#because experimental technology took her son from her
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what you’re doing takes more than guts. it takes hope, and determination
and it takes love
#Thunderbirds Are Go#EOS#The Long Reach#Sally Tracy#have you ever thought about how she sticks to compasses and paper maps#because experimental technology took her son from her#and nearly killed one of her grandsons
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Qualits (pt. 1)
The wyverns of the stars who originate now at the Tree of Souls deep in the Abyss.
Prior to the tree existing, they once had a world of their own called Everveil. In this world they were the top predatory species and came in multiple different colors. Nine elements ran through their race with each soul attuned to a single element. On exceedingly rare occasions a dual element soul would be born but those were extremely unpredictable and often borderline feral without proper guidance and harmonious training for their elements to co-exist.
The elements are as follows: fire, water, earth, electricity, shadow, light, air, ice, and magic.
Those of the magic element alignment could display powers of any of the other types, though at a considerably lower power level than that of a qualit born with that element.
Over time fire element aligned qualits underwent changes in their biology to accommodate for their territory being near volcanoes. They lost their scales and gained feathers, becoming phoenixes who ceased to have a reliance on their souls rather than the soul-powered wyverns they’d once been.
On a similar note, water element aligned souls developed into their own separate species as well. They lost their wings but gained webbed feet and gills so that they could hide below the waves as sea serpents.
Now left with seven elements, the remaining qualits made cities and enacted a governing system. They lost themselves to their greed for power and desire for conquest and turned their gazes to the stars which they had once thought to have come from.
Strange dark magic begun to crop up in their pristine world, causing vast technological advances but at the cost of further eroding their values. Horrific experiments were conducted in the name of science, injecting this unknown tar-like substance into pregnant qualits and then confiscating the resulting eggs to observe the young.
One such experiment was the qualit Versila Silskiva whose father Raymos Silskiva sought a business deal with the head of the qualit government at the time. He had pledged his firstborn to become a test subject in exchange for the opportunity to work alongside the Head Councilmember Magnus Stonequil on compiling the results.
An unexpected encounter with one of the healer qualits who oversaw all aspects of injury recovery resulted in Raymos indulging his desire for control and he laid with the healer igna, who became gravid and bore a son, Nethreis.
Not wanting this illegitimate child to soil the Silskiva name, Raymos offered the child and his mother to be used in awful experimentation. Nethreis became a child soldier, taught nothing but how to kill, but escaped when he was fifteen during a cave-in Igna caused so her son could be free. Because he had unknowingly bonded himself to his mother, Nethreis took up the last name of Ignis in her memory following his time of grieving.
He became drafted into the capital city’s military and rose through the ranks swiftly due to his training. At the same time Versila broke free from the abuse she’d been under by her father and Magnus, resulting in the first manifestation of the entity known as Void who killed Raymos in an avalanche. Homeless, Versila wandered the streets looking for anyone to take pity on her as her mother, Havana Silskiva, had died not long after Raymos’s death from bereavement.
As fate had it, these two met. They had already met roughly ten years earlier when Igna had snuck Nethreis out to give him a taste of freedom and he had saved Versila from some bullies. But now they could begin a friendship and eventually romance.
They wed and were soul bonded by the Council with Magnus overseeing the union. A few months later Nethreis was dispatched to quell some unexplained qualit aggression and encountered the effects of prolonged exposure to the dark energy. This “corruption” drove their race mad, becoming feral and needing to be dealt with before innocent lives were lost.
The longer Nethreis was away on military missions, the lonelier Versila became. She had her job as a healer, something she’d wanted since she was young, but had few friends due to her hesitation to open up to others. Upon her discovery she was gravid with Nethreis’s child, she was involved in vicious rumors and forced to flee the city.
Nethreis gave chase once he returned, convinced she was unfaithful and unwilling to hear her explanation. The months of hunting down corrupted qualits had eroded his own questionable sanity and in a fit of rage he sliced through her throat, killing her but leaving her soul intact. The death was able to provide Void the energy to manifest fully as an abyssal creature and so she did, slipping away into the snow.
Nethreis, now distraught with grief, carried her soul with him until he at last could fly no longer and fell into a cavern, dying from the impact. Like Versila his soul survived and once he was assuredly dead, Void quietly stole away both souls.
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New AI tools let you chat with your dead relatives
Creepy or cool? New products that let people keep relatives "alive" via AI are proliferating — offering, say, an interactive conversation with a recently departed dad who took the time to record a video interview before he passed.
Why it matters: As interest in genealogy and ancestry proliferates, these tools let families preserve memories and personal connections through generations — even giving children a sense of the physical presence of a relative who died before they were born.
The tools are also being used to record the memories of noteworthy people: celebrities, Holocaust survivors, etc.
One such tool, StoryFile, was notably used at the late actor Ed Asner's memorial service, where mourners were invited to "converse" with the deceased at an interactive display that featured video and audio he recorded over several days before he died.
"Nothing could prepare me for what I was going to witness when I saw it," Matt Asner, the actor's son, told Axios.
The "Lou Grant" actor had used StoryFile to record an oral history; the product then employs AI to enable "conversations" based on subjects' answers to myriad questions.
At Asner's memorial, "many people just stopped by and asked a question or a couple questions," including Jason Alexander of "Seinfeld" fame, said Matt Asner, a TV and movie producer who now runs the Ed Asner Family Center, a nonprofit for people with special needs.
"Actually, you can't just ask one question," he observed. "That's the great thing about it, is it draws you in — because the personality is there."
Ed Asner, a former head of the Screen Actors Guild, had "covered everything — his childhood, work history, political history, family life," his son said.
While a few mourners were "a little creeped out by it," the conversational video was "like having him in the room," Matt Asner said. "The great majority of people were just blown away by it."
The actor Ed Asner appears on screen at his memorial service. Photo courtesy of StoryFile
The big picture: StoryFile is perhaps the most robust of a growing number of tools that help people create interactive digital memories of relatives. Many of them don't require the relative to be alive during setup.
Amazon recently showed off an experimental Alexa feature that can read books aloud in the voice of a late relative, extrapolating from a snippet of that person's recorded voice.
MyHeritage, the ancestry-tracing site, now offers "Deep Nostalgia," a tool for animating old-timey photographs of your relatives.
HereAfter AI lets you record stories about yourself and pair them with photographs — so family members can ask you about your life and experiences.
Microsoft has obtained a patent to create "chatbots" that mimic individual people (dead or alive) based on their social media posts and text messages, per the Washington Post.
How it works: With StoryFile, a user sits for a video interview and answers a series of questions.
The company produces an archive that can be watched sequentially or used in a Q&A format.
When a question is asked, the AI technology retrieves relevant video content to create an answer, picking out clips from the available footage.
The company was co-founded by oral historian Stephen Smith, who used to run Steven Spielberg's Shoah Foundation and specializes in preserving the memories of Holocaust survivors.
"In its most optimal state, the idea of StoryFile is you should be able to speak to anyone, anytime, anywhere that you wouldn’t normally have access to," Smith tells Axios.
"Maybe you don’t have access to grandma because she’s passed away, but you can still learn her story, feel a sense of connection to her."
StoryFile is also building an archive of public figures who have sat for interviews. (Try asking a question of very-much-alive William Shatner.)
Between the lines: These types of programs are already growing familiar through deepfakes, science fiction, and rock concerts that use holograms to bring back dead performers like Buddy Holly.
In the Netflix series "Black Mirror," a woman converses with a chatbot version of her late fiancé — and a grieving Canadian man did something similar with his dead girlfriend in real life, the San Fransisco Chronicle reports.
Other examples: Carrie Fisher being brought back to life as Princess Leia; chef Anthony Bourdain's AI voice being used to narrate a posthumous documentary about himself.
What they're saying: "When we learn about some very sophisticated use of AI to copy a real person, such as in the documentary about Anthony Bourdain, we tend to extrapolate from that situation that AI is much better than it really is," said Amit Roy-Chowdhury, who chairs the robotics department at the University of California, Riverside.
"They were only able to do that with Bourdain because there are so many recordings of him in a variety of situations."
"In the future, we will probably be able to design AI that responds in a human-like way to new situations, but we don’t know how long this will take."
The bottom line: These kinds of memory-preservation programs "might change the way we collect history," as Smith put it.
"We all have amazing stories to tell, and one of the big discoveries I’ve had in founding this company is how few of us truly understand the importance of our own story," he said. "We’re quite self-deprecating."
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Can we talk about a Pacific Rim AU where Steve hasn’t piloted a jaeger in years and retired from public life since his last drift partner Bucky died on a mission? And then Fury calls him back to the Shatterdome when a new invasion attacks and he meets Tony? And they’re both sad and too gay to function but there are giant robots and aliens and soulmatism? Okay, buckle up:
Steve Rogers was part of the first groups of pilots for the experimental jaeger program headed by Nick Fury, Howard Stark, and Peggy Carter and sponsored by SHIELD. It was a group created to fight the threat of alien invasions that came out of a rift in the ocean floor, monsters called kaiju. Jaegers (giant robots) were built in response to fight these threats.
It was with Steve that they discovered that it takes more than one pilot to successfully run a jaeger, and with two minds joined with the robot, it is significantly more powerful and better controlled. The catch is that the pilots must be completely in sync with one another, or “drift compatible.” By being in the drift together, they have access to each other’s thoughts, memories, intentions, and it takes a lot of trust to drift.
Steve’s co-pilot is Bucky Barnes, his childhood best friend. Together they pilot Captain America, the most advanced jaeger of the fleet at the time. They’re one of the most successful teams, with the highest kaiju kill count. They become national heroes and are often sent out to take care of the most difficult and dangerous missions.
On one such mission, everything goes horrifically wrong, and Bucky dies in action. Steve is devastated. They were still in the drift when Bucky was ripped out of the cockpit by the kaiju, and the severance of his mind where it connected with Steve’s nearly drove him crazy. It took everything he could to finish the kaiju and survive. After that mission and Bucky’s death, Steve swears he will never pilot another jaeger again, he can’t. He disappears from the public eye and lives a quiet life in the wilderness, until the day Nick Fury comes knocking on his door.
The invasions are coming in quicker succession, he’s told. SHIELD has lost many good pilots, and there are few who can do what Steve and Bucky did. He’s needed again. There’s a war to fight. It takes a lot to convince Steve, but it’s been over ten years, and while he still misses Bucky, maybe Steve can fight for the greater good again. He agrees to meet with Fury in the New York Shatterdome.
There, Steve meets young Tony Stark. He’s the son of the late Howard Stark who had co-founded the jaeger program (Howard and his wife were assassinated by anti-jaeger extremists who think the existence of jaegers invite kaiju invasions). Tony is the head of the Jaeger Advancement Research Venture Institution Syndicate and he’s rebuilding the old jaegers as well creating new ones with better weapons and defense. He created arc reactor technology to pilot new jaegers with more efficient clean energy. He got his hands on Steve’s old rig, Captain America and not only fixed her but made her a new shield with a magnetic return and better recoil as well as an updated AI system Tony built himself.
Tony is intelligent and sarcastic and ridiculous and Steve is painfully reminded of Bucky. Tony takes no shit and doesn’t pull his punches, and he’s sharp as a whip, but he’s also kind and understanding, and his big brown eyes are so sad. Steve can’t help but be drawn into Tony’s orbit but he can’t pay afford to attention to that because he needs to find a new partner and he was told Tony isn’t an option. He’s not a pilot.
Steve runs through a gamut of potential drift partners and none of them work. He’s not drift compatible with any of them. He misses Bucky, and he doesn’t think it’s possible to drift ever again. His mind is too loud to let anyone else in. Fury finds him more candidates. They aren’t compatible either.
Meanwhile Tony has been on the sidelines taking notes to collect the data. Steve has a sudden idea, and maybe maybe maybe. Why not?
He wants to try with Tony. Tony recoils. He says no.
“Apparently I'm volatile, self-obsessed, and don't play well with others.”
The newest kaiju horde they named the Chitauri are at their doorsteps. Steve still doesn’t have a partner. He’s at a point where he thinks he’s just going to get into Cap by himself. At the last moment, as he’s suiting up for the final test run, Tony comes in and says he can try to see if a drift with Steve would work, but he warns him he’s not the kind of guy to lay down on the wire for others. Steve smiles and doesn’t believe him.
They’re drift compatible. Their connection is stronger than anything Steve has ever felt and there are a few bumps in the road when they train, they often clash and they fight a lot, but this is it. This is the bond he’s looking for.
When they’re in the drift together, Steve realizes that Tony’s reservations about being a pilot are because his best friend, James Rhodes had been a jaeger pilot, now retired after his injuries. Tony had been in War Machine with Rhodes when the mission had gone horribly wrong and Rhodes was injured, resulting in the loss of the use of his legs. Afterwards, Tony became obsessed with building more powerful jaegers to keep his friends, and the world safe. Tony just wants to build suit of armor around the world.
They end up piloting Captain America together. The battle begins, and they’re part of the front line with Thor and Bruce Banner who copilot Thundering Hulk, and Natasha Romanov and Clint Barton who copilot Widow Archer. They almost all get destroyed in the first wave of the invasion. They survive, but just barely.
After Steve is knocked unconscious during the initial battle, and they’re surrounded by Chitauri with no way out, Tony ejects Steve from the cockpit in a lifepod and stares down the horde himself. He still has a nuclear payload strapped to Cap but her autopilot function is shot, and there’s only one way to get the payload close enough to have any effect. Tony knows it’s going to be a one way trip but he needs to manually pilot into the portal the Chitauri had opened in the tectonic plates deep in the ocean and detonate it there.
Somehow, Tony manages to send Captain America into the portal and just barely survives after ejecting in a lifepod at the last moment. The old jaeger is lost, but the mission is successful, and the nuclear detonation in the portal manages to close the wormhole and kill the remaining kaiju.
On the surface, Steve regains consciousness thinks he’s just lost yet another driftmate and copilot when Tony’s pod bobs up in the water. Steve rips open the door of the pod to find Tony unconscious, and he fears the worst, but Tony wakes after CPR. After Tony says, “please tell me nobody kissed me,” Steve could weep with relief.
Tony babbles, apologizing that he destroyed Cap, he’s sorry, he’ll rebuild her again, even better this time, but Steve doesn’t care. He’s just so happy Tony is alive, he hauls him in for a kiss, and for the first time in a long time, his mind quiets.
And Tony does rebuild Captain America. He adds rocket launchers, repulsors, and gold to her red, white and blue. Her new call sign is Iron Patriot.
#anyways this started on twitter but now i'm obsessed#i think tony is prob around 20 in this au#and steve is mb 30?#stony#superhusbands#stevetony#mcu#tony stark#iron man#steve rogers#captain america#pacific rim#pacific rim au#headcanons
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A Hug a Day Keeps the Akuma Away Ch.2
(A/N) Thanks to liz.r for betaing!
I originally intended for this to be a one-shot, but then I had an idea on how to continue it so... Yeah, you guys know how that goes.
AO3
Ch. 1
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“I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess that you’re the butterfly kwami,” Alya said.
The kwami nodded. “My name’s Nooroo.”
