#there is something to that. i don't know. if memory is more than the incidental. if memory is the You part. the way you interpret the world

[commsroom]

the association in wolf 359′s sound design between memory and water, and the association between water and hera by extension; the artificial construct of a beach as imagined by someone who has never seen a beach but wants to. what’s expected of hera, the parts of her that were programmed to serve a certain function... “or end up in other places, doing things not because you’re good at them but just because of what you are" ... is so much in conflict with who she is, what she enjoys and feels drawn towards. the natural world, appreciation of music and literature, even spirituality... in one AMA, sarah shachat suggested druid as an rpg class for hera, and i’m fascinated by that. hera’s draw towards the natural world and, broadly, things the text associates with the Human Experience is such an interesting and deliberate choice. that alone feels like such a statement about isolation and loneliness as obstacles to personal growth and self-discovery: to have some innate longing for things she literally was not designed to experience.

#wolf 359 #w359 #hera wolf 359 #hera w359 #the association of water + memory is its own topic #esp. storms in the sound design. in memoria in change of mind in brave new world #even paradise valley is lyrically About Water #there is something to that. i don't know. if memory is more than the incidental. if memory is the You part. the way you interpret the world #then there is something intrinsically human tied to the concept. and by extension #the conflict between technology and structures and situations #that aren't designed for or are actively hostile to human life and the human spirit #paired with these motifs of. nature and music and all of the connected associations #is certainly. well i think at the very least you can interpret it in the context of capitalist disregard for What Makes Us Human. #all things considered #and i do think that's particularly interesting with hera #the divide between WHO she is and WHAT she is #the things she values and the way she thinks as a person #this draw towards a natural world she has never experienced and wasn't made TO experience #vs. the way she's expected to think by virtue of programming and automated functions and the job she has to perform #she can also be. surprisingly spiritual #i just think it's such an interesting choice. when i have the time and inclination i'd like to expand on this #re: potential options for hera post-canon and why i feel the way i do about them. i think there's some interesting potential thematically #also yes this ties into the way i think you can read her character arc as a trans narrative. of course it does. #oh i thought i'd mentioned this but reading this back. i didn't. so #i also think that even #hera's appreciation of space. the way she observes it and the way she describes it. is in ways both appreciation of art and nature

[blacknedsoul-blog]

The divorce of the White Raven was the chronicle of a foretold death

Now that the White Raven divorce officially begins tomorrow. I wanted to do a little review of why I've been looking forward to this moment for over 40 chapters and the delicious drama to come. 

The chapters of Annabel and Lenore talking in the greenhouse are wonderful for many reasons, but mainly because they lay the groundwork for what the conflicts in their relationship will be from now on, simply put: these two just aren't on the same page. 

Annabel wants to save them both, Lenore wants to save everyone.

Annabel calls Lenore "my favorite," "my darling," and "my petal"; Lenore understands "my companion animal" (and Annabel doesn't bother to clarify). 

Lenore says they are friends; Annabel clearly knows they were a couple.

Annabel tries to kiss her goodbye on the lips; Lenore kisses her hand. 

As the comic progresses -and especially with the last chapter released by the Freepass- the more fundamental root of this problem becomes more apparent: the White Raven don't really know each other, they think they do and, incidentally, insist on not listening to each other.

The Annabel Lenore Knows

The "disappointment rooms" are a Victorian myth (I say "myth" because there is no evidence that they were a widespread practice, although there are cases like Blanche Monnier's, they did not seem to be particularly common. But they exist in this comic, so they will be treated as real in this essay) were isolated rooms where a family member with a mental illness or physical deformity was kept isolated from the world, making him or her an outcast. 

We don't know the real reasons why Annabel wanted to get close to Lenore (this scene make it clear that it was of her own free will, something Lenore knows), but anyway, this was extremely strange at the time, the kind of thing that could severely damage someone's reputation if it became public.

In other words, for Lenore, Annabel not only pulled her out of the spiral of madness she was in, made her feel alive again, and treated her like a person (something that hadn't happened since Theo's death); she also put her reputation on the line to get closer to "the crazy woman in the attic". 

Add to that the fact that Annabel, like Lenore, is someone with an extremely protective personality, albeit in a much more subtle way: containing Lenore's outbursts by trying to distract her, complimenting her when she doubts herself, trying to give her a sense of purpose by asking her to write her a song, and automatically containing her own panic attack when she sees Lenore's horrified expression. 

To Lenore, Annabel is someone who would rather destroy something that makes her happy and be hated than let Lenore suffer for her absence.

This is a gigantic contrast to the Annabel readers know, yes, the basics are there: she is seen to genuinely care about Prospero, and gratuitous violence against someone who cannot defend himself infuriates her. But Lenore does not dimension how Annabel's methods of survival (shaped by her trauma of not being heard, reasons why she machines her way through people) make her a Machiavellian, manipulative and cold-blooded person. 

The last time Lenore saw Annabel in a situation where she could do nothing, she saw her give up. But readers know that this time, Annabel is willing to burn absolutely everything down to get them both out of it.

That is why the Duke affair takes her by surprise. Never mind that Annabel has said she's willing to destroy or trample anyone to get out of Nevermore. The Annabel Lenore knows would not be capable of that.

The Lenore Annabel knows

This part is more difficult to analyze, because unfortunately Annabel's memories are tied to big mysteries within the plot. On the plus side, this comic is excellent at dropping large amounts of information at the point of detail. 

The most obvious: Annabel is carrying around the ring Lenore had when she burned down her house, in other words, "Leo's" charade worked so well that the two of them got engaged. In other words: Annabel has seen this woman burn down a family home (perhaps with servants inside), fake her own death, steal, take a continental trip, change her identity and pose as a man, all to save her from an arranged marriage. 

A very "you and me against the world" situation. A scenario Lenore made possible by lying to basically everyone, even Annabel herself, who must have spent at least a few months believing Lenore was dead until "Leo" knocked on her door. 

Add to that these two scenes: in the first, Annabel seems pretty convinced that Lenore has a good idea of what's going on here...

And in this one, Annabel thinks Lenore is doing this out of guilt.

Again, this is a huge contrast to the Lenore we readers have seen throughout the comic: a person who desperately wants to show others the affection and security that no one (except Theo and Annabel) has given her. A mix of a naturally vivacious and caring personality with traumas from which her need for control stems from anxiety and a terrible fear of abandonment. 

In this light, Annabel putting Duke in danger to keep Montressor away from Lenore was something that was informed, known, and something that Lenore would agree with, because the Lenore she knows would be willing to sacrifice anything to achieve her goal. 

In that sense, that scene is foreshadowing. Not only did Lenore trick her into using a memory that Annabel does not have, but it comes right after Annabel confidently says that "no one knows Lenore better than she does.

The masks

One of the most painful tragedies of the White Raven relationship (besides the fact that it ended with both of them dead) is that one of the two has had to wear a mask on both sides of it: Annabel pretending that this relationship isn't as deeply ingrained in her as it really is, and then Lenore doing the whole "Leo" thing to be "the perfect fiancé" in everyone else's eyes.

Their divorce is imminent because both of them (especially Annabel) are projecting onto the other the expectations they have that are a product of the few memories they have been able to recover, rather than really looking at the person in front of them. 

I'm going to enjoy all the beautiful character development that comes from here on out, because they both have a lot of unpacking to do separately from this divorce arc. And, I hope that, when they can finally reconcile, we also get to see how, for the first time in the history of their relationship, Annabel and Lenore can actually see eye to eye.

#annabel lee nevermore #annabel lee whitlock #lenore nevermore #lenore vandernacht #nevermore webtoon #white raven #lennabel #divorce arc #Appreciate the quality of the damn captures #Took me forever to get them

[drylan]

ryan sees dylan in a bar a year or so after the events at hacketts quarry and they haven’t talked since court, and they angry fuck in the bathroom

Ryan froze, then and there. It was as if someone had dropped an ice bucket down the length of his back. But how could he not feel that way with...with him here, in front of him?

