#meteorites literally from all over

[tapakah0]

#Don't tell me anything. I'm trying to reborn my exhausted brain. #tapadoodles #Cass over here started a f***ing war #On three fronts #Listen to me #RUN. #I mean I will stay #But you better run #meteorites literally from all over #and Cass just hilariously laughing from above #Let me go free I wanna in this chaos please

[theoutcastrogue]

Cold Iron in folklore, fiction, and RPGs

'Gold is for the mistress—silver for the maid! Copper for the craftsman cunning at his trade.' 'Good!' said the Baron, sitting in his hall, 'But Iron—Cold Iron—is master of them all!' — Rudyard Kipling, “Cold Iron”

Folklore

Drudenmesser, or "witch-knife", an apotropaic folding knife from Germany

The notion that iron (or steel) can ward against evil spirits, witches, fairies, etc is very widespread in folklore. You hang a horseshoe over your threshold to deny entry to evil spirits, you carry an iron tool with you to make sure devils won't assault you, you place a small knife under the baby's crib to ward it from witches, and so on. Iron is apotropaic in many many cultures.

In English, we often come across passages that refer to apotropaic cold iron (or cold steel). "All uncouth, unknown Wights are terrifyed by nothing earthly so much as by cold Iron", says Robert Kirk in 1691, which I believe is the earliest example. "Evil spirits cannot bear the touch of cold steel. Iron, or preferably steel, in any form is a protection", says John Gregorson Campbell in 1901.

Words

So what is cold iron? In this context, it’s just iron. The “cold” part is poetic, especially – but not only – if we’re talking about either blades (or swords, weapons, the force of arms) or manacles and the like. It just sounds more ominous. There are “cold yron chaines” in The Fairie Queene (1596), and a 1638 book of travels tells us that a Georgian general (in the Caucasus) vowed “to make the Turk to eat cold iron”.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang defines “cold iron” as a sword, and dates the term to 1698. From 1725 it appears in Cant dictionaries (could this sense be thieves’ cant, originally? why not, plenty of words and expressions started as underworld slang and then entered the mainstream), and from ~1750 its use becomes much more common.

NGram Viewer diagram for 1600-2019.

In other contexts, cold iron is (surprise!) iron that’s not hot. So let’s talk a bit about metallurgy.

Metals

In nature, we can find only one kind of iron that’s pure enough to work with: meteoritic iron. It has to literally fall from the sky. Barring that very rare occurrence, people have to mine the earth for iron ore, which is not workable as is. To separate the iron from the ore we have to smelt it, and for that we need heat, in the form of hot charcoals. Throwing the ore on the coals won’t do much of anything, it’s not hot enough. But if we enclose the coals in a little tower built of clay, leaving holes for air flow, the temperature rises enough to smelt the ore. That’s called a bloomery.

clay bloomery / medieval bloomery / beating the bloom to get rid of the slag

What comes out of the bloomery is a bloom: a porous, malleable mass of iron (that we need) and slag (byproducts that we don’t need). But now we can get rid of the slag and turn the porous mass to something solid, by hammering the hot bloom over and over. And once the slag is off, by the same process we can give it a desired shape in the forge, reheating it as needed. This is called “working” the iron, hence “wrought iron” objects, i.e. forged.

a blacksmith in his forge, with bellows, fire, and anvil (English woodcut, 1603)

This is the lowest-tech version, possibly going back to ~2000 BCE in Nigeria. If we add bellows, the improved air flow will raise the temperature. So smelting happens faster and more efficiently in the bloomery, and so does heating the iron in the forge, making it easier to work with. And that’s the standard process from the Iron Age all through the middle ages and beyond (although in China they may have skipped this stage and gone straight to the next one).

If we make the bloomery bigger and bigger, with stronger and stronger bellows, we end up with a blast furnace, a construction so efficient that the temperature outright melts the iron, and it’s liquified enough to be poured into a mould and acquire the desired shape when it cools off. This is “cast iron”.

a blast furnace

So in all of this, what’s cold iron? Well, it’s iron that went though the heat and cooled off. (No heat = no iron, all you got is ore.) If it came out of a bloomery, or if it wasn’t cast, it’s by definition worked, hammered, beaten, wrought, and that happened while it was still hot.

Is there such a thing as “cold-wrought” iron? No. In fact, “working cold iron” was a simile for something foolish or pointless. A smith who beats cold iron instead of putting it in the fire shows folly, says a 1694 book on religion, so you too should choose your best tools, piety and good decorum, to educate your children and servants, instead of beating them. When Don Quixote (1605) declares he’ll go knight-erranting again, Sancho Panza tries to dissuade him, but it’s like “preaching in the desert and hammering on cold iron” (a direct translation of martillar en hierro frío).

Minor work can be done on cold iron. A 1710 dictionary of technical terms tells us that a rivetting-hammer is “chiefly used for rivetting or setting straight cold iron, or for crooking of small work; but ’tis seldom used at the forge”. Fully fashioning an object out of cold iron is not a real process – though a 1659 History of the World would claim that in Arabia it’s so hot that “smiths work nails and horseshoes out of cold iron, softened only by the vigorous heat of the sun, and the hard hammering of hands on the anvil”. [I declare myself unqualified to judge the veracity of this statement, let's just say I have doubts.] And there is of course such a thing as “cold wrought-iron”, as in wrought iron after it’s cooled off.

Either way, in the context of pre-20th century English texts which refer to apotropaic “cold iron”, it’s definitely not “cold-wrought”, or meteoritic, or a special alloy of any kind. It’s just iron.

Fiction

The old superstition kept coming up in fantasy fiction. In 1910 Rudyard Kipling wrote the very influential short story “Cold Iron” (in the collection Rewards and Fairies), where he explains invents the details of the fairies’ aversion to iron. They can’t bewitch a child wearing boots, because the boots have nails in the soles. They can’t pass under a doorway guarded by a horseshoe, but they can slip through the backdoor that people neglected to guard. Mortals live “on the near side of Cold Iron”, because there’s iron in every house, while fairies live “on the far side of Cold Iron”, and want nothing to do with it. And changelings brought up by fairies will go back to the world of mortals as soon they touch cold iron for the first time.

In Poul Anderson’s The Broken Sword (1954), we read:

“Let me tell you, boy, that you humans, weak and short-lived and unwitting, are nonetheless more strong than elves and trolls, aye, than giants and gods. And that you can touch cold iron is only one reason.”

In Peter S. Beagle’s The Last Unicorn (1968) the unicorn is imprisoned in an iron cage:

“She turned and turned in her prison, her body shrinking from the touch of the iron bars all around her. No creature of man’s night loves cold iron, and while the unicorn could endure its presence, the murderous smell of it seemed to turn her bones to sand and her blood to rain.”

Poul Anderson would come back to that idea in Operation Chaos (1971), where the worldbuilding’s premise is that magic and magical creatures have been reintroduced into the modern world, because a scientist “discovered he could degauss the effects of cold iron and release the goetic forces”. And that until then, they had been steadily declining, ever since the Iron Age came along.

There are a million examples, I’m just focusing on those that would have had a more direct influence on roleplaying games. However, I should note that all these say “cold iron” but mean “iron”. Yes, the fey call it cold, but they are a poetic bunch. You can’t expect Robin Goodfellow’s words to be pedestrian, now can you?

RPGs

And from there, fantasy roleplaying systems got the idea that Cold Iron is a special material that fey are vulnerable to. The term had been floating around since the early D&D days, but inconsistently, scattered in random sourcebooks, and not necessarily meaning anything else than iron. In 1st Edition’s Monster Manual (1977) it’s ghasts and quasits who are vulnerable to it, not any fey creature. Devils and/or fiends might dislike iron, powdered cold iron is a component in Magic Circle Against Evil, and “cold-wrought iron” makes a couple of appearances. For example, in AD&D it can strike Fool’s Gold and turn it back to its natural state, revealing the illusion.

Then Changeling: The Dreaming came along and made it a big deal, a fundamental rule, and an anathema to all fae:

Cold iron is the ultimate sign of Banality to changelings. ... Its presence makes changelings ill at ease, and cold iron weapons cause horrible, smoking wounds that rob changelings of Glamour and threaten their very existence.... The best way to think about cold iron is not as a thing, but as a process, a very low-tech process. It must be produced from iron ore over a charcoal fire. The resulting lump of black-gray material can then be forged (hammered) into useful shapes. — Changeling: The Dreaming (2nd Edition, 1997)

So now that we know how iron works, does that description make sense? Well, if we assume that the iron ore is unceremoniously dumped on coals, it does not. You can’t smelt iron like that. If we assume that a bloomery is involved even though it’s not mentioned, then yes, this is broadly speaking how iron’s been made since the Iron Age, and until blast furnaces came into the picture. But the World of Darkness isn’t a pseudo-medieval setting, it’s modern urban fantasy. So the implication here is that “cold iron” is iron made the old way: you can’t buy it in the store, someone has to replicate ye olde process and do the whole thing by hand. Now, this is NOT how the term “cold iron” has been used in real life or fiction thus far, but hey, fantasy games are allowed to invent things.

Regardless, 3.5 borrowed the idea, and for the first time D&D made this a core rule. Now most fey creatures had damage reduction and took less damage from weapons and natural attacks, unless the weapon was made of Cold Iron:

“This iron, mined deep underground, known for its effectiveness against fey creatures, is forged at a lower temperature to preserve its delicate properties.” — Player’s Handbook (3.5 Edition, 2003)

Pathfinder kept the rule, though 5e did not. And unlike Changeling, this definition left it somewhat ambiguous if we’re talking about a material with special composition (i.e. not iron) or made with a special process (i.e. iron but). The community was divided, threads were locked over this!

So until someone points me to new evidence, I’ll assume that the invention of cold iron as a special material, distinct from plain iron, should be attributed to TTRPGs.

#long post #cold iron #d&d #Changeling: The Dreaming #World of Darkness #Peter S. Beagle #The Last Unicorn #Rudyard Kipling #Poul Anderson #The Broken Sword #how to rogue #pathfinder #rogues in fiction #Operation Chaos #rogue superstitions #words of the trade #thieves' cant #ad&d #d&d history #1st edition #fey #3.5 #fluff #trs

[five-rivers]

The Intern

AO3

Inspired by a variety of DPxDC posts, but mostly this one by @gettingcomfyinyourwalls

.

Before Danny's Accident, he and Jazz had competed for the title of "the normal one" with an intensity and ferocity achievable only by siblings in families where there was no normal one.  After the Accident, he had to cede the title, however reluctantly, to his sister, who then, in a turn around only possible for siblings, then dedicated herself to giving Danny the title of "the one everyone thinks is the normal one."  Combined with his chosen friend group - a girl who pursued weird as a lifestyle, and the kid who once tried to use a tamagotchi to hack a vending machine, then gave the tamagotchi an Egyptian burial when the attempt killed it - it was very easy to forget that Danny was not normal at all.  Not even if you ignored the whole "half-ghost superhero" thing, which was very difficult to ignore.  

It was even easier to forget what kind of not normal he originally was, before the accident, and continued to be even afterward.  

However, the world (and particularly Sam and Tucker) was about to be reminded.  

"Guys!" shouted Danny, literally skipping up the hallway to come to a bouncing stop between Sam and Tucker.  "Guess what!"  He was quivering with so much excitement that his edges looked a little blurry.  