He hesitated. “Did- did you rescue my Miraculous from-”
Bubbles came out of his mouth.
“Are you alright?” Alya asked, alarmed.
Nooroo nodded. “It’s an ancient spell. We can’t reveal the identities of our wielders.”
Alya grimaced. “I can see that being useful, but it kinda sucks right now.” She let out a sigh. “I’d already guessed who had you at least. It’s the only option that makes sense.”
Nooroo tilted his head to the side, looking up at her questioningly.
She scrolled through Adrien’s instagram feed, showing Nooroo the picture of Gabriel hugging his son. “Gabriel only hugs Adrien after he almost dies… but he might ALSO do it if coerced into it. Say, by an akuma keeping his Miraculous hostage.”
Nooroo looked morose, his wings wilting. “...Yes,” he said, in the faintest voice Alya could imagine.
He was just too cute and sad. SCREW YOU, Gabriel.
Oh, what the hell.
Reaching out, she patted him on the head, using a single finger because he was so small. He… was he purring? Could butterflies purr?
Huh. Apparently if their wings vibrated quickly enough they could. Was- was that Nooroo’s equivalent of tail wagging?
Kwami biology was weird. Or butterfly kwami biology was weird. Whichever.
How could anyone mistreat this sweet little butterfly puppycat?
...Okay actually Gabriel managed to hold off on hugging his own son, so clearly he’s allergic to cuteness and sunshine.
*ping*
Oh yeah, she was in the middle of uprooting Adrien’s entire world. Damn Nooroo’s distracting adorableness.
What do you mean? Adrien typed back.
She took in a deep breath, exhaling slowly. No going back.
Just a couple minutes ago, I found a brooch in my pocket, one I’ve never seen before. I must’ve snatched it while I was Lady Wifi. I pulled it out and well - she snapped a pic of the butterfly kwami, who looked a little less sad after the petting, looking around curiously at her room instead - you can see the result .
...Did the brooch change the color of your wall? Or do something to your bed? Sorry, I’ve never been in your room, I can’t tell.
She blinked. Uh, can’t you see the-
Wait.
The pic she sent.
She’d been sure she’d centered the shot on Nooroo - she’d used her phone camera often enough, she barely needed to look at the camera screen to know what it’d show.
Yet, he was entirely absent from the photo she sent Adrien.
Experimentally, she tried to take a picture of Nooroo again, paying close attention this time so she could be absolutely certain she didn’t miss.
And stared.
She moved her phone closer to him.
She changed the angle.
She even shook her phone (which she knew wouldn’t help, but it made her feel better, dammit!)
“Uh… Nooroo? Are you a vampire kwami?”
“Nooo? Fangg was in a different box,” he said, puzzled.
...She’d unpack that later. “Then do you know why you’re not showing up on-camera?”
“Oh! Kwamis can’t be seen by technology.”
Good to know. Inconvenient right now though.
Never mind, Nooroo says that kwamis can’t be seen by tech.
WHAT?!
Oh right, Adrien would have no idea about Nooroo or kwamis. He’d never used a Miraculous before. Kwamis give Miraculous holders their power. Nooroo is- was- Hawkmoth’s kwami.
“And never will be his again, if I have anything to say about it,” she muttered.
She waited a minute.
Then another.
And another.
Before, Adrien had been reading her messages instantly. Now? Now it’d been several minutes and her previous message was still unread.
Please, please let Adrien just have needed to reply to someone else. To just have been interrupted. It’d only been a few minutes, it didn’t mean much, right?
Unless Gabriel heard all the pings and confiscated Adrien’s phone-
No. Don’t think like that. If she started down that road she’d start catastrophizing, and she knew how much that didn’t help, what with helping Marinette with her anxiety.
* knock knock *
Her blood froze. Slowly, she inched to the side, fumbling for some sort of weapon.
There weren’t any.
Note to self: get a baseball bat. Or a knife. Or a shuriken.
Black cat ears twitched.
She let out a sigh of relief. Then frowned. “Chat Noir? How’d you get here so fast?”
“I- uh- I was visiting with Adrien! You know, just checking up on a lonely civilian!” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “Especially with his father…” his face turned stormy. “You meant it, about Nooroo and the Miraculous?”
Nooroo flitted into view. “Chat Noir!” he said excitedly. He drooped a moment later. “I’m sorry, I didn’t want to fight against you, but-”
Chat gave the little kwami a reassuring, but strained smile. “It’s alright, I know you didn’t have a choice. No one under his control does.” He muttered the last part bitterly.
“You’ve got a pretty good idea what he’s like, huh?” Alya asked softly.
Chat’s eyes darted around the room. “Uuuuuhhh…”
“What with being Adrien’s friend,” she continued. “I’m glad he has someone who can visit him when he’s locked up. Not even Nino can do that, as much as he’d like to.”
“Yeah, sure!” Chat said hastily, rubbing the back of his neck. “That’s definitely why I know what he’s like.”
She narrowed her eyes, but let it go for now. There were more important concerns than Chat Noir’s strange evasiveness. “Did Adrien seem okay?” she asked urgently. “Do you think he’s in any danger? I’d hope he’d be safe from his own father, but…”
Chat grimaced. “But I wouldn’t count on it,” he said, continuing Alya’s thought. “Hawkmoth’s attacked plenty of times when he knew his son was in the line of fire. Don’t worry, I moved Adrien somewhere safe. He’s shaken, but he’ll manage.”
She let out a sigh of relief. One problem taken care of.
“Did you contact Ladybug yet?” she asked. “To figure out a game plan?”
He shook his head, looking faintly embarrassed. “We’ve suspected Gabriel before,” he admitted. “It didn’t pan out. He was akumatized later that day, so we crossed him off the suspect list. I wanted to make sure you were right before calling her over.”
She frowned. “But he has an accomplice. He could’ve gotten Mayura to akumatize him.”
He made a face. “This was before we knew about her. We just… never revisited the theory.”
“Why’d you suspect him in the first place?”
Chat shook his head. “I didn’t. Ladybug did. She said she had proof, but she couldn’t show it to me. It did make sense though, even without it. He’s alone often, he could easily pause his work to go and prey on people’s sadness and anger. Plus…” He pulled out his stick, opening a screen. “He has this whole butterfly motif going on. Like, on these shoes he had Adrien model, for instance.”
Her eyebrows shot up. Sure enough, there was a highly stylized butterfly. “You know, normally I’d say this was a point against him being Hawkmoth,” she said. “But considering how over-the-top Hawkmoth is, I could see him doing that. Wouldn’t have pegged Gabriel for the type, though.”
“Yeah well,” Chat said bitterly. “There’s a lot of things I never would’ve thought he’d do.”
“Do you have any idea who his accomplice might be?” she asked, changing the subject. She had an idea, but best to get a second opinion.
His eyes dropped to the floor. For the first time, he looked more sad than angry. “Nathalie, it has to be,” he whispered. “She’s the only one who makes sense. Gabriel doesn’t have a lot of visitors, and he’s not exactly the most trusting person in the world.”
“She wouldn’t turn him in? I mean, I guess she’d need proof…”
He shook his head. “I think she and Gabriel… they seem closer than just employer and employee. Nathalie practically raised Adrien since M-” he hesitated for just a moment, “my friend’s mother fell ill. He thinks of- thought of- Nathalie as family already. He was ready to welcome her as his stepmother.”
She winced.
“That’s not going to happen now,” Chat said, his voice steely. “Not after all this.”
Yeah, with Nathalie-
Wait.
Nathalie was Mayura.
Alya had the Butterfly Miraculous.
She didn’t have the Peacock.
If Gabriel had any clue that she was the reason his Miraculous was missing-
“Chat, we need to leave,” she said urgently. “NOW.”
He looked at her, confused. “What’s wrong?”
She opened her mouth-
*swoosh*
Something flew through the window.
Instinctively Chat rushed in front of her, extending his stick.
And relaxed.
“Buginette!” “Ladybug!”.
“Geez, you scared me to death,” Alya complained, collapsing onto her bed. She frowned. “How’d you know to come here? I thought Chat hadn’t called you.”
“Oh-uh- well-” Ladybug stammered. “I- I was just on patrol and saw Chat come in here, figured I’d see what he was up to.”
Chat looked hurt. “You started patrolling without me?”
“Sorry Kitty,” she said soothingly. “I just needed a little alone time. I was going to call you once I’d gotten it out of my system. Then I saw you enter Alya’s window and well, I didn’t have to.”
He gave her a small smile. “It’s alright, I know what that’s like. Jumping around Paris, feeling the wind in your hair… it makes all your problems seem small, insignificant. Or at least, they can’t catch up to you, not when you’re free-falling off the Eiffel Tower.”
She might need to talk with Chat after this was over. Or talk to Ladybug about talking to Chat. That didn’t bode well.
She glanced at Ladybug, gauging her reaction to Chat’s words, and frowned. The superheroine hadn’t changed expression at all.
Maybe she was just overthinking things. If even his partner wasn’t worried, then it must not be a big deal.
Now if only she could turn off the part of her brain that kept screaming that he needed hugs. Must be left over from Adrien. Not everyone has neglectful supervillain parents, brain.
Ladybug’s eyes drifted towards her hands. Self-consciously, Alya stuck them in her pockets.
The cool stone of the Butterfly Miraculous met her touch.
“We know who the Butterfly wielder is.”
Ladybug didn’t even blink. “Who?”
“It’s Gabriel, Milady,” Chat Noir stated, sounding as dead and crumbling as a cataclysmed object. “You were right all along.”
“How do you know? How can you be sure?” Ladybug demanded.
“Last time, you didn’t find this,” Alya took her hand out of her pocket, slowly uncurling her fingers.
The Butterfly Miraculous sat innocently in her palm.
Ladybug’s eyes fixated on the gem. “I should take that,” she said, reaching out for it. “I can take it somewhere safe.
Instinctively Alya drew it close to herself.
“I…”
No.
No, she’d already done this.
When Ladybug first gave her the Fox Miraculous, she’d been reluctant to hand it over, for her time in the spotlight to be done. She thought she could help more as a superhero than as merely a reporter on the sidelines.
In the process, she came close, so very, very close, to breaking the trust Ladybug had in her.
She didn’t want to do that again.
Slowly, she relaxed. Maybe she’d be able to help with the fight as Rena Rouge, or spread the news of Hawkmoth’s identity as Alya Cesaire, Ladyblogger extraordinaire. Maybe she’d just get to comfort Adrien after his whole world has crumbled. She’d have a role, whatever the case. She’d get to help, to be important. She would matter.
As she slowly extended her arm again, she glanced at Nooroo.
He hovered in the corner of the room, not far from where he hid after Ladybug launched herself into Alya’s room, frowning questioningly at the superheroine.
He hadn’t reacted that way to Chat.
*beep beep*
Chat’s eyebrows shot up. He pulled out his still-beeping stick. “Hello?”
Ladybug made a grab for the Butterfly Miraculous.
NOPE NOPE NOPE.
Alya scrambled backwards, fumbling for the doorknob.
“Chat Noir? What’s wrong? I saw news reports of you racing across the city. Is something wrong?”
Chat grabbed Ladybug’s arm as she tried to make a grab for Alya.
Or rather, the Ladybug Impostor’s arm.
“I’m at Alya’s. Come NOW,” Chat said curtly.
“Chat, WHAT-” He ended the call, extending his stick to its usual combat length.
“You want the Butterfly Miraculous, faker?” he spat. “Come and get it.”
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1/4 the thing about Donna is that it was after Claudia died that she was probably vulnerable enough to fall for the 'I adopt you as my child so now you have a family and i'll give you a 'gift'' shtick of Miranda's. Claudia died in 1996 aged 9 and was either her sister or her child. The Gardener says 'Mistress Donna' and 'Miss Claudia' so she was already head/last heir of the Beneviento estate.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that Claudia's death must have been the final hit for Donna. Losing her parents was one thing, but it's something all of us will have to deal with in our lives at some point (hopefully a late one). Losing a younger sibling/child when they're 9 is undoubtedly tragic. Considering Claudia's age I immediately assumed she was Donna's younger sister; I saw Donna as quite young herself, unless she was super young when she had Claudia, if Claudia is her child. But in any case, her death must have caused her even more distress, so it was the perfect situation for Miranda to swoop in and claim herself as Donna's "mother". Especially considering that Miranda's "gift" allowed Donna to create the perfect friend; Angie, the doll that was gifted to her by her father, and whose personality she could shape exactly the way she wanted.
2/4 as for nonaging+alcina, i raise you: her daughters. 3 young women were experimented on w cadou and as a result they were 3 amnesiac carnivorous swarms of flies that went back to looking pre-experiment. Then got adopted. And stayed looking like that for years up to the game's events. As for Heisenberg, he says 'decades of being forced to serve her' so shouldn't he have said 'my whole life' (he's dramatic/showman enough that he would have) or reference to lifelong slavery or 'MM raised us'?
Good point about the daughters! I hadn't even thought of them! But yeah iirc one of the diary notes you find in the game is dated at around 1958 or something, and it mentions Daniela, so all three of them were definitely there at least since then, non-aging and all. And I think though Alcina ended up adopting them, Miranda also oversaw the experimentation on them, so it's a good point towards proving that symbiosis with the Cadou pauses one's aging completely.
And yeah, Heisenberg would definitely be as dramatic as to say something like that, especially considering how oversharing he was about everything. It was like he was seeing Ethan run around his factory, being the only intelligent creature around that wasn't on Miranda's side, and he just unloaded all his burden because Ethan was the very first to be able to comprehend it and not rat him out to Miranda (who, ironically enough, already knew all about Heisenberg's wish to rebel against her). And Ethan was just like "Dude I honestly don't give a shit" XD
But yeah the way he says "She took me. Took us. To be her children." He sounds disgusted and like, he's rightfully so but the kind of disgust fits a bit more the idea of Miranda kidnapping a grown-ass man, experimenting on him with the hope of reviving her daughter through him, and when that failed she just claimed him as her "son". It sounds more like that and less like a rebellious son who, after growing up, realized what a fucked-up caretaker he had as a child.
3/4 MM had established herself/met Spencer/forbade people from going+getting anything from outside the village by the late 50s/early 60's that's why there are trucks and tvs and radios; and the Duke being the one to sell newspapers to villagers + being Karl's informant about bsaa+the stuff that happened in america (this is from the game director Sato who said heisenberg isn't a nazi and the fanservice of 'boulder punching asshole' here polygon . c o m / interviews / 22453564)
4/4 and now that i think more on it, MM just grabbed the last descendants of the most historically powerful houses, literally the founding ones (except alcina) to have even more influence within the village huh. timeline is wonky for sure. but then again all re canon is a bit wonky. Tumblr pls don't eat this one.
I honestly fucking love the design in the village because it's so well made to showcase that Miranda had cut off any connection from outside and inside the village. People on the outside didn't know it existed (aside from whoever it was in BSAA who made sure the mold man and his mold daughter would be relocated in driving distance to it and its leader with an obsession over a certain megamycete), and people on the inside were stuck with technology of mid-20th century and zero contact with the outside world. Even the Duke seems to adapt to it style-wise even though he obviously can contact the outside world.