So many memories flashed through his brain in that moment. Dylan's coy words, his flirting, the taste of his lips mixed with cheap stolen beer, the sounds of his cries, the shrill pitch of his voice as he screamed...the taste of his blood, as he splashed against Ryan's lips. How it coated them both.

The sad, forlorn looks in a hospital, in a court room, the final goodbye that apparently wasn't as final as he thought.

He has a moment, only a moment, to turn away. To leave this place he had stumbled upon randomly one night as some from of an escape from everything. Because Dylan hadn't noticed him yet.

But then he did.

Ryan himself had bleached his hair, covered himself in piercings and ink, even more than before everything happened. He preferred the outlet, the escape. Maybe if he looked different from back then, he could forget all those memories. He could be a different person.

Dylan looked a bit rougher around the edges. His hair had grown down to his shoulders, soft stubble graced the lower half of his face, and his clothes were a bit crumbled.

He eyed Ryan a little, draping his armless hand across the surface of the bar. At least he seemed less self conscious about it now. "Fancy meeting you here, big guy."

"H-Hey." Ryan offered as he sat next to Dylan, waving the bartender down and ordering himself a drink, then, thinking better, ordered another for what Dylan was having, too.

"That's all you have to say, man? 'Hey?'" He kept his voice low, to not draw suspicion from the other guests and the bartender, but as Ryan took a swig of his own freshly placed drink, he knew there was a dangerous edge there.

He thought carefully as he gripped his glass. "I don't know what else to say."

"...unfortunately I think you're telling the truth." Dylan sighed, tossed back the rest of what remained in his glass and began to make quick work of the drink Ryan had given him. "Thanks for that, by the way."

"S-Sure, man, of course." There was a tension there, between them, something tight. Ryan kept waiting for it to snap, as they sat there, listening to the shitty music and sipping on overpriced liquor.

"You really weren't the best with words, though. Not unless you were telling those fucking campfire stories for the brats." He snorted and then continued. "You always were better with actions, huh, Ry-Guy?"

Dylan stood up, placing some cash on the bar, and Ryan almost flinched. Not because he was afraid that Dylan would hurt him. No. But because he knew he needed to act, he needed to do something, before Dylan left.

He couldn't lose him again. He couldn't be selfish and cut him off again. This was another chance, this was-

Ryan's brain froze once more as he took in the fact Dylan didn't head out the front door. No. He looked back at Ryan, eyes deep and soulful and so fucking angry. And then he headed to the bathroom.

His body began to move on it's own then, mirroring Dylan as he tossed some bills on the counter, the bartender giving him this almost knowing look that made him a bit nauseous.

Brushing it off, though, he trailed behind Dylan, relieved to find the men's bathroom to be a single stall and, incidentally, unlocked. He locked it behind him.

"You seemed so eager to leave us all behind before and now you're following me after I take a piss?" Dylan laughed, but there was definitely some bite to it.

"I-I'm sorry, I..." The words failed to come, the meaning and desire to connect there but dammit, he really was just fumbling, struggling, to find the right thing to say.

Dylan stood up from the sink and took a few steps forward, effectively pinning Ryan against the bathroom door. "Stop speaking with your words. Do it with your hands."

Ryan could see now, feel it, the heat radiating off of Dylan. Not just the anger. The sadness. The fear. And the desire. Burning red hot above almost all else.

Quickly, he switched their positions, pushing Dylan against the surprisingly sturdy door and kissing him breathless. Dylan invited him in, tongue and lips and teeth, nearly biting and sucking on each other as he panted. Ryan loved each new noise he made, especially the additional puffs of breath when he tugged on his hair.

He slid to his knees, unzipping Dylan's jeans and sucking him down instantly. It tasted like sweat and skin, earthy with a twinge of body soap. Ryan relished in it, the way his jaw ached and how Dylan tugged at his own bleached locks, making a blonde joke in between his desperate moans.

Once he was good and wet, Ryan pulled his own pants down, demanded Dylan finish the job, and he did.

How convenient this crummy little bar bathroom had individual packets of lube for a quarter in a little machine hung up on the wall?

Dylan thrusts his own name and curses out of Ryan's mouth, until he bites back into it with his own swollen lips, swallowing each gasp and moan and cry.

After, Ryan cried. He couldn't help it. Not because he regretted it, but because of how tenderly Dylan held him, how he gently caressed his face and kissed his lips.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. It's alright now."

Ryan would go home with him that night. No more goodbyes.

#my stuff #fanfic #ficlet #the quarry #drylan #rylan #radioheads #ryan erzahler #dylan lenivy #oh this prompt spoke to me thank u

[thefirstknife]

Lightfall quest is also really good. Seems to be something that will go on for a bit, I think, since the point was to get Golden Age files and we heard only one file. Osiris said there's more but that he needs time to decrypt them.

Files are Chioma Esi's logs! She is a voiced character now! Massive win for the lesbians. Osiris also directly mentions her having a wife, just in case there are people who wanted to be in denial until now.

But before that, really interesting dialogue between Nimbus and Osiris towards the end of the quest. I'll transcribe it and add a link to the video later when it gets uploaded by Destiny Lore Vault:

Nimbus: You know, ever since we defeated Calus, I've been wondering a lot more about the Veil. I think... I think we take it for granted. It's always been here. We always assumed that the Ishtar Collective brought it with them on the Exodus ship, but... Osiris: But now you question that assumption. Nimbus: Nezarec seemed to know something, didn't he? When we were inside the Vex network, he said something about... Savathun. Osiris: My memories cast shadows of Savathun's. Echoes of the time she and I were bound by her dark magic. The more time we spend here, the clearer the outline of those shadows become. The Ishtar Collective didn't bring the Veil here, Nimbus. Savathun stole it from the Witness and left it here... quite possibly for the Ishtar Collective to find. Nimbus: Why? Why would she do that? Isn't she our enemy? Osiris: She is. And yet, at times, she is our ally... when it is convenient to her, and in that convenience, we find common ground. Or as a friend once said, the line between Light and Dark... is very thin. Nimbus: [grunts] I kinda hate that. Osiris: As do I.

That's really good information and an interesting angle to understand the Veil situation better. First, Neomuni clearly don't even know how the Veil got there. They either assumed (as Nimbus said) that it was brought by the founders or perhaps the founders told everyone they did so, to keep the situation in control. It's easier to build a civilisation on this power if you tell people you brought that power here, rather than telling them that an alien entity placed it there during the time when alien entities were destroying the solar system.

But outside of that, ever since that time, people took it for granted, as Nimbus put it. They didn't really question it or wonder about it. The Veil is there, it's powering Neomuna, it was brought by the founders to make the civilisation, that's it. There's nothing really to wonder about for the average citizen. Not to say that they don't care about it, but they don't view it as something that has to be explained or pondered. As I've said before, the Veil to the Neomuni is a power source. They're not into it because of strange paracausal powers or whatever the hell is going on with it and the Witness. It's nice to see that reading was the intended one; to Neomuni, the Veil is a power source and one that is taken for granted aka isn't being actively researched. Meaning, they can't answer our questions about what the Veil is.

And now transcript of Chioma's first log (very VERY likely that more will be coming throughout the season, maybe on a weekly basis? They wouldn't voice her for one message is my main assurance). The log is accessed in the big room overlooking the Veil:

The log transcript (link):

Chioma Esi, personal log: incidental. Maya arrived yesterday with the Exodus Indigo. I should be relieved, but... in light of the current situation, I... I don't feel much of anything. We're presently en route from Hyperion to the terraformed surface of Neptune. I'm scared. I'm so scared! We don't even know what we've lost. Comms are dead. It's just silence everywhere. We might be all that's left. Maya was right about everything. The cult, the end... how we'll survive. [sighs] I hate this.

Some interesting points right away! Hyperion has been long established as a place where Chioma Esi was working. This is also giving us the Exodus Indigo route: Maya was on the colony ship which made a stop at Hyperion to pick up Chioma (and possibly other people). Shortly after they left Hyperion, the events of Winterbite lore happened where the colony ship was attacked by an unknown entity which left Winterbite in the hull.