Tucker put a hand on his shoulder to get him to stop.  "I guess it's a good thing, and not that your parents invented a ghost wiggler or something?"

Danny stilled.  "The ghost wiggler.  My enemy."

"Wait, I was joking."

"Mom and Dad weren't.  That thing was evil."

"Okay, okay," said Sam, raising her hands, "it didn't have anything to do with one of your parents' inventions.  What did happen?"

"Two of my summer internship applications were accepted," said Danny, almost sparkling with delight.  

Actually, he was sparkling.  If he had an internship outside of town, he would have to get that under control.  

"That's great," said Sam.  "Which ones?"

"Lexcorp and Wayne Industries!"

"Lexcorp?"

"Wayne Industries?"

"You applied to Lexcorp?" demanded Sam, appalled.  

"You're going to Gotham?" asked Tucker in the same tone.  

Danny looked from Sam to Tucker, then back again.  "Yessssss?"

"To work for the guy you call Bald Vlad?  The one who keeps trying to kill Superman?"

"The place with all those crazy villains and mad scientists? That Gotham?"

Then, together, they asked, "Why did you even apply there?"

"Lexcorp is a civilian leader in astronautics, meteoritics, cosmochemistry, nuclear physics, quantum computing, robotics and medical research."

"Because Lex Luthor is trying to kill Superman."

"And even beyond Wayne Industries, there are so many great scientists in Gotham, like Dr. Isley, Dr. Crane and even Dr. Fries!"

"Danny, those are the villains."

"Well," said Danny, "I figure I'm never going to meet Lex Luthor, being an intern and all, but if I see any dangerous weapons, I can trash them!  I have lots of experience."

"Don't you think it might be a little dangerous for you to work for an avowed human supremacist?"

"It’s not any different from staying home."

Sam leaned back to stare at a point over Danny's head, flummoxed.

Tucker, not liking his point being ignored, squeezed Danny's shoulder.  "If you miss fighting that much, I'm sure any ghost you ask will be happy to spar with you.  The villains, Danny.  Why do you want to go somewhere with that many villains?"

"It's not like I'm joining them."  Danny rolled his eyes.  "I just want to talk to them.  If you're so concerned, I can take Dr. Isley and Dr. Crane off the list."

"Why only those two?  Why not get rid of the whole list?" asked Tucker, shaking him slightly.  

"Because Dr. Isley was mostly for Sam and Dr. Crane was mostly for Jazz.  Dr. Fries is for me, and Mom and Dad want me to try to convince cousin Hugo to try therapy again."

"Why," said Sam, as Tucker glared at her, "do you think I'd want you to talk to Poison Ivy?"

"Uh," said Danny, "because you admire her work?"

"Admired, past tense, and that was before she started turning people into trees."

“But the ‘turning people into trees’ part is way more applicable to our lives!”

“Forget about that,” said Tucker.  “Why do you want to talk to Mr. Freeze?”

“Well, Doctor Fries is an expert in cryogenics and incorporating ice into technology.  I want to be able to do that.”  Danny looked back and forth between Sam and Tucker.  “Come on, I’m not interning for him.  I just want to expand my knowledge base!  Just think about all the cool things I could make!”

Sam and Tucker, united in horror and purpose, grabbed Danny by the arms and dragged him bodily into Senior English.  

"Jazz," said Sam, hauling Danny forward by the arm she held, "your brother is turning into a mad scientist!"

Jazz looked from Sam, to Danny, to Tucker, then back to Sam.  "Yessssss?"

"Well," huffed Sam, "aren't you going to do anything about it?"

"No?  Why would I?" 

“Mad scientist,” repeated Sam.  

“That’s generally a bad thing,” said Tucker.  

“It’s fine.  Danny has a very strong sense of ethics.”

“And lab safety!” chimed in Danny.  

“And lab safety,” agreed Jazz, nodding.  “Now, if you want me to help you with your internalized prejudice, I can refer you to some resources I’ve found quite helpful myself.”

“Internalized prejudice is when you’re biased against yourself,” said Tucker.

“Yes.”  Jazz returned to the task of arranging her pens and notebook on her desk.  

“Wait,” said Sam, “you are not calling us mad scientists, are you?”

“Well,” said Jazz, “Mad Science Disorder isn’t in the DSM, but there’s a movement to have it included in the next edition, and I think you would fit the proposed diagnostic criteria.”

“No,” said Sam.  

“Yes,” said Danny.  

“I have seen the inside of your greenhouse, Sam,” said Jazz.  “You’re at least on the road to being a mad botanist, if not a mad ecologist.”

“I’ve been saying that for years,” said Tucker.  

“And you’re obviously a mad computer scientist, with a minor in archaeology.”

“Wait, why are you saying this like they’re college majors?” asked Tucker.  

“It’s easier that way,” said Jazz.  She frowned slightly.  “I’m not saying it’s a bad thing.  It’s just that you should be aware of it, so you don’t wake up one day and start planning involuntary human drug trials, or something like that.”

“Jazz did that, once.  I was five.”

The warning bell rang.  

“You should go to class,” said Jazz, pleasantly.  “You don’t want to be late.”

.

“Listen,” said Sam, leaning over the desk to whisper at Danny, “couldn’t you, I don’t know, just do the Wayne internship?”

“Hm,” said Danny, rubbing his chin, “maybe.  But I kind of get the feeling I only got the Wayne internship because I got the Lexcorp one.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I mean, like we talked about way back, Bruce Wayne has to be funding the Justice League, at least a little.”  He pushed his math homework - already finished - to one side.  “It’d make sense for him to keep an eye on anyone Lex Luthor personally hires, on account of the Superman thing.  It’s either that or corporate espionage.”

“Wait,” said Tucker, leaning in from the side, “go back to the ‘personally’ part.”

“It’s a special internship?” said Danny, somehow still managing to pull off the clueless innocent look.  “It was, like, competitive?  You know what I mean.”

“Luthor personally hired you?  Reviewed your application and whatever?”

“Yeah.”

“And you think he isn’t going to meet you?”

“Why would he?  I’m basically going to be getting a tour, then doing drudgework for a month.”

“I love you, man, but you are so, so dumb sometimes.  The man is going to meet you.  Jeez, I hadn’t even heard he was doing internships like that for our age group.”

“Age group?” asked Danny.  

“Dude.  No.  Tell me it was at least limited to just high schoolers.  Tell me you didn’t apply for an internship meant for college students.”

“There wasn’t any age on it as far as I remember.”

“Mr. Fenton,” said Mr. Falluca, “will you please come solve this triangle for the class?”

Danny huffed.  “Rule of cosines,” he said as he stood.  “Give me an easy problem…”

“Why is he even in this class?” mumbled Sam.

“Ghost hunting,” Tucker mumbled back.  

.

“How are you even going to get to Metropolis?” asked Sam as they walked away from the school.  “You don’t have your license yet.”  He probably wouldn’t have his license ever.  Three Fentons driving had, evidently, proven too much for the local DMVs.  Jazz, as conscientious as she was, had gotten hers from the one in Elmerton before they, too, realized the horror that was Jack and Maddie.  

“Jazz is going to take me,” said Danny with a little shrug.  “She’s doing a pre-college thing there.  Some kind of volunteer thing.”

“And how are you getting to Gotham?”

“There’s a train that goes there,” said Danny.  “Like, a regular one.”

“And getting back?”

“Mom and Dad will pick me up.”

“Where will you be sleeping?”

“There’s on-site dorms on each site.”

Sam curled her lips.  “The return of company towns in the modern era.”

“I don’t know, I think the Wayne ones are probably fine.”

“But you’re sleeping in the Lexcorp ones?”

“I figure I can disable any subliminal programming devices that might be installed there.”

“Do you not see how crazy that sounds?  Tucker, back me up, here?”

Tucker sighed.  “Honestly, I don’t think we’re going to be able to change his mind.  I’ve been picking out funeral flowers.  You still like lillies?”

“It’ll be fine.  I’ll call you guys if I need help.  Just like you’ll call me if some new ghost shows up and starts causing trouble, right?”

“Yes,” said Sam, exasperated.  “But you understand those two things aren’t the same, right?  That with the way things are here, there probably won’t be a new ghost causing trouble?”  

Danny had made… peace probably wasn’t quite the right word, with the Fentons, the Guys in White, and the lack of an organized overarching social structure, but there was an understanding between him and the ghosts.  Without that understanding, he wouldn’t have been able to take the time to apply for internships, let alone actually go to any.  

“I mean, if it’s an imposition–”

“That’s not what she meant,” interjected Tucker.  “Nope.  Nope.  You aren’t wriggling out of calling us when a supervillain kidnaps you.  She’s trying to talk you out of taking an unnecessary risk.”

“It’s not really a risk for me, though.”

It really wasn’t.  Danny might not be invulnerable, but the sheer variety of his powers along with his accelerated healing made that point academic.  For most enemies.  

“This is the guy who fights Superman, Danny,” said Sam.  “For all we know, he’s got some kind of anti-ghost material in the same cabinet he keeps his Kryptonite.”

“I don’t think that’d work very well, actually,” said Danny.  

“It was a metaphor.  Be serious.”

“I am being serious.  This is something I want to do.  I want to go there and learn and prepare for the future.”

“You sound like Jazz, you know?  You’ve got two more years here.  You don’t have to do this.  If this is some kind of overcorrection because of the ghosts–”

“It’s not.  I told you why I wanted to do this.”  He stopped on the sidewalk, pulling on the hem of his shirt.  “Is it really that bad?  Is it really that terrible that I’m going somewhere and doing something that I’m interested in?”

“No,” said Tucker, awkwardly.  “We’re worried about you.”

“And I’ll be fine,” insisted Danny.  “Really.  I will be.  And, you know, like I said, I want to do this kind of thing in the future, so it’s good practice.”

“For what?” asked Sam, crossing her arms.  “Scamming supervillains?”

“Well, yeah,” said Danny.  “That, too.”

Sam’s arms fell, along with her jaw.  “What?”

“Scamming supervillains,” said Danny, starting to walk again.  “Like, obviously, I want to either do something with spaceflight or something with a big humanitarian dimension, but scamming supervillains is definitely going to be my backup.  Or maybe my hobby.  They always have the coolest stuff, and a lot of money, too, usually.”

“Coolest stuff?”

“Yeah,” said Danny, almost skipping, now.  “Ice rays, supercomputers, gene therapy, rapidly growing vegetation, limb regeneration, cloning techniques… Lex Luthor came up with a cure for, like, over half a dozen different types of cancer.”

“Because he wanted to kill Superman,” said Sam, taking up an earlier refrain.  It had only 

“Yeah, but imagine what he could do if we could convince him that Superman got his strength from, like, world hunger or something.”

“I hate it,” said Sam, after a long moment, “but I think you have a point.”

“You two could go into business with me.  Some villains go through goons so fast, I bet we could hit them about a dozen times.”

“You’re not planning to do this now, though, are you?” asked Tucker.

“Huh?  No.  No, not until after graduation.  Most I’ll do with any supervillains I see this time around is talk.”

“That’s a lie,” said Sam, immediately.  “There’s no way.  The first time Man-Bat or Brainiac jumps out of a sewer, you’re going to start swinging.”

“Man-Bat is a geneticist and a chiropterologist, you know,” said Danny.  “I’d love to take Brainiac apart, though.  Do you have any idea how many planets he’s wiped out?  And the stuff he’s got to have–”

“You’re floating,” said Tucker.  