And yeah, from the very little we see of the villagers, they seem to have felt very obedient to the Lords and Miranda, even though people like Elena were terrified of Castle Dimitrescu (with good reason!). And that probably was because Miranda made sure to have control over the right influences in the village.
Also, I love the phrase "the fanservice of "boulder-punching asshole'". Out of context it just sounds even more hilarious.
Thank goodness that I've taken to saving every ask in a txt bc my memory is bad. Next time I'll send shorter stuff like the friendly reminder+oppy+ethan and the hammer thing tho. You shouldn't have given me permission to ramble, now your inbox is mine, nyehehehe /joking
Honestly, I love getting your messages! I have a quick scroll through my activity every morning before work and I smiled every time I saw the notifications of your messages! Feel free to make yourself at home in my inbox :D
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This week on Great Albums: a Great Album that your average rock critic would actually agree with me about! Find out how Kate Bush got her groove back with her fifth LP, Hounds of Love, and whether she ever came down from that hill. Full transcript below the break!
Welcome to Passionate Reply, and welcome to Great Albums! Ever since I first conceived the idea of Great Albums, I’ve always intended it to reflect nothing other than my own personal “canon”--not necessarily a list of albums that were influential, successful, or acclaimed by anybody’s standards but my own. But in this installment, I’m making a somewhat uncharacteristic move, and diving into an album that really doesn’t need me to advocate for it: Hounds of Love, by Kate Bush, often considered Bush’s greatest masterpiece--if not one of the greatest albums of all time.
Released in 1985, Hounds of Love was Bush’s fifth studio LP. Her career had started off surprisingly strong in 1977, with the release of her debut single “Wuthering Heights,” written when Bush was only 19 years old. With a high-concept theme, based around the titular novel by Emily Brontë, it would set the template for much of Bush’s subsequent career: irreverently eccentric, high-concept art-pop with the intensely personal passion of a singular singer-songwriter. But just how much patience for that sort of thing does the general public have, beyond letting the occasional “Wuthering Heights” through as a sort of novelty hit? Bush’s subsequent work in the early 1980s met with inconsistent reception, with her fourth LP, 1982’s The Dreaming, marking a particularly low point. The first album that Bush produced all by herself, The Dreaming took even more radical creative liberties, pushing her sound into increasingly experimental territory.
Music: “Get Out Of My House”
Following the fairly cold reception of The Dreaming, Bush took several years to produce her next album, but it would prove to be the one that redeemed her career, and arguably turned her into a bigger star than ever before. Hounds of Love managed to stay true to the core principles of the Bush aesthetic: moody and introspective, full of rich and complex narratives, as well as musical risk-taking. But it honed and refined that sound into something that was also remarkably pop.
Music: “Running Up That Hill”
“Running Up That Hill” was one of the biggest hits of Bush’s career, and arguably dethroned even “Wuthering Heights” as her signature song. I think the secret to its success is its ability to balance Bush’s experimental impulses with an intuitive, deep-felt emotional quality that makes her best work resonant in an accessible way. On paper, “Running Up That Hill” is as high-concept as anything else in Bush’s catalogue--a song about making a deal with God to swap sexes with your lover, and feel what life is like in another body? But at the same time, the song has an ability to “work” even if you don’t know all of that. Who hasn’t longed for a way to bargain with supernatural forces, for a chance at the impossible? There’s a certain applicability to its themes, which I think is a chief reason why it’s inspired so many covers and reimaginings over the years. But even when one listens to the original, the stately washes of digital synthesiser and the powerful conviction that propels Bush’s vocals make it easy to sympathize with. It feels grounded and physical, rooted in the most carnal aspect of the human body. Positioned as the opening track of the album, “Running Up That Hill” feels like an obvious lead single--in the best way possible. But it’s worth noting that not everything on the album is quite so radio-friendly.
Music: “Cloudbusting”
Perhaps one of Bush’s most compelling narratives, “Cloudbusting” is also, ostensibly, fairly high-concept, portraying a heavily fictionalized episode from the life of Wilhelm Reich. A controversial figure both in life and legacy, Reich is best remembered for his work in psychology, heavily influenced by the spectre of Sigmund Freud. But “Cloudbusting” focuses on his later-life fascination with the physical sciences, and his belief that a mystical energy called “orgone” was responsible for both human emotional woes as well as disturbances in the Earth’s atmosphere. Reich attempted to develop a machine that could manipulate this energy, and hence achieve the longtime dream of technological weather control, but there’s no evidence his “cloudbuster” really worked, or that there’s any such thing as “orgone.” But Bush’s “Cloudbusting,” and its accompanying music video, portray Reich as a tragic hero, silenced by government authorities who sought to destroy what they couldn’t understand, conflating his work with cloudbusters with his censure by the FDA for his questionable medical devices.
The song was inspired chiefly by the memoirs of Wilhelm Reich’s son, Peter, with Bush explicitly portraying Peter’s naive childhood perspective on his father, and that does allow for some substantial nuance here...but at some point we have to ask ourselves what responsibility an artist has to the truth. “Cloudbusting” is the musical equivalent of a film that’s “based on a true story,” and I see no reason why music can’t be just as capable of spreading misinformation as the Oscar-bait biopics of Hollywood. Just how accurate, or how beautiful, does a work of art need to be, for us to allow a bit of playing loose with the facts for the sake of a great story?
Setting aside these quandaries presented by its subject matter, “Cloudbusting” undoubtedly delivers musically. Across its sprawling runtime, it develops and earns a sense of grandeur, building from its infectious percussion and cresting with Bush’s fragile, but assertive prayer: “I just know that something good is going to happen.” If you listen closely to the percussion tracks on the album, you’ll notice that there’s no cymbal or high-hat utilized anywhere, which helps give the album its particular hazy, meandering ambiance.
That effect is perhaps even more pronounced on the second side of the album. Hounds of Love is divided quite sharply into two sides. The first side, also sub-titled Hounds of Love, opens with “Running Up That Hill,” and finishes with “Cloudbusting,” which serves as something of a bridge between the two, combining a singable hook and a pop-like verse-chorus structure with a taste for more visionary narrative. While the first side is home to all four of the album’s singles, the second side, sub-titled The Ninth Wave, strays much further away from the standard expectations of pop.
Music: “Under Ice”
Going by the tracklisting, there are seven tracks that make up *The Ninth Wave,* though their smooth transitions and willful defiance of verse/chorus structure create a seamless oratorio or song cycle feel, not unlike many of the great “album sides” of the prog tradition. The Ninth Wave also departs from the feel of the first side in its instrumentation. While the Hounds of Love side has its fair share of exotic instruments, such as a balalaika on “Running Up That Hill” and a didgeridoo on “Cloudbusting,” The Ninth Wave is more richly baroque, with elements like that jarring violin on “Under Ice.” As it progresses, the breadth of timbres increases, climaxing in the Celtic-inspired “Jig of Life.”
Music: “Jig of Life”
The explosion of folkish, backward-looking sounds of “Jig of Life” and “Hello World,” with their fiddles, whistles, and full choir, represent its protagonist’s return to the realm of the living, after the trauma represented by earlier tracks like “Under Ice.” The abstract, though affecting, narrative presented by The Ninth Wave seems to be a tale of death and rebirth, with a narrator who drowns themselves, only to be reborn--whether literally revived from a failed suicide attempt, or metaphysically reincarnated after a passage through the realm of the dead.
Much more has been written about the themes of *The Ninth Wave* than I’m getting into here, but suffice it to say that many people consider it the relative highlight of the album. But I think it’s worth questioning that a little bit, and taking the time to look at Hounds of Love a bit more holistically. Just because the first side is a bit less overtly experimental doesn’t mean it doesn’t have just as much to offer, artistically, or that it isn’t a part of what makes this album truly great. At the end of the day, I think we can probably agree that far fewer people would have ever heard The Ninth Wave if it weren’t for those more accessible singles on side one, moving copies of the record and adding to Bush’s widespread acclaim. Without “Running Up That Hill,” Hounds of Love might have gone down in history as a fairly niche cult classic like The Dreaming, instead of the era-defining album that it got to become.
On the cover of Hounds of Love, we see an image of Bush reclining and embracing two dogs--who were, in fact, her own pets. The image’s saturation in purplish pink and Bush’s perhaps sultry expression combine to create an impression of traditional femininity, which resonates with the album’s themes of gender and sensuality. Framed in by large white borders, we might read the composition of the cover as evocative of a personal locket or memento, a sort of furtive glimpse into Bush’s more private or intimate essence, fitting for the introspective and emotional focus of much of the music. This “framing” is perhaps also evocative of the idea of the domestic sphere of life--and hence, again, of femininity.
While the title track of the album portrays the “hounds of love” as figures of menace, who are said to “chase” after its narrator, the submissive and comfortable-looking canines portrayed in the cover art seem like a foil to that idea. In the history of European art, dogs are often used as symbols of fidelity, particularly in the context of romance. Titian’s Venus of Urbino, painted in the 1530s, is often considered the progenitor of the Western “nude” as an archetype. Alongside the titular goddess, paragon of eroticism and the feminine, the painter has also included a lapdog, peacefully dozing beside her. It’s tempting to see the composition of the cover of Hounds of Love as doing something similar, invoking confident sensuality alongside a symbol of faithfulness to portray the essence of idealized love.
After the release of Hounds of Love, Bush would once again take several years to produce her next LP, 1989’s The Sensual World. More closely related to The Ninth Wave than the A-side of Hounds of Love, it was nonetheless another commercial and mainstream success for the artist.
Music: “The Sensual World”
From the mid-90s to the mid-00s, Bush took an extended hiatus from music, focusing instead on her family and her personal life. Despite uncertainty surrounding the future of her career, she would eventually return to the public spotlight in the 21st Century, and remains active, if somewhat intermittently, to the present day. At this point, it’s safe to say that Bush has a fairly enviable position, having lived long enough to become a cultural institution, and able to bask in the cult following her unmistakable and distinctive work has earned her. For as much as I’ve praised the more commercial side of Hounds of Love in this piece, I still believe in the power of the truly unfettered creative soul, and I’m still happy for Bush that she’s achieved that kind of freedom.
My favourite track from either side of Hounds of Love would have to be “The Big Sky.” In the context of the album, it stands out for its rousing, triumphant crescendo of energy--a marked difference from the languid, introspective sensibility that dominates most of the material. And it manages that without bringing the cymbals back, either! Thematically, its emphasis on weather and the sky prefigures that of “Cloudbusting,” perhaps providing a more hopeful and naive vision of what weather can do, which resists being “clouded” by political drama. That’s all I have for today--as always, thank you all for listening!
Music: “The Big Sky”
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Mega Man 3 Electric Heart Styled.
Now we're on to Mega Man 3, and this time we introduce a new possibility to redesigns: Gender swapping. There are just way too many guys, I don't think anyone would mind if I made a few girls here and there.
Proto Man
Proto man, otherwise known as Blues, is Dr Light's first creation. He is the literal first robot master ever built, and his blueprints serve as the base for almost every robot master that followed him. When Dr. Light was revealing him to the public for the first time, Dr. Wily detonated an explosive at the convention, resulting in many injuries and the disappearance of Blues... While Light thought at first his son had died... the heavily damaged Blues was actually wandering around the outskirts of town, with no recollection of how he had gotten there or what had happened... and he was eventually discovered by Wily, who took advantage of the robot's amnesia. Proto man was then modified for combat, and his damaged core was replaced with an inefficient and possibly unstable nuclear core, resulting in buster shots somewhat similar to atomic fire, but not as strong. Under the guise of "Break man" Proto man willingly helped Wily, as he was led to believe he was protecting the world from Mega man. Luckily, Blues learned the truth and he slowly started to recover his memory... Though he does aid the right side now, he never stays at Light labs for too long. He loves his father and his new little siblings to death, but he fears Wily has rigged his power core to explode if Light were to replace it, which is why he avoids maintenance unless he really needs it. While wandering, he can often be heard whistling, or can be found spray painting one of Wily's abandoned fortresses. Oddly enough, he would become somewhat decent friends with Bass, despite the two having a fairly rocky start.
Needle Man
Needle man sometimes seems very cold and sharp with his words, but really he's just an introvert who values his alone time, which he often spends by knitting or sewing. Built through the combined efforts of Light and Wily, he uses his sharp needles to whittle down tough metallic ores into manageable pieces, namely on one of the mining planets gathering materials for building Gamma. Though when Wily created a plan to steal Gamma, Needle man was brainwashed into fighting for Wily against his will. Needle man is weak to the Magnet missile, since his armor and needles are made of highly magnetic metals, and in a similar sense to Metal man, Needle man's Element is Undead. Not only are needles deadly and sharp, but they even have their own dedicated phobia.
Magnet Man
Magnet man was built for sorting through scrap and recovering recyclable materials on the mining planets, to reduce waste and increase efficiency. His magnetic fields are very powerful, which is why Wily didn't hesitate to brainwash Magnet man on his quest to steal Gamma. Magnet man values his spiritual and physical health, despite being a robot, so he loves massages and Shaitsu therapy. He can also be found sticking to metallic ceilings taking naps. He dislikes Disk based media, because he is unable to touch it without accidentally damaging it. His Element is Tech, and his weakness is Spark shock, due to the electric charge disrupting the balance of his magnetism.
Gemini Woman
Despite Wily's arguments, Gemini woman is the second female robot master every created. Named after the twins constellation, she is able to create holographic clones of herself with varying levels of detail, and she can use her Gemini laser to mine tough crystalline minerals on the mining planet she was stationed at. Though Wily didn't want her to be a girl, her abilities were still useful to him, so she was brainwashed. Gemini woman is friendly, but very vain, and is said to use her holograms to admire herself when she has no access to a mirror. She is deathly afraid of Snakes, but still gets along with her sister Snake woman. Search snake is able to tell the difference between her and her clones, which is why it's her weakness. Her element is Light, because of her abilities utilizing holograms and lasers.
Hard Man
Big, buff, and made with thick ceratanium armor, Hard man uses his immense weight as a ground leveling robot, mak8ng mining and construction easier on the mining planets. He is able to shoot his heavy fists as projectiles, an attack called the Hard Knuckle, which Wily created after brainwashing him. Hard man is a fair minded and honest individual who loves good food, though he often finds himself disappointed in some of the decisions his little sister Snake woman makes. His Element is Earth, and his weakness is Gemini laser, as it's the only weapon capable of piercing through his thick paramagnetic armor.
Top Man
Top man was built with experimental auto-balancing technology and wheels in his feet so he could explore new territories. He is able to spin at high speeds, but only for short times as he can sometimes feel motion sick. Wily definitely brainwashed Top man, though no one is sure why he had Top man take over a greenhouse. He loves to dance and rollerskate, and he absolutely loves new years, as his ability to produce you tops from his head makes him popular. After the events of 3, he even left exploration behind in favor of working at an amusement park. Due to his toy based theme, his Element is Magic, and his weakness is Hard Knuckle as it knocks him off balance.