Another neat point is that Chioma mentioned that a part of Neptune's surface was already terraformed. This gives us some crucial details; Exodus Indigo was going to Neptune on purpose and didn't just have to land there as an emergency escape. Going there was deliberate which also makes sense given that previously an ECHO ship crashed on Neptune. This makes it's more likely that Maya knew about the ECHO ship crash and about Soteria's possible survival and that Exodus Indigo followed that trail deliberately. The mention of surface being terraformed already also means that the colony was well underway of being established following the ECHO ship crash. Neptune was being hard-prepared to fit a colony.

This also means that Exodus Indigo was most likely a very well known mission and that Neomuna was not originally planned as something secret. They only went dark after making an assumption that they may be the only ones who survived the Collapse, which Chioma mentions in this log! Comms went silent and they had no idea what was going on; if they wanted to ensure the survival of the human species, they had to also assume that they're the only ones left and hide.

Chioma also mentions that "Maya was right about everything." She specifically mentions "the cult" which is Future War Cult, founded by Maya in the Golden Age. FWC was investigating something called the Device, a Vex-tech based machine capable of predicting the future. The cult would eventually regain access to the Device and use it well into the present day for the same purpose. Chioma also mentions "the end" as she muses about Maya being right about everything. Strange and possibly concerning. What exactly did Maya see through the Device?

This is some wild stuff, especially to me now after I've made a really long post about some curious connections between the concept of the history and mind of the universe and how it tends to be adjacent to Vex predictive technology. I mentioned Maya, Future War Cult and the Device in this post as well, trying to see if there's anything worth connecting in an analysis. Chioma alluding to the cult again the first time we've ever heard her voiced is intriguing. I'm not sure if this is something that will continue to be explored and if these connections are important, but it definitely felt like an important point to add into this fairly short voice line that specifies about Maya having been right "about everything," "the cult" and "the end."

I'm really excited to see if we'll get more and I assume we will. Osiris was very direct about us having to protect these logs and that there's a lot of them, but that he will have to decrypt them first. If we genuinely get more logs, it will be an incredible treat to hear actual voices from the Golden Age and the Collapse, of people who founded Neomuna and their first encounters with the Veil and possibly their original research into it.

#destiny 2 #destiny 2 spoilers #season of the deep #season of the deep spoilers #chioma #veil log #long post #lore vibing #i've binged everything that released today in one sitting in 5 hours i am enchanted #really good start #and definitely hoping to hear more of chioma. genuinely don't believe they would voice her for one message #and osiris very explicitly said 'i'm gonna go decrypt the rest' #extremely exciting little addition on top of already banger season

[decepti-thots]

☕️ fic trope: time loops

the thing about this is. i LOVE time loops but i don't necessarily always love them for the reasons folks who write time loop fanfiction do. aha. what i want from a time loop is for it to represent or literalize some kind of fracture for a character experiencing it, rather than a situation where like. hmmm. you know the kind of fic where the Thing the time loop is essentially comes down to "this is the fact that this relationship is Supposed To Happen and things cannot resolve until this occurs"? (time loop fics are often just soulmate fics with an extra layer of removal from the premise, i think!)

i prefer the idea that a time loop be used to explore more... negative... ideas? concepts? i really like self-imposed time loops as a device. you can exit at any time! you have every reason to because not doing so is breaking shit and you are becoming an intrusion! but you refuse because Existential Dread! THAT'S GOOD SHIT. i think there should be cdrw time loop fic about memory and fucking with it. maybe something based on rewind's observation in Elegant Chaos he could maybe go find dominus or something. hmm.

incidentally, one of the few recent... ish... TV shows i have watched is Russian Doll and especially the first season i loved it and felt it was Peak use of time-travel-as-theme, so that's a good touchpoint for me in terms of "use of time travel as satisfying device in a narrative" baselines. (i also liked s2 overall, but s1 was just tight.)

#i am also one of the few people who did not like This Is How You Lose The Time War before anyone asks. sorry.

[asmo-cosmetics]

brothers + smoking hcs

because like, they're vices, i bet they have vices, y'know?

lucifer

genuine cuban cigars. barbatos has had them imported from the human world for him ever since diavolo found out about the habit.

he still finds it embarrassing, of course, but they are very good quality cigars. he doesn't have it in him to refuse.

he keeps two, wrapped, in the inside breast pocket of his coat. if you see him taking one from there (rather than the cigar box that sits eternally beside the gramophone in his bedroom), you know something particularly heinous just happened.

he keeps his lighter in that pocket, too. it's a zippo-style refillable, sterling silver and engraved with his name and the demon lord's crest.

another gift from diavolo. again, it's just excellent quality. the fact that it rests over his heart nearly at all times is incidental.

mammon

blacks, almost exclusively.

-- is what he says. they're menthol blacks, but he's old enough to remember when menthols were marketed primarily to women in the human world, and he's still kind of embarrassed about his "girl" cigarettes.

they're a devildom brand, but don't get it twisted, he still prefers the most expensive variety they have.

he also likes those flavored cigarillos, the cherry or honey ones, usually.

(there's also a demonus flavor in some stores. he loves those.)

leviathan

prefers weed.

is one of those guys who is really annoying about the fact that he prefers weed.

to be fair, this is probably mostly to annoy mammon.

probably has a vape pen and an online store he likes that does those dumb cartoon-themed carts but with like. nostalgic anime.

but... it's levi. so, like... bongs.

no, but it's levi, so seriously like a legit kind of impressive collection of custom bongs purchased directly from the glassblower's akuzon page.

one of them looks like ruri-hana's flower staff.

def one of those guys who can explain to you in scientific detail how all that shit works, too.

"but what's he like high" giggly. more talkative. fascinated by everything. really honest.

he'll have cigarettes sometimes. usually when he's lonely and he wants something that smells like his brothers.

satan

he grows, prepares, and blends everything he smokes himself. everything he blends smells fucking divine.

usually uses a pipe, but he has an antique hookah from the human world that he'll get out on occasion. also not opposed to rolling clove cigarettes if he finds good rolling papers.

(levi gets him those sometimes. in return for satan rolling joints for him because he can't roll for shit and satan's are always perfect.)

the pipe is a sherlock holmes replica. it was a gift from barbatos. he treasures it.

sometimes he'll infuse magic into a blend, usually for hookah sessions with other people. with satan, you can smoke a memory, or the sound of a string quartet, or an entire ballet.

but usually, it's just a taste to fit the book he's reading. some go best with an apple cider feel, you know?

asmodeus

he used to get those little disposable vapes all the time, but eventually levi felt bad and helped him pick out a permanent one.

his juice is like. all fruit and sweets and candy flavors. he has one that tastes like vanilla cupcakes that everyone likes the smell of.

also maybe this is kind of a pull but you know that brand black devil? that makes the strawberry cigarettes with the pink paper? yeah.

looong black audrey hepburn cigarette holder. he has a little collection, actually, because, well, they're accessories, but the black one is his favorite. it's elegant and cool and looks sexy in pictures.

beelzebub & belphegor

beel doesn't really smoke unless belphie's smoking, and belphie usually just steals from his brothers.

he has a brand of reds he likes but he mostly relies on someone else picking them up for him because he is Too Lazy to go to the store.

beel actually likes the taste of asmo's best, but the reds are still his favorite because they smell/taste the most like belphie.

belphie's favorite are actually a blend satan makes and rolls for him to help him sleep.