“And glowing,” said Sam.  “You’re really going to have to work on that.”

“Oops,” said Danny.  “Sorry.  It’s just, like, everything I’m Obsessed with.”  He landed, but still fidgeted, as if shaping something invisible with his hands.  Which he might have been.  “It’s– I still want to help people.”  The plaintive note in his voice made it clear that ‘want’ was, in this case, closer to ‘need.’    “I don’t mind doing the hero thing, and I can’t ignore a cry for help.  But I’m not going to just waltz into someone else’s territory and start messing with stuff.”

“I think the territory thing is more of a ghost thing than a hero thing.”

“Eh,” said Danny, “I wouldn’t be so sure.”

.

Danny waved goodbye to Jazz as she pulled away from the curb, then grinned up at the Lexcorp building.  Wow, it was tall.  And probably had a lot of really sketchy stuff in the basement.  

But!  He wouldn’t start poking around with that stuff until he’d been there for at least a week.  

(Okay, he’d probably last twenty-four hours at most, but who could blame him?  How often did anyone get to poke around the lair of a supervillain who wasn’t their archenemy?)

He walked into the lobby, craning his neck this way and that to take it all in.  It was… honestly pretty boring.  Not unlike Vlad’s buildings.  But he supposed that all corporate buildings were like that to some degree.  

“Hello!” he said, walking up to the front desk.  “I’m–”

“You’ll have to wait for your parents to come out, I’m afraid, sweetie,” said the secretary.  “Company rules.”

Danny blushed.  “No, um, I’m here for the internship?  The Innovators of Tomorrow Today internship?  I’m Danny Fenton.  Daniel.  Daniel Fenton.”

The secretary blinked at him, then looked down at her computer for a moment.  “I’ll need to see some ID.”

“Will my passport be okay?” Danny asked, tugging on his bracelet to get it to lie more comfortably on his wrist.  On account of the whole ‘no driver’s license’ problem, he didn’t have anything else, other than his student ID.  

“That will be fine,” said the secretary, reaching for it.  She looked it over carefully, becoming more and more confused.  Danny wondered if she was expecting it to be fake or something.  “You’re fifteen.”

“I know I’m short,” said Danny.  “But I’m almost sixteen.”

“I see,” she said.  “Well.  Here’s your visitor badge.  We’ll have someone come escort you to the meeting room shortly, and your internship badge will be ready when you start tomorrow.  You can leave your luggage here, and it will be scanned and brought up to the dorms.”

Danny bobbed his head happily and took back his passport and the badge.  He couldn’t wait to meet the other people he’d be working with.  He bet that there’d be a lot of people his age, no matter what Tucker said after he looked it up and saw the website.  

A tall man wearing an earpiece and some kind of weapon - a taser, probably - walked up to Danny a few minutes later and scanned his badge.  With a few words, he directed Danny to an elevator - one with a keypad code - and brought him up to the tenth story.  The elevator opened directly into a… Danny wasn’t entirely sure what to call it.  It was square and very large and open, with soft, rounded furniture, a kitchenette, and a catered lunch spread out on several long tables.  One wall was all windows, looking down into Metropolis, and another wall was covered in cool, art-deco Lexcorp posters.  

There were a lot of people.

A lot of tall people.  

A lot of tall, college-aged people.  Older college-aged people, even.  No teenagers.

Tucker had been right.  Great.  

A middle-aged woman extracted herself from the loose crowd and came over to Danny, smiling.  

“Hello!” she said.  “You must be Daniel Fenton.  My name is Liberty Rue, I’m the coordinator for the Innovators of Tomorrow Today program.”

“Hi,” said Danny, “it’s nice to meet you.”

Ms. Rue nodded.  “Thank you, thank you.  We’re just giving everyone a chance to get to know each other before we start the orientation.  Please feel free to take any of the refreshments and mingle.  All of you are going to be working together closely.  Your specialties were electrical engineering and space science?”

“Yes,” said Danny.  Although, to be honest, he didn’t really have a specialty.  He was more of a generalist.  

(Unless you counted ghost science, but there was absolutely no way he was going to bring that up.)

“Excellent.  Let me introduce you to the group you’ll be working most closely with–”

What followed was something of a whirlwind.  It wasn’t that there was a lot of people, but it was one after the other, and Ms. Rue seemed to be… showing him off, almost?  Or showing the other people off?  In any case, there was a weird tension to it all.  

Was it because he was younger?  

He tried not to dwell on it too much, though, because everyone here had so much cool stuff to talk about.  Almost all of them had been involved in serious graduate or undergraduate research projects.  Strange matter, transient dimensions, reality fields, meta gene analysis, non-quantum teleportation, reproduction of extraterrestrial technologies…  Danny was starting to feel a little inadequate.  The project he’d sent in was a ‘theoretical’ blueprint for a spy-bot disabler.  One that he was proud of, sure; getting a localized EMP effect without a nuke wasn’t easy, but it was doable.  And the EMP part was definitely the ‘last resort’ stage of things.  It was, after all, much better to hack into Vlad’s bugs and have them send him a hundred hours worth of rickrolls.

In the middle of a conversation about exactly how much room you needed for a decent particle accelerator, Ms. Rue stepped aside and put her hand to her ear.  Danny hadn’t noticed the earpiece before, but now he looked at it with curiosity.  It was well made, and he could barely hear it, even with his slightly augmented hearing.  He wondered if they were designed to counter Superman.  

“Mr. Fenton,” said Ms. Rue, “I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to steal you away for a moment.

“Okay,” said Danny.  He followed her back to the elevator, stealing a cookie as he went.  They weren’t as good as his Mom’s, but he was pretty sure they tasted the way they did because of their ectoplasm content, so…

Ms. Rue punched a code into the elevator and scanned her badge.  “Alright, Mr. Fenton.  Go ahead.  You’ll be taken where you need to go.”

Well.  That was maybe a little sketchy, but Danny was nothing if not curious.  He got in.  “I’ll be back in time for the orientation, right?”

“If you aren’t, I’ll make sure you’re shown around personally,” promised Ms. Rue.

The doors closed and the elevator went up.  And up.  Then stopped for a moment, during which Danny felt the tingle of a very thorough full-body scan.  And up some more.  All the way to the top.  The doors opened to a sparkling office.  Everything in it was white, chrome, or glass, with smooth straight lines and geometrically perfect curves.  It blended perfectly with the skyline of Metropolis framed by the full-wall windows.  

Between Danny and the windows was an enormous white desk.  Behind the desk was Lex Luthor.  

“Daniel Fenton,” said Lex Luthor, inclining his head ever so slightly towards Danny.  “It is good to meet you.”

“Thank you,” said Danny, trying not to squeak.  “I’m happy to be here.  I’m looking forward to working here for the next couple of weeks.”

“It is heartening to see that you are more open to cooperation than Vlad.”  Luthor turned away, slightly, surveying the city below him.  

Danny took that as an invitation to come closer and peer out the huge windows himself.  What did Vlad have to do with this?

“I confess, I found myself frustrated by his lack of vision,” continued Luthor, “but youth often holds wisdom that age lacks.”  He turned back to favor Danny with a smile.  “On seeing your application, I was charmed by your initiative in circumventing your mentor.”

Danny’s train of thought, such as it was, derailed.  

“Mentor?” he asked.  

“You don’t have to hide it,” said Luthor.  “Not when we are both quite aware of the others’ knowledge.  Considering my wealth, I am privy to a number of things that ordinary people are not.  Including the beneficiaries of my fellow billionaires’ wills.”

Oh.  Oh, no.  Lex thought– But why–  Was he–  He couldn’t be right, but–  But did this make Danny a… a… nepotism baby?

The sprout of confidence that had been flourishing ever since he got the letter announcing his acceptance to the internship program withered.  This was even worse than finding out he and Jazz were test tube babies.  (And that was only so bad because his parents had felt the need to go on a long tangent about how they had selected their donor-parents, as large portions of Jack and Maddie's genomes were unstable due to a combination of the family proclivities and a variety of curses.)

Lex Luthor stood.  “Doubtless, you’re interested in the projects I outlined to Vlad when I proposed our cooperation.  The device blueprint you submitted for the internship referenced them quite cleverly.  I would like to show you how far they’ve progressed since I spoke to Vlad, and then we can discuss your contribution to their success.”

“I don’t have access to any of Vlad’s resources, Mr. Luthor,” said Danny, cautiously.  “I couldn’t provide any, er, funding to these projects.”

“I am aware of that.  But I think your value goes above and beyond the financial, Daniel.”  He put a hand on Danny’s shoulder.  “After all, the reason I approached Vlad was his science background.  And in a few years… Well.  Vlad Masters is not a young man.”

Was that a murder threat?  Danny thought it was a murder threat.  Oh, boy, did he have something else coming for him if he thought he could just kill Vlad like that.  

Luthor directed Danny back towards the elevator, and this time they went down.  Far down.  Into those basements Danny had been thinking about before.  

They stepped out into a vestibule, and a pair of much more openly armed security guards saluted Lex before running through a series of security measures.  Danny took note specifically of the ones intended to detect mind control and shapeshifting.  

From there, they passed through a series of locked doors and into a maze of gleaming white hallways.  The color made Danny’s skin itch.  Too much like the GIW for his taste.

Luthor opened a side door, and showed Danny into an empty lab.  Empty in terms of people, that is.  In terms of stuff… blueprints, prototypes, models, drawings, coffee cups… not so much.

“I had the team take the day off,” said Luthor.  “I thought you’d appreciate the chance to look at things without any distractions.”

Danny surveyed the plans with interest.  There were similarities between what was being built and the mini-EMP portion of his bug-zapper.  There were also echoes of shield technology…  some kind of energy projector or amplifier?  

“What is it supposed to emit?” asked Danny, unable to hold back his curiosity.  He touched, ever so gently, a hollow place he was sure the energy source was supposed to sit. 

Lex smiled.  “I’m glad you asked,” he said.  “Follow me.”

They went back out into the hallway, but only briefly.  The next room had even more security, but Luthor bypassed it all with businesslike efficiency and they entered a plain, all-white and bare room.

One wall of this room was taken up by a backlit display cabinet made of square cubbies.  Within each cubby was a tiny chip of crystal, like a sample display of particularly expensive rock candy.  Green, of many shades, was the best-represented color, but there was also red and blue.  That made sense, because each crystal was made of delicious ectoplasm-infused quartz.  Danny swallowed.  They were making his mouth water, but the amount of death energy they would have had to be around…

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” asked Luthor.  “Kryptonite.  The key to repelling our would-be alien overlord.”

Yeah.  Remnants of a planet that imploded while still inhabited by billions.  That would do it.  

“I intend to create a Kryptonite field over the whole of Metropolis, one that should, at the least, disable Superman to the point where we can drive him out.  I will sell them to the great cities of America, and then, the world.  One day, the whole Earth will be protected, and Superman must either leave, or die.  But for now, it is still a dream.  That is why I need you, Daniel.”

Danny didn’t think Luthor’s weapon would work.  Not now.  There was too much missing.  Too much being missed by scientists and engineers expecting the Kryptonite to behave in a normal, logical way.  He was certain, however, that he could make something that functioned exactly as described.  He could even do it quickly, building off ghost and human shield technologies.  He could see the pieces of it fit together, like a puzzle.  