Snake Woman
Snake woman was also made for exploration, though she specializes in areas that are extremely steep or heavily forested due to her insane climbing ability, and her Search snakes, which slither across the ground and up walls as little surveillance drones. Again, Wily does not like that she was built as a girl, but he still found use in her abilities, especially when she showed interest in using her braid as a whip, and martial arts, primarily Viper style kungfu. Snake woman is very mischievous and flirtatious, she loves to tease and mess with others just for fun (Toad man being a favorite target bot necessarily because she's interested, but because she finds his reactions cute), which Hard man often gets disappointed in. She shows great interest in real snakes and would love a pet Boa, but she's terrified of Slugs. Being inspired by constricting snakes that are good at climbing and thrive in jungles, her Element is Life, though since the Needle cannon is good at pinning her down, it serves as her weakness.
Spark Man
Spark man's job is to manage the electricity on the various mining planets and ensuring that no blackouts occur. Since he's the only robot master with this job out on the colonies, he is able to produce three times the amount of power as Elec man, which is why Wily didn't hesitate to brainwash him. Spark man loves electric eels and catfish, but even more than that he loves his brothers and sisters being able to keep him company. He can be a bit clingy, and he really hates being alone for too long. He's weak to the Shadow blade, in reference to cutting electric wires, and his Element is Tech. Electricity technically isn't tied to a single element in Skylanders logic, so his Tech typing comes from the fact his body is shaped like a Spark plug, a common component to machines.
Shadow Man
No one knows exactly where Shadow man comes from, but he's possibly of extraterrestrial origin. Wily discovered this robot in ancient ruins, which would later be revealed to be where the Stardroids and Ra moon resided. Since this robot was in such a state of disrepair, Wily patched him up and added a ninja motif, though Shadow man requested not to be catalogued as a Wily robot when he was repaired. Shadow man is a fast learner, and he was able to learn ninja techniques from simulations alone because of this trait. He can seem cold and merciless at times, but he is loyal to the LWN robots, as they treat him as their brother despite his alien origins, and it would end up being him who helped Mega man craft a weapon that could damage the Stardroids.
Doc Robot
While these robots have no advanced personality or thinking ability like Robot masters, they are able to copy the abilities and combat patterns of previous robot masters from data preinstalled by Wily. While Wily was getting Gamma ready for world domination, he sent the Doc robots out after Mega Man to stall for time.
#megaman#megaman 3#protoman#needleman#magnetman#geminiman#hardman#topman#snakeman#shadowman#docrobot#megaman au#electric heart
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Attention students! Two new students have been permitted by their parents to attend Auradon Prep! Please welcome:
Liam Morris, son of Maddy & Rhydian Morris!
After the secret was revealed, it took only a short while for the news to reach Maddy, her parents, and Rhydian, in their wild pack in Canada. Because once they knew the world knew about them, they knew they couldn’t hide forever. Not anymore.
When Maddy and Rhydian learned they were expecting a cub of their own, they agreed to do what they thought was best for him: return to the human world, and live their lives there. The family settled down in a small town in Ontario, slowly readjusting to lives as tame wolfbloods. And despite all the difficulties of relearning everything they once knew, they managed, and they made a safe home for their son in a world that once upon a time hadn’t ever known about them.
Liam grew up extremely close with his parents, for all of his childhood being the one in charge of both them and his maternal grandparents during full moons and blood moons. He was generally mild-mannered, agreeable, though he carried some minor tendencies of his father and sometimes forgot his manners. Until, however, his first change. A wolfblood’s first change changes who they are, after all. He grew into his full self, a slightly rebellious, often snarky though well-meaning, loud, outgoing, and - to put it bluntly - slight asshole of a teenager.
He was raised immersed in both human culture and wolfblood tradition, close with both his mother’s parents and his father’s English foster parents - though he never was very close with Rhydian’s biological parents. While he learned as much as he could from Ceri about wolfblood history and tradition, about wolfblood medicine and healing, about Eolas and ansin and other wolfblood abilities, he couldn’t bring himself to be close to her like he was with Grandma Emma, or Grammy Vaughn.
Upon discovery of Auradon’s tried-and-true werewolves, human-wolf creatures that weren’t wolfbloods but were so, so similar, Liam just couldn’t resist it. He had to see it for himself, had to explore it, because it was uncharted territory for his pack, for his kind. And if he was going to be an alpha one day, he had to learn to lead by seeing how other packs functioned, too.
Angie Doppler, daughter of Amelia & Delbert Doppler!
Mute from infancy, Angie grew up learning how to use her expressions to talk, until she received the gloves and wrist bracers that would change her life.
At 8 years old, Angie was given experimental bracers that could log her movements and sign language, then interpret it to text using a holographic display when she holds up her arms. She helped develop the technology even as a child and to this day uses them to interpret for her in her life.
Much like her mother, Angie is a confident leader, who wants to be a captain someday and has the energy and spunk to match the title’s nature. She can be very sassy, with significant attitude and she hates being called cute.
She is closest to her twin brother, Jared, especially after he lost his hearing when the pair got older, and would do anything for him. She refers to him as her voice, and he refers to her as his ears.
Flynn and Destini, you have 24 hours to send in your blog URL! The follow notice will be posted as soon as possible! Thank you for applying, and welcome to the group!
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(logan lerman, 28, he/him) - are you ready to fight for your world, HAROLD OSBORN? through everything that’s happened in the world, you’re known to go by HARRY/SPIDER-MAN (BEGRUDGINGLY) and have been said to be LOYAL and QUICK-TEMPERED. over the past three years, you could be located at EARTH-2 and word out there is that your abilities include SPIDER-THINGS (INCLUDING ORGANIC WEBS) & GENIUS LEVEL INTELLECT. seems like that’s going to help you survive this apocalypse.
I will be taking most of his background/history from the 2018 Spider-Man game, with personality elements from other canons!
Background ;;
Harry was born to Norman and Emily Osborn and had a relatively happy childhood until his mother died. He absolutely adored her and stuck close to her as soon as he was old enough to do so, and losing her was not only incredibly hard for him but left him incredibly lonely
With Norman being such a busy distant, borderline abusive father, Harry largely grew alone until he began at school. Fortunately he became close friends with Peter Parker when he was younger and eventually the rest of the future Spidey Gang. They remained friends through their childhood and teen years
Both his friends and their families - namely Peter’s aunt - helped Harry feel that gap that had been left by his father’s negligence, giving him the love and care and support he needed most of the time, but he still grew up effectively without parents.
Unfortunately, Harry inherited the same genetic illness that took his mother’s life - Oshtoran Syndrome. The complications began in his teen years, but Harry did his best to hide them from his friends to save them from the pain he’d felt watching his mother be claimed by the same illness when he was a child
He used easy excuses like being busy with school, college, and eventually his Oscorp work, or claiming hangovers from partying to avoid suspicion when he was unwell
During his work with Oscorp he was determined to carry on his mother’s work, hoping to become an environmental attorney. He used his time, resources, and intelligence to try and better the city via Oscorp
Eventually his condition became critical and Harry couldn’t continue on without deteriorating rapidly as his mother had. Norman suggested they attempt an experimental treatment to which Harry agreed and, planting the cover story that Harry would be managing Oscorp’s European operations, he was put into a type of stasis to undergo the treatment. None of his friends knew at this point that he was sick, or where he was really going.
After deriving a treatment from Devil’s Breath failed, Norman made a last-ditch effort to preserve his son, a temporary solution until they found a permanent cure. He attempted to isolate the healing factor from the spider-venom and have it to Harry to try and treat him, but the isolation didn’t quite work and while the venom did cure him, it also gave him similar powers to Peter’s. That’s right, after hating Spider-Man for years, Harry came out of stasis with spider-powers.
At first, it wasn’t easy to cope with and Harry spent an inordinate amount of time trying to find a way to survive without the venom, to find a way to strip it out of his body without killing him in the process, to no avail. And once the anti-life equation hit there was no way to continue researching, and Harry found himself in a position he never expected. His father became infected almost instantly, and it was only thanks to his spider-sense and some crash course help from Peter that he was able to escape.
Knowing he would be no use on a technology-free world, Harry made the difficult decision to leave his Earth behind and travel to Earth-2 on the arks, knowing he could do much more good there to help people start over.
Where has he been these past 3 years? ;;
Harry has been on Earth-2, helping the remains of humanity settle on a new world. After seeing the anti-life equation rip through their world so quickly via technology, he’s been working to try and product equipment that’s less susceptible to network-wide issues, but it’s hard given how ingrained that was on their own home.
He’s also been Spider-Man, much to his frustration. It was a difficult mantle to take on at first, given how long Harry spent hating the vigilante. But the appearance of a suit tucked in with the belongings he took with him, and a heartfelt note from his best friend, managed to convince him that he could do some good there. And whatever issues Harry once had about Spider-Man had begun to dissipate when he found out who the vigilante was back home. This was a chance to start over, and.. despite his own feelings, people needed as much hope as they could get. And Sipder-Man can give them that, even if he’s not quite the same Spider-Man they remember.
What they've been doing/working on/focusing on for the past 3 years:
A combination of things, really. Harry had to learn fast, how to be Spider-Man. It’s not like he had time for heaps of training and tips back home. It’s been eye-opening really, to go through what Pete went through when he first got bitten, trying to figure things out on his own.
He’s also been working on shoring up any technology they may have gained on Earth-2, and creating new tech that’s just as useful but not network-linked or susceptible to widespread viruses of any kind, deadly or otherwise. Watching the anti-life equation tear through their home so quickly purely because of the convenience technology had begun to develop had been terrifying for him, given how much tech Oscorp created, and Harry doesn’t want to repeat the same mistakes.
He’s also been trying to research a cure, given biochem was a big part of Oscorp, but it’s been hard without a source of the equation to work on so he hadn’t made much headway.
How does he feel about coming back to Earth after so long?
Nervous, terrified they’re going to fuck something up, uncertain if earth can be saved - but relieved to be coming back, and incredibly glad that there’s been some confirmation that a cure could exist somewhere. That there could be a way to save all the people they left behind, infected or not. He’s confident if he can find Cyborg he can find the cure in his system somewhere, and he’s determined to do so. Not in the least because his own father is infected.
He’s also just.. so relieved to see his friends again, to see Peter again. It’s been a long time, and especially after he spent a year “away” like that. He and Peter have been best friends for so long, living without even being able to contact him in any way has been hard and Harry’s not entirely sure he’s the best version of himself without Peter around. Seeing him again is going to be incredible and very overwhelming, but he’s more than ready for it.
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Original Sin Story: Re_Crime
[AFTERWORD]
So this is mainly mothy talking about the original book so I guess this means I get to go through my process. More or less just my patch notes from this build of Original Sin Story: Crime.
Part 1
First, I made Maria a little older when she was caught in a storm. I wanted to distance Levia from lightning and make Maria a more Miku-ish age rather than a typical Rin age.
Basically, I’m increasing Levia’s association with wind instead of lightning.
Next was Miroku’s name. I don’t know, it’s an alright name but it feels weird for a surname from later EC being a first name of a not-Jakokuese character here. I first renamed him Nemanja, but then found a Slavic G- name I liked, Gavriil. It’s an equivalent to “Gabriel” which is the name of an archangel.
I liked the first few chapters so not too much has changed. It got exponentially more and more divided from the source material as the book quality went down.
I haven’t changed too much of the worldbuilding or politics cause that is not my strong point, lol. It’s serviceable so I let it be.
I added a description of curled platinum blond hair for Irta Li because I think he should look like Alucard.
Changed the “gear” system of time to “period” since that term is an actual expression of time and is not used in-universe/in the book for this purpose.
Changed Adam and Gammon’s reactions to being late. I just feel maybe Adam shouldn’t be so smug and Gammon such an ass.
I didn’t change anything about Vaju, but his description makes me think of the Capitol elite from The Hunger Games.
Part 2
Didn’t feel like settling on “Mogura” or “Mole People” for those people who dig up Second Period relics, so I just titled them Excavators.
Kept the magic car cause it’s pretty dope and it made my friend go feral cause she predicted it.
Genderbent Raiou into Raijoou because I always imagined the Zvezdas as matriarchal and instead of switching it so Raiou was the late parent, I just said screw it, Eve gets two moms.
I like the idea of Horus Solnste being his own character but there’s really no way to make it work without even more rewrites so he’s still Seth here.
Raijoou’s wife still claims to have found Eve in a river. This is an in-story lie and a meta misdirection.
Added that Adam and Eve have a year to two year difference in age, but they’re both around 20.
I found the whale thing kind of dumb so I just made Catherine a “white blur under the waves” (i.e. a dead sunken body). I get it was a Jonah’s whale reference but I don’t think she needs to literally be a whale for her to fulfill that reference, like how Seth is never a literal snake.
Changed the mention of “THE White Army” to “A White Army”. Raisa mentions a test of her “Second Regiment”. I changed her from a Salem inheritor to a Vlad inheritor (who uses fire magic). This “Second Regiment” is an undead army that are all white, like the Netsuma humans of her First Regiment. Though the zombies are resistant to regular fighting, lightning gets them down quite easily.
I have to say, I wasn’t really chill with Meta being a Gilles inheritor when the info came out but the Red Devotees are so terrifying I couldn’t change it.
Salem inheritor fire is not fire magic. The Netsuma are not all Vlad inheritors like Raisa, but they are all skilled in the fire arts, that is, fire spells and weapons. The arts don’t cover blue flames, as only Salem inheritors produce that.
I made Eve a Held sect member from the start, for more conflict between her and Zellana as Zellana proceeds to be an asshole about Held. Since Nemu isn’t too close to the forest, Eve hasn’t seen Held for herself, so she tries not to cause so much of a fuss, aware she’s in a Levia sect majority place.
Part 3
Adam doesn’t have a direct memory of any river. He was just already out in the open as a very young child as far as he could remember.
Adam is still caught up in a storm like the original tsunami and is saved by Catherine.
Made Horus/Seth as less of a dick than he is, by him being unable to bring Adam to Maria (or reveal Adam as Maria’s son) since Maria’s visitors really are restricted and enforced.
It’s unclear if Horus really did update Maria on Adam’s condition as he claims, decide depending on how you want to see him.
Made Gammon and Adam’s relationship just a bit more pining-y, so when Gammon is drunk he just leans on Adam instead of the counter.
Changed the fucking STUPID Levia inheritor bullshit with Venom. Venom is now connected to Gilles Inheritors. Kept the dead body experimentation part so it’s uncomfortably close to the truth.
Made Adam a little less willing to commit homicide.
MADE ADAM KEEP HIS STUPID, GROSS PLAN ON THE BACKBURNER. HE DOESN’T GO THROUGH WITH IT.
Adam circumvents Seth for the recipe for Venom. This is very important.
Horus/Seth has told Adam about the river children, not telling Adam he is one of those. Adam thus assumes he must be one of them. This is further misdirection.
Raijoou is still a founding member of Apocalypse.
Seth isn’t around so much while Adam and Eve hang out, so as far as Adam is aware, Seth doesn’t know he’s using Venom. This is important as well.
Gammon flirts with Adam but slyly takes it back before he notices.
Adam is already paranoid that he’s given Eve too much Venom (this is unchanged from the source but still important for the payoff)
Scene with Catherine is unchanged, because I love her and this scene.