#this was fun #obey me! #obey me! fanfic #obey me! headcanons #obey me! lucifer #obey me! mammon #obey me! leviathan #obey me! satan #obey me! asmodeus #obey me! beelzebub #obey me! belphegor #also sorry for the dialuci crumbs i can't help myself lol #notebook

[crumbleclub]

looks at you in the eyeballs hmm yes family business au

tell me everything (you want) i WILL eat it

Ok ok here's what I have so far

Remnant info:

Has to be injected directly into the spinal cord (not a comfortable injection site, but not nearly as painful as it sounds) for full effect. Injections elsewhere have dulled, short term effects that are more noticeable at the injection site (ie it could be useful to inject near an injury to speed up healing or in joints to slow progress of long term joint damage)

Soul remnant, William discovered before moving any of his experiments to himself and his children, carries a high risk of possession. He is able to siphon souls out of harvested remnant and use only agony-based remnant on himself and his children.

The siphoned souls WILL find something to possess if left unattended, so he generally seals them into animatronics and the like on purpose. That gives him some control over them.

In the short term, there's an injection reaction to agony remnant that's... well, agonizing.

Picture like, high fever + associated symptoms, re-experiencing all of the baseline emotions and instincts the agony resulted from, but without context (as in they don't know this comes from, say, running from a scary guy in a bunny costume, then being bludgeoned to death, but they do get runrunhidescaredscaredHURTSHURTSSAVEMESAVEMEHELPHURTSHURTSstops.) This is more severe the first time– when the body is literally rejecting the remnant and may display more frightening complications like seizures and lasts a few days– and eventually dulls down to a day or so of a fever, panic attacks, and crying fits. Luckily, the more severe experiences only leave a hazy memory afterward, as the affected party is pretty delirious initially

There might be some very vague memory leftovers from when there were souls in the remnant. Nothing solid. Nostalgia for a place they've never been and can't describe, flashes of a favorite outfit they've never worn, missing the shadow of a person they never met.

William experiences these symptoms as much as the kids; he just decides that it's worth it. He doesn't want to die. Nothing scares him more, and he's always had the creeping sense that death was just around the corner for him, no matter how healthy he was or how well things were going.

Michael is the one who has to administer treatments to William. He had to do it for Evan, once; not long after the bite. He would rather go through it himself than see anyone go through the severest phase of it ever again.

Desensitization and Training:

Elizabeth was the easiest. She wanted nothing more than her father's love. All he had to do was hinge any displays of affection on her responding well to the realization that her father was a prolific murderer and, eventually, being expected to participate in his, er, side-hustle.

Evan had less natural inclination towards violence, but his age and the fact that he was somewhat naive/not a literal prodigy like his sister made things somewhat easy for William. He couldn't piece things together befofe William was ready to tell him, so he could be slowly exposed to things like "incidentally" finding dead or injured animals and then humans without putting together that his dad was the one to set it up.

Michael was more difficult, mostly due to being older. He was also hard to threaten directly into action, so sophisticated manipulation had to be used. William mostly started out when Michael was already in some sort of vulnerable state– either by orchestrating tension and fights at home ahead of time, or, on a few occasions, by paying someone outside of the home to scare Michael in some way (mugging him, for example) that would make him more dependent on William. After that, he could acclimate him similarly to how he did with the others.

With Evan and Michael, he had to claim that wherever the souls went was better than the world they were in now; both boys saw the world as hostile and frightening. Elizabeth didn't require this; she wasn't really worried about what happened to consciousness when someone died. Hiding the fact that the souls were actually trapped in animatronics was extremely important

Very early on, the children were exposed to crime scenes and violence whilst under varying levels of sedation. This allowed for some desensitization without risk of resistance + with a foggy memory that William could easily warp

Other assorted info:

They had to go on the road after a while; too many deaths in a small town becomes noticable very quickly, as does children not aging

The fact that they weren't growing up wasn't explained to them. The only one with any knowledge of how remnant works is Michael, and his knowledge is mostly an explanation of how its immortality works on the cellular level. They figure it out eventually, obv

No matter what William does, Michael always has a fear + disgust response to corpses. This comes from him being the first to help dispose of things, with very little desensitization ahead of time. It was too traumatic to even partially undo, and it's notable enough that William recognizes it as an actual failure on his part

Michael flips a switch after the bite and almost idolizes Evan. He's perfect, he can do no wrong, and Mikey would do anything to make up for the years past. This kind of sucks for Evan, because he doesn't need a groupie(?? does that word work here?), he needs a family.

They have weapons of choice. Axe for Elizabeth, knife for Evan, crowbar for Michael. This is because Elizabeth likes the power, Evan likes things to be stealthy and quick, and Michael just wants things to be over with and involve minimal blood.

Elizabeth ends up learning that, when someone is unconscious or otherwise incapacitated, problems go away for a while. She has trouble unlearning this after William is gone

Evan remains very easily manipulated even after William dies

Michael develops a pretty notable shut-out response that never really goes away. Under too much stress, he stops talking. He'll shut his eyes, cover his ears, and just not respond for extended periods if it gets to be too much. This includes situations where doing so could put him in danger

The thing that hurts the most in this AU is that none of the kids ever manage to stop loving William. He was kind to them, and, while it was to manipulate them, it stuck. They miss him after he dies. They miss him while they kill him. It hurts.

#fnaf family business au #family business au #ask #fnaf #michael afton #cc afton #evan afton #elizabeth afton #william afton #mike's actual writing #cw abuse #cw neglect #cw murder #child death mention #child death tw

[utilitycaster]

thoughts re: skip/norman (also on the aso discourse the d20 fandom went through and also as a big skip/norman fan)

The ultimate problem that I see with the pc concept of skip/norman is that aso had heavy heavy themes of autonomy and "owning yourself", whether that's literally, through gunnie, or figuratively, through syd, margaret, etc. the leading question that was prompted by having one of the pcs literally being something that takes over a body and removes the original owner's control of it was just, WILD to me to tee up and then not explore.

norman was an asshole, for sure, but brennan and zac put just enough effort into making him a realistic person that the way doing brain surgery on him without consent was played straight for comedy felt a little strange. it is fascinating to me to discuss skip's position as a literal parasite in the galaxy and how he still deserves the right to exist and live, and how that intersects with norman's same rights, but aso just didn't have time for that.

and aso is a comedy, and one of my favorite seasons, so it's a pretty small issue that this is kind of shrugged off (that's where I disagree with the people who discoursed about it). like, I don't think that was what the season needed to be about. but, d20 in general is so committed to themes and philosophy uniting the pcs that the glaring hole that is the skip/norman of it all duct-taped over with "ahhh symbiosis is a thing" stands out. skip as a pc concept in the sense of his backstory isn't wildly dark to me (I mean, gunnie's is already pretty awful lmao), but in the sense of what he says in terms of the larger story, he feels a bit out of place.

there's a lot more to say here about how the Wurst crew's actions play into that given that he was their asshole boss, etc etc, but essentially: I thought skip/norman just kind of incidentally brought up some points via backstory/pc concept that were a little too complex for a 18 episode comedy season of dnd.

ps. pib fits perfectly into neverafter imo and I adore him completely

I'm going to be totally honest: I learned about this discourse re: Skip and autonomy long after it happened and my gut reaction was "well that's fucking stupid." I also haven't rewatched it and my memory for D20 seasons is often nowhere near as strong as for Critical Role.

I did not blink once at the concept for two reasons:

I'm familiar with sci fi and "creature that takes over the bodies of others" is a pretty standard trope, and not only that but one that has been played for both extreme horror and comedy. Which isn't to say you can't explore the concerns about autonomy but like...I do not find this to be remotely obligatory, which sort of removes all the concerns raised above. "Oh yeah, brain slugs, I know about those, one took over my cousin for a few years" is to me an entirely valid way in-universe of dealing with it. Cannot stress enough that at no point did this seem weird or horrifying to me. Which doesn't mean that it's not valid for others to feel that way, but it just...did not even register as a thought people would have, because it felt so utterly organic to the genre and universe.

I'm also familiar with actual play and Zac and Brennan were quite careful not to abuse the possession mechanic (to the point of creating Norm so that Zac would essentially have his own PC to possess as his real PC) so I have autonomy concerns re: the metagame.