Making it, just to prove that he, Danny Fenton, could, was tempting.  

So tempting.  

But he had this little thing called morals, and driving Superman off Earth was definitely in the category of bad.  

“Well, I don’t know if I can fix problems all your scientists can’t, but I can sure try to help.”  He winced a little at the phrasing.  Why did he have to use the word help?  

“That’s all I ask,” said Luthor.  “But that’s far from our only project.  Shall we?”

“Sure,” said Danny, not at all faking his smile.  Even though he’d have to sabotage this stuff, it was really cool to see it!

.

Later that night in his dorm room - which was, incidentally, a lot more spacious than he’d expected - Danny rotated the bracelet on his wrist and pressed a button on its side.  Inside the thick band was a miniaturized and completely functional version of the spy-bot zapper he’d submitted as part of his internship application.  He listened to it click as it went through the different modes available to it.  It tweedled at him when it finished.  

Only then did he pull out his phone and power it on.  He clicked into his contacts and hit the button for his first favorite.  

“Hey,” he said, when the call connected, “Jazz, so…  Sam and Tucker might have been just a little bit right about my internship…”

.

May do more at a later time, but for now, this is it. I am incredibly forgetful, so I don't do taglists. Please consider subscribing to the AO3 version of this instead.

#dpxdc #dannymay #dannymay 2023 #dannymay 2023 day 7: weapon

[pyrookami]

The call

Fren normally loved working with David. That was usually because the lone human on the small supply depot in the void between solar systems was not normally this quiet and strange. Fren's species did have trouble with humans expressive faces since their own was mainly carapace and they communicated feelings through pheromones. But this cycle David's usual smile was gone and his laughter that would ring out through comms whenever he told a bad joke or saw a skree mating dance was now silent. In their external excursion suits, or as David called them "jogging suits," Fren could only see a part of David's face as he floated in the zero gravity for some reason starring off into the darkness for some reason.

After watching silently for a moment as both David and his special vacuum welding tools simply floated Fren decided enough was enough and keyed his communicator.

"Engineer David you have been staring off into space for approximately ten units is there a problem?"

Strangely the human appeared to flinch at the sudden breaking of the silence, odd since in Fren's experience very little could actually harm the death world species. so quieter and with less intensity he keyed his comm.

"Engineer David are you all right?"

It took a few moments for an answer to come forth from the human as he collected his tools from around him and seemed to gather his thoughts at the same time.

"Sorry boss kinda got lost in thought there for a moment. It wont happen again ill finish up these last couple seals and we can head back into the nice cozy station."

There it was his usual tone and even a bit of laughter. what thoughts could have caused such a jovial creature such dark and pensive silence for so long?

"If you do not mind Friend David. What thoughts were you lost in that had your usual joviality overwhelmed?"

With a chuckle David began welding two metal composite sheets together to patch the meteorite hole before answering.

"Oh it was just the call of the void messing with my mood. Wondering how it would go if i was to drift off into the literal void you know what i mean?"

in shock Fren stared at the human, to the human who had trouble with the blank faces of the arachnian it was hard to tell what was going on as it seemed that there was something wrong. after looking around to make sure nothing was behind him David maneuvered over to his eight-legged counterpart and waved a hand in front of Fren's primary eyes. the motion achieved its goal of pulling Fren out of his shocked stupor only for the arachnian to embrace his human coworker with four limbs and use his remaining free limbs to maneuver the duo to the air lock. Fren did not release his friend until the air lock ha d cycled and opened into the interior of the station.

"WHOA HEY!"

"Engineer David you are to report to doctor Shulo immediately for psychiatric evaluation and are not to work until i have a clean mental bill of health for you and your thoughts of self termination have ceased."

Before the human could respond he was forced out of the airlock and it was closed behind him.

"Well time to freak out the doc i guess."

#humans are space orcs #hfy #writing practice #humans are deathworlders #humans are space australians

[yourheartonfire]

Reporter finds out that their city's hero is corrupt, and they make it their goal to expose them to the public. Somehow they fall in love. (Can go plucky reporter who openly confronts Hero, or cautious reporter who knows a corrupt hero is dangerous, so they get close under false pretenses to find evidence.)

Prompt courtesy of @thepenultimateword

"Wait. No. What is...?" The reporter's throat had gone dry as sand. They slapped the composition book shut, thrust it back into the gold paper wrappings. But it was too late. Afterimages of dates and names and dizzyingly high sums danced before their eyes - all in the hero's own neat handwriting.

"It's the proof you wanted, darling," the hero said, a dreamy smile on their lips as they gazed at the reporter through the candlesticks. "All the money I've been extorting from our city's villains in exchange for turning a blind eye to their wrongdoing. Happy one year anniversary."

The reporter stared from the hero's face back down to the gift, so beautifully wrapped. They had gotten the hero designer sunglasses. "You knew," they said. It was meant to be a question but... no. This was not a surprise. Somewhere over the past year, this had become an inevitability. "You knew I was..."

"Investigating me? Seducing me?" The hero chuckled and rose. The reporter managed to quash their flinch as the hero picked up the reporter's empty plate, then their own. "Darling, I spend my life foiling schemes. Yes, of course I knew."

The reporter sat, flooded in an adrenaline rush so strong they wondered if they were having a heart attack. The door to the hero's penthouse apartment was forty feet behind their back. Their fingers itched to grab that notebook and run - but some survival instinct kept them frozen to their chair as the hero prowled the dishes off to the kitchen.

"So," the reporter said evenly. "You've just been... toying with me, this whole time?"

"Toying with you," the hero purred, returning to cock a hip against the table and give the reporter that half-feral smile they had only ever seen behind closed doors. God help them, the reporter felt themselves blush. "Yes. That's a good word. You decided you'd try to seduce your way into my confidence, to uncover my secrets. So..." The hero traced a finger along the reporter's temple, teasing a lock of hair out to run between their fingers. "...I set out to seduce you back. And you win."

The reporter blinked. "What."

"You win." The hero gave a fond little tug to their hair and then let go. "I've fallen in love with you. So."

"You cant love me! I'm here to expose you!" The reporter scrambled backwards, clutching the notebook to their chest as if the hero hadn't just handed it to them, literally gift wrapped. "You've been blackmailing villains!"

The hero shrugged without a blush of shame. "Only those who would have bought their way out of the justice system anyway. Why shouldn't I cut out the middleman and use their money for crime-fighting?"

"Crime-fighting? You're lining your pockets!" The reporter waved a hand wildly at their luxury surroundings as they backed away. "The food, the clothes, the whole lifestyle!"

"And I'm the last hero of my generation still standing," the hero said, calm and steady as they paced forward. "You think that's a coincidence? Or you think it's because you and I both know sometimes doing the right thing means bending a few rules along the way?"

The reporter stopped dead again. "What are you talking about?"

The hero's hand closed on the reporter's wrist and - yanked was too harsh a word. It was a pull and a spin, like the sun dragging a meteorite into its gravity well and suddenly the reporter was wrapped up in the hero's arms. In their lover's arms, their back pressed to the hero's chest.

"This," the hero hummed into the protagonist's ear, swaying them both to the soft music trickling from the hidden sound system. "A year of lies and blurred lines and compromises to get your story. Hardly the stuff of journalistic ethics seminars. What would your friends and colleagues say?"

"So it's blackmail," the reporter whispered.

"If that's what you want. We could destroy each other. Or..." The hero's mouth pressed to the sensitive spot on the reporter's neck. They almost melted. "Or we could see what happens next, with all our cards on the table."

"You can't be serious." The reporter jerked away. The hero let them go. "You want to keep dating?"

"Of course. You're gorgeous, clever, a little reckless, and you have that flexible morality thing. It's like you were made for me. Like we were made for each other." The hero gave them a once-over so blatant the reporter blushed again. But they didn't move to corner the reporter. "Go home, think about it. Take the notebook."

"You won't chase me?" the reporter said before they could stop themselves.

The hero's grin widened. "How about I give you a head start?"

The reporter fled to the sound of the hero's laughter rattling in their chest.

#my fiction #hero x villain #reporter x hero #evil hero #filled prompt #thepenultimateword #reporter x villain #100 #300 #500

[mossy-rainfrog]

[ID: A digital illustration of many different characters and symbols from Star Wars Rebels season 2, surrounded and connected by designs from various Lothal cave paintings. 

From left to right, and top to bottom: A small snail from Atollon, peering out from its shell. Next, Ezra Bridger with his arms crossed, rolling his eyes as he says “I’m literally neurodivergent and a minor but ok ://“. A drawing of Ezra’s repainted imperial cadet helmet. Garazeb Orrelios, looking to the side with his teeth bared and his ear flicking up to listen, with an arrow pointing to his ears and saying “ears!!”. Ezra, with his saber ignited, grinning and looking over his shoulder as he runs, yelling “let’s go loth cats” in all caps.

The next section shows Kanan Jarrus and Hera Syndulla kissing, with her hand tipping up his chin, and him blushing with many hearts floating around them. A brown spotted loth cat laying down in a loaf position, with one leg sticking out, captioned “leggy”. Sabine Wren takes her helmet off and scowls harshly, saying “cringe” in all caps. Hera sits in the cockpit of a fighter with a smile, captioned: “[screamo playing over cockpit radio]”.

The next section shows Sabine and Zeb lounging together, with peaceful smiles on their faces as they simultaneously daydream the words “violence murder killing arson biting”. Chopper stands in the center of the entire piece and extends one arm as he says “fuck!”. A Lothal cave painting with a Loth Wolf and a rider, staring to the side. The glowing meteorite stone is visible to the right.

The last section shows the fulcrum symbol glowing gray. Kanan and Ezra mimic the copycat meme from Into The Spider-Verse, with Kanan deep in thought, a hand on his chin, and Ezra watching him with wide eyes, a hand on his own chin. Ahsoka Tano is drawn buffer than her canon appearance, and has her lightsabers ignited as she reaches out her right hand to something unseen, her expression a deep scowl. Sabine, with her helmet on, jumping into the air with a basketball labeled “Ezra” as she dunks it into a net labeled “brother zone”. The piece is dated January 2023, and the artist’s signature is visible under one of the pieces.

The next three images are zoomed in on various sections of the piece. End ID.]

ok the ID for this is already long enough, but I've been rewatching the comfort show of All Time (SWR) and I ended up having so many silly art ideas that I put them all in one piece. I had an INCREDIBLE amount of fun with it, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did making it :D I miss my space family ;~;

#star wars rebels #swr #sw rebels #ezra bridger #kanan jarrus #hera syndulla #garazeb orrelios #sabine wren #ahsoka tano #lothal #chopper #C1 10P #star wars rebels season 2 #swr season 2 #star wars rebels s2 #swr s2 #the ghost crew #described #accessible art #mossy art #this is my magnum opus i adore this piece so much

[parker-pride]

can we talk about how insane it is that when harry is completely taken over by venom the plan to lure him away from the symbiote meteorite STILL WORKS???? LIKE????? every single self-preservation instinct baked into Venom will be screaming to protect that god damn meteorite. because it's the source of all its power. if that is destroyed then so is venom. and it knows how much of a threat spider-man is to that!!!!! AND YET!!!! that core instinct is completely overridden by its host's completely non-negotiable urge to be with pete. to heal the world with him. so off they go, leaving their lifeblood behind to follow pete. the lure plan LITERALLY only works because harry is too gay to function.

