucifer, until I read this series. Not to mention that I think that they got Sabrina spot on. There are eight pieces in this series, so it is sure to keep you occupied. Down below I'm going to put the word count for the entire series, and the status will have the last update on the newest addition to the series.

Status: Incomplete 

Last Update: 8/25/21

Length (Whole Series): 228,275 words

Nieces and Nephews

By: Theon_Lannister

https://archiveofourown.org/works/43715991

Summary: Lucifer calls Chloe after sealing away the Goddess, planning on revealing the truth. Except -- well, he gets teleported by a demonic ritual to Greendale, Mass. This is relatively good timing - because an Imposter is making a power play for Hell, with his daughter. Oh yeah, his daughter - Sabrina Spellman.

My Comments: I originally found this fic because I was aching for more after reading all of the Morningstar Family Values series. I’ll admit this series took a little while to grow on me. But once the author really picked up speed, I got swept away by it. If you love Lucifer and the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, then I recommend giving this one a read!

Status: Incomplete

Last Update: 10/15/23

Length: 69,394 words

This Rage is the One Thing I Get from My Father

By: keeping_up_with_the_morningstars

https://archiveofourown.org/works/19803442

Summary: “After all, the Devil never left a favor ungranted. So in the end, I did give him a child.” Sabrina held her breath as the next words were softly uttered from his mouth. “I gave him mine.”

My Comments: This fic was actually suggested to me by a follower. It had been in my tbr for a while, but I finally decided to give it a go, and let me tell you that I wish I had read this sooner. It’s a brilliant fic that is a much different take than the other fics up above. I really love the direction it went with it, and I love how complicated Sabrina and Lucifer’s relationship is and how they slowly work through it. I highly recommend this fic if you love COAS/Lucifer crossovers and want something that shows the ups and downs of their relationship. I did cut the summary down a lot for the purpose of this rec list, just fyi. This fic is cross posted on ff.net, so I’ll link that down below. 

Status: Incomplete

Last Update: 9/16/23

Length: 107,917 words 

Ff.net: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13557772/1/This-Rage-is-the-One-Thing-I-Get-from-my-father

Criminal Minds

Reverence For Life Series

By: Melethril

https://archiveofourown.org/series/1482401

Summary: A series of rapes and murders has shaken the city of San Diego. The Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU) of the FBI was consulted to catch the criminals. Before they can really narrow down the suspects, it appears that the pack responsible for the crimes has moved to Los Angeles, where Detectives Daniel Espinoza and Chloe Decker with her partner, Jake Collins, are investigating two separate murders. After realizing how these cases must be connected to the San Diego cases, the BAU is invited to help them catch the monsters responsible.

My Comments: When I first found this fic, the summary sort of confused me, mainly who is Jake Collins?, but the first chapter clears it up. In this series Lucifer and Chloe never become partners, instead Lucifer ends up joining the BAU! Now Chloe does appear in a couple of the fics in this series, but she is sort of OOC and like early season 4 Chloe, and I can see why the author wrote her that way, and I do think it worked really well for the story. This is a 13 part series, and mainly follows Criminal Minds throughout the show, with a few original cases thrown in. I will admit that it had been 7 years since I watched Criminal Minds, but this series reminded me of why I love the show so much. I also love the world building in this fic, and the supernatural elements and how it really builds on it. I love the backstories behind everything, and how it takes some minor characters from Lucifer, mainly being Candy, and really develops them into major characters. Plus it has a few OCs thrown in there for fun! I can’t recommend this series enough. This series is ongoing, and the author has promised more fics in the series to come!

Status: Incomplete

Last Update: 6/5/23

Length (Whole Series):  567,677 words

Marvel

The Divinity of Heroism

By: LeEspionage

https://archiveofourown.org/works/23468932

Summary: Lucifer utterly fails at returning to Hell at the end of season 4, and instead wakes up in the middle of the desert at a familiar bifrost sight in a world with superheroes. Now he must find a way back home, and also help save the world along the way.