I will also admit that I found the theme to much more be a case of finding one's place within the tough universe in which the characters must live, rather than autonomy and self-ownership, which puts Skip's story well in step with the rest of the group as he fights against his father's wishes. I should also add that I don't see any disjoint in Starstruck being a comedy. All D20 seasons are comedic; even the more serious ones are still comedic in tone and choice. They've also gone extremely dark at points, and that's a choice one can make in comedy, and in my opinion, a valid one.

#answered #thespoonisvictory

[deadendtracks]

Continued from here...

On to season 6 finally. One thing that surprised me looking back over the season is that as far as I can recall, Tommy doesn't actually ever directly say that he's trying to be a "good man" in those terms.

I searched the @peaky_script twitter for that term and it doesn't come up referencing Tommy at all. Which isn't really how I remembered things, but *is* more in line with what I think is going on. What he does talk a lot about is "changing." Of course, the question is from what into what, and the implication is certainly at least "something better than he was." It just intrigues me that he never specifically refers to it as becoming a "good man," even if that's somewhat implied. This contrasts with Arthur, who flat out calls himself a "good man" a few times in canon -- most notably while assaulting and slashing up the man Linda was seeing in s5. What Tommy *does* talk about is doing good things (such as the housing project), but that's something of a tangent.

In the first episode of s6, Tommy does say to the men in Miquelon since I foreswore alcohol, I've become a calmer and more peaceful person. This is the first glimmering of Tommy making purposeful changes. Of course, he says it right after being quite violent in self-defense, so it's said with a bit of conscious irony. It's also fairly evident that swearing off alcohol didn't particularly make him calmer or more peaceful (I've written before about how giving up self-medication of his PTSD actually made him a lot less stable and anxious). But this is at least something he's attempting to achieve in some way.

So yeah. I went looking for Tommy talking about changing into a good man in s6, and what I found was that he never quite says this, and the places where he does discuss anything close are a) mostly after Ruby's illness and b) still pretty ambiguous.

The first mention of him 'doing good' is in the scene with Ada at the Garrison after he's talked to Captain Swing.

Ada, this will be the end of it, do you hear me? This is the way out for all of us. And along the way, I will be doing good.

and when she points out he's going to be making money:

All right, fair enough. Any incidental rewards for my good work will be welcome. But you will get your fair share, sister.

What I want to underline is that he doesn't talk about being a "good man" here, he talks about *doing* good and about his *good work* -- I know this might seem like semantics, but I don't think it is. I think there's a difference.

After Ruby is admitted to the hospital, Tommy sits at her bedside and tells her he'll strike a bargain to save her. He goes looking for Esme. Esme takes him to a burial site and tells him a story about Evadne Barwell blaming him for her daughter's death and cursing Ruby in revenge. Setting aside whether this actually happened or whether Esme was fucking with him, this is when he starts the sort of magical thinking/transactional deal making in earnest.

He tells Esme he's done bad things, that he'll give Evadne ten thousand pounds and build a monument to her daughter if she'll reverse the curse. He tells her his children are teaching him kindness. Notably, he says Now that I'm without whisky I can hear the spirits clearly, and they're saying Ruby will be well, if I make amends. That is the conversation.

Again, he doesn't say that this would make him a "good man" so much as it is a transactional 'deal' where if he makes up for his sins, his daughter will live. If he strikes the right bargain, if he convinces Evadne Barwell to take back her curse by giving her money.

However, Ruby dies before he can find Evadne Barwell.

Tommy's speech at Ruby's funeral continues this theme of change and *doing* good:

Little Ruby's fate came a thousand miles too soon. But in her name and in her memory things will change.

And whatever comes down the river from now on, we will make good, we will make peaceful and honest and good and send it on down the river better than it was. In her memory we will do this.

Notably, he says *things* will change, and that *we* will make things good in her memory. It's quite ambiguous what he actually means by this, and he doesn't directly refer to himself. Given he's been talking about going fully legit since season 1, it at least carries the connotation of getting the family out of the violent business and concentrating on the positive work he's been doing in parliament. But he doesn't say anything specific. And I think in part, he has no concrete idea what he himself means here.

And of course, directly after saying this, he leaves the funeral and hunts down Evadne Barwell and murders her and the three men who try to defend her. Absolutely not the actions of a good man and not remotely making things peaceful and honest and good. When he returns home, Lizzie confronts him about what he's done, screaming WHAT IS THIS "GOOD" THAT YOU WILL BECOME?!

His response is that their bodies will be thrown aboard the boat, like all the other bodies, but I am stepping off that boat and onto another boat. Do you understand?

Again, he's not really specifying what this other boat is, except it's not the one with the bodies on it. And it's interesting that Lizzie asks him what is the good he will become when he hadn't actually framed it as he *himself* becoming good. It's understandable that she interprets it that way, and it's not even that he doesn't mean it that way, but it's not something he's said to that point.

That night, Mosley, Mitford, Captain Swing and Jack Nelson show up at his house for their meeting. Mosley asks Tommy to prove his dedication to the fascist cause "physically" in the form of the Nazi salute, which he complies with. Tommy is then shown staring at Ruby's chair and then abruptly leaving the meeting to go outside and scream at the sky while firing a machine gun. Later we find out he burned Ruby's chair in the fire place.

One thing I haven't really talked about is the impact on Tommy of working to take down Mosley. This starts in s5, and it's something he was immediately terrified of. Briefly, he's afraid of what he'll have to do to destroy Mosley; this is at least part of why he tries to have him killed. Mosley's talk of the forbidding being forbidden, the talk about Mosley sleeping with his family members, Mosley basically trying to tell Tommy that he should hand over Lizzie to him -- all of these things freak Tommy the fuck out. But that's another longer meta. The point I wanted to make is that "proving" his loyalty to the fascists in front of a representation of his daughter, the day of her funeral, really fucks him up.

And this brings me to my original point! LOL I did have one. That he doesn't look at killing Mosley as something that would make him a good man. I've already talked about how he never frames anything in s5 in those terms. In s6 he's moved past trying to kill Mosley to working behind the scenes privately to inform on Mosley to Churchill. To do this, he has to keep up this charade of being on Mosley's side, working for the 'cause,' by introducing Mosley and Nelson, President Roosevelt's envoy.

When Lizzie discovers him typing up his notes from the meeting the next morning and tries to reach out to him after he talks about burning Ruby's chair, he stops her and says:

Not yet. Not yet. I have this work to do cos now I know that I will change. That I have to change. And change for good, Lizzie. Not just yet.

What stands out to me here is how he says that he has to change (again, not specifying what he'll be changing into, and not framing it as a 'good man') but not just yet.

So what does he mean by that?

My interpretation is that he knows that what he'll need to do in order to succeed in bringing down Mosley will require him to do things that don't fit that 'change for good.' It requires the man who is willing to murder people, the man willing to do a Nazi salute to prove his bona fides, the man who will sleep with Diana Mitford to 'prove it physically.'

That man *isn't* a good man. He thinks that in order to achieve his goal, he has to stay the man he currently is.

Anyway, that was incredibly long, but hopefully illustrated the point that I think Tommy doesn't believe killing Mosley (or taking him down from the inside) will make him a good man; on the contrary, he has to remain the 'bad' man in order to do it. He has to put off this "change for good" whatever that means, because it will be impossible for him to do what needs to be done otherwise.

And I'll conclude by saying that the "change for good" that Tommy talks about doesn't seem to be linked to anything specific or concrete that he'd do, so much as it is about the things he'll *stop* doing. So it's not really framed as "if i do this, i will be a good man" but "to make a change for good i will stop doing these bad things." Which is why he can't make that change while there's still a chance he needs to do 'bad' things to achieve his goal and stop Mosley.

#peaky blinders #meta

[harrowharks-iliac-crest]

20

Ninth skull.

And he had said: “Ortus, have pity.” “This is my pity, Lord,” said the Saint of Duty. “She’s your responsibility, not your punching bag.” “I find the responsibility a hard one.”

Puzzling. Does he genuinely think she would be better off dead?