#guys. Guys. frantically waves at my pinboard of red string and clues #harry osborn #insomniac spider man #spider man 2 ps5 #spider-man #parksborn

[yuliasolsystem]

Behold my craziest theory about the Plants in manga.

Everything below is not my take on the actual canon, but rather just a fun theory I came up with based on some plot holes.

Okay, so listen: people in Trigan didn't just become incapable of obtaining food and energy naturally, without the Plants. They're probably genetically altered in such a way that they are unable to use food and energy that doesn't come from the Plants.

That's why they don't use solar panels on the No Man Land, even though it would seem like an obvious solution. And that's why the townsfolk in Chapter 47 all died out in a few days.

Soldiers speculated that it could have been up to two months after the city was cut off from the world.

But in such a period of time, the Ark would have time to fly over the horizon and it was seen on the fifth day of the soldiers' stay in this area. And the day before, that is on the fourth day, there were still people alive in the town and they still had the strength to make riots.

But on the 7th day, when soldiers reached the town, there was no one alive (except for one man).

"Exposure" in the original was "burns" ( implying sunburns). That is, people not only managed to die of hunger and thirst before the Ark had time to disappear beyond the horizon, but sunburns also were mentioned among the causes of death. So, the Plants not only provided food and water, but also somehow protected against solar radiation, which is probably why there are so few suntanned people on the NML.

This means that the bodies of the humans in Trigan are completely changed and die in a matter of days without a Plant presence anywhere near them and without consuming food containing Plant biomass (since even the cannibals in that town didn't survive). They are literally completely dependent on the Plants, just as the Plants are dependent on the life support terminals they are connected to.

And we also have mutated humans and humans with Plant-like abilities, like Elendira, who can create matter from nothing (her nails literally appear in her suitcase out of nowhere, they are neither stored in it nor teleported from somewhere else by some device)

and Legato, who can manipulate electricity and take control of other people's bodies, which is reminiscent of Knives' ability to control the merged being. When Knives "connected" to Domina with a thin feeler, it looked very similar to Legato's technique.

(It's not impossible, however, that Knives intentionally copied Legato's trick. )

What's my point? You know, there's this trope in horror stories: an alien ship/meteorite falls from the sky and infects the land and living things all around so that people, who lived there, become unable to live outside the ship/meteorite radiation zone or eat normal food. And they, these people, gradually turning into aliens or mutants. So, what if the same thing happens in Trigan, it's just that in this universe humans, unlike in all these movies and stories, didn't avoid the " impact zone", but rather took the alien DNA and spread it all over the Earth. So Trigun humans are no longer 100% humans, but part of the Plants' biosystem, which is why dependent Plants forgave them so easily and don't really mind to be "used".

This could also be related to the presence of ghosts, which can be both human's (like Conrad and Wolfwood) and independent's (like Tessla). The existence of ghosts is not revealed to public, most likely so that people won't find out that after death they will spend eternity in a gloomy black void.

What are independent plants for then? Most likely they are some sort of walking weapons. From the conversations of the Earthlings we can conclude that Knives is not the only aggressive independent (he was just the strongest of the known ones) and that independents on Earth have their abilities blocked for humans' safety ( so most likely all independents have weapons built into their bodies).

What's the need for weapons against humans if the dependent plants don't mind their position and "humans" are in some sense part of them? Maybe to regulate their numbers, or to stimulate their reproduction and further mutation, maybe the Plants need not humans but their souls (ghosts), or maybe independents are something like immune cells that get rid of improperly developing body cells.

#trigun #trigun maximum #trigun plants #my headcanons #manga spoilers #trigun spoilers #manga theory #my analysis #spoilers #millions knives #legato bluesummers #elendira the crimsonnail

[chocolatemilk-77]

I’ve seen quite a bit of Lumine harem going on so I wanted to add to the brain rot.

Alright, hear me out- the Archons feel really proud when Lumine chooses their element. Like, of all the other elements, she trusts THEIRS to protect her in battle. They feel like there’s this special bond between them whenever they see the traveler approach their statue, placing her hand on it and watching her accessories change color.

And then they start getting jealous of each other because Lumine is using someone else’s element instead, especially if she seems to prefer using one element over the others.

Like, imagine Venti rubbing it in Zhongli’s face that traveler hasn’t changed from Anemo in quite a while.

Some Archons get so jealous they try to find ways to change Lumine’s element themselves. Like, I know it probably isn’t possible, but I mean, in the Childe fight, the traveler did switch from Anemo to Geo mid-battle, so I’m willing to bet it isn’t completely off the table.

If they ever do find a way to do it, it’s gonna be chaos. Lumine would be fighting a bunch of hilichurls, and just as she’s about to blow them all away with a gust of wind, she ends up electrocuting them instead and is like ???? and then five seconds later the hilichurls have been crushed by a meteorite and she’s just like ???????

Like, she has to take a break from fighting enemies for a while because her elements are acting wack because these literal fucking GODS are yelling at each other because Lumine’s flower isn’t the color they want it to be.

They’re all super petty about it. They’re all calling each other out on how this is negatively affecting Lumine’s journey, but then they’re doing the same thing, and they’re all huge hypocrites.

Yeah, this could work with Aether too, I just like Lumine.

#yandere genshin #yandere genshin impact #yandere genshin impact harem #yandere lumine harem #lumine harem #genshin impact #yandere #? #lumine #yandere genshin impact x reader #yandere genshin x reader

[anxiescape]

Since Peach Blossoms 🌸 is coming to an end within the next couple of chapters, I was wondering:

Which of these stories would you guys like to see next?

Fire Lilies:

The sequel to Peach Blossoms, but with Spicynoodles. Need I say more?

You Leave Me Paralyzed:

In the final battle against Lady Bone Demon, Macaque didn’t walk away from the fight against Possessed!Wukong unscathed.

In fact, he didn’t walk away at all.

Now paralyzed from the waist down and stuck living with the monkey that put him in this condition, Macaque has to learn how to live with his new limitations, while building new friendships and, perhaps, rebuilding old ones.

(Shadowpeach, obviously. But slow burn.)

Celestial Bodies:

“You are the most beautiful of all of Heaven’s treasures, and I am going to steal you away.”

“Well, you can certainly try~”

Begins similar to Stargaze, with Macaque being a (literal) celestial monkey that hatched from a meteorite. However, the fallen star didn’t land on Flower Fruit Mountain—it landed in the courts of the Jade Emperor’s Palace, in the Celestial Realm.

A Shadowpeach Soulmate AU, with love at first sight.

TL;DR: Sleeping Beauty but with gay monkeys and war crimes.

View the sketchdump here.

The Little Sea Monkey:

One day while out with friends (AKA Mei and Red Son), MK happens upon a strange, abandoned shrine in a forgotten part of the city. He makes a silly wish to be a monkey, just like his mentor, the Monkey King.

His wish comes true, just… with a fishy little twist.

Contains slow burn Spicynoodles, and fun, dramatic reveals. Also inspired by @alyssh-art’s beautiful drawing of Wukong and Macaque as sea monkeys, which you can view here.

It’s On The House:

The story of how Tang and Pigsy met, and the struggles they fought through to make it to where they are today.

Contains a slow-burn Freenoodles romance, with university student Tang and line cook Pigsy, not to mention a rough and tough Sandy who loves to pick and end fights. These two noodle-loving dorks fall head-over-heels for each other, but face extreme disapproval from those they consider family (solely, Tang’s homophobic, speciesist parents).