When Eve has the stillbirth, Seth implies something on Adam’s part is what caused it. The pieces all come together: Seth may have created Venom, but Adam went behind his back to get Venom, used it while trying to keep Seth from knowing about it, thus making this all Adam’s fault. Seth didn’t even convince him to use it, either.
Part 4
Seth gets a black eyes and is being creepy when pistol-whipped. Also his glasses were sent flying off his face.
Finally, Seth clears the meticulous shit I set up, lmao.
After Maria was rendered sterile and her twins were gotten rid of, she still wanted a child and enlisted Seth to make it happen.
The twins aren’t Adam and Eve. Seth kept the boy in cryostasis in Lunaca Labora for his destruction powers, and gave the girl to the Lighwatch Temple so he could keep a close eye on her. These are Amostia and Elluka, respectively.
Adam is essentially a tube-grown human. He’s not a ghoul child because he was made with two sets of DNA, Maria’s and a foreign man to obscure Adam’s phenotype.
Lunaca Labora is a large underground complex, with secret entrances spanning to and from many important capital buildings.
Thus, when Apocalypse bombed one of these buildings, this caused a collapse in the section of Lunaca Labora below it, the chaos in which Adam disappeared.
It was incidents like this that made Raijoou leave Apocalypse and take a wife in the quiet village of Nemu once again.
Horus had met both Raijoou and her wife, Inanna while searching Evillious.
I named her wife Inanna because I wanted a name that resembled “inazumi” to fit Raijoou’s lightning theme, in addition to Inanna meaning “lady” and “heaven/sky”, and being a Sumerian goddess equated to Ishtar.
Without Raijoou’s input, Inanna enlisted Horus to make them a child, she she couldn’t have any, and of course not with Raijoou.
Eve is fashioned the same way as Adam- made with two sets of DNA donated by Inanna and Raijoou.
She was a backburner project so she was finished about a year after both Adam and Meta. Seth had also made Eve a HER carrier.
Since Raijoou is a Held inheritor, Eve ended up as one, too. Noticing this early in her development, it got Seth interested in making ghoul children with inheritor abilities.
Seth is still a shitty father, but I made it less..... cartoonishly horrible. Not better, just less awful. Seth is already a twisted guy, so he tried raising Adam the way he himself was raised, the only way he could think of: purely for their intelligence. Seth had gifted child syndrome, I’m calling it.
Seth tried making Gilles inheritor ghoul children specifically because they were hard to make. If he could get them correctly, he could make any kind of inheritor.
When he failed, he melted down their compositions since they were now useless. This is where Venom really comes from.
His first success was Meta, which opened the door for more inheritors.
Seth would have preferred Cain and Abel be born alive, as he swapped the God Seed for Seeds of Malice when they were first conceived. (Notice how Seth just always has it with him and is the first to brandish it, even in OSS: Crime?) Eve being a HER carrier would have increased Cain and Abel’s chances of being born with HERS.
They did indeed die because Eve had too much Venom. Not because of some really gross lazy ass-pull of a plot twist. That’d be crazy, right?
Eve was actually immune to Venom because as the Held inheritor test tube human Seth made, her own powers cancelled Venom’s powers out.
But even though the drug did not affect her mind, it was still in her bloodstream.
Normally, that’s not a problem, but Venom’s side effects in a pregnant person include deformities in the developing fetus(es) that can kill in utero (the same general reason Gilles Inheritors were so hard to make)
Eve still went mad after the stillbirth, which is not because of all the Venom in her bloodstream, the trauma activated the self-hypnosis (another Held inheritor power) she uses throughout the series. It’s a self defense tactic to protect her from the death of her children, by making her think they are alive and well.
That hypnosis will last a VERY long time, it’s in constant action like a flexing muscle, though its effects waver. I imagine it’d make her kind of despondent or tired since she’s just constantly using her inheritor powers without even realizing it.
Seth is definitely puppeting all these disasters but Cain and Abel’s deaths are on Adam’s hands.
Part 5
RAISA AND META ARE ACTUALLY FRIENDS, LIKE MOTHY ORIGINALLY SAID.
I mean honestly they’re like casual, informal girlfriends. It’s like they never actually asked the other out but when they spar for fighting practice they pin each other a lot. They just like being near each other. Looking at each other. They drink together a lot.
I made Meta not such a bitch about Raisa, too. Like, Jesus Christ, mothy. Meta is now worried for Raisa because she’s such a hellbeast in battle, not cause she hates her for [404 REASON NOT FOUND].
Meta didn’t really have any impression of Raisa when Pale suggested they recruit her, mainly agreeing because it beefed up their forces, coming to know her because they had since lived together with the rest of Apocalypse.
Meta finds Raisa’s scar (particularly around her mouth) distracting because they aren’t covered up behind a mask like they usually are.
Raisa literally climbs onto Meta’s bed and probably over Meta so they can be face to face.
Meta’s almost not even listening, cause Raisa’s hair is like a glowing white next to her red face. Meta, please stop thinking about how pretty your girlfriend is and listen.
Instead of completely pointless amnesia, Meta simply wishes to not dwell on her past. It’s more of a conscious effort to repress that time of her life than actual locked-away memories.
To nonamnesiac Meta, her life really only meant something once she was around 20.
HEY, INSTEAD OF CHILD META BEING ASSAULTED, LET ME PROPOSE:
Much like Adam, Meta had nothing to do but wander around the country, though she more often broke into homes and stole than he did.
Her Gilles inheritor charms allowed her to weasel her way out of trouble, but she always thought people went easy on her because she was a homeless child.
Her powers/the genuine pity of onlookers sometimes allowed her to SCP-1076 her way into a home, but she always felt out of place and would usually end up running away again.
Meta was caught up in an attack by Apocalypse but as the action was winding down, Pale found her and recruited her, her murdering a hostage as a sort of initiation.
The Royal Capital Army’s armor can’t be breached by Raisa’s fire. This is important later on.
Meta is done zoning out so she hugs Raisa to make her stop shouting.
Some very subtle rewording that implies Meta wasn’t dressed before Raisa left the room. Not necessarily naked, but maybe in whatever nightclothes she had. I imagine just lingerie though.
Milky is dressed as she usually is, on top of the covers while Pale is under them.
Made Meta less so goddamn spiteful about Milky??
Basically Meta and Pale kind of joke with each other about their other partners, Raisa and Milky respectively. Apocalypse is a big ol’ polycule, minus Yegor. Cause he’s a creep.
Kept the cute stuff Meta thinks about Pale... who’d have thought their relationship would be the least garbage out of the original book?
Changed a little bit about Pale’s music box tinkering. He’s not making something, he’s taking it apart. Though he plans to put it back together to get better at making things.
Meta is still thinking about Raisa so she accidentally brings her up when they’re discussing the mole in the group.
Meta genuinely doesn’t think Raisa is the mole, and defends her when Pale asks if she’s implying something.
The woman Meta comes across is still? Eve? I have no goddamn idea why it can’t be her in the original so, you’re welcome mothy, I fixed it.
The fog and fighting has knocked out Adam, whom Eve is cradling. The fog is a byproduct of Venom so it doesn’t affect Meta nor Eve.
Eve is so stressed, so hypnosis is going into overdrive to the point she can’t even get her children’s names right. or she could just be so upset that she’s slurring her words.
Raisa has somehow come into intel that says Yegor is the mole and is conspiring to capture Meta, so she abandoned her trip north to warn or help Meta.
Raisa is not immune to Venom, but the mask she uses to cover her scars is helping filter some of it out so she’s still lucid enough to yell to Meta.
The fog has overtaken most of the scene, Eve has escaped with Adam, and Capital Army forces are closing in on Meta.
Raisa tackles Meta to the ground in an effort to cover her and unleashes an explosion (that ends up knocking the both of them out) in an effort to keep them away.
Elluka is older on account of being Maria’s twin daughter. She’s still quite youthful anyways.
Removed the second period legacy room mumbo jumbo. It can just be a Third Period anti-magic room.
Yegor Asayev looks like V from V For Vendetta, because I said so.
Instead of dying like a punk and offscreen no less, Raisa was killed immediately after her stunt to protect Meta. Remember, her fire can’t penetrate the army’s armor. She was aware of this but it was all she could think to do, or to do at all.
Yegor doesn’t know how Raisa caught wind of his betrayal and wonders if he has a mole of his own. I don’t either. It’s for intrigue!!
Made Meta more... emotional. Cause she kind of seemed not to care too much. Like obviously she was angry and defeated but since in this version, someone she loved, Raisa, died protecting her, all in vain, she’s even more griefstricken.
Meta and Elluka are friends by the barest means. Meta tried scaring her to get what she wanted, but Meta ends up giving her advice. This is how it was in the original but I still want to highlight it.
Instead of a pendant, Seth’s plan and map is kept in a glass bottle on Meta’s person.
Seth remains a little shit in this scene because he’s honestly the best part of the original book.
Elluka still cries for Meta, because of their rapport. God, I just think it’s so sweet.
Kept the baby Pale thing. I mean in the original it was probably added to make the age gap between Elluka and Kiril less YIKES, but I wasn’t quite sure how to take it out. Even if Elluka is older in this continuity, I think Pale being de-aged doesn’t hurt.
Hansel and Gretel are preemies!
Clearly something is up with Gammon, so I added he’s being tying his hair differently and smiling more often.
Since it was traveling into Maria’s maze that marked this changed, I changed his hair tie from high to low to match Irina’s low braid to suggest Maria might be in there.
I think it’s weird if Gammon himself was just kind of removed from the story by another character in his body so I made it ambiguous as to whether he’s still in there or not.
Looking at the babies forces Meta to think about her own childhood.
Meta can’t drain the tanks without letting the babies fall, so she dives inside, disconnects them from their support tubes and breaks them from the inside.
Yes, I’m aware the strength needed to break the glass would have to be fucking IMMENSE since it can handle the pressure from containing a building’s worth of heavy fluid, but shut up, Meta is buff in this continuity. Besides, the glass probably isn’t made to withstand sharp, repeated points of stress from the inside as opposed to the designed entire surface area pressure. I’m sure someone who’s into physics is reading this and pulling their hair out and I’m sorry. Not sorry enough to fix it. sdfghj
I want the incident that allowed Adam to escape to be the same one Meta escaped in, but I have NO idea if I can make that work in the timeline. I sure which there was a goddamn calendar system for this, mothy.
I have no idea what the hell mothy is talking about with Levia’s blessing, but anyways I kept it vague about how the babies are immune to the Venom fog. The wording is more in line with what we hear during Lust Arc when IR is talking about Mikulia’s immunity to Sateriasis’ lust spell.
Part 6
Kept the fourth wall breaking with Eve. That shit’s too great.
Definitely made the pre-demonic Venom Sword Raisa’s sword that they confiscated.
Eve picks up her Held worshiping habits again. They technically never went away but it was hard to do deep in Levianta.
Part 7
Adam doesn’t recognize Meta. To be honest, I can’t tell if he DOES recognize her in the original or not. But for sure here, he doesn’t point her out as Meta.
Adam is kind of silently panicking, so he just says sorry for every movement of the shovel he makes to bury her.
The time placements are all over the place in this chapter, just ignore it.
Eve’s self-hypnosis is still in full effect when they escape deep into Elphegort.
I sort of added a whole scene? More like I took stuff from other scenes and added enough to make it its own scene.
Her hypnosis was in complete swing when she came in the door, but Adam and the reality of Meta’s death finally broke it. Her denial from now on is normal self-denial, not the result of an inheritor ability defense mechanism.
Even though Eve has, on some level, acknowledged her wrongdoing and the reality of things, she still finds comfort in the babies.
I know earlier I made Adam less willing to commit homicide but I find his even just contemplating infanticide darkly humorous. Like, what the fuck, Adam? Of course he doesn’t follow through on it, though.
Kept Gretel being weirdly conscious of everything while Hansel is just a normal baby. I love the idea of Gretel being a creepy horror movie baby who knows more than she should and Hansel is just here vibing.
Remember that Adam thinks she’s done all this because he drugged her with Venom. He is indeed responsible for killing her unborn children with Venom, but he isn’t aware Venom hasn’t affected her mentally.
So Eve’s Original Sin is killing Meta and taking her babies, and Adam’s Original Sin is “ruining Eve” and thus killing her children.
Part 8
Added how Seth technically had Maria’s permission to do what he did, but he still took advantage of that, so even revealing that wouldn’t make him look good. It’s not officially reported cause it could lend him some credence.
Kept his edgy little manifesto because it makes me laugh.
Didn’t take out the Pale/Kiril thing because honestly that was an adequate turn of events.
Glossary
Levianta was founded by a cabal of mages who discovered Second Period artifacts. Magic is powerful, but requires time and preparation to use—however, the old technology streamlined the usage of magic, making it easier and more useful for technological advance. The woman who would become the first queen was named Alice Merry-Go-Round, and she is the one who realized this.
She hired people to dig up the technology in the temple, but was faced with resistance from the local populace, who revered Levia-Behemo using that temple. Alice put a wall around it in response, and this became the “first wall”. More walls were built and eventually this became a fortress.
Her followers named it Alicegrad, and Alice herself founded Levianta with herself as the queen. Still, they faced resistance from the natives. To appease them, Alice declared Levia-Behemo as the country’s god, and made a council of 12 people. Six of them were mages who served under her, and six were comprised of the local natives. Levianta grew prosperous.
When the first queen died, her daughter inherited her position and took on the name of Alice Merry-Go-Round herself. Since then, every queen has taken that name. The one who appears in the story is the seventh one.
Alices 1 through 4 are based on Alice of Human Sacrifice, broken by the Fifth one.
Loop Octopus and Vaju are of the 6 mage families in the senate. Asayev and Li are of the 6 native local families. The families are supposed to be equal, but there are great gaps between them. Example being Loop Octopus has taken much of Vaju’s wealth, and there are two Loop Octopuses on the senate now (Gammon and his younger brother, Nazar, the family’s heir).
Lighwatch is a place where they raise queen candidates, but also has things like jail cells and execution devices like Torcia Tower. Lighwatch collects girls with Levia inheritor powers. They are able to remove “malice” from people’s hearts, and also hear the “voice of god”. Yegor is able to tell them by sight, as he is an inheritor of Behemo, who can see another person’s inheritor powers. Zellana and Elluka are orphans.
There were different varieties of Ghoul Children when it came to the artificial personalities they had. “Clean” refers to those that have no memories, “Preset” refers to those that have pre-made false memories, and “Copy” refers to those that have identical memories to Seth.
Catherine was a marine scientist, and married to Gilles. They rode along in the Climb One. They had a son, but he was sickly and did not ride on the same ship as them.
For this reason she grew jealous towards female psychologist Rahab, whose two children were able to board the ship with her. When she realized that Rahab was having an affair with Gilles, her jealousy turned to rage. She conspired with Lich to kill Rahab, but in the end was killed by Lich, who she realized too late was really “malice” wearing his form.
So then, I guess I’m gonna have to fix Original Sin Story: Punishment, whether I want to or not. Can’t wait to see what fuckery awaits us in it.