The Emperor said, carefully: “He made a pact, with an authority I have no power to gainsay, that he would protect me from all dangers. Now it has been put to him that you are that danger.

Bruh???

Gainsay, here, meaning negate, or deny.

An authority higher than GOD?

Something truly fucky is going on here, far beyond Harrow's memories.

Oh, this next bit is interesting:

“You say you misapprehended the process,” said your Teacher, leaning forward and crossing his shabby-sleeved arms over his knees. “I don’t believe you did, Harrowhark. I really don’t believe you did. [...] You could not trip in the Ninth House without falling over an Anastas, an Anastasia, or an Anastasius; or, in later years, bumping into their niche. [...] You were profoundly upset to learn that she had been real; that the rooms you inhabited—the empty, tintless, quiet rooms—had been intended for her.

One person (and her cavalier) has gotten it deeply wrong before, and she was also of the Ninth.

Later I would ask of her a greater and more terrible thing. I had a body and I needed a tomb … you might know of the body, Harrowhark, and you will know far better the Tomb.”

Oh.

“I buried a monster,” he said.

Okay hold up a sec. Hold up a sec.

Anastasia was... the one who founded the Ninth house by creating the Locked Tomb? Or was she (and her cavalier, in the terrible mishap that was their joining in Lyctorhood, which somehow went wrong) was she the monster? I don't think so - but, she either died burying herself with the body, or went on to create the Ninth house.

So much info in this chapter already, wowee.

That night, the Body consented to embrace you. You so nearly felt those long arms wrap around your neck, your middle. You were so close to feeling that press of graceful forehead to yours, the long, lean, dead body chilling yours to the shivering point,

Okay, well that's really gay, Harrow. I mean. We all know that Harrow loves the Body more than anyone, but still.

Anyway, looks like any similarities to Gideon might have been just incidental or perhaps wishful thinking on my part (or maybe not - I feel like if there's any story where things that seem to be connected actually are, then it's this one).

I don't think Gideon would be described as lean, in any case.

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

Who indeed was Annabel Lee?

And - the moon? Which moon? There's different planets around - which moon?

#harrow the ninth #harrow the ninth liveblog #htn liveblog #tlt liveblog #htn spoilers #tlt spoilers #the locked tomb

[blazehedgehog]

As far as you know, is there any truth to the long-standing rumor that a third "Adventure Sonic" was ever considered for Sonic Generations? I don't remember anyone drawing a distinction between "Modern Sonic" and "Adventure Sonic" as characters circa 2011, so it always sounded like one of those rumors that held on thanks to wistful thinking.

To my memory, the information comes directly from Ryan Drummond himself, who stated Sega was offering him the role of Dreamcast Sonic for Sonic Generations. He declined because he said Sega's offer was an insult; they wanted him to leave his actor's union and were proposing to pay him way below the going rate.

Digging, it looks like the source is a (now defunct) website called The Gaming Liberty. Here's a Wayback Machine link. However, it doesn't mention anything about Dreamcast Sonic, just that Sega was trying to get him back.

Doing some more digging, this Game Informer article pointed me towards an episode of Did You Know Gaming.

Watching the video, they tag the information to Unseen64, who claim to have "sources inside of Sega" that confirmed this detail for them. For what it's worth, Unseen64 seems generally accepted as reputable as far as I know. The article's byline is one Liam Robertson, who has a history of significantly more hits than misses when it comes to leaks and insider information.

Liam, incidentally, now works for Did You Know Gaming, and a lot of their more recent videos involve them publishing original research received directly from the developers themselves -- much like Unseen64 used to do (and still does, I guess).

For me, I always felt a pretty clear delineation between Dreamcast Sonic and "Modern Sonic." Sonic 06 was an attempt for them to do Sonic Adventure 1 over again, and when that failed, we got Sonic Unleashed, which to me plays absolutely nothing like Sonic Adventure. All that talk where they say "we called unleashed 'sonic world adventure' in japan because we were trying to make sonic adventure 3" feels like marketing garbage to me.

There's a feel to Sonic Adventure. A vibe. If you could truly touch the heart of Sonic Adventure with your fingers, you would feel a certain kind of texture. Sonic 06 has a very similar texture and Sonic Unleashed does not.

Sonic Unleashed was the soft reboot Sonic 06 wishes it could be, and there is an unmissable line in the sand drawn between the two games. Sonic 06 was the last gasps of an old era and Sonic Unleashed was its rebirth as something new.

#questions #Anonymous #sonic the hedgehog #sega #sonic team #sonic unleashed #sonic generations #sonic adventure #ryan drummond #did you know gaming #liam robertson #unseen64

[honestlyvan]

any polyboros thoughts?

Many. I think every iteration through the group has something unique going for it, but because out of the six of them, five have learned to socialise strictly in-context with each other, they keep inadvertedly referring back to those relationships in the way they approach each other, and it ends up blending everything, forming this web of connections that make the group adhere as a whole.

For example, I've mentioned in the past that I think Lanz' treatment of Taion parallels the way he treats Noah, and the way Eunie treats Sena parallels the way she treats Lanz, and that both of these are the wrong approach -- Sena is far more sensitive than I think any of them realise, and the prodding and stress-testing Eunie does doesn't make her feel like they're connecting, it makes her feel like she's failing to give her what she wants; likewise Taion is far more grounded and dispassionate than Noah, so what is meant to be a brake on him being led by his feelings comes across like second-guessing his reasoning.

And just like Sena had to step in to remind Noah that he's not dealing with Lanz and Eunie when he's dealing with Mio, that her way of communicating and her way of showing she loves him is not gonna be the way he's used to receiving other people, there's gonna be a lot of meddling occurring from the Ouroboros partner of one or the other participant in a relationship trainwreck for it to all work out, y'know?

So Taion has to keep reminding Eunie that even though he likes her because she's a bitch, he can also literally read her mind, lol, and it took Noah and Lanz years to get to that point with her; and Sena needs to bond with Lanz to feel comfortable approaching Noah and Eunie even though both of them have very standoffish vibes to her at first, to realise that Noah is just a nerd and Eunie is just a jerk, and she's better at being a person than both of them.

Likewise, the dynamic of uncomplicatedly being half of a person with someone else changes the way they approach relationships to each other -- less so for the Agnians, who have always been more distant and standoffish with each other, and have had to work on communicating more, but seeing the parts that their Ouroboros partners draw out of the other makes Noah, Eunie and Lanz far more aware of what they don't know about each other.

Neither Lanz or Eunie has ever been able to get Noah to be at ease the way he is around Mio, Eunie is far more trusting with Taion than she is with either of them, like. There's a lot of little things that would start nagging at them, witnessing those interactions, the three of them are so used to being each other's whole world. They would need to get to know each other again, properly, rather than relying so heavily on always having been together, being boxed into a comfortable dynamic with each other.

Having other people there changes things for them -- I think that's the only way they can really cope with the way they now have these memories and feelings and opinions about these perfect strangers in their lives. They have to interrogate those feelings somehow, to figure out what parts of them are real and what parts of them are coloured by their soulmate, which will also give them better insight into their soulmate. If they want to retain their individuality, they have to ask those epistemological questions about their own feelings, which incidentally is a really good way to make yourself fall in love with someone XD

#van's answers #Xenoblade Chronicles 3 #polyboros #long post #you CANNOT believe the fucking restraint this took #this is edited down. I took out so many examples #I didn't even mention how I think Mio and Lanz are dark halves and how Sena and Noah are literally the same fucking person #and that Eunie is so sure of who she is she has no idea who that person is actually #so much #this could have been twice as long #anyway your honour I love them they're all dumb as fuck

[dapandapod]

Handshandshands

I don't even know. I just needed more hands and haldholding excuses, and just. Yes. Hands. What was I saying? Anyway please enjoy! <3

On Ao3 here

Armor is one of the most important things for a witcher. Leg padding, chest plates, neck protectors, gloves-

Gloves is in honesty what Jaskier keeps returning to over and over again.