(Co-authored by the awesome @amalgamorph.)

~~~~

Aaaannnd that’s all! Let me know which of these I should start working on next, but I’m letting y’all know now that they won’t update as quickly as Peach Blossoms did because 1) I miss having free time and 2) I miss working on Stargaze.

#Peach Blossoms #shadowpeach #spicynoodles #freenoodles #fanfic ideas #lego monkie kid #Celestial Bodies AU #Stargaze AU #Fire Lilies #Paralyzed AU #lmk spicynoodles

[hoongiri]

vanilla latte — ryohei arisu

˚. ⋆　☄︎　🔭　in which you meet arisu for the first time after the meteorite— an internet cafe is a much more pleasant meeting spot than the borderlands.

　pairing — ryohei arisu x gn!reader (works both platonically and romantically)

　genre — fluff / angst (idk how to categorize this tbh)

　tags — aib s2 spoilers, post-borderlands au, reader and arisu were friends in the borderlands, reader was best friends with tatta before and during the borderlands, reader is acquainted with arisu's brother, sad boy arisu due to the deaths of karube and chota

　warnings — not proofread lol

—————

　it was taking everything in you to not drop out of university. you would think that after a deadly meteorite left you and numerous others hospitalized that you would get a break. unfortunately, you were wrong, as always.

　even though you were pronounced dead for one minute, there was no getting out of your dreaded assignments. perhaps you should honour your late best friend, kodai tatta, and drop out of school to immediately be sucked into a pyramid scheme. you sighed at the memory of him; you didn't think you would ever accept the fact that he was gone. it was all too sudden and incomplete— you should have at least been there to say goodbye.

　you shook your head at your pointless ideas, arguing with yourself that you wouldn't be able to pursue your lifelong dream if you were to leave university unfinished like your late friend. the homework would have to be done, despite how much you'd rather stay in bed. plus, you could use a distraction. studying was better than coming to terms with loss.

　after about twelve minutes of begrudgingly filling out questions, you couldn't help but find yourself coming back to blankly stare at your ceiling. it was obvious that you could do with a change of scenery. you had just survived a literal space rock falling from the sky, the least you could do is get out of your bedroom and into the city of tokyo to find a comfortable place to hit the books. plus, you could use something to drink in the meantime.

　fortunately for you, you wouldn't have to walk for long before spotting a familiar building— an internet cafe which you had often seen on your instagram feed being praised for its delicious beverages. from the looks of it, it didn't look too busy at this hour, either. you mentally shrugged, figuring that this could work for your study time.

—————

　taking a seat at one of the computers in the corner, you can't help but look up at a boy around your age furiously clicking his keyboard and mouse. it alarmed you slightly, as you had dabbled in your fair share of computer games when you were younger, but never to the extent of the male adjacent to you. biting your bottom lip, you stifled in a laugh; you had never seen someone so passionate about video games before. it was almost concerning how much emotion he put into clicking buttons. perhaps you should try his methods to cope with losing tatta.

　turning your head back to your own computer, you made a mental note of all the work you had yet to complete, sighing as you realized that the list was almost neverending. your mind idly faltered, instead letting in thoughts of anything but your work into your brain. one thought in particular caught your attention— it was about the passionate gamer you had just observed. before you had looked away, you caught a small glance of his face, more specifically his eyes; you could have sworn you had seen them before. a wonderful shade of deep brown, with sparks of integrity and honesty behind the irises. where have you seen them before? they made you feel too warm to have just belonged to a stranger, but then again, you could count on one hand the amount of friends you've ever had. this boy was not one of them.

　you decided that you needed some caffeine, as you obviously were starting to show signs of sleep deprivation. standing up from your chair, you carefully make your way over to the counter, intentionally not looking in the way of the fluffy-haired gamer. quickly ordering your classic drink of choice (a vanilla latte), you leaned against the wall, entraced in deep thought once again. if there was one thing to know about you, it's that you aren't the kind to easily let things go. could he have been in the same class as you? that was possible, but you ruled out the possibility knowing that you would have at least known his name.

　your train of thought was broken by the voice of the barista. "one vanilla latte—" he started, and you made a start for the counter to collect your beverage. however, your path was blocked by the only other customer that had caught your attention— the fluffy-haired gamer. you watched as his hands attached to both sides of the mug that you believed to be your latte. "—for arisu," the barista finished.

　arisu.

　his name is arisu.

—————

　your arms held on tight to tatta, your face buried in the crook of his neck as you two leaned against the door to an apartment. ever since most of the population of tokyo had disappeared, you two remained attached to the hip— even in near-death situations.

　"game clear."

　a sob escaped your mouth at the annoucement. the nightmare was over, and you and tatta were still alive. in all honesty, it was thanks to the lanky boy that had saved your best friend. him and the girl that you had spotted climbing between floors. they both seemed accustom with these death games, seeing as neither of them were paralyzed with fear at the sight of a man wearing a horse mask successfully killing a majority of the other players.

　"let's get out of here," tatta said to you, to which you responded with a solemn nod. slowly standing up, you looked down at the floors below you. though you saw no dead bodies, you could see their blood; that was enough to make you wince. turning your head towards what you could only assume was the exit, you spotted your two saviours conversing. sighing with relief, you started to follow tatta towards their direction. passing the boy that had so courageously pushed your best friend out of the way of the tagger, you paused. turning to face him, you gave him a sincere nod— you couldn't muster up a smile in these conditions.

　"thank you for saving tatta. he's all i have." making eye contact with you, the boy gave you a humble nod.

　"it was nothing," he replied.

　from one of the lower floors, you could hear a male yell out. the name "arisu" rang throughout the floors, catching the lanky boy's attention. you figured it had to be the yellow-haired partner of the boy who you could now identify as arisu.

　following tatta, you exited the game arena, unaware that this would not be the last time you had your ass saved by a boy called arisu.

—————

　your face lit up. you knew the surname arisu— you used to be in the same class as hajime arisu before you switched out (you were too frustrated that he always came top of the class). that had to be hajime's brother, right? it was the only explanation as to why he had seemed so familiar.

　approaching the younger arisu brother with a smile on your face, you looked up at him.

　"are you hajime's brother?" you asked the boy, tilting your head ever so slightly to the side as you awaited your answer. you could tell that your question had very obviously caught him off guard, seeing how he now resembled a deer in headlights. he nodded quickly, picking up his latte in the process.

　"uh— yes, i believe so," he started, mixing up his words in the process. "sorry. i am, my name is— um. it's ryohei." you couldn't help but feel a smile creep upon your face. you had never asked him for his name, just if he was related to a boy that had been in one of your classes previously. a typical response from a gamer, you thought. you opened your mouth to introduce yourself, but you were cut off by the barista calling out your name. the both of you turned your heads to see a beverage identical to the vanilla latte in ryohei's hands on the counter. picking up your drink, you grinned at the boy.

　"you have a nice name," ryohei said to you. not moving from his position in front of the counter.

　"thank you, as do you."

　a moment of awkward silence passed, and neither of you had moved— you were sure that the boy in front of you had an intense gaming session to return to, yet here he was; staring at you. perhaps he was experiencing the same sense of deja vu as you had? no, that didn't make sense. you knew him from his brother, but he couldn't possibly know you from anywhere else.

　he must be lonely.

　you weren't the only person who had lost somebody close to them due to the meteorite. could he be one of those people, too?

　it seemed too soon to ask.

　"if you want to sit at my table, you're more than welcome to do so," you said to him. taking your vanilla latte from the counter, you nodded to your study setup in the corner. his eyes followed yours, acknowledging the unoccupied computers next to you.

　though he said nothing, his warm brown eyes were enough to give you an answer.

　little did you know that this would become a regular occurrence, with you walking into the internet cafe every week to see ryohei at your regular table with two vanilla lattes. perhaps adding another friend to your list wasn't so bad after all.

#hoongiri #aib #aib s2 #alice in borderland #arisu #ryohei arisu #arisu x reader #ryohei arisu x reader #arisu fluff #arisu angst #aib fluff #aib imagines #aib angst #alice in borderland fluff #alice in borderland fic #arisu ryohei #arisu imagines #arisu fic

[satureja13]

After Rubyn told Francine what she found at the Archives, Francine went to Moonwood Mill. The last entry in Professor Callahan's file says he went with his assistant to Selvadorada. Maybe to continue his research? To proof his prediction? We don't know. But Francine and Rubyn are determined to find out!

They met in the living room of the Bunker. First burning question is: Is Professor J.Callahan somehow related to Jack? We know that Greg gave Jack his name after he rescued him. But why Jack Callahan? Is Greg related to Professor Callahan and knows more about him?

Greg: "Haha no. I like movies! Especially the 'Dirty Harry' movies with Clint Eastwood. He played Harry Callahan ^^' And I'm a fan of Wolverine from the X-Men. Played by Hugh JACKman haha. Yeah sorry, but there's nothing more behind it." (Editor's note: And this is the very truth behind Jack's name I chose for him over ten years ago ^^' And it turned out that teenage (and baby) Jack literally is a little wolverine ;) Jack sighs from the dephts of his soul. What had he expected... But: it's better to be named after cool movie characters then after a crazy Professor, right?

Francine, Noxee and Greg went down to the War Room. There is a lot to discuss. Of course they are going to investigate in Selvadorada. They need to find the last place of residence and the documentation of the professor's research. There must be some hints on how he found out about the meteorites and maybe he even knew why they radiate magic that affects Ji Ho and Vlad. And how was he even able to name the meteorites after them? ö.Ö

But who should accompany Rubyn on her expedition? Noxee: "The Boys should all go. They suffered enough and I'm sure they reflected over their mistakes and will avoid them in the future. Let them proof themselves."

Francine: "Let's hope so. We'll give them one last chance. Ji Ho and Vlad should accompany Rubyn anyway. With the meteorites. Though, we need to remind them of their contract to do everything possible to help to cut the bond. Best Saiwa and Jeb watch over them to make sure the Bond behaves. We can't risk another incident like at the Castle. Although, it's helpful Vlad can see again. So... we still have to decide how they should to travel to Selvadorada."

Francine: "Jack should stay here. He is not stable enough for such a mission. Better he spends more time with Greg to work on his mental problems."

Jack: "Sai - have you never thought of leaving the resistance and raise something on our own?"

Noxee: "We can hear you!" Jack: "Yes, I know! Because we can hear you too!" Poor Jack...

Eventually they convinced Francine to allow Jack to go with them. She took him to the Archives and handed him the box with Kiyoshi's heart. Francine: "Take it with you." How does she know?

Jack: "How did you know?" Francine: "Let's say we're nosy ^^' "

Francine: "Jack, this will be hard for you. Are you sure you don't want to stay here? You could put the others and the mission in danger." Jack: "I feel better now. Greg... huh I hate to admit it, but he helped me a lot. And I don't have to worry anymore about ... uhm... my Alpha anymore, so. I promise I won't be a nuisance and do my best." Francine: "Very well then. Your behaviour will reflect on Saiwa, your leader. Don't forget that."

From the Beginning  ~  Underwater Love ~  Latest 'Putting the Boys Back together' from the beginning -> here Previous Chapter: 'Disbandment of the Group' from the beginning -> here

#putting the boys back together #simlit #ts4 story #sims 4 story #sims 4 #simblr #ts4 #jack callahan #giga byte #saiwa #noxeema jackson #greg lunvik #francine #underwater love #sims 4 vanilla #moonwood mill #wolves of letters bunker #meteorites #Kiyoshi's heart

[ameliafuckinjones]

A few headcanons about nyo!America:

1.) England definitely would have placed nyo!America in one of the New England/Middle colonies, more specifically the Plymouth colony, for a variety of reasons. Chief among them being they had more women and children in the New England colonies, which were mainly filled with families fleeing religious persecution/seeking religious freedom as opposed to the Southern colonies like Jamestown which was male-dominated due to its foundation of agriculture and trade that attracted large numbers of male colonist. Another reason is because Plymouth in particular was more competently ran due to the religious and cultural emphasis on community cohesion (even brokering peace with the local native tribes via harvest feast) in comparison to Jamestown which was always succumbing to plague, famine and skirmishes with local native tribes. Taking all this into consideration, I imagine he'd feel it would be safer to leave a small immortal girl-child with the religious family dominated New England colonies than the oftentimes chaotic and violent male-dominated Southern colonies that focused more on agriculture than domesticity. As a result, Amelia would probably develop a lot of core New England/Middle Colonial characteristics and mannerisms down to the east coast (probably a Bostonian New Yorker hybrid) accent. Also, also I think it's cute that Plymouth is called America's Hometown so I think it'd only be right to have Amelia grow up there during her formative years (or even Alfred, cause I don't see a logical reason why England would place boy!America in the environmentally and culturally hostile Southern colonies either !!!)

