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theoldaeroplane · 9 months

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Intercessor

Behold, a hyperfixation-fueled day-in-the-life of my new Apocalypse World character! His name is Fray and he definitely isn't 85% just BotW Link. This was written mostly for my GM and fellow party members, so the brief rundown is that we're in an eternal magic winter, surviving in pockets of tolerable cold, with steampunk/Victorian-esque tech.

4.3k, no content warnings. I put his character sheet under the cut at the bottom as a bonus :)

---

“Fray! Saint Fray!”

Hold on.

Saint?

Fray’s not sure when that started happening.

He’s heard hero and gallant and even champion—all of them kind of feel like too much—but saint is new. Sainthood seems really excessive.

He was not consulted on this. But then, he never is.

Fray stops in his tracks, peering over a heavily-obscured shoulder to see who’s calling. His new scarf, all wool and possum fur, feels like sitting in a sauna, but it’s terribly bulky, especially with his pack in the mix. It might be too big. He doesn’t cut an impressive figure in it. But then, he never does.

Behind him, squeezing between frozen-over remains of archaic vehicles in the narrow alleyway with all the grace of a puppy, comes—ah. Of course.

Andrei.

Fray turns, eyebrows cocked as Andrei halts his bulk bare inches in front of him. Fray is short, but Andrei’s ridiculous. Six and a half feet, top-heavy, all muscle he’s never done a thing to earn as far as Fray can tell. Deep pockets and a deeper voice. Sort of cute with his gold hair and dimples, but not Fray’s type. Still, he’s nice enough. If nothing else he’s bought his way into Fray’s good graces with beer after beer at the Manufacturing. “You’re so fast,” Andrei complains, leaning on his knees. “Gimme a second.”

So: Fray shoves his hands in his pockets and thinks through his agenda. He’s not in a rush. The tailor’s doesn’t close for hours yet. The yotes that have apparently found a way to worm their frozen bodies under the wardings and onto the Merchants’ land won’t come out until the shifts change. He’ll work dinner into the middle somewhere. He’s got time for whatever this is.

There’s another thing about Andrei that Fray likes. When Fray tugs off his top pair of mittens to free the thin-gloved fingers underneath and signs S-A-I-N-T?, he can see Andrei focus on his hands, lips jutting out in his concentration. Andrei is nowhere near fluent, probably will never be, but being able to sort-of read what feels like Fray’s first language goes a long way in endearing Andrei to him.

“Um,” Andrei says. “Are you not? That’s what they’re calling you.”

Fray squints at him. Signs: T-H-E-Y?

“The Children?”

It always takes Fray a moment to realize people usually say Children with a capital “C” around here. His face twists up in a grimace, and he shakes his head no emphatically. W-H-Y?

“Don’t know,” Andrei says, guileless as always. “I won’t say it no more, if you like.” At Fray’s resigned, bewildered shrug, he goes on, “Well, but, I’m glad I caught you!” With this he claps a huge hand on Fray’s shoulder, the blow barely cushioned by the thick layers of wool. Fray staggers instantly, unprepared knees almost buckling. Andrei yelps and helps him regain his feet. “Sorry! Sorry! Here, this is it, this is all, look, my sister got these and I thought to myself, you know who’d love that? Fray, that’s who! Lucky thing we crossed paths!”

The thing he shoves in Fray’s face smells like heaven. He starts salivating like a damn dog. It locks Fray in place momentarily, trying to piece together where he knows it from. What it reminds him of. It’s there somewhere, on the edge of things, but—

“It’s doughnuts,” Andrei tells him, conspiratorial. “Like at the market that time. You know?”

Fray remembers. A wagon on the merchant circuit pulled by four aurochs. The overpowering smell of fried dough drawing him nearly straight from his house. Standing in line for thirty minutes when Andrei pulled him in. Finally being handed the paper bag, translucent with oil and steaming hot, and looking into it to see not just the miniature doughnuts, but for the first time he can remember in—a long time—sugar.

It had been physically painful for him to keep himself from cramming the whole thing into his mouth. Instead he forced himself to savor it. That had almost been worse, it turned out, because now his memory of it was such that he does not think anything will ever near its equal.