My Comments: So I wrote the summary above, since the author’s original summary was just taken directly from the fic, which doesn’t really work that well for a rec list. Anyway this is just an amazing crossover, I love how the entire world reacts to Lucifer just being Lucifer. And Tony and Lucifer’s friendship is just awesome! Not to mention Lucifer is a total badass in this fic, which is just a delight! Highly recommend this fic!! This fic is incomplete, and last update was over a year ago, so it may be abandoned, but I would still give it a read!

Status: Incomplete

Last Update: 6/13/22

Length: 113,994 words

Bones of Metal (Strong and Brave)

By: Kilameia

https://archiveofourown.org/works/42913389

Summary: Lucifer went to Earth during World War Two. There, he ran into one Steve Rogers on his way to storm an enemy base all on his own. Well, he had to stick around after that. Years later, Lucifer receives a prayer from a Captain who is supposed to be dead. Not long after that, aliens invade New York. It’s the most fun Lucifer has had in years.

My Comments: This is a pretty awesome crossover with Lucifer meeting the Howling Commandos, and later the Avengers. I love the friendship between Steve and Lucifer, and Lucifer and Thor, not to mention Maze just being a total badass. I can’t recommend this fic enough! You do need an account to read this fic.

Status: Complete

Length: 11,542 words

Daredevil

A Pair of Cherry Red, Heart-Shaped Sunglasses

By: villian_klaus

https://archiveofourown.org/works/36394834

Summary: After a cold blooded murder and a quick fly over to Hell’s Kitchen, Lucifer Morningstar stood in front of a tiny apartment. Ready to pick up Matt, in order to return the favor asked by Jonathan Murdock. Lucifer was in no way capable of taking care of a child, but a promise is a promise. And he doesn’t break them.

My Comments: So this is another Lucifer-raising-Matt fic, like the one above. But this one focuses more on the past than the previous fic does. And I just absolutely fell in love with the relationship between Matt and Lucifer. I highly recommend this one!

Status: Complete

Length: 21,024 words

The Umbrella Academy

The Devil You Didn’t Know You Needed

By: JackMcGarrett

https://archiveofourown.org/works/22662619

Summary: Lucifer catches wind that the end is nigh, but he’s not done having fun. He and Maze seek out the cause of the End of Days and take matters into their own hands. Who would have thought that Lucifer would be the one to stop the Apocalypse by starring in a duet with The White Violin?

My Comments: I found this fic when I was scrolling through Lucifer crossovers and absolutely fell in love with it. This is a great crossover and I love all of the Umbrella Academy meeting the Lucifer crew. Not to mention the bond between Lucifer & Vanya, and Vanya & Maze is just to die for. Highly recommend this one.

Status: Incomplete

Last Update: 8/4/22

Length: 23,846 words

The Vampire Diaries

The Angelic Doppelganger

By: JasonMorganfan87

https://archiveofourown.org/works/47511421

Summary: The ritual to sacrifice Elena doesn’t go as planned, leaving Elena to discover that her father isn’t who she thought he was. What happens when Elena learns that her true father is the Devil himself? How will her relationship with the Salvatores change? How about her relationship with the Originals? And what will Lucifer do when he realizes he has a daughter?

My Comments: This is a fic I’ve been following since the first chapter was posted, and I’ve just fallen in love with eadavech new chapter. The pairing is Klaus/Elena, which is a little weird, but the author hasn’t even gotten to that part yet. And I’m sure that they’ll make it work. I still recommend giving this fic a chance.

Status: Incomplete

Last Update: 9/25/23

Length: 12,494 words

Ff.net: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/14238314/1/The-Angelic-Doppelganger

#lucifer #lucifer morningstar #sabrina spellman #lucifer fanfiction #lucifer fanfic #lucifer fanfiction rec #the chilling adventures of sabrina #tcaos #the vampire diaries #tvd #marvel #marvel fanfiction #daredevil #matthew murdock #tony stark #mazikeen #maze #chloe decker #the umbrella academy

[stellarufos-arc]

If you’re expecting some kind of tragic backstory...  this is not it…

The biggest tragedy of Moonbeam’s life was that she was born to parents who were well into their fifties which meant that they were keenly aware of every embarrassing thing she managed to do throughout her entire life. Every goddamn thing. It probably didn’t help that her parents ran the local vape shop so everyone knew she was the girl with connections. Maybe it would’ve been more of a tragedy if it actually bothered her. But Moonbeam? Her parents ran a fucking headshop. How cool was that? AND they let her test the merchandise? The only tragedy that came out of that was the fact that she eventually had to start working at the shop to pay for whatever she wanted to sample. And even then? It was only tragic when her shift fell in the middle of a Grateful Dead tribute show.