See, traveling together as much as they do, you do get to see most of your companion. Jaskier has seen Geralt's ass enough times to paint it from memory.

(Let’s not talk about why he would paint Geralt's ass from memory.) (Also, it needs saying, that is one fine ass.)

What Jaskier now has discovered, and been completely obsessed with lately, is how little he has seen Geralt's hands. Hidden under those gloves, gloves used for any and all purposes and especially hiding those hands. 

Wow, Jaskier is a wordsmith today. But look, Geralt just took them off, and Jaskier is watching those pale, strong and oh-so-capable hands, and this bard's brain can only handle so much at any given time.

He is plucking herbs, and he apparently decided that he doesn't need gloves for that. The little flowers and stems and the whatnots look delicate in his hands. For once Jaskier is quiet. For once, the filter between mouth and brain is working, and it is working *hard*.

His mind is reliving a few weeks back, when the obsession began. Where they had a close call, a Griffin surprising them, nearly taking a chomp out of Jaskier's arm. 

Geralt shot it with a bolt while still sitting on Roach, a good hit, and Jaskier had felt something warm hit his face before it screeched and flew to a safer distance. 

Geralt didn't even have time to down any concoctions, but he was.... more intense than usual. He had made fast work of it, returning to Jaskier's side, who still sat on his ass and blinked dumbly.

"You alright?" Geralt had said, feathers and blood splattered all over his armor.

Jaskier had nodded, and then Geralt had looked down, his eyebrow twitched, at which point this obsession of Jaskier's started.

He took off the glove, slowly and carefully, and wiped something from Jaskier's cheek. Thumb big and gentle and warm, palm cradling his jaw.

Fuck, yep, brain has been in a state ever since.

And thus, here we are.

Jaskier's brain is focusing on little else than those hands as soon as the gloves are off.

"Here, let me hold those for you." Jaskier offers quickly when he notices Geralt's hands getting full. 

The witcher flashes him a quick smile, and when Jaskier reaches out to accept the herbs, he may or may not accidently, totally incidentally, touch their fingers together.

It makes something in his brain spark, he can feel his mouth do something weird, and he hurriedly accepts the herbs and steps back, putting them on the cloth Geralt prepared.

When they settle down for the night, some hours later, Jaskier has a plan.

A great plan. A masterplan. Gods, his brain is so big, it is a wonder he doesn't get more headaches. 

He is also very humble.

The lute is put to the side, Geralt is sorting his herbs and Jaskier is fiddling with his rings. Go time.

"Do you think my rings would fit you at all?"

"Hm?"

"I mean, I have rather large hands, right?" Geralt gives that crooked smile of his and Jaskier is alright. Absolutely alright. "I do! But not as big as yours, I don't think. Oh don't give me that smirk, wipe those dirty thoughts of your mind, witcher."

He scoots closer, holding up one of his hands.

"Look! Let's compare. You can’t have that much bigger hands than me. You are not that much taller than me."

Geralt gives him a look that he can't read, puts down the herb he was holding and wipes his hand before he places it against Jaskier's.

If that bard brain had been thinking anything but HANDHANDHANDHANDHANDHAND he would have thought, oh how considerate. But his brain is in fact thinking HANDHANDHANDHAND and there is room for little else.

Geralt's hand is, in fact, not much bigger than his. His fingers are just a little longer, and just a little wider. His palm is warm, calluses surprisingly smooth. Less dry than he expected.

Jaskier's mind is still chanting when Geralt quirks an eyebrow and flexes his fingers and, oh wait, right. Masterplan.

"Fuh-... Fine. Your hand is a little bigger than mine. Like I said. But my rings, witcher?"

"What about them?" Geralt says, not removing his hand yet. Bard brain sparks. Makes it hard to think.

"Would you fit in one?" Jaskier asks dumbly. Now he has to keep chanting HANDHANDHANDHAND or else his mind will go... places.

"Why would I wear one of your rings?"

"Why not?!" Jaskier asks, deciding to take matters in his own hands. Hands. In his own hands. Yes. Good brain. Anyway, Jaskier grabs Geralt's hand in his own, holding it as if he could ever keep Geralt from freeing himself, pinching at those fingers.

"Maybe on the pinkie." Jaskier decides, choosing one of his rings that seems big enough. Masterplan in action.

Geralt lets himself be held, lets Jaskier attempt to put a ring on a finger. Only twitches lightly when Jaskier grips his ring finger and index finger. 

There is a strange silence around them now, and suddenly Jaskier sees the flaw in his plan. 

Putting ring on finger is.... intimate.

It gets stuck on the first joint, the gold ring just sitting there. They both stare at it for a moment, before Jaskier snorts.

"Well. Yeah, no, that won't fit. I want to get that back, so I'm not pushing more."

More brainsparks and some absolute internal panic, because Geralt adjusts the grip and instead holds Jaskier's hand. Holy fucking shitballs and Meliteles shapely kneecaps, help.

"Never said it would." Geralt says, not looking up, plucking the ring from his own pinkie and returning it to Jaskier's finger.

Remember how putting a ring on someone is intimate? Yup. Brainmelt.

Again, Geralt's hands are gentle. Warm. Jaskier blinks, blinks again, and then he is let go.

"Don't need no rings. It's a good way to lose a finger in my line of work." Geralt tells him and returns to his herb sorting.

Jaskier's hand feels cold and lonely and empty now.

The witcher is still sorting herbs, and Jaskier is once again fiddling with his rings.

The evening is quiet, but Jaskier's head is not. When Geralt leans forward, he sees the ring he thought he lost last year, hanging on the same chain as his medallion.

Yeah, no, Jaskier's mind is screaming.

There is not much sleep for Jaskier that night, and come morning, Geralt doesn't climb up on Roach as usual.

Instead, he takes off his gloves (HANDHANDHANDHANDHAND) and puts them in his saddlebags. Instead, their bare hands bump together as they walk, until Geralt catches his hand and holds it.

Geralt makes jokes the entire way that this is what it took to shut him up, he would have held his hand years ago.

Jaskier says nothing, because if Geralt is offering to hold his hand to keep his mouth from blabbering HANDHANDHANDHANDHAND he won't complain.

#handhandhandhandHAND #we are all fine here #geraskier #the witcher #geralt x jaskier #hands #holding hands #comparing hands #rings #fluff #funny #idiots in love #what was i saying? oh yes #handshandshands

[veliseraptor]

yi city time travel aus you say? How do we make the rest of this form in your head? Ask questions about how that goes for everyone else from canon that might show up later is XY could keep his shit together long enough to pull this off? 🍿 👀

my problem with yi city time travel aus thus far has kind of been a combination of (a) deciding which one of the, like, six I've considered I'd want to go with actually trying to write and (b) the difficulty personally of living up to one of my personal favorite yi city fics which happens to be a time travel/time loop au (warning: big ouch). so like. it's less that I don't have thoughts about what I'd do so much as that I have too many thoughts.

well that and the 5 million existing wips I'm constantly struggling to finish, that too, because if I wrote this odds are it'd end up getting long.

one of my favorite things about a yi city time travel au specifically is that...okay, so, one of the functions of a time travel au in fandom generally is that it gives a character the opportunity to Fix Things, right? or at least to try. and generally speaking the character who is trying to Fix Things is probably somewhat involved in the main plot of the thing/invested in a main plot point (or plot points) that they'd like to see go differently.

and I've talked about before how specifically with Xue Yang it's very entertaining to me that that's not at all the case, that Xue Yang could not give less of a fuck about everything else going on around him as long as he gets what he wants. all these large scale injustices and tragedies happening and Xue Yang's here like "yeah yeah massacres and injustices and tragic deaths of important people okay but fuck that I'm just here to make sure I get mine and by that I mean get my Daozhang alive and not hating me." and sure! there are adjacent things that he will do to achieve that goal, incidental benefits that may accrue for other people (reconsidering, for instance, what to do about the Song Lan problem, maybe he doesn't actually need to kill his whole temple), but they're, you know, incidental. collateral damage, as it were! or lack of damage, if you're lucky.

there's something I just kind of love about how deeply Xue Yang doesn't care about all the other stuff that's going on. he's so endearingly myopic about it. he has his interests and that's what matters. I feel like if I wrote this one of the functions of it would be that I would, like...barely allude to canon events happening vaguely in the background, in a way where they were still happening, but maybe differently, but the narrator (Xue Yang, in this case) isn't really paying attention.