#infoedit#story#fanfic#patch notes#original sin story#ec#evillious chronicles#is this salty? yes#get your daily dose of sodium here
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Review: How to Be Both by Ali Smith
Synopsis:
How to be Both was written by Ali Smith and published in 2014. This is an experimental novel made up of two sections and depending on the copy you read you may get them in a different order. The edition I have started with one about a teenage girl named George living in the present day dealing with grief for her recently deceased mother. The second section was from the point of view of a renaissance painter Francesco del Cossa. The two sections are interlinked as George’s mother was very interested in Francesco’s art and they had been to see a famous mural of his in Italy together, which George reflects back on. In Francesco’s section he follows what goes on with George as a ghost. When George is looking at his painting of St. Vincenzo at the National Gallery it seems to conjure his ghost and he ends up witnessing her story for awhile. This is a novel about interconnectedness. About both. About everything. About mirrors. It’s about grief, art, love, history, and gender/sexuality.
Storyline:
This is a book that has grown on me as I read it and after I’ve read it. It seems to unfold itself like a flower opening it’s petals. It isn’t straightforward. It’s an experiment. It’s post modern. There is so much in here to unravel however. I enjoyed both sections. George’s has a certain tone to it that I liked. She’s rather sardonic. Francesco’s may have been my favorite though because of the prose of the stream of consciousness style that made up that section. I love how the title seemed to reveal itself. How things are made up of opposites, but you can’t have one without the other. Death and life. Female and Male. Grief and happiness. Past and future. Art and viewers of art. This book seemed to show that things aren’t as straightforward as they seem. Can things really die? Is the past really gone? Or perhaps everything is always present. Particularly when someone has created something that lasts or is in a photograph that lasts. It’s interesting because the renaissance section was called eyes and George’s present day section was called camera. Everything that lasted from the renaissance could be beheld with the eyes, while so many things preserved in the present day seems to be from a cameras’ lens. Pictures of moments. Videos even. Like this one porn video that George is obsessed with because she feels bad for the girl in it that will always exist in that moment. Whether before technology or since it’s heavy involvement in our lives, things get captured and they never die. I loved the juxtaposition of the past and future as well. George expresses to her mother at one point that she doesn’t get why make a fuss about history as it’s dead and gone, but her mother says that everything is connected. You see through the two different stories that times may be different, but certain themes of life are still present. There’s also a bit about gender and sexuality and the fluidity of it all. Especially with Francesco. He’s really a girl that has had to dress as a boy to become a painter. He/she is both. Also, it seems he might like men and women. Francesco is both and everything. George isn’t quite like that, but she is into girls. She finds out her mother while happily married was also in love with a woman. Sometimes it seems like George’s mother paralleled with Francesco more than George. The last theme so present in this novel was of the subjectivity of art. The various ways you could interpret Francesco’s art. Even this photograph George has of these french singers from the sixties her friend has given her. How you can come up with what is going on at that moment. Even Francesco’s story and what Ali Smith has done with it. Very little is know about Francesco. Just the art he made, that he was the son of a brick maker and that he asked to be paid more for his work at the Palazzo de Ferrara. Ali Smith took that information and created art from it. Literature. His life could be what she saw in it. What she chose to create from it. His paintings are what you choose to take from them or see in them. Even this book can be whatever you happen to see and take from it.
Setting:
Both settings seemed pretty real to me. Both modern day England and Renaissance Italy. The Italian Renaissance setting was my favorite however, although I’ve always be a sucker for historical settings. I loved being able to look up Francesco’s fresco and other paintings that were mentioned in this book. It made the context, setting and history come alive. I kept looking at his work as it was mentioned in the book.
Characters:
I liked George and her sardonic and sarcastic personality. The tone of her section was fun to read. I liked her mother a lot too even though she is only seen through George’s eyes. A lot of what her mother says were quotes that struck my fancy that I ended up writing down. Her mother seemed like quite a thoughtful and philosophical person. Francesco was my favorite. So fascinating to read that perspective. Honestly I feel Francesco is the main character of this novel. The potential love interests were interesting too. There is not much satisfaction of love in this novel. There is the hint of it, but never the satisfying coming together of it. Perhaps forbidden love could be seen as a topic. Definitely tackles LGBTQ themes and perhaps the love is difficult because of certain societal feelings around that throughout time. Although it seems like George in the present day may end up happier than her mother or Francesco when it comes to love. Perhaps there is progress in the present day and not all mirrors. Some things are changing for the better.
Did I Like This?:
At first I just thought I liked this, but on further consideration, there is so much to this book. So much to admire and think about. When I turned to the last page and that last beautiful line ( although of course it’s different in every edition) it really struck me “The seed still unbroken. The star still unburnt. The curve of the eye bone of the not yet born. Hello all the new bones. Hello all the old. Hello all the everything. To be. Made and unmade. Both.” It’s just continued to affect me. This is a wonderful book and wonderful introduction to the talented Ali Smith. Can’t wait to read more of her work.
Do I Recommend This?:
Yes! This is for those that like literary fiction, stream of consciousness writing, experimental fiction, historical fiction and those that love art.
~Katie
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Ok so In this one anime uh, Owari no Seraph, there’s this child that got experimented on and literally turned into a weapon for the military. Could this happen to Oscar?..
Never watched Owari no Seraph before but what you said pretty much describes my Pinehead headcanon anon-chan.
My hunch is that at some point during V7, Ironwood might convince Oscar to undo experiments on his aura. Initially it was on the grounds of helping the young farm boy reconnect with the old soul who had locked himself inside of mind. The experiments were meant to force Ozpin to come out isolation by having Oscar undo circumstances where his life was placed in immediate danger. The last time, Oscar’s life was on the line, Oz returned to help him only to disappear afterwards.
The idea I have is that Ironwood would put Oscar a series of stress tests to force Oz to return. But when those tests fail and only serve to anger Ozpin and make him even more withdrawn, that’s when Ironwood would come forward and propose the notion to possibly separate Ozpin’s soul from Oscar’s via Atlas’s experimental aura technology and research.
So out of desperation, Oscar agrees to go through with the aura experiments. Unfortunately, similar to the stress tests, the aura experiment fails as well since it proved too painful for Oscar to fully go through without killing himself in the process. So the experiment was ceased but not before Ironwood was able to discover something very unique about Oscar’s soul.
Since Penny Polendina was the first artificial lifeform to possess an aura, I have a feeling that that’s going to come back into play for V7 or at least some point during the Atlas Arc.
My guess is that following what happened to Penny during the Vytal Festival, Ironwood ceased his aura experiments. My theory for Penny is that she was made from the harvested aura of Dr. Polendina’s original daughter who possibly died prior to the series.
The experiment was supposed to be Penny’s second chance at life but what it led to was the doctor watching his beloved child die twice before his eyes. I’d like to think that Penny’s ‘soul’ is still intact, safely contained somewhere in Dr. Polendina’s lab or something of the like. My theory is that following the events of Beacon, Dr. Polendina confiscated the remnants of his daughter’s soul that Atlas had used to create Penny since he didn’t wish for Ironwood to use his daughter like that again.
I’d like to think that Penny is still alive but not really. My theory for Dr. Polendina that he’s a grieving father who hasn’t been ready to let his daughter go for years and has tried everything he could to keep her alive. While Ozpin is probably the man that sparked Ironwood’s curiosity about the soul, I’d like to think that Dr. Polendina was responsible for proving to the general that the soul can be harvested in some way.
My hunch is that Dr. Polendina was keeping his daughter’s soul that was harvested years prior under safe keeping. I still wish to believe there is a connection between Dr. Polendina and Arthur Watts.
Like perhaps Watts was formerly the doctor’s apprentice and adoptive son who was once very close to him and his family. And what if…the original Penny used to be someone close to Watts.
I know we all know Penny as being a teenage girl around the same age as Ruby and the other huntsmen and huntresses (y’know age sixteen to seventeen-ish). But imagine if…there was a twist that Penny was actually the younger robotic clone of Dr. Polendina’s daughter who was previously the loving wife of Arthur Watts who died tragically of an incurable disease?
Perhaps this is why Arthur was banished from Atlas (or left it). What if…when his wife was going to die, Arthur performed inhuman experiments on her in an attempt to salvage what was left of her? This resulted in him successfully extracting his wife’s soul. Watt’s had made plans to further his experimental research in the hopes of figuring out a scientific way to resurrect his wife but when Dr. Polendina discovered what Watts had done, the doctor was devastated.
Dr. Polendina reported Watts to the Atlesian authorities on the grounds that ‘his experimentations were a crime against human nature, punishable by law’.
What if…Dr. Polendina caused Watts to be banished from Atlas and he’s held a grudge against him the most for more reasons that just getting him thrown out of his own home.
What if…the studies on the human soul was originally Watt’s idea and the research that Ironwood eventually used to conduct his own experimentswas his as well. So basically, what if…Ironwood stole Watts’ research while Dr. Polendina encouraged him?
Hear me out on this one.
Imagine how twisted of a twist it would be if Dr. Polendina caused Watts to lose everything— his career, his reputation as a scientist and researchers and all the hard work he had done because Dr. P believed the work that Arthur was doing was immoral and inhuman.
Work that Arthur was only doing because he was desperate to resurrect the woman he loved. The same woman Dr. Polendina loved. His own daughter.
Dr. Polendina thought Watts was a monster. The mad doctor, he called him the night he betrayed him. Yet still, Dr. Polendina allowed Ironwood to steal and continue Watts’ research in secret.
And to add more insult to injury, he even condoned the General creating that robotic abomination (Penny) he had the gall to parade around as his ‘daughter’. As if that mindless machine could ever be the real Penny. Watts’ Penny.
I kind of like the concept of Watts’ taking pleasure in contributing to Penny’s destruction and feeling no remorse for her. Even if Penny was a younger artificial clone created from the soul of Dr. Polendina’s daughter and Watts’ wife, unlike Dr. P, Watts could never see this broken machine as his beloved.
Pardon the deviation to discuss Watts and Dr. Polendina. It all ties into my theory on Oscar, I swear. I don’t share or indulge in much theories of Watts but for the longest while, I have liked the thought of him sharing a connection with Dr. Polendina. It’s the musing that makes the most sense to me and having Watts share a connection to Penny fits too.
In the beginning, I figured original Penny was Watts’ sister who was terminally ill and he had tried to resurrect her with his research on aura experiments that Ironwood stole. But now I think it would be a much better, bigger twist is the original Penny (that I’ll hereby dub Penelope Polendina) used to be Watts’ deceased wife and that the Penny we know is just a young robotic clone of Watts’ wife. Just a copy.
Imagine how tragic that would be? For Watts’ to learn that Atlas had secretly used his own research that they had condemned him for to produce a robotic clone of his former wife powered by her soul he had harvested years ago, puppeting her around as an innocent young huntress representing the kingdom when she was in fact a weapon. A lifeless doll they had crammed his wife’s soul into.
And to make matters worse it was all done under the consent of the same man who has caused Watts’ damnation? The man he once called master. The man he once called father.
Dr. Polendina had stopped Watts from saving original Penny but allowed Ironwood and his military to use her as a tool.
When I picture the backstory between Watts, Dr. Polendina and Penny like this, it makes it sound so depressing yet fascinating.
Arthur Watts intrigues me as villain since, like Hazel, I’d like to believe there are more layers to him than meets the eyes that contributed to him becoming the man he is presently.
Not trying to say my hunches are true. Just saying it would be cool if his story took a turn in a direction like what I described. Doubt that will be the case for the canon but I am curious to see what Watts’ story will be for the Atlas Arc. That’s my small hunch for how him and Dr. Polendina are related.
Resuming talk on Oscar now, how all of this stuff I said with Penny ties back into Oscar is that—if Penny proved that it is possible for one soul to power a machine capable of producing an aura then what say you for an entire army of machines fueled by one potent soul. A soul that is a culmination of many souls gathered over centuries of lives.
My hunch is that at some point Ironwood would get the idea to create an infinite army of robotic soldiers powered by Oscar’s soul as his so-called ‘new approach’ to stopping Salem.
So to really answer your question anon-chan. Do I believe Ironwood would turn Oscar into a weapon? Yep. I think that will play into his moment of treachery for V7. Whether or not it’ll happen that way is up to the series itself to show. Either way, I’m firmly sticking with my ‘Ironwood’s Immortal Legion’ headcanon I talked about here. That’s my main hunch for now.
~LittleMissSquiggles (2019)
#Anon-ninja#squiggles answers: rwby#oscar pine#arthur watts#penny polendina#rwby theories#rwby volume 7 theories#pinehead headcanons#squiggles pinehead headcanons
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Metabods: Change of Mind (1)
Time for another favourite story of mine. It’s a bodyswap story written by “Mango Deville” on the Metabods site. I really, really love this story and it’s definitely one of the Top 3 Best Bodyswap Stories of all time! /Verus
This happened a few years ago now.
Stuart was just lying there, unable to do anything with his life. I had come into his room on a late night prowl of the hospice made more restless than normal that night due to the news I had received that day. My suspicions had been confirmed, I had inoperable liver, stomach and bowel cancer giving me only a few more months to live.
Not that I could really complain, at 64 years of age I know that I had had a reasonably long and active life. Although I hadn't been in an intimate relationship since my last lover and I parted company twenty-five years ago I had to be grateful for what I'd had. Let's face it, it was a life of sorts at least, unlike some of the patients whose physical welfare I tended as the resident physician and who tonight I looked in on. Most were here only due to the “wonders” of modern medical technology.
Case in point was Stuart here, 23-year-old son of a wealthy industrialist, all but killed in a motorcycle accident on the family estate about a year ago; physically his young body had healed completely, flawlessly you might even say. His brain, however, had never recovered; he had never regained consciousness and brain scans failed to reveal any activity. In a less advanced society he would have died and been laid to rest after the accident. But his parents had denied him this natural process, refusing to accept the medical facts and well able to afford 24 x 7 intensive care for what was basically only the shell of the vivacious and high-spirited man-boy that I had also known, as private physician to the family. His mother regularly spent long hours by his bedside trying to revive him with her conversation and massaging his surprisingly still very fit body; there were hardly any signs of wasting away, a rare situation that gave her hope. But there was never any response and it was probably a matter of time before they finally accepted the inevitable and let him go.
I looked ruefully at Stuart, his chest rising and falling rhythmically but somehow mechanically; in the dim light I could see the heart stimulating pad that was taped to his firm chest. A respirator sat beside the bed but it was not expected to ever be used. During my tenure at the hospice I had grown to accept the tragic waste of patients like this as part of life's cruel irony. In the soft glow of the machines that were keeping his body alive and on that day of all days the irony of the empty shell of such a beautiful youth lying here for want of an active brain resounded heavily in my mind. Irony, because for want of just such a healthy body my brain would soon be silent like his.