2.) Another headcanon is Francis and Arthur dueling over who gets to claim the new child-colony upon her discovery (which I place around the late 1500s rather than the popular 1607). Francis wins, because he's always been the better swordsman man and Arthur the bowman, but upon seeing him hurt/slightly injured and defeated Amelia goes to Arthur instead of Francis (and refuses to leave his side despite prying) and the French explorers reluctantly concede that the colony belongs to England (before traveling further North where after years of exploration they eventually discover Matthew and establish Quebuec!!)

3.) Before meeting Arthur, Amelia was initially found and sheltered by the Roanoke colonists during the early days of North America's discovery, then (after the Roanoke colonies' failure and "disappearance") with the nearby Croatoan tribe in what is now modern day Dare County.

4.) After her discovery, Arthur takes Amelia back to England, and she stays with him for a few decades and is christened in Queen Elizabeth's court (and briefly meets the Virgin Queen and Shakespeare, though she does NOT remember this much to her irritation)

5.) She was christened Elizabeth Amelia Kirkland (Elizabeth to honor the queen, Amelia, to pay homage to Shakespeare by referencing the rumored Dark Lady, and Kirkland for obvious reasons)

6.) Given that her birthday, on paper, was on July 4th, 1776 in Philadelphia, at precisely 5:10pm, she is a Cancer Sun, Aquarius Moon, and Sagittarius Rising ( which is actually America's birthchart in real life, make of that what you will!!!)

7.) Last but not least, she was made from literal starlight and stardust. I like the headcanon that nations are born from volcanoes or snow capped mountains or they come bursting from the green earth or rising from the sea, and considering America's fascination with the stars its only fitting that she was born from one. Like meteorites, pieces of shooting stars - which in this case were meteor showers born from meteoriods that were born from the tail of a comet (or cometary debris), a comet made from the very material present in the early solar nebula that formed our Sun and planets- that entered the atmosphere, falling to the earth and out she came from that celestial body. I imagine she'd explain it just like that, and that the moment of her birth is the one thing that she remembers clearly from her early babyhood, much like all nations. It also pairs well with the fallen angel vibe that I ascribe to all versions of America.

#hetalia headcanons #hetalia meta #hetalia #aph america #aph england #arthur kirkland #amelia f jones #nyotalia #this might seem like crazy ramblings because it is like im barely awake as i write this lmao

[pridepages]

It’s a Metaphor: This is How You Lose the Time War

I just finished This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. I have thoughts...

Here there be spoilers!

Mix Red and Blue together and what you get is a novella painted entirely through with purple prose.

Time travel is a trope that used to evoke a sense of action-adventure in science fiction. Think Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure or Back to the Future. But after the meteoritic rise of The Time Traveler’s Wife, the genre became one that was less driven by science and more by magic touched with romance.

Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone’s This is How You Lose the Time War swings hard to the latter. The story follows two competing organizational bodies known as The Agency and Garden. Each has access to the power of time travel, and their goal is to send agents through the multiverse’s various time streams--known as “strands”--to bend events to their respective desired outcomes.

Two of their best--The Agency’s agent “Red” and Garden’s agent “Blue”--cross paths throughout the strands while on competing missions. Until one day...or does it really start then? Red finds a piece of paper marked: “Burn before reading.” It’s a letter from Blue herself, and it kickstarts a romance that transcends the limits of space and time conducted almost entirely through letter.

Let’s cut to the drawbacks first: What are The Agency and Garden? How did they figure out time travel? Why are they so determined to wage war against each other to manipulate history? To what purpose does either manipulate history? We don’t know. We never really get to know much about any of these players or how they work. It becomes clear really quickly that the whole book is a slew of evocative imagery powered by overarching metaphor. The Agency appears to represent a cold, techno-driven vision of society (think The Matrix) and Garden appears to represent a more “natural” return-to-the-land type of world. The idea of time being represented either by the march of progress or by the endurance of the world as human ages pass it by is nothing new. So which gains supremacy? Why are they fighting each other? The answers respectively are: ‘neither’ and ‘unclear.’

As it turns out, we’re meant to be less interested in the wider world than we are in the psychological developments of Red and Blue, each of whom are rebels in their respective worlds. Red longs for individualism and Blue hungers for ownership, each of these wishes leave them dissatisfied and threaten the stability of their worlds. Consequently, their correspondence must be conducted in secret--they hardly ever share the page together.

So let’s circle back to what people love about this book. Truthfully, I don’t think there is anything more quintessentially lesbian than about 200 pages of yearning, falling in love by letter, and never co-existing in the same space. And it’s full of romantically poetic lines designed to drive the reader feral. (If I tried to quote all of them, we’d be here all day.) Why waste time trying to understand the convoluted mechanics of the plot when you can soak up the romance of long-distance forbidden love?

So in all, the appeal of Time War to me is that with its pseudo-science, magical realism, pretentious prose, and romance, it becomes the queer answer to Time Traveler’s Wife. Which is great! I enjoyed every minute of it. (But I’ll confess, I’m not sorry that it’s short and sweet.)

So if you’re picking this one up: sit back, relax, and let it wash over you. The only way to really lose the Time War is to try to take it too literally.

#this is how you lose the time war #amal el mohtar #max gladstone #wlw #sapphic #lesbian #lgbt reads #queer lit

[alieinthemorning]

Wish on Us [Ace Trappola | Nijiue Yuuta]

Content: First-Meeting, Nightmares, Falling In Love, Literal Sleeping Together, Love Confessions, OC-Insert

Pairing: Ace Trappola/ Nijiue Yuuta

Note: Under the cut due to 3,000+ word count

Header: @/lolitsleia

Reblogs: Let me know that you enjoy my work and want to see more, so don’t forget to like and reblog (and comment in the tags. I love seeing people’s rambles in the tags)!

This work’s concepts, plot and original characters are my own which means I do not allow any sort of creative theft nor do I allow my work to be entered into any sort of A.I. bots. Thank you for respecting my space and boundaries

It was almost midnight, and Nijiue Yuuta was still awake. He and sleep just had a very complicated relationship. Whether it be staying asleep, falling asleep, sleeping during the middle of the day or simply not sleeping at all.  So, most of the time, he spent his time curled up on the seat of his room’s bay window, mindlessly scrolling on his phone until his eyes hurt, and he absolutely had to get to bed.

Tonight was different, however. Tonight, a bright orange-red glow forced him to remove his gaze from his dim phone screen to the dark sky above.

"What is that...?" He whispered to himself as he watched a red line shoot through the sky. "A shooting star...or maybe a meteorite?" He hummed, watching as it slowly crossed the sky.

Then a childish thought came to him.

He closed his eyes, clasping his hands in front of him. "Starlight, star bright"

What would he wish for? "First star I see tonight."

Maybe a better sleep schedule? "I wish I may, I wish I might."

Nah, he could do that himself, just really needed to put his mind to it. "Have this wish"

Oh! That's it! You'd wish for— "I wish tonight."

"What's the wish? I ain't got all day." Yuuta jolted, checking his phone, frowning when he found that it had died.

So what had made that noise—"Look at me." Something hot grabbed his cheeks, yanking his face to the side. "Now, answer my question: What's your wish?"

His eyes widened as he took in the stranger.

They had orange-red hair, red eyes and a gold star painted (or was it like a birthmark?) over their left eye. Yuuta tried to get a peak at their clothing, but they pulled him closer.

They sighed. "I get it—A guy like me is so handsome that you can't fathom it, but you can't be so stuck that you can't answer a simple question."

Yuuta shoved himself out of his grasp, hitting the back of his head on the window (ouch). “What are you?”

He gave you a look. "What does that matter? Just tell me your wish, so I can go."

Yuuta blinked. "What wish?"

"The wish that you were just about to make? The connection got cut off, so I had to come here."

“You were the shooting star?” Yuuta raised a brow. He would chalk this all up to sleep-deprived hallucinations, but he could still feel the heat from where his fingers grasped his cheeks.

"Wishing Star, but yeah, whatever."

"Okay, Mr. Wishing Star—"

His face scrunched up. "Ew, no. Call me Acedia."

Yuuta rolled his eyes. "Okay, Acedia, are you trying to tell me, without so many words, that you are a Wishing Star, specifically the one I just wished on, but something happened while I was making my wish and that's why you're here—to get my wish?"

Acedia nodded. "Hit the nail on the head. Now tell—"

"I forgot." Yuuta stood, heading back to his bedroom.

Acedia blinked at Yuuta, and Yuuta blinked back.

"I'm sorry—what?"

"I forgot the wish."

"You have got to be fucking shitting me." Acedia dropped his head into his hands, turning his back to him.

Now that he didn’t have that bright-ass red gaze piercing through him, Yuuta could take a better look at his outfit. It wasn’t anything too special, though. Purple robes with a golden star pattern, and very sparkly.

A frown tugged at his lips, "Is me forgetting really a problem? Can't you just move on to the next wish?"

"I would if I could." Acedia sighed deeply, facing him. "But I accepted your wish, and until I fulfill it, I can't move on."

"Oh...well that sucks."

"Yeah, it's really fucking bad, actually" And then his body changed, morphing into a ball of red light that shot pass him, phasing though his window and out of sight. Yuuta crossed his arms, annoyed. "It can't be that bad..."

Yuuta didn’t see Acedia much after that. Only every so often when he would pester him about the wish. At first, he was just gonna tell him whatever to get him out of his hair, but then he realized that, despite how dumb this was, this was potentially a once-in-lifetime thing, so the wish shouldn’t be wasted.

So, in the end, he just resolved to ignore him. Which honestly worked against him since he went from simply appearing at random to deciding that sitting on his couch with the fattest fucking frown, and complaining about wanting to go home was the best way to guilt (see: annoy) him into giving in. He did, however, still disappear during the night (not like he was impeding his sleep anyway).

Yuuta didn't budge, much to Acedia’s chagrin.

And then it was Monday, and everything changed (for the annoying).

"Where are you going?" Acedia asked as he watched him shuffle from the kitchen to the front door.

He pursed his lips. He didn’t think he’d make a big deal out of this.

"I'm going to work." He replied as he threw his scarf around his neck.

"Oh, so you can go to work, but I'm stuck here." Yuuta heard him get up, ready to crowd him out the door.

He rolled his eyes, turning to face him.  "Yes, I can't exactly have a bright red—"

His eyes widened, as he, once again, took in his (new and improved) appearance.

Instead of that fiery orange-red hair, it was now a muted light brown, as well as his eyes. The golden star had now become a cluster of freckles in the same pattern. His clothing was still the same, however.

Yuuta gave him a flat look. “You’re not coming with me looking like that.”

“Come on, I’m tired of being cooped up in here, let me just walk around or something.” Acedia sounded like he was pleading, but the way his body was still very close to his (despite him being shorter), said otherwise. “‘sides, it’s not like I’ll get cold or anything. I run hot.”

Yuuta gave him a flat look before rolling his eyes. “You’re also not human, but—fuck it, fine—just don’t bother me. I get off at three, so you better be outside waiting for me.”

“Why do I have to wait?”

Yuuta sighed roughly as he slipped on his shoes. “Because my neighbors will freak if they hear someone in here while I’m supposed to be gone. Then they’re gonna be nosy, and I really don’t want to deal with that.”

“Fineeee.”

Work was nothing to write home about, Yuuta did what he was supposed to do, and only cared a miniscule amount about what Acedia was doing (if he got into trouble, he didn’t know him). When he finished locking up (it was a small store, two people could run it just fine), he found Acedia leaning against the wall.

“Finally.” Acedia sighed as he pushed off the wall approaching him. “That took way longer than what you said.”

“It only took ten minutes to close. Chill out.” Yuuta rolled his eyes as he started down the street.

Acedia was quick to join his side. “This isn’t the way to your place—where are ya going?”

“Store. I don’t feel like cooking.”

“You can cook?” Acedia eyed him warily.  “You sure don’t look it.”

“Shut the fuck up. You talk like you’re gonna be the one eating it.”

Yuuta really wanted it to be an in and out trip, grab a sandwich, chips, and a drink, and get out. Unfortunately for him, however,

