so, old news obvious news blah blah, but i keep seeing people not getting this about my girl gideon nav so have to say:
i think at first blush, people get the impression that Harrow’s got all the convolutions and layers and hidden vulnerability whereas gideon wears her heart on her sleeve and is just brazenly herself (a loveable rowdy himbo) & that’s the contrast.
and yes, that’s there, but that’s not all. that dynamic itself is a part of their mutual (codependent) front, and like everything else in this book, it gets peeled back.
i think the real contrast is that they’ve both got masks, and those masks are complimentary. they’re both kids who never got a childhood. they grew up tortured in the same place from very different angles with no one but each other to butt heads against. they both had to play-act grown up versions of themselves with few models for what a well-adjusted adult even looked like. so it’s cartoonish. gideon is the plucky hero of her own adventure story that will totally have a happy ending some day, far far away from her nemesis whom she’s totally not in love with. harrow meanwhile (to grossly oversimplify) has to imagine herself as someone cruel and cold enough to cope with being alive at the price of 200 other people. these two things fit very well together. gideon can play the hero to harrow’s villain, and harrow can enact cruelty toward gideon to make herself feel strong and mean (and generally just to vent anguish). the way they hate one another is a kind of mutual protection - it re-enforces the self-image that each of them needs to get through the day. but that’s the coping mechanism. harrow the ruthless bones overlord. gideon the hapless swords idiot, who thinks of nothing but tiddies & sweet sweet vengence (harrow’s corpse in various states of disgrace ) all day. and behind that they’re both tearing apart at the seems beneath caricatures of themselves that are deeply unsustainable and neither of them feels safe letting on the extent to which that’s the case. their hearts are a goddamned mess. neither of them is wearing that shit on their sleeve.
so yeah, there’s a lot more to gideon than being a swords himbo but that’s not the wild thing. the wild thing is she’s so convincing that she somehow manages to sell people on her no braincells act while being the pov character of entire first novel.
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Pondering Sniper with his Emotional Support Scout (AU)
Modern+College AU speeding bullet
Both in their early transitional age (Scout is 19, Sniper is 22), they’ve already spent a handful of years, supposedly taking the steps to build their futures, but are they where they want to be? Are they going to where they want to be? Where is it anyways?
I just had the idea for a more grounded side to their story, slice-of-life in a coming-of-age setting, with themes of existentialism. I aged them down to make it work… Under cut for info dumps about these goobers 8)
Scout took a break right after high school, working for his family business (an unsuccessful one, ran by one of his oldest brothers). This used to be a summer job, a way to get extra money as a kid, but now he’s been a full time worker for 2.5 years, familial obligations exploiting him to stay, while being undermined by his narcissistic brother. He eventually gets out of it, but has to face the hurt from being used, and also the fact that he had to grow up so quickly as a kid (especially when he has to deal with the fallout caused by his Mom’s and Spy’s affairs. He and his Mom are in good terms, it’s just his Mom isn’t a good support system atm). Left to face the real world by himself, he tries to find a way to stabilize by himself, while trying to face his trauma (trauma from a missing father figure, and being treated as the black sheep of his family) as he finds a way to be more himself and be happy. He’s optimistic and responsible when the world calls for it, otherwise he’s most likely to test this new freedom (for better or worse). Eventually Spy comes around to try to reconnect with Scout, there’s no telling how Scout will cope with it when he’s in the midst his new-found freedom.
Sniper went straight to university, never once took a break from the school work, because he thinks that’s the only way to go about in life. He took up a program and career plan that was not right for him, but struggled his way through by retaking course’s countless of times, pulling off impossible all-nighters, etc. At some point he gave up, began to drop classes every semester, and finally quit the program. However, he started working somewhere in the industry he had been studying years for. He thought this could bring him forward, but it kept digging him a deeper grave. He’s a workaholic, impulsive, but lost. At a very young age, he was a subject of a tough custody battle between his neglectful biological parents (Lar-nah and Bill-bel), and his grandparents (who are Mr and Mrs Mundee in this AU). From that, his guardians want him to be better than his parents, and in return he strived for that. However, after giving up, he feels like a failure and is currently going through a period of depression. However, with the money he earned from his job, he wonders if he should take that road-trip he used to fantasize. He told himself doing this will help him find himself, but a part of him wonders if its just him trying to run away from something. Either way, he’s got a deal for a junk RV and he wants to renovate it!
After all that, Scout and Sniper meet, their lives are in the cross roads, and their relationship is a turning point as well. It feels like the world is moving faster than they can cope with, but can they find some respite in this new relationship together? DUN DUN DUUUN
Phew this was really fun to write! I really like their dynamic, romantic or not (idc). Them being the same age range inspired me to write this, because I know myself and some friends have gone through this similar experience aswell, and I just think its fun/interesting to explore that with they have in cannon.
A lot of this projection tho lmao with a loose base derived from cannon, and some embellishments to make this AU work.
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One thing I unabashedly love is cross overs. I love looking at how two different fandoms can intersect, and of course I'm going to smoosh together my favorites any way I can.
In that spirit, I've decided Tsuna is a Hobbit.
Tsuna is a Hobbit, and I'm thinking specifically of Bilbo. It's funny how much Tsuna's basic story line mirrors the other's. Here's this kid with a very average life. While it is not amazing and there is quite a bit he's not happy with, there is a routine to it. Good or bad, he knows what to expect. Then suddenly, Reborn invites himself into Tsuna's life whether he likes it or not, telling him, "We're going on an adventure, and you're going to be our burglar, I mean, mafia boss." Tsuna's all, "Are you crazy?! I'm not going to do that!" and slams the door him.