Tragic backstory? Don’t know her.

Moonbeam was the definition of an oops baby. Daisy and Rowan Noble had done the whole parenting thing twice. Had watched both of their kids grow up, embrace normal society, and move on with their lives. They were good with that. They didn’t need more than that. They had succeeded. And according to every medical professional in their lives, they were too old to even worry about an oops baby.

But then again… Moonbeam had never been one to follow the beaten path. Not even when she was half egg and half sperm, apparently. Because there was something magical about a night visiting Roswell, New Mexico for their anniversary that left them parents for a third time. Parents to a little girl who would fully live up to the fact that she was conceived in the alien conspiracy capital of the fucking world.

Her parents had thought to give the little girl a name that commemorated the cosmic miracle of her birth, but worried that like their first two children she would lean towards conformity, they gave the little girl the most normal middle name they could think of… Josie. Moonbeam Josie Noble. Paperwork for Pre-K and kindergarten insisted that her name was Josie, insisted that they didn’t want their little girl to be embarrassed. But Moonbeam? By the time she was in kindergarten, she was correcting anyone who dared call her Josie. She was proud of her celestial beginnings.

The youngest of three, Moonbeam Josie Noble was finally the child who embraced the life of the hippy, the life that made sense to her parents. Not that they weren’t proud of Star and Atlas, because they were. Star was some hot shot lawyer out in Seattle, Washington and Atlas was the chef at his own restaurant. They had plenty to be proud of. But knowing that their youngest was becoming a free spirit like her parents? Well, there was a special kind of pride in that.

At the age of 18, she found her first bus. Her first bus came with the retainer she’d received after submitting the first manuscript of her first novel. She was a big time writer, wasn’t she? She could get the coolest fucking home on wheels money could by. That first bus wasn’t much… a small activity bus converted to a studio apartment parked in her parent’s backyard. But she was proud of it. And it gave her a cute little place to record her music for youtube that probably went a little further than it should have.

Once that manuscript turned into a book and royalties started coming in, she took to the road. Her first bus quickly traded in for her second bus. And her second bus for her third. And eventually she had a cool ass double decker painted while high. Home. And somewhere in the middle of it all she ended up with a best selling young adult series about a lost little alien under the pseudonym Stella Luna.

No one knew that the books following the adventures and misadventures of Astrid Scott were written by a stoner from Idaho who traveled the United States in a double decker bus fit for the true queen of the aliens.

Now the alien queen has an alien king and they’re ready to start their family of starlight before the mothership takes them away...

#☆･ﾟ: * META ↳ every dreaм нaѕ a naмe and naмeѕ тell yoυr ѕтory

[words-writ-in-starlight]

I just went through your whole Untamed tag and your analysis and tags are SEnding me, thank you ✨✨✨✨✨✨ do you have any favourite fics about the ya city characters? I am Vibing with your takes so hard

I’VE READ A LOT OF FIC IN THE LAST COUPLE WEEKS but here are some highlights that I can think of offhand, in no particular order or organization.

I mean, always and forever chopping block, aka the most (only) Valid Xue Yang/Xiao Xingchen fic I’ve encountered thus far.  Lots and lots of trigger warnings for dubcon, gore, violence, etc, but it’s good as hell.  HARD angst.

This star trek AU is obviously a pretty hard AU, but I love the whole series and the third fic starring Song Lan and Xiao Xingchen is a really cool take on a utopian sci fi future version of the whole Xue Yang debacle.  Plot and fluff and angst.  The main fic is about A-Yuan and I had, like, multiple feelings about it.  Please read this AU.

Snowfall is a great fic about Song Lan and Xiao Xingchen’s entire relationship, I made a note on my bookmark with “this fucking killed me, lads” so, you know, it fucking killed me, lads.  Canon-typical angst.

hand in hand is a fix-it where Xiao Xingchen doesn’t immediately leave the celestial mountain and he and Song Lan reconcile, it’s extremely sweet and sincere and I really like their Baoshan Sanren.  Fluff.