Many thoughts had gone through my head that day but I don't quite know what prompted me to decide to try out such a crazy idea. For some years to relieve the boredom of my normal work I had experimented with brain wave patterning, always with laboratory animals of course but ultimately as a possible means of cancelling out criminal and antisocial behaviour in humans too. I was not unaware of the ethical dilemma of this concept but was not really expecting any major breakthroughs to need to worry about those realities now, if ever. And now it appears that nothing would ever come of it anyway, despite some interesting results among some of the larger mammal subjects I had tried lately. The concept was for the “good” brain wave patterns of one subject to be read into a computer and “mapped” into the other subject's brain, erasing the negative patterns. I had been experimenting with horses recently (the hospice kept a few for the active but terminally ill patients to enjoy) but to get the strength of signal required there had been problems with feedback. The donor subject would get some of the recipient's brainwaves back through the system, usually for example it would respond to the recipient's name (as well as it's own still) and other behavioural anomalies. It was as though there'd been a slight merger of memory. Certainly the recipient benefited from the experience as behavioural patterns immediately took on the donor horse's profile; it even responded to the donor horse's name! There was some evidence of a merger on this side too.
Of course all this experimentation was done on the quiet and was completely unknown to the other staff of the hospice, but I had documented everything I had done on the laptop and the main copies were on my desktop computer at home.
Perhaps it was ill-formed thought processes caused by the reaction to my bad news but also there was a feeling that maybe my experiments could help Stuart here and perhaps other patients like him. There was not also some degree of pride in the thought that my “brain” was somewhat worth saving; having been gay all my life had meant I had not had children to pass any of my characteristics on to. Perhaps I could pass my brainwaves over to Stuart and he would be able to function again? At the same time it would be like I was passing him some of myself, my characteristics so that he could make use of them. I decided there was nothing for either of us to lose, either of our lives would be measured in months now, as things stood.
So that night I went back to my office and got my experimental apparatus, consisting of a laptop computer, a pair of skullcaps, an electrical transformer and some loops of wiring to connect them all together. On my return I plugged in the transformer and connected the skullcaps to it and the laptop in parallel. I booted up the computer and loaded the program and realised I would need to modify the parameters for the different body weights (for the electrical charges) and relative brain masses (for the mapping) of humans compared to horses. I entered the data and the computer quickly calculated the settings it would feed to the rest of the apparatus. I positioned a chair by the bed and placed the laptop next to Stuart's left arm, facing the chair. I then placed the recipient's skullcap on his head and located it carefully, as I had learned the criticality of its correct positioning with the previous experiments. Stuart at least did not move with the unfamiliarity of it, unlike the horses.
The other cap I placed on my own head and, using the mirror across the room over the washbasin in which I could see myself from where I stood next to the bed, positioned it carefully. I sat on the chair and placed my right hand in Stuart's left one and clasped it tightly (this wasn't necessary but I appreciated the feeling of warmth it gave me). With my left hand I clicked the laptop mouse button to initiate the sequence. I remember the feeling of buzzing in my brain rising from almost nothing to what no doubt had caused the horses to react nervously. For them I had resorted to mild sedatives recently but had not even thought of it for myself, having only just decided to do this on the spur of the moment. It was nothing really compared to some of the pain of the cancers I was carrying in my body. The buzzing was getting to be most objectionable and I remember thinking that at least I was confident that Stuart would not be feeling anything. And then I blacked out.
I woke with a jolt, the buzzing in my head was down again to a bare minimum. I went to open my eyes but the lids seemed strangely heavy as they do when you are awakened suddenly from a long deep sleep. My eyes took some time to focus clearly though there was no problem seeing with the light in the room—I could make out the clock on the wall across from me, it read a quarter to 1, about 12 minutes after I had started my “experiment”.
Then it struck me! I was looking at the clock from a different angle from what I should have, sitting on the low patient's chair beside the bed; I was higher than that and my neck was at a reclined angle from which it was a slight strain to focus on the clock. And I could feel a hand in mine but it was my left hand, not my right one!
Noting the stiffness of my body I pushed myself upright with my free hand and realised it was the bed I was on, not the chair! And the hand I was holding was that of an older overweight man who was slumped motionless in that very chair I was sure I had been sitting in only minutes before. And that man was me! I was looking at my own body from afar—was this an out-of-body experience? Slightly panicky, I searched the room and my eyes fell onto the mirror over the washbasin and there was the ultimate shock! Looking back at me was Stuart, animated and sitting up in bed! And I saw the startled look on his face in complete accord with my emotions. I moved my head and Stuart moved his too! I raised my right arm and waved my hand and Stuart raised his arm and waved back at me. How could this be, was this possible, was I inside of Stuart's body?
Just then the fact that I (or was it Stuart?) was still wearing the skullcap caught my attention—perhaps instead of merely transferring brainwaves more than that had gone across; my consciousness in fact! So where had Stuart's consciousness gone? But then he hadn't had any consciousness had he? Is that why my (former) body lay slouched in the chair? As the thought dawned on me I instinctively reached up and removed the skullcap and it's wiring from my.. er.. Stuart's head. How would I explain this, that the former me was now at least comatose possibly dead and I was now alive inside of Stuart's body? It would appear to everyone that I had “stolen” his body! And what a body to steal! Prime of youth 6 foot 2 23 year old with a slim but muscular physique, blue green eyes and sandy coloured hair. And then there was his flawless skin, skin that when he arrived last year had acquired a golden hue from outdoor activities in the summer months but was by now somewhat paler from his time in the hospice. No one would ever understand.
I reached over and saw that my former self was indeed lifeless. Without brain activity and the life-support system that had kept Stuart's body alive all these months it had probably taken no time at all for the body to die, certainly less than the 10 minutes I had been unconscious. There was obviously no going back now. In a strangely horrified reaction to something that I had called “me” for over 60 years I shook free of the hand that still clasped mine.
Perhaps I could hide what had actually happened? My brain ticked over quickly—I would have to remove all traces of the “experiment”. With some effort I reached over and removed the skullcap from what was formerly my head. I wrapped the two of them together and reaching down to the other side of the bed, opened the cupboard door and tossed them inside. The transformer was a standard issue one though there had not been need of one for any of the equipment in Stuart's room. Again with some effort I reached down and switched it off. I picked up the laptop computer from the bed; I could see from its display that it had been coordinating and recording the miraculous process that I had just been through. Somehow I had to save this data but not let it get into anyone else's hands, of course. Fortunately I had previously loaded a rewriteable CD into the machine as I had previously found this to be the easiest and most secure way to transfer data from my experiments to the desktop at home. I quickly typed in the commands to copy the data onto the CD, noting the stiffness in my fingers. I guess when you haven't used your muscles for months, as Stuart hadn't, you can't expect them to be anything but stiff, despite his mother's massages.
My immediate thought was to delete the files from the laptop lest someone discover them but stopped myself; I normally waited till I knew the CD could be read before deleting the files, a habit formed from making an early mistake with saving data. I remembered I could encrypt them so did so and set the password to “Change_Of_Mind”, my “codename” for the experimental work I had been doing. I removed the CD and placed it into an empty CD case that I saw was lying on top of the bedside cupboard, next to the portable CD player with which I had seen Stuart's mother play his favourite music in her efforts to revive him.
Finally I pushed my former body back into the chair and slumped it over to one side (away from me).
I closed down the experiment program and opened my expenses spreadsheet, did a minor change so that it would look like I had been working on it, and launched the screensaver program. I positioned the machine on “my” lap and arranged “my” right hand as though I had been typing but it had fallen loose.
Satisfied that most of the evidence of my experiment was now removed and a plausible view of “my” former body's death was established I lay back for a minute to think about how I could “become Stuart”. I knew the boy well enough, delivering him and being the family physician for all his 23 years, but it was gonna to be hard for them to accept the inevitable differences in our personalities. I decided that perhaps they would believe that it was the result of the months of coma, a form of amnesia, maybe. I, too, would need to remember what it was like to be young and free of worries.
I had been lying there for about 15 minutes and realised one last thing. I was supposed to be comatose and there I would be perfectly normal in the morning when someone would find us. Only one thing to do, knock myself out for some time and then I could “awake”, to everyone's miraculous relief, no doubt! I remembered the tranquillisers that I had been using to give myself a few hours sleep each night, relief from the pain of the cancers. They were in my breast pocket! I reached over and gently removed the strip, took four from it, replaced the rest and then smoothed down the jacket again. From the cupboard I took the glass of water Stuart's mother used to moisten his lips... er... my lips with. Swallowing the pills was not easy (even my throat muscles were unused to activity) but after a moment I'd got them all down.
I lay for another 10 minutes or so before I could feel their effect but while I was waiting another thought occurred to me. Once or twice I had arrived to visit Stuart as the hospice's Chief nurse Peter had been finishing sponge bathing Stuart. I had been slightly jealous of the strongly built male nurse's job, really only when it came to Stuart, I admit, but couldn't help wondering at his enthusiasm to take on this particular patient with such personal zeal. My suspicions were confirmed when driving past a gay bar on the other side of town one night I saw Peter coming out of the bar, and he wasn't alone. That was some time back and I had seen him again on two more recent occasions also leaving the bar. But both of the later times he was alone which had surprised me because not only was he well built but he was quite good looking with a white blond mop of hair and possibly Nordic features. I reminded myself that gay life in our town was not necessarily a hectic social whirl (it certainly never had been for me my whole life) and with shift work perhaps Peter did not often meet other available gay men. The second time I saw him come out alone I actually felt real sympathy for the man.
On the last occasion that I had arrived before Peter had quite finished Stuart's sponge batch I discovered that he was gently cleansing Stuart's genitals, and the sight of it was enough to make me even more jealous. From where I stood at the doorway I could see that Stuart's penis and balls were quite large and not only was Peter bathing them meticulously he was obviously enjoying the moment too, from the sizeable bulge I could see in his white uniform trousers. I momentarily wondered had Stuart gotten an erection then, as a response to the warm soapy water, whether Peter would have “helped him out” if he had thought he was not likely to be disturbed. The thought had sustained me for a number of nights in my own bed, too.
I raised my “new” hand and looked at it; it was a reasonable size for a man. I then thrust it down under the covers until I located “my” genitals. Sure enough the penis I felt there was a size that surprised me even at such close quarters and my balls were easily larger than my hand could grasp together. I could almost feel an erection coming on (I was starting to get used to feeling things through Stuart's body) but the tranquillisers were kicking in. Instead I contentedly dropped the weighty objects between “my” legs and fell into a heavy sleep in which, I am now convinced, parts of Stuart's life were revealed to me in flashbacks. This would prove to be a common occurrence over the next few months.
(End of part one)
Source: “Change of mind” by Mango Deville on Metabods.com
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SICON verse, Will and Hailey/name rank and serial number
The cell door was thrown open and lieutenant Ericson was thrown in his dog tags hitting the ground before the rest of him, he was wearing normal clothes as he demanded “Is this how you treat your guests!?”
T’Mai was shoved in next to him as the alien sneered “you will tell us how your Chekov drive works human.”
T’Mai said “you should free us before the humans realize what you have done…”
The alien was large and kind of looked like a crab just bigger and meaner; He struck T’Mai causing the Kalber to fall to the ground Ericson said “hey! I’m his commanding officer! You leave him alone.”
The creature scuttled over to Ericson saying “you will tell us how the Chekov drive works or we will kill you and your Kalber friend!”
Ericson smiled “but you can’t because if you do you won’t learn how the Chekov drive works…and the Watson gets back and carpet bombs you back to the stone age…you my foolish friend just committed an act of war.”
The creature touched Ericson with a small prod causing the human to yelp as he electrocuted “the trouble is human is that you will tell us and we will use that knowledge to destroy your ship…your precious Earth and the entire council! We will rise.”
Ericson held his chest saying “the only thing you’re getting out of me is, Lieutenant William, Henry Ericson SICON federal forces Serial number 12451…” he was shocked again falling to the floor groaning loudly.
T’Mai moved to help him but another guard stopped him as Ericson was dragged out of the cell he yelled “T’Mai no matter what you hear you give them nothing but name rank and serial number got it! That’s an order!”
T’Mai nodded weakly not sure what to do. Ericson was dragged along blood dripping from his month as he muttered “you guys are so screwed… I passed SEAR school.” He mumbled half out of it. As they locked him into human style shackles they clearly dug up from an old TV program.
The Alien hit him hard causing a loud crack to emerge from Ericson’s chest he groaned “that’s a rib.”
The integrator said “your hyper drive, how does it work?”
Ericson glared at them “Lieutenant William, Henry Ericson SICON federal forces Serial number 12451”
They shocked him with one of their shock sticks causing him to jerk around his dog tags buzzing with electric current.
They asked again “tell us!”
Ericson groaned “what’s your name?”
The alien clinked its claws “Mamot”
Ericson smiled “good they will know who to blame when SICON bombs your people into hell!” he spit blood onto the alien who recoiled in disgust and punched him in the face.
Ericson felt his nose break as his head snapped back his last thought before passing out was “My mom is going to be so angry.”
Camp Pendleton Nine years ago:
“On your feet Private!” Private Ericson jerked awake at one in the morning snapping to attention as his drill sergeant glared at him.
Ericson said “Sir!”
The sergeant smiled “someone very special wants to talk to you son! So double time it!”
Ericson nodded running out of the barracks towards a building were some mp’s escorted him to a small concrete uniform the man inside wore a dress uniform with the stars of a general.
Ericson entered and snapped to attention saying “Private Ericson reported as ordered sir!”
The general nodded “at ease private…I assume you heard?”
Ericson nodded “crazy business sir…aliens here on earth.”
The general chuckled “well they clearly didn’t do there research showing up in the middle of winter.”
Ericson smiled lightly “some folks can’t handle the snow sir.”
The general smiled “truer words private…” he opened up a file “hmmm top marksman in your class, one of the finest recon man your instructor’s have ever seen, already recommend for special forces training…quite the resume Private.”
Ericson nodded “thank you sir.”
The general closed the file “I’m here private because your name came up for the counter attack.”
Ericson asked “counter attack sir?”
The general smiled “ever wanted to go to space private?”
Before Ericson could answer a distant voice said “Lieutenant Can you hear me? Wake up LT!”
Ericson blinked suddenly he hurt all over and he felt his eyes open.
Cell:
Ericson blinked as T’Mai looked down on him breathing out saying “of thank fuck you’re ok!” a human phrase he picked up from Futuba
Replied “I swear you have been hanging out with Futuba to much…” Ericson chuckled as he felt his face and knew his nose was out place and mumbled “3,2,1” before popping it back into place
T’Mai flinched as Ericson said calmly “report.”
T’Mai answered “they dumped you back here passed out and left talking to themselves with their translators off so I couldn’t tell what they were talking about.”
Ericson forced himself up “I’m sure they are talking about what they’re getting us for dinner…I hope for pizza…any weaknesses to let us bust out of here?”
T’Mai shook his head “walls are solid, no windows and hostile locals.”
The door opened and the guards entered Ericson smiled “so you gentlemen give up on the whole taking over galaxy plan?”
Mamot clenched its claws “I was around when you humans first attacked the Ryundi I thought you humans were finally the answer to this galaxy’s weak governments!”
Ericson looked at T’Mai sighing “I think I know why these guys were not allowed into the council T.”