Of course the disrupter at the door doesn't go away. He brings more people to Tsuna instead. Before he knows it, Tsuna's home is overrun by a host of strange individuals who is eating all his food, and he is Freaking Out.
"Oh my God! Who are you?! Why are you here? Stop fighting/breaking things! Why are you all like this?"
So Tsuna very unwilling goes on this adventure. Pretty much everyone, including himself, doubts he will be of much use, at least initially. He is constantly being underestimated. Reborn is the one who sees Tsuna's potential from the start and pushes him to see that potential too.
Like Bilbo, Tsuna does not want to fight. He hates the idea of it. Everyone around him will be gearing up to throw down, and he's just waving his hands saying, "Guys wait! Can we just not?" However, he will do what he has to do when his friends' safety is on the line. Tsuna might not be the biggest guy and might not seem all that impressive at first glance, but when things go sideways, he is the one to save the day, and he does it in ways no one else would have considered.
By the end of it, he is changed. There's no way he couldn't be after all the dark and scary things he's seen. But the amazing part is how he manages to hold onto all the best parts of what makes him who he is. He's got all the Hobbit Resilience and the Humility too. The world is offered to him on a plate and he's all, "Nah, you can keep it," because now he has his friends, his found family. What more could he need? Well, besides being left alone so he can stay home and hang out with said friends.
So, that is my nonsense contribution to fandom. Tsuna is a hobbit. (And we all know Reborn would jump at the chance to dress up as a wizard.)
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When you add tags like “OR both Ezio and Altaїr being brought back by Desmond (accidentally) during Solar FlareExcept something went... Wrong” in that post I immediately think “yandere time? Yandere time???” (I might have been reading yandere isekai manwhas lately) What if when Desmond activated the device, it needed a way to disperse all the power it received from the Solar Flare, otherwise it would burn Desmond up. (1/?)
So instead, it used the power to make Desmond’s foremost thought a reality. However, Desmond wasn’t thinking of anything ‘nice’. He was in a lot of pain and he just… He remembered the pain and anger of knowing that everything that he has done, his entire life… He had been dancing to the tune of someone else. The Assassins…The Templars… Even those years he spent on the run, being a simple bartender… He had simply been dancing the tune that the Isus had been playing the entire time. (2/?)
He wanted someone… anyone… He just wanted to be someone’s priority, for once. For once, he wanted someone who would be by his side, to accept him for who he is and to… Just… make everything stop. And that’s what the device latched into. The cries of a man in pain, wishing for freedom he believed he never had in the first place. Although, it was too abstract so the device made a few tweaks of its own to make it ‘feasible’. (3 of 4)
It created two representatives of Desmond’s wish, formed from the two men Desmond had achieved a Synch Nexus with. They were copies with a similar personality to the originals, with the memories that Desmond had thanks to the Bleeding Effect.But they were created with a ‘condition’. They were created to do whatever was necessary to protect Desmond and to grant his every desire and wish.… In whatever way they can. (4/4)
You made me get out my eerie music playlist for writing
See when the Temple went in for the one option it had to disperse the energy, it went at it hard. Creating a body and uploading the memories that Desmond has personally observed was not enough. It would get rid of part of the buildup, true, but not nearly enough to guarantee it’s Admin user (…yeah let’s pretend Isu also used something like that) will survive
Nor could it guarantee the memories would be enough to make the simulacrums function independently
So instead – with the shield the Temple was generating, it looked for everything. It scoured all that could be pulled from the genetic memories Desmond carried. It scoured everything that was left behind from Juno. It scoured all the remnant information that was available to any of the pieces of Eden. And then it used those to create the “interface” for the “protectors”
Altaїr’s replica wasn’t just Altaїr left behind in his descendant’s genome. He was also the memory of every contemporary Templar that handed a piece of Eden. He was the memory of every person who still had traceable lineage that interacted with him. He was every shred of Minerva’s calculation that referred to him
It was the same for Ezio. The only difference being – Ezio had much more “source” material to go with, given that (and let’s go with fanon here) he had many more direct descendants
A lot of people whose recollections went into recreating them didn’t have the same rose-ish tinted glasses Desmond did. They were just this side of sharper, just this side of terrified
Collecting all that data… Was enough to burn off what the Temple was not going to use to reconstruct the bodies
Desmond still suffered through it. Some of him still burned – but not in the way heat charred flesh and destroyed nerves. It was the burn of circuitry, much like that of Isu, etching itself into his body. After all, the Temple had to go by the “parameters” that were “set by the Admin”
When both Altaїкand Ezio came to – Desmond was the brightest, most golden thing either of them had ever seen
This alone was enough to snap them into gathering him, and the Apple, first – there was no time to question each other, not when they had to *act* first
Random thoughts:
They do not leave the Temple. Well, not at once – and Altaїr, being the most familiar and thus most “attached” to Isu tech – makes good use of being able to access the system
Both, at some point before Desmond wakes up, find out they are not the originals and there is a bout of freaking out. Surprisingly, it’s Ezio who deals with it first – for the sheer force of habit. It wasn’t the first time he was yanked around by the “gods”
Sharing body heat is going to be a thing. We ARE talking about meters upon meters of stone. It doesn’t keep heat well
Ezio is also the one who spend more time holding vigil over Desmond. At least since the moment Altaїr managed to divine Desmond’s name from the system
Abstergo still tried to get inside the Temple. They don’t have a good time out of it – not against two Master Assassins who are much more familiar with direct combat. That one of them is semi-familiar with firearms and the other has control over the building they are in becomes stuff of nightmares
At some point, Abstergo deems recovering anything from Temple a lost cause
At least one instance of Desmond thinking he is dead when he wakes up, and speaking accordingly. Ezio freaks out. Which causes Desmond to freak out. Altaїr is the one who ends up having to talk them into calming down
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