As long as I’m on the subject of happy fics, Second Intentions is an angst-free modern AU where they’re fencers and Xiao Xingchen gets to punch Xue Yang in the face, if you’re in the market for that.  Fluff.  Like, no angst in sight.

Strange Darling isn’t actually about the Yi City folks, but it’s about WWX and LWJ having a conversation about Song Lan and Xiao Xingchen and it’s kind of heartwrenching.  Angst and fluff.

everything i’d never ask for is an AU where Song Lan is a prince and Xiao Xingchen is a nomad who helps get him home after he’s blinded in a fight, and also they fall in love.  Plot and fluff.

the way to purpose is part of a larger post-canon series, also very good, but specifically this one is about Song Lan getting a rabbit and a happy goddamn ending.  Angst and fluff.

Also, I’ll throw in a self-plug for how bored i’d be if you did, the fic I wrote about Song Lan’s time as a fierce corpse under Xue Yang’s control.  I would consider it sort of a spiritual relative of chopping block in terms of content and the inheritor of the lengthy trigger warning list.  HARD angst.

EDIT: we built our own house (out of sweat and dust) is another valid Xue Yang/Xiao Xingchen fic, but it’s mostly Song Lan/Xiao Xingchen and A-Qing being a badass, a canon deviation where things are...better?  YMMV but it’s amazing and I died.

#the untamed #mdzs #mo dao zu shi #xiao xingchen #song lan #fic rec #i've read...most of the song lan/xiao xingchen tag recently #i've read a L O T of fic lately #this isn't even all the stuff i read and liked it's just the stuff i either remembered or had open or found fast #please enjoy this bounty #a queue we will keep and our honor someday avenge #Anonymous #asked and answered #ADDITIONAL EDIT: guest hits are no longer registering on ao3! #as an author i can confirm that we could all use a comment in these trying times! #kick a comment to these great authors as long as you're out there!

[recentanimenews]

FEATURE SERIES: My Favorite One Piece Arc with Daniel Barnes

  I love One Piece and I love talking to people who love One Piece. And with the series going on 23 years now, there is a whole lot to talk about. As the series is about to publish its 1000th chapter, a true feat in and of itself, we thought we should reflect upon the high-seas adventure and sit down with some notable names in the One Piece fan community and chat about the arcs they found to be especially important, or just ones they really, really liked.

  Welcome to the next article in the series "My Favorite One Piece Arc!"

  My next guest in this series is Daniel Barnes, writer for the Aggretsuko comic, and his original graphic novel The Black Mage. For my chat with him, he chose the Marineford arc, in which Luffy drops into a World Government headquarters in a desperate race against time to save his "brother" Ace from execution.

  A note on spoilers: If you haven't seen the Marineford arc yet, this interview does contain major plot points. Watch the Marineford arc starting RIGHT HERE if you'd like to catch up or rewatch!

    Dan Dockery: Let’s say that for some reason, I get to the end of Impel Down, just before Luffy & Co. drop into Marineford, and I’m like “I’m done. This is it. I can’t handle any more One Piece.” In one sentence, what do you tell me to keep me going?

  Daniel Barnes: Why are you stopping before you reach the payoff of everything you’ve read so far?

  I like that! How long have you been into One Piece?

  When I first started consuming One Piece in earnest, ironically enough, I was in the Navy at the time. It was 2014, and up until that point, my only exposure had been the 4Kids dub on FoxBox.

    Nice. I love a good FoxBox reference. Was it recommended to you? Because I know that, when a lot of people start One Piece, it’s like “FINE. I’ll watch One Piece. You’ve convinced me.”

  I don’t consume anime as voraciously as I did back then. Back then, I was an anime vacuum, but I was also in this weird spot where I was semi-depressed. But someone told me, “You gotta try One Piece, it’s the best.” And my first reaction was “Umm, the art style’s kinda weird, though.” But they told me “You’ll get over it,” and the thing that made me finally take that leap was Gurren Lagann, which also had an unusual art style and then became one of my favorite things ever. So I figured I should at least give it a shot. 