T’Mai stared flabbergasted at the human as the alien applied the shock stick to him again. Mamot sighed “clearly you have a resistance to pain…”
Ericson spat “someone has clearly never taken a standardized test…now that’s torture.”
One of the guards approached with a large medal cylinder as Ericson twitched “ok that’s bigger than a bread box!”
Mamot sighed “it seems you will not tell us no matter how much pain we put you through…however this chemical will simply have you spill your guts…as you humans say anyway.”
Ericson flinched as the needle entered his arm after a minute the liquid was emptied as Ericson felt himself slipping into an almost dream he said “T’Mai if I say anything that can endanger the galaxy you need to stop me! I don’t care how…” he felt his eyes roll into the back of his head as he started mumble.
Area 51 9 years ago:
“wake up Navy.” Ericson was woken up from where he was sitting on the seat of the C160.
The person next to him was a girl about his age she was Fatigue’s that marked her as an Officer in the air force. Ericson mumbled “it’s the marine’s mom not the navy…”
The girl narrowed her eyes yelling “what did you call me!”
Ericson jumped awake “I’m so sorry I was out of it…it was a long night.”
The girl nodded “I know how you feel…I’m Hailey Hernández…Flight Lieutenant Hernández” she corrected herself
Ericson sat up straight saying “ma’am!”
Hailey shook her head “look we are the only here even close to each other’s age…so no ranks deal?”
Ericson smiled “deal” reaching out his hand “William Ericson…Private USMC or I was”
They unbuckled themselves grabbing there bags and they walked off the plane Hailey sighed “I know we are both last minute…hence why both of us fresh out of training were tagged for this…whatever it is.”
Two mp’s began to escort them into a building where other people from all over the Military sat waiting.
Will and Hailey sat down quietly as people stared at the young recruit’s a man in a white lab coat entered saying “greetings…I am Doctor Anton Checkov…welcome to the earth defense system.”
Cell:
Mamot nodded “yes now we are getting somewhere!”
T’Mai kicked the humans causing the drugged lieutenant to lose his train of thought.
Mamot shocked T’Mai as the Human carried on.
9 years ago, Area 51:
Chekov smiled “now aliens have been visiting earth for some time in the past…using that technology along with one we got from our latest visitors has allowed us to use the interstellar technology previously discussed. Using that technology 5 Pacific class ships have been built, the Rhine by the European Union, The Yangtze by the people’s republic of china, the Orinoco from the South American defense league, The Zambezi from the African Collation, and the ship you will all be assigned to the Delaware built by the United states of America.”
Chekov took a drink of water as he explained “these vessels are expansions of the basic principles of aircraft carriers here on earth, you have all been chosen because you are the finest people in your respective areas. Area leaders will explain specifics of your roles and jobs during the counter attack.”
The scientist left and the groups were divided into pilots; Operation’s specialist’s and ground forces. Will waved goodbye to Hailey as she joined the Pilots and joined the ground forces finding out he was assigned to Alpha Team as there recon specialist.
The next few days went by quickly as He was taught to use the powered amour; the old design was clunky and bulky about the size of space suits from the Apollo program just with in built weapons and jump jets.
After that came the tour of the Pacific class starship it is about 230 meters long and 70 meters across, equipped with 9 air superiority jet aircraft capable of both space and in planet flight, the ship is also equipped with 4 “bouncing betty” Class VTOL retrieval/drop ships. The class is capable of carrying of 4 squads of solider with 5-6 soldiers each, as well as the experimental orbital insertion system.
It had been a about a week And Ericson eat his dinner most of the older officers tended to not talk to him so he was surprised when a tray hit the table across from him and Hailey sat down smiling “hey Will.”
Ericson lowered his fork corn on it greeting “Hailey, Have not seen you since orientation!”
Hernández sighed “yea a lot of hours in the simulator.”
Ericson shuddered “can you believe it we are going to another planet?”
Hernández nodded “it is crazy.”
Ericson sighed “and also some of the equipment they cooked up…”
Hernández raised an eyebrow “can you do better?”
Ericson sighed “well no…but a bomb that shirks in their language…”
Hernández smiled “welcome to the future of warfare…”
SICON ship Watson 9 years in the future:
The flight lieutenant reported “ma’am that distress signal we picked up…there is nothing here.”
Hernández sighed “have we scanned the entire system?”
The pilot nodded “aye captain we have.”
The Pacific class ship moved slowly through space as she asked “something is off…”
The pilot asked “Captain?”
Hernández said “we got called away leaving just Will and T’Mai on that planet…a bit too convenient for them…Tactical alert!” The ship darkened as red lights activated she ordered “lay in a course back to that planet.”
Cell:
Momot yelled “Human tell us about the hyper drive!”
Ericson eyes darted back and forth still drugged as he explained.
9 years ago:
Ericson boarded the Delaware as a crewman escorted him to his quarters, he was sharing it with a fleet officer and it was a bunk bed.
Ericson sighed throwing himself onto the top bunk to get some sleep.
His attempt to get some fleet was interrupted as the door flew open and Hailey said “Will come on you are not going want to miss this!”
Ericson threw on his uniform asking “what is it?”
Hailey smiled “takeoff”
Cell:
Mamot yelled “I don’t care about your budding friendship with this Hailey….tell me about the Hyper drive!”
T’Mai sighed “you really should…”
He was ignored as they shocked the drugged Human.
Delaware 9 years ago:
Ericson sighed “yea that sucked,” As he unbuckled himself from his launch seat.
Hailey smiled “we haven’t even jumped to hyperspace yet Will.” As she floated past
Will smiled “so when does artificial gravity kick…” before he could finish he hit the deck plating hard face first as Hailey landed gently helping him up.
The intercom said “all hands report to stations.”
Will stood up giving Hailey a wave before walking towards the drop center.
There the commander waited for everyone to arrive before saying “listen up! We know from the data we got from these aliens that there are other races in this galaxy. Command wants to send a message while still maintaining peaceful ties. As such we are going for maximum damage and bare minimum on local casualties you got that!”
Everyone chanted “sir yes sir!”
He smiled “we are going in hard people…I don’t want to see a single bomb on any of you when we get retrieval… and good luck.”
Will was strapped into his power suit closing in before being placed into his drop pod and strapped in, the technician smiled at him as the pod closed leaving him in the pitch black.
The intercom buzzed distantly “t minus 30 seconds to hyper jump…it will last for three hours all hands strap in.”
Then the ship started to jerk hard and it didn’t stop lurching and jerking for the entire trip.
Cell:
T’Mai winced the first few seconds of the human hyper jump sucked but 3 full hours of it…he shuddered to think about it.
Mamot seemed interested to hear a first-hand account of the carpet bombing of the Ryundi home world, as he waited to hear more.
Delaware 9 years ago:
Ericson exhaled as he the jerking stopped, a second later there was the sound of tapping against his drop pod. He returned the thump and took another breath as more thumping started meaning pods had been launched.
Ericson breathed deep before his pod was launched; he jerked and lurched as he counted the seconds out loud. Then an alarm blared and the light went red he muttered “uh oh.” He flipped down his visor which indicted that a gust of wind had knocked him off his landing course.
Ericson reported “Alpha 1, this is alpha 6 a gust knocked me off course over.”
The squad leader responded “roger Alpha 6 ride it out and rendezvous after landing.”
Ericson nodded to himself answering “roger”
His shell spilt and he fell right through a skylight landing in the middle of a large room with hundreds of Ryundi, it was most likely some kind of government building, Ericson stared at them and they stared at him as he grabbed a sphere form his belt.
The sphere lit up with a screen as the screeching sound of the Ryundi was heard, what the device was saying translates to “I’M A THIRTY SEACOND BOMB! I’M A THIRTY SEACOND BOMB, 29, 28, 27…”
Ericson bolted down a hallway as the Ryundi scattered for any exit. Ericson dove through a window and a few seconds later the entire building exploded. The sounds of jets filled the air as fliers went by after bombing the enemy ship yards.
Ericson turned on his jump jets jumping through the air throwing grenades everywhere and spraying with his flame thrower.
A Ryundi got a lucky shot on one of the jets which started to go down. Ericson quickly pulled out his Marotta rifle and shot the alien before his squad leader said “flyer went down near you Alpha 6 ensure there safety.”
Ericson nodded “on my way.” He kept jumping ignoring the civilian’s watching terror from beneath him as he jumped from building to building.
He jumped over a water purifier unclipping another device he pulled it dropping it into water causing Chlorine to be released into the water before landing and moving to the crash site.
He approached the destroyed jet tearing open the canopy he saw Hailey battered but alive saying “I am glad to see you.
Ericson unclipped another bomb attaching it to the jet before gently picking up Hailey to avoid accidentally crushing her as the squad leader reported “retrieval in bound get to the coordinates.”
Ericson jumped before the explosion destroyed the shot down air craft Hailey whooped as he landed running across a roof before jumping again throwing an incendiary grenade behind him.
He landed heading for the beacon before dropping Hailey in the ship before climbing in himself as the squad leader said “get out of here!”
The ship took off before a second later a EMP travelled through the city shutting down all electric’s as similar devices were detonated by the attacking forces worldwide.
The ryundi stared there cities reduced to a pile rubble within five minutes of the humans arriving.
Then just quickly as they arrived the human ships jumped back into hyperspace.
Cell:
Mamot said “all that devastation in just a few minutes!”
T’Mai nodded “and they have had nine years to perfect there tech…also the Captain is the LT’s oldest friend…I would surrender.”
Mamot laughed “our empire is immortal it cannot be destroyed!”
Just then a loud noise was heard over the imperial palace Mamot demanded “what is that!?”
T’Mai answered simply “the rollers.”
A cylinder came crashing through the ceiling leaving a hole through several floors. The side of it opened up revealing a human who stated simply “you are holding SICON personal unlawfully either surrender now or we will destroy you.”
T’Mai felt a chill as Ericson still drugged out of mind mumbled “nuke em chief.”
Mamot yelled “you would not dare to harm your own people!”
The human answered “our personal are aware of the risks however it is likely you are trying to obtain info from them that could cause harm to SICON and as such lethal force and even friendly fire is allowed.”
Mamot lashed out slashing the cylinder in anger cutting it in half.
9 years ago Delaware, quarantine center:
Will sighed “I’m fine Doc!”
The Doctor shook his head “both of you had direct contact with the locals and won’t be released from quarantine until we know you are not carrying anything.” Pointing at both Will and Hailey before the screen shut off leaving the two people strapped to the beds
Hailey shrugged “it’s not all bad…”
Will chuckled “you sure?”
Hailey chuckled “I don’t about you William” she finished with a fake British accent “I am going to enjoy explaining my experience’s when we get back.”
Will sighed “my mom is going to kill me.”
Hailey raised an eyebrow as he explained “she doesn’t even know I was involved in this.”
Hailey shrugged “I’m sure she would be proud.”
Will nodded “oh she will be but she can be a bit of a mother hen.”
Hailey lay back saying quietly “hey…thanks for saving my life.”
Will laughed “oh that, that was nothing” waving It off.
Hailey shook her head “it really wasn’t…I was going to blow up the self-destruct to avoid capture…when you showed up.”
Will sobered up “yea…if it wasn’t for that gust of wind.”
Hailey chuckled “so navy…how about we make a deal.”
Will groaned “Marines Hailey, not the navy!”
Hailey mussed “so you’re a space marine?”
Will chuckled “yep worshiping the god emperor Chekov….”
Hailey shook her head laughing before saying “for real though…let’s not get into that kind of trouble again.”
Will sighed “we are soldiers both of us…we could always hide…wherever you’re from if you think it would be safer.”
Hailey deadpanned “I’m from the Bronx.”
Will said “alright so you come with me then…live out our days in the quiet Ohio Country side.”
Hailey asked “you’re from Ohio and you joined the Navy?”
Will said “I didn’t join the Navy! And you’re from New York and you joined the air force!”
She raised her hands “what you got against the Navy?”
Will sighed “just a guy I knew a long time ago was a Navy officer…and a real jerk.”
Hailey nodded “I hear that…and its fine I figure I would go crazy in Ohio.”
Will responded “hey it’s not all bad!”
Hailey chuckled “sure Will…hey fun fact did you a good chunk of Apollo astronauts were from Ohio…I guess something about that state makes you want to ditch the planet.”
Will responded offended “hey…but really?”
Hailey shrugged “I saw on an internet article so maybe?” the ship rocked as it flew through hyperspace.
Will said “Well…I can’t really talk smack about New York.” He answered bitterly.
Hailey provided “our rent is too high?”
Will smiled “sure that’s a solid burn….not really is it.”
Hailey sighed “it is crazy.”
Will said “yea and Ohio is really affordable so who’s laughing now!”
Hailey laughed aloud “god how did we even start this conversation?”
Will sighed “we were talking about running away together and staying out of trouble.”
Hailey winked “is that a proposal?”
Will sighed “I swear you are going to be the death of me.”
Hailey laughed “just wait until I meet your mother.”
Will said “oh god no.”
Hailey put on mocking old lady voice “oh Willy who is your friend?”
Will said “she does not sound like that.”
Hailey carried on her normal voice “oh Hi Miss Ericson…I’m Hailey one of your sons coworkers.”
Hailey switched back to the old lady voice “ohh you are in the Navy as well?”
Normal voice Hailey answered “well no…you see we invaded another planet together…and he saved my life.”
Old lady voice Hailey said “oh my Willy saved you…he always was such a sweet heart, come in and tell me more about it, I baked cookies.”
Will grumbled “she does make great cookies…”
The ship jerked again as a distant voice called “LT…”
Will smiled “well what about me meeting your folks? I’m thinking a classic blading muscle shirt type with a sweet jersey accent…and maybe a shotgun?”
Hailey laughed “not quite…but my mom’s would love you!”
Will chuckled “so what crazy baseball fans…?”
Hailey whispered unconvincingly “no…”
The voice got louder saying “wake up LT!”
Will shook his head “hey Hailey you hear that?”
Hailey nodded “that’s not how this memory goes…”
Will asked “what?”
Hailey laughed “drugs am I right?”
Will said “WHAT?”
Then he felt a prick and his eyes flew open.
Cell:
Ericson yelled “Hailey!?”
Depoint removed the Needle saying “easy LT your safe now.”
Ericson blinked saying “wha…Depoint?”
The Medic nodded “that’s right sir.”
T’Mai appeared saying “are you ok LT?
Ericson nodded “did I say anything weird?”
Hernández entered in her formal uniform saying “nothing I haven’t heard before…”
Ericson blinked “Hailey…why are you dirt side…you blew these guys sky-high?”
Depoint said “believe it or not this is being resolved peacefully…”
Ericson asked “how’d you guys pull that off?”
Hernandez said “I guess they quit while they were ahead…”
Ericson looked at her skeptically before saying “why are you here….am I still drugged?”
Hailey smiled “you are not drugged anymore Will…these guys code of honor only allowed me and Depoint to pick you up…something about the Commander and the Doctor.
Ericson nodded as he tried to get up but could not groaning in pain Depoint said “you are in bad shape LT let us help you.”
Ericson was helped to his feet as Hailey smiled “come on your mom still owes me cookies.”
Will groaned as he was led to the drop ship.
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