“Who’s this with you, Yuuta?” Mrs. Sakamoto, resident gossipmonger, asked as he walked toward the check-out area.

There was another cashier available, but she had already called out for him. Sure, he could ignore her, and just go to the other person. Yeah, he’d be a dick (not that he cared), but he really didn’t feel like hearing people whisper about whatever nonsense she’d cook up from this interaction (or lack thereof).

“This is my friend, Ace.” He replied, not missing a beat. He knew if he hesitated, she’d be onto him in a heartbeat.

“Oh, your friend.” She quickly slid his items across the scanner, “Twelve thirty-eight.”

He grumbled under his breath, pulling out his wallet. Shit was getting more expensive by the week, he fucking swore.

“So, Ace, I haven’t seen you around here before. How are you adjusting?”

Acedia raised a brow at her, most likely surprised that she bothered speaking to him. “I’m just passing through.”

“Oh?” She took the money from Yuuta, “I presume you’re staying with Yuuta then?”

Acedia shrugged, and her eyes narrowed. Yuuta could feel a headache coming on as he ushered Ace out the store.

“What was her deal?” Acedia asked as they were comfortably away from the store (and Mrs. Sakamoto).

“She’s homophobic, don’t worry about it.”

Ace scoffed, a frown settling on his lips. “I thought people like that would be little to none by this point.”

“There’s always gonna be people who hate people.” Yuuta couldn’t even sound bitter if he tried. He was just…tired.

So very tired.

Acedia usually fucked off at night, went to explore the area, and mingle with whatever other Wishing Star was in the area. When he returned to Yuuta’s place, he was usually holed up in his room, doing Lumine knows what. However, tonight was different. When he returned, the first thing he noticed was the silence. There was also some kind of noise coming from Yuuta’s room, whether that be from his TV or phone, or his talking to himself (since he clearly didn’t have friends). The silence unnerved Acedia, but it was really his business, so instead of prying he just settled in.

Until the noise returned. First it was small, quiet little whimpers, then it built crescendo into strangled screams. So, even if he wanted to be a dick and ignore it, he couldn’t. Acedia didn’t like intruding on Dreamers spaces (that’s why he stayed out most of the day), but he also didn’t want to be a dick by not doing anything.

So, he steeled himself as he approached Yuuta’s bedroom door. Just as his fingers grazed the knob, a loud scream cut through the garbled fear.

“Stop!”

He threw caution to the wind, throwing the door open.

However, he wasn’t prepared for the sight before him.

Yuuta was sprawled out on his bed, sheets haphazardly on his body, the bed, and the floor. He was sweating and clawing at his shirt, as if he were trying to rip his heart from his chest.

And he just kept shouting, “Stop, stop, stop.”

Acedia froze. He didn’t know what to do, should he intervene, or should he just let him weather the storm on his own. The crossing thoughts only lasted for a few moments, though, because streaks of red that crossed his vision pushed him into motion. He rushed for Yuuta, not caring about intruding or getting harmed in the process.

He had to protect his Dreamer.

So, he reverted to his Steller form, and entered Yuuta’s dream.

Usually, when a Wishing Star entered a dream, they were deposited right into it. Whether that be a sweet dream, nightmare, or nothing. But what he dropped into was entirely new.

Yuuta was sitting in black, not darkness, but pure void. Knees up to his chest, curled into himself. He was so still, so quiet.

So very quiet.

He couldn’t even hear his footsteps as he approached, as if the surrounding void was even stealing the sound. He reached a hand out, hesitating for a moment, before grazing against his bare, scared arm (how hadn’t he noticed all those before?). However, a sharp power pushed him back, and just like that, Yuuta’s body unfurled, back slamming onto the flat surface below him.

And he screamed,

and screamed

and screamed.

He was still screaming even after Acedia was forcefully ejected from the dream. And into Yuuta hovering over him, face pinched in disgust.

“What the fuck are you doing in my bed?”

Acedia just blinked at him, still too far away to properly respond.

Yuuta sighed roughly, turning away. “You know what? I don’t care, just don’t bother me again. I’m exhausted.” And he buried himself underneath the covers.

Acedia laid there for a while, until his eyes were forced open from the harsh light that attacked his lids. He attempted to move his arm to block it, but found it stuck. Rolling over, and squinting, he found—

Yuuta’s face, a hair's breadth from his own. His face exploded.

Literally.

As Acedia launched himself from the bed, Yuuta lurched backward.

“Ow! What the fuck?!” He was clutching the side of his face, despite there being nothing there.

But Acedia didn’t stay long enough to explain to him that it was just his body heating up, and despite how his hair looked like it was on fire, it most certainly wasn’t. Instead of explaining all of that, he bolted outside, and didn’t turn up until the dead of night.

This lasted a far longer than Acedia wanted to admit, but he got over it.

Eventually.

Snow melted away, making way for blooms.

Yuuta thought that today would be a good day to go outside and paint.

And so did everyone else, not to paint necessarily, but everyone and their mother was in the park today.

Yuuta sighed, as his eyes scanned the place. “I’d really rather not work in such a crowded area.”

Ace hummed, then nudged him. “Follow me, I know a place.”

Yuuta snorted. “Oh, really?”

“Yeah, I used to come here a lot.” Ace grabbed his sleeve, tugging him along. “So, I know of a more secluded area that I think you’ll like.”

And he was right, the place was far away from the others, hidden by a large group of trees, but beyond them was a small meadow of wildflowers of all different colors. However, despite the beautiful scenery in front of him. He couldn’t seem to focus on it. Instead, his paintbrush wandered along the canvas.

Until Ace’s beautiful brown eyes were staring back at him as he stood in the middle of the flowers, a crown of them atop his head.

He looked like a fairy.

Blooms withered away as heat waved over them.

“Don’t you dare fucking touch me, you fucking sun.” Yuuta kicked Ace, who was trying to slink closer to him, away.

“Ugh, this is no fair.” He groaned as he flopped back.

“Turn off the heat, and maybe I’ll let you hold me hand.”

“Your hand? Really that’s it?” Ace pouted, “I wanna hold you.”

Yuuta could keep the blood from pounding against his already flushed cheeks. How could he say something like that when he could barely handle hand holding before?

He paused.

Six months have passed since they’ve met, less since…this began.

Where did the time go…?

Fog rolled in as showers poured.

Fall was a quiet time, a time of mourning.

Although Ace did not know what it was they were grieving over. He stood by Yuuta’s side regardless.

And water crystallized into unique flakes.

It had been a year since Acedia had descended upon Earth to bless Yuuta with a wish. A wish he had yet to grant. However, neither of them were complaining. And how could they when they melded together so seamlessly.

Acedia now answered to Ace. He took the form of the boyish brown hair and eyes, and clusters of freckles around his left eye. He had his own normal clothes (that rested beside Yuuta’s), and—

“I’m glad you still run like a furnace, even in this form.” Yuuta said as he pushed himself further into his chest.

Despite sleeping in the same bed for a while at this point, Ace still wasn’t completely used to the unrestrained physical contact (especially with how they started out). So, he kept his head tilted up and away from Yuuta’s view, so that he wouldn’t see the flush pulsing against his cheeks.

“Y-yeah…”

He felt Yuuta’s chuckle rumble in his chest.

“I know you’re blushing.”

“That doesn’t mean you gotta point it out.”

“You should be glad I’m too comfortable to look at you and make you really turn red.”

“Shaddup and go to sleep.”

They’d found routine in their life.

Until something came tearing across the sky, destroying that fairy tale life.

Ace didn’t sleep, there was no need. So when he and Yuuta turned in for the night, he simply laid there as he rested his eyes, content with listening to his soft snores, as well as fending off whatever nightmares plagued him (which were thankfully becoming more far and few).

However, as the bright red light grew brighter and brighter, Ace knew his days of playing pretend were as good as over.  So, he quietly slipped free from Yuuta’s embrace, and headed into the living room.

Where his superior, Riddleaum, awaited him, burning a hole into the rug with the impatient tapping of his foot.

“You’re as red as ever.” Smooth, Ace.

“You’ve got a lot of never to even speak to me, Acedia.” Riddleuam began as he marched closer. Despite their height difference, he still was able to easily dominate the room. “It has been over a year since you were assigned, why hasn’t the wish been granted yet?”

Ace’s gaze slid away, “He forgot his wish.”

“He may have forgotten then, but that does not mean that he should still be wishless!” He scoffed, eyeing Acedia with disdain. “I’m sure you’ve just used this time to slack off.”

Ace’s eyes widened as he summoned his scepter, while Riddleaum’s frown turned into a smirk.

“I’m sure you know what this means.” He pointed the ruby gem at him, “By the power granted to me, I decree that you have until the moon reaches its highest point to claim the wish.” His smirk widened, “If not, you will never reincarnate, and you will fade into dust.”

Ace went to gulp, but the searing pain that clasped around his neck stopped him from doing so. Instead, he nodded.

“Good, I will return promptly. It would be in your best interest to chase after that wish now, less you know what’s good for you, Acedia.” And with that, he left.

Ace dropped to his knees, hands hovering over the glowing mark that now marred his skin.

“What the hell am I supposed to do?”

And how exactly would Yuuta take this?

He was dreading it, but he had to do it, because it would be better to meet him down the line through reincarnation, than to fade into dust in his memories.

He steeled himself, waited until the cycle of day became night yet again, so he asked him.

“What’s your wish, Yuuta?”

Yuuta raised a brow at him, “This is still a thing? It’s been forever since you asked.”

He was going to wave him off, and push him, but Yuuta asked him something instead.

“What about you?”

“What about me—what?”

Yuuta scoffed. “What’s your wish?”

Ace started to shake his head then close his eyes as he paused to think about it.

Did he have a wish? No one ever asked him. Since all he was ever told to do was grant wishes. But if he had one, what would it be?

He sighed to himself.

Why was he asking?

His eyes slide back open

When the answer was right in front of him.

Cold, callous fingers gently grabbed his cheeks.

“Tell me.”

“You already know it.”

“Tell me anyway.”

Ace covered his hands with his own. “You. You’re my wish, Yuuta.”

"I'm glad." Yuuta smiled wide, and bright. "We have the same wish."

And then suddenly everything is different, but also so very familiar.

When me and Rogue start talking…I start plotting. This idea he proposed struck my fancy and I kinda lost my shit with it. The notes? Went crazy. Literally gave him another form, like he is now a creature who is blending in with the people.

And then when I start thinking by myself, I go: "But what if I made this with his OC, Yuuta, in mind (Yuuta my beloved boyo)." And then I said screw it, I'm gonna write a fic for his OC, and his OC alone. :3c

Also, WHOOPS SORRY RIDDLE! Basically, Riddle ascended to a higher power because he didn't want to be reincarnated into another shitty family (also rules are cool)!

His reaction (there was alot of reaction but here's a snippet):

I think he likes it!

Also little day of pubslishing note: Happy Final Fantasy VII Rebirth release day!

Ko-Fi | Commission | Masterlist

#alie requests #alie requests: twst #alie requester: Rogue ✨ #ace trappola x nijiue yuuta #ace trappola x yuusona #ace trappola x oc

[birbmonster]

MSM headcanon yelling part 4

I know I’m posting these a LOT and basically taking over the ‘msm headcanon’ tag but I love doing this so I ain’t gonna stop until I run out of headcanons.

Just remember the most important thing, that all monsters are species expect Legendaries and Celestials.

So, this episode is about.. the song!

I’ve already brushed this a bit in the ‘general society’ part, but this one goes into more detail of what it looks like.

Unlike they do in-game, the monsters don’t spend all their time singing. Each island plays the song once or twice a day. It’s the most important part of monster world culture. When it’s time to sing, everything is interrupted. Everyone who was working or in school drops what they were doing and heads outside to sing. The only thing that can interrupt a whole island from singing is any large event, like a ducking meteorite hitting the castle or something like that. However, not everyone goes out to sing every time. This could be because you’re a doctor and you need to save someone’s life. Or sometimes, you just don’t feel like it, or you’re lazy and sleep through it all.

Songs are often coupled with suprisingly intricate dances. Some individuals literally have whole perfect routines they spent their whole life building up.

Occasionally everyone gets bored of the usual song on their home island, so sometimes they decide to do ‘hey what if we changed x and x’ and they change the song a tiny bit to spice things up. Every few years they even go as far as to do something like the MSM: Recomposed” stuff. Now for some times of day I think the monsters on given islands sing (not all of them. Just the ones I have the best ideas for)

Plant Island- Midday, when it’s all warm and sunny and planty

Cold Island- Right after sunset so you can truly look at the stars in the big black ink

Water Island- As the sun starts setting

Fire Oasis- Very early like 6:30 Am or something like that

Wublin Island- Midnight. But midday for the Wublins, I headcanon that they’re nocturnal lol

Shugabush Island- Same as Cold Island

Composer Island- It’s heckling disorganised there. Whenever a new composition comes up someone just goes “hey y’all let’s do it now”

That’s all folks!

Not exactly sure what to do next so:

#msm #my singing monsters #msm headcanon #msm headcanons #msm lore #I still wanna live on Fire Oasis #I can totally join the song I wake up very early already