  That’s something I’ve heard a few times. Because in other big series like Naruto and Bleach, the character designs are much more proportionate and straightforward. And I felt the same way...until I watched it, and realized the art style is PERFECT for what it is. So, Marineford is pretty much the halfway point of the series, with characters returning from all over the place. Were there any that you were excited to see come back?

  There’s a few of them. I always love it when Mihawk shows up, but I think the big one is Whitebeard. Because up until this point, he’s just sitting around and you know he’s a big deal but you’re always wondering why he’s a big deal. And then you find out in Marineford. I enjoy seeing characters that are kind of defined as the “power ceiling” in an anime universe get to do stuff, and it was cool to see him make the entire world quake.

    I think I called it in an article a “Be Quiet, The Parents Are Talking” character. You’ll go through Luffy getting new power-ups and increasingly strong villains and these seemingly insurmountable admirals with their elemental powers and then Whitebeard comes in, and he’s leaps and bounds above everyone. And like you said, for the most part, he’s just sitting down beforehand.

  Yeah, he’s sitting down drinking a giant gourd of sake. His name is Whitebeard, but he doesn’t have a beard. Got a real Hulk Hogan vibe to him. Who is this guy? But then you finally see him after all this time, and that’s the magic of One Piece. You see all of these things over the years and you wonder what part they’ll play and then it finally hits you and their role and strength becomes clear. 

  Marineford, obviously, is all built around Ace. And what you get out of the arc probably depends on how much you enjoy Ace’s character. How did you feel about him? Did it make you emotional at all? I know he has the one scene with Garp where they talk about finding your purpose in life, and that really got to me, even though I’m not the biggest fan of Ace.

  Okay, I think Ace looks cool and I think he has good powers, but I didn’t really care that much when he died. I didn’t really know him enough. 

    Were there any characters that you did get attached to or like a lot in Marineford? I know you said you liked Whitebeard and Mihawk, but who was your Marineford MVP? Who shines brightest among all those crazy diamonds?

  Okay, so the cop-out answer is probably Luffy. He’s one of the weakest characters there and he manages to survive and he plays such a big role by rallying everyone despite being constantly outmatched. So, objectively, Luffy. But maybe I give it to Coby, because Coby stands his ground against Akainu. He gives you hope that maybe the Marines can change their ways one day and when he refuses to move in front of an Admiral, I thought that was a real stand-out, awesome moment. 

  So Ace dies, Whitebeard just wrecks Akainu and throws him into a pit, and then, out of nowhere, Blackbeard shows up. Whitebeard beats up Blackbeard and Blackbeard’s forces kill Whitebeard. What do you think about Blackbeard as a villain? Because he’s so unlikeable. He’s underhanded, he whines whenever he gets hurt, he’s super pompous. He has cool powers, but there’s nothing cool about who he is. 

  He’s super interesting, to me. He has a mystery around him with his two Devil Fruit powers, and he doesn’t really fit into any shonen villain stereotype. He’s an inverse of Luffy, but not in all of the super obvious ways. When you first see him in Jaya, you see him start with basically nothing, and you watch him work through the system and the powers that be, just like Luffy. They’re both trying to achieve the same thing and reach the same goal. But Blackbeard’s methods are different. 

    Yeah, Luffy will punch you in the face, while Blackbeard will stab you in the back.

  And getting to see that evolution is great, because they easily could’ve just said, boom, here’s the next big bad guy and given him to you without context. But it’s like I said about One Piece earlier, where it shows you stuff over time and gets you to look forward to what will happen with it later. That’s Blackbeard’s whole appeal. 

  You talked earlier about Coby standing up to Akainu, ready to die for his beliefs. And then Shanks comes and stops the war. How did you feel about that? Because we’re all still waiting to see what his deal is (which as you said is a big part of the continuing appeal of One Piece,) but were you hyped to see him show up?

  I thought it was cool, because One Piece has done a good job of establishing him as an awesome guy. He’s a lot like Zero from Mega Man X, where he shows up at the beginning, they imply how powerful he is, they make the main character want to be as strong as him, and then they take him away and only show him sparingly. So whenever Shanks drops by, he's been handled so well that you’re just on the edge of your seat wondering what he’s gonna do.

    So, after the war is over, Jimbei has to remind Luffy that he still has things worth fighting for. And then, the timeskip. Were you aware that a timeskip was coming?