(it would have some of the same comedic value to me personally as every time I mention Xue Yang's fond memories of killing Nie Mingjue as, for him, just kind of a fun thing that happened one time. nice memory! moving right along. meanwhile for everyone else Nie Mingjue's death is a major catalyzing event and a very sad thing for a lot of people. one of my personal favorite jokes in if living can be this verse is specifically when Xue Yang is trying to figure out who he might've killed that Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian would be upset about and legitimately taking a minute to remember.)

anyway! I actually do think that Xue Yang could...potentially keep it together long enough to pull something off, anyway, if only because when Xue Yang has a project he will go a long, long ways to make it work. when Xue Yang wants something he is a persistence predator about it, for sure. he will follow that idea for hundreds of miles until it drops dead of exhaustion.

and if he has the means to time travel more than once to make multiple attempts at getting it right? god help you, now he gets to experiment.

#conversating #anonymous #anyway maybe it makes sense why i haven't written this yet now #because there's like. so much i could do with it #i don't even know where to start #xue yang #aggressively headcanons #xuexiao #the sad queer cultivators show

[mtkanna]

more narzissenkreuz thoughts below the cut :3

was mary-ann human or an oceanid? unknown. the more i think about it, the less i realise we know about mary-ann guillotin. we know that she was the last to join the narzissenkreuz institute and was later adopted alongside alain, that she had some scientific knowledge, that she joined the marechaussee hunters and had seymour as a mechanical assisstant, and that she died within elynas; beyond that, we can only make inferences.

i'm currently leaning towards her being an oceanid.

Here, the first person she met was the tall, pure Director. And though she was even less sure of what to do than the little girl, she still greeted her with an embrace, And got her clothes soaked for the trouble.

^^ these lines, from heroes' tea party, say to me that mary-ann was probably an oceanid or hydro-aligned in some other way. for all that we know, she could have been someone granted a vision at a young age, like klee and diluc, or another kind of hydro being that we haven't seen before...

what happened with the narzissenkreuz ordo? the ordo was established by rene and jakob before mary-ann's death. they were slowly able to bring other researchers into it, who they controlled largely through fear; these people were used to begin construction on projects like the four orthants. the ordo's work, and perhaps also carter scherbius' """death""" caused an irreparable schism between rene and alain, which likely led alain to deem it a threat to fontaine.

alain, and presumably mary-ann too, were firmly against the narzissenkreuz ordo. jakob and rene wholly believed that it was necessary for fontaine's future.

so what's the deal with lyris? lyris was the director of the narzissenkreuz institute. she was involved in "defeat[ing] the evil at its source" during the cataclysm, which i believe refers to either the sign of apaosha or something to do with the seal over the primordial sea. at some point during their journey in sumeru, rene began to theorise about the director's nature, and suggested that she hopefully wouldn't die due to some unknown experiment he was planning.

later on--in page seven of the book of revealing--rene says that lyris also saw scenes of an apocalyptic future, and he and mary-ann planned to visit her; the next time she is mentioned, her condition has also "deteriorated." what was this deterioration? was it like carter, or was it something else?

we know that her title was the "red empress," and that she had access to something which made her valuable to narzissenkreuz and the ordo. but what was this 'something?' why did her condition deteriorate, and what brought her to work alongside jakob and rene? these things are all unknowns.

other things we don't know 1. what happened to karl ingold and dwight lasker? we know that basil elton was killed and emanuel guillotin was dissolved, but karl and dwight fall out of our sight very quickly... 2. who put together the book of revealing? we know it was written by rene, but was it him or jakob who assembled it? 3. (complete tangent) since historians/poets/artists keep Peeping The Horrors, does that make rene involved in one of these fields? honorary historian rene desperately examining his primary source archives (abandoned papers in the desert) trying to piece together history (what happened with the golden troupe and the destruction of remuria) 4. was narzissenkreuz deliberately reformed with no memories, or was it incidental, so to speak? 5. why did alain and mary-ann join the marechaussee hunters? they probably know that emanuel quit and would have heard about what happened in fleuve cendre and poisson from jakob and rene, so why join? 6. GREAT DETECTIVE HURLOCK AND THE LILIACRUCES ORDO.

#tower of daffodils #genshin lore #genshin impact #the narzissenkreuz institute makes me think so hard #i don't like thinking. but i will do it. for them #throws in the hurlock mention at the end. does not elaborate. leaves.

[memryse]

Au!Scott question! Wann give me the rundown? I've only seen some Fanart (which looked AWESOME) but I don't even know what au stands for >< so if u wanna give me an introduction...? that'd be epic uwu

ive tried posting this like three times now and i think it just doesn’t want to let me include a clip so you’ll all have to do without sorry

ausmp = area unknown smp! it’s guqqie’s server, i don’t know too much about it beyond au!scott bc i got into it just for him like a week ago and haven’t gotten around to watching much else but the vibe i get is a sort of dsmp level vibe of “friends fucking around but also heavy lore”. nobody is fully human on this server and if you think you are? think again apparently :D <- soupforeloise didn’t like that one! scott isn’t in the server from the start and when he does join he takes the role of the main villain.

au!scott is, in cc scott’s own words, what alsmp vampire scott would have been if alsmp had been more lore heavy. he’s a demon, the ruler of hell, and also aimsey’s brother. aimsey is also a demon, but was never as good (evil) at being a demon as scott. they had too much love in their heart, they were too human in nature, so they ran away to escape both hell itself and scott - until scott shows up and finds them :) scott is just. yeah. pure evil here. he’s manipulative and specifically delights in making aimsey’s life miserable. he refuses to do manual labour and everything that he owns is stolen from another player. he’s smug and awful and violent to aimsey’s face (and later eloise’s) but to everyone else he’s the new guy :) he’s lovely and friendly and everyone loves him. nobody would ever believe aimsey - a demon who already has a reputation for causing trouble - over him, right? :) he’s here to take aimsey back to hell, but he wants to stick around a bit first. for funsies. he’s smug, manipulative, lies in every sentence he says and is entirely used to getting his own way. he’s continually learning that very few things - and people - in the overworld are fireproof. he’s immortal and, unlike aimsey, is not afraid of water… no spoilers but let’s just say there is a reason au!aimsey doesn’t like water and it is not because it’s innate to demons. so no fucking wonder he’s smug he’s basically invincible for now (in lore this will change. Outside of lore owen is really fucking mad about this and keeps insisting au!scott is actually also allergic to water)

other than lying his hobbies include manipulation, twisting other people’s words to get what he wants, redecorating other people’s homes with nether items when they’re not in and more lying and making aimsey’s life miserable and more lying. the redecorating usually involves hiding corruption in their walls. incidentally he does canonically know xornoth and has said that this is similar to what xornoth used - he doesn’t personally usually use corruption, he prefers manipulation and outright brute force, but he’s curious about its effects on overworlders. however as i said he puts it in their walls rather than like massive tentacles lol.

he has a rlly fun dynamic with owen too imo. owen is a ghost with a very inconsistent memory, and scott is very interested in him because he senses something darker in him. he keeps pushing to corrupt owen by trying to get him to steal etc but they’re both playing mind games with each other because owen is also extremely sharp and is beginning to cotton on that scott is perhaps not the honest, kind and generous man he appears to be. If youve seen the axolotl thing you know exactly what i mean i watched that at like 6am because i couldn’t sleep and my heart was in my mouth.

in conclusion i love minecraft guys that are just the worst guys imaginable and au!scott is so so very up there.

#ask