  Oh yeah. It’s kind of hard to exist on social media and not get a bunch of these little hints about what’s gonna happen. But that was my goal with One Piece for a little while: I’m gonna get to the timeskip. I have to get there. It’s coming, I know it’s coming, I don’t know when it’s coming, but I just have to reach it. 

  There are so many big moments in this arc, but looking back at it, are there any moments that stand out as prime One Piece to you? 

  The obvious one, for me, is when Luffy goes Third Gear and punches the giant out of the way. That’s so cool and such quintessential One Piece. A giant on an arena made of ice and a rubbery kid inflates his fist to make it huge and knocks him around. It’s so weird and it works. 

  ONE PIECE LIGHTNING ROUND!

  Favorite One Piece character?

  Usopp.

  Favorite One Piece villain?

  Crocodile.

  Favorite One Piece arc?

  Sabaody Archipelago.

  Which Devil Fruit would you eat if you had the choice? 

  Bellamy’s Spring Spring fruit. 

  If you had to live on any island in the One Piece universe, which would you choose?

  Does the Gran Tesoro from the Film: Gold movie count? That one’s pretty dope.

  Favorite One Piece fight?

  Luffy vs Blueno, when he first reveals the Second Gear.

  One Piece moment that made you cry the hardest?

  When the Franky Gang beats up Usopp and Nami finds him and Usopp is like “I’m useless. I can’t do anything.” Whenever Usopp gets beaten up, his nose gets all crooked and he loses teeth. There’s so many cartoon-ey visual indicators for Usopp in pain. It got me.

  One Piece moment that made you cheer the loudest?

  When Luffy punches the Celestial Dragon in the face. It’s so cathartic. 

      Stay tuned for the next installment of "My Favorite One Piece Arc" as we speak with One Piece Podcast Co-Host and storyboard artist Steve Yurko about his favorite One Piece arc: Baratie!!

      Daniel Dockery is a Senior Staff Writer for Crunchyroll. Follow him on Twitter!

  Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features.

By: Daniel Dockery

#Anime #News #Latest in Anime News by Crunchyroll!

[mediaeval-muse]

Book Review

A House of Rage and Sorrow. By Sangu Mandanna. New York: Sky Pony Press, 2019.

Rating: 2/5 stars

Genre: YA sci fi/fantasy

Part of a Series? Yes, The Celestial Trilogy #2

Summary: Esmae once wanted nothing more than to help her golden brother win the crown of Kali but that dream died with her best friend. Alexi broke her heart, and she vowed to destroy him for it. And with her sentient warship Titania beside her, how can she possibly fail? As gods, beasts, and kingdoms choose sides, Alexi seeks out a weapon more devastating than even Titania. Past lives threaten the present. Old enemies claim their due. And Esmae cannot outrun the ghosts and the questions that haunt her. What really happened to her father? What was the third boon her mother asked of Amba? For in the shadows, lurking in wait, are secrets that will swallow her whole. The House of Rey is at war. And the entire galaxy will bleed before the end.

***Full review under the cut.***

***Minor spoilers in the Character section.***

Content/Trigger Warnings: violence, blood

Overview: I really, really loved the first book in this trilogy, so I was somewhat disappointed when the sequel failed to live up to my expectations. Most of the things I loved about A Spark of White Fire were absent from A House of Rage and Sorrow: the gods were more withdrawn, there are no prophecies to avert, Esmae has chosen a side so there is no longer the view that both sides have merits (at least, not in Esmae’s mind). But by far, the things that most prevented me from loving this book was the pacing and chaotic plot structure, which I will explain in more detail below. Thus, this book only gets a 2 star rating from me.

Writing: Mandanna’s prose in A House of Rage and Sorrow is fairly similar to that of A Spark of White Fire. It’s fairly straightforward, without many flourishes or complex imagery, which can be good or bad, depending on your preference. However, because of the quick pacing in A House of Rage and Sorrow, Mandanna’s prose felt more sparse than before; because we whip through events so quickly, there is little time to establish the mood or feeling of a new location, or little time devoted to making Esmae’s emotions feel tangible. Instead, we get quick notes like “the hall is lined with bookcases” or “the ground is covered in snow.” I wanted a little more grandeur, especially in celestial places, and I wanted Esmae’s emotions to resonate a little more with the reader.

There is also a major change in that we are given Titania’s POV for several chapters in A House of Rage and Sorrow. While the idea is an interesting one, I ultimately didn’t think Titania’s perspective added much to the story. Everything Titania related could have been done from Esmae’s POV, and Titania herself didn’t have a strong enough personal arc to make me feel invested in her story apart from Esmae. I think it could have worked if Titania was doing more on the side, participating in events without Esmae’s knowledge, but for me, it seemed like this POV was included just for variety, not for any real plot or storytelling purpose.

Plot: It’s hard to describe the plot of this book other than “Esmae plans to make her brother suffer” because, at least for me, the structure felt somewhat chaotic. Events didn’t really build on each other until the last quarter or so towards the end, and the combination of a lot of twists without much foreshadowing or groundwork made the shocking parts of the story feel unearned. So much seemed to come out of nowhere that the story didn’t feel suspenseful; it was just one shocking thing after another, some of which seemed to be inserted for convenience rather than purposeful storytelling.

Also, because the pace moves so fast, there is a lot more focus on events than characterization, which made the plot feel empty because there wasn’t a lot of time to explore the emotional impacts of any given reveal. For example, Esmae doesn’t seem to grapple that much with Max’s secret identity, and nothing was shown to us that would have foreshadowed that reveal anyway (at least, I don’t think there was).

Moreover, a lot of things seemed to happen off-page and characters would tell us about them later, rather than the reader experiencing things through Esmae’s POV as they happened. As a reader, I felt like I was expected to absorb the significance of these events, but because I didn’t really see them, I didn’t quite feel like I could connect with them emotionally. For example, the stuff about Esmae’s father comes out of nowhere and happens off-page. The only reason we know about it is because Titania and Kirrin tell us (and other characters) about what happened. Also, there is a section where Esmae relates an encounter where she almost dies, but the suspense is taken out of the story because it’s told in a kind of flashback, so we already know that things turn out ok.

Overall, I would have liked a slower pace and more groundwork to be laid so that when the twists come, they are at least foreshadowed in some way. I also would have liked plot points to build on each other more clearly throughout the book, building up to the finale rather than the story floundering before finding its feet during the last quarter.

Characters: Most of the characters are the same as in A Spark of White Fire, but their motivations and emotions are little more unclear. Esmae is perhaps the most changed of all, going from conflicted in the first book to single-minded in this one. I can understand that to an extent, and I think a story about how grief and obsession with revenge can be the basis of an interesting story; however, I felt like Esmae didn’t emotionally progress in any way, and her arc felt somewhat static.

Sibylla, Esmae’s bodyguard, gets a lot more screen time in this book, and though I liked her as a character, I also think her arc could have been stronger. Sibylla’s journey was more about learning to accept and embrace good things in her life, and I think it could have been a nice counter-point to Esmae’s story, if the two arcs mirrored each other a little more.

The gods also had a little more personal drama in this book, and I really wish more was done to foreground Amba’s emotional journey. Amba is largely absent because she has to guard the prison where a great beast lives, so we don’t get to see her emotionally develop until the surprise twist with her towards the end. I would have liked to see Amba interact more with Esmae and for Mandanna to show us how the relationship between the two changes the way Amba feels about her godhood (or, at least, why Esmae is more important to Amba than her celestial family).

Other recurring characters had potential, but ultimately fell flat for me because of pacing. Max could have had a more interesting arc if his secret identity was foreshadowed more. Alexi’s regret could have been more potent (I almost wish the second POV was Alexi’s and not Titania’s) and his offer at the end of the book had been foreshadowed, rather than coming out of nowhere. The stuff with Esmae’s mother could have been foreshadowed more. Ultimately, everything moved too fast and characters felt like they were acting in service to a twisty plot more than fulfilling a personal arc.

TL;DR: A House of Rage and Sorrow suffered from poor pacing, flattened characterizations, and a chaotic plot structure. Because so much of what I loved about the first book was absent in the second, I ultimately felt disappointed, but I am looking forward to the final installment in the trilogy.

#book reviews