Andrei had said they were pretty good doughnuts.

Fray stares at the oil-soaked paper that Andrei holds level with his eyes, and before he can quite stop himself he looks from bag to man with naked want on his face. He points at himself with a disbelief that is exaggerated both to be clear enough for Andrei to pick up on, and as a show of his genuine surprise and delight. He probably does look like a dog, waiting for a treat. That’s fine. Fray knows what he is about.

Andrei, generous enough to overlook how Fray is practically vibrating, pushes the bag into his hands with a lopsided grin. “You bet! I remembered how much you liked them—oh, no, no,” he cuts himself off when he sees Fray pull out his wallet. “It’s a gift!”

Fray looks at the bag again, to Andrei again, to the bag once more. He gets it settled in his off-hand so he can use the other. W-H-Y?

“Well, because we’re friends, twerp,” Andrei says with the kind of smile that Fray can only read as knew you’d say that. Because this has happened before.

Because Fray kind of doesn’t … do friends.

Not on purpose. He’d rather if he did have friends. It just seems like it never quite sticks. It’s not unusual for him to be hailed in the street by someone grateful for some favor or other he’s gone and done for them months ago, something he’s already forgotten. But those aren’t friends. Or at least, he’s pretty sure they aren’t. Lots of people ask him for favors after what happened.

There just seems to be something about him that keeps people from wanting to stay too long.

Except Andrei, apparently.

Fray pulls the bag closer to his chest and lets the fried smell warm him inside and out. He works his face into something he hopes looks appropriately sheepish. “Thanks,” he signs, because he’s pretty sure Andrei knows that one. (He does, by the way he beams.) Fray adds, afterwards, F-A-V-O-R-I-T-E.

“Hell, Fray, you’re my favorite too,” Andrei says with amusement. Before Fray can correct him—tell him he meant the doughnuts—Andrei straightens and sticks his hands into his armpits against the cold. “Hoo! Bad as witch piss out here. I’ve got to be getting. See you at Manufacturing tomorrow night? I hear there’s going to new music!”

Fray nods, giving up on the favorite comment. Sure, Andrei might as well be his favorite person. He likes him well enough. It’s not like there’s anyone else, not really. The thought stings a little more than it used to.

---

He doesn’t get swarmed just trying to cross the dome anymore, at least. That had been a problem last year. Far Haven has a scant few hundred souls to its name, and Fray is sure every single one of them has talked to him at one point or another by now. It drove him into hiding for a while, nerves shot with so much attention. The flocks of opinionated strangers only died off with time, as memories and emotions faded and what he’d done drifted out of the city’s mind.

Saving the lives of every one of those few hundred souls takes some time to drift.

These days he’ll only get a few hangers-ons, most of them children who want to see the sword. The children do not get to see the sword. Fray tries to prevent anyone from seeing the sword in general. This has never deterred them, and he cannot bring himself to frighten off kids. It’s not uncommon to see Fray making his steadfast way through snow and slush with three or four ragamuffins tailing him, telling each other stories of the thing their parents say he did. Fray never confirms (or denies) anything.

That’s happening now, as a matter of fact.

“I heard you’s killed the thieves dead!” says a gap-toothed girl at least ten years younger than him, but nearly as tall. She reminds him of someone, he thinks as he eats the doughnuts. He wonders who. “I heard there was forty of ’em!”

“Nuh-uh! It was three! But they were big and scary and frostbitted!” This from a blond-haired boy with huge glasses and a mouth entombed by a scarf.

“You jokers gotta get your stories straight,” says that absolute goblin of a red-head girl with the false arm. Her voice is like a vulture croaking. “Short stuff, hey! Mr. Hero! You were there, weren’tcha? Cough up the details!”

She’s all but dog-piled by the other two. “Mr. Fray can’t talk!” protests the boy. “Because he got hit in the throat by the frostbitted!”

“Horseshit, I see him talk. Came saw my dad about maps and shit last week, didn’t he? He talks. Not a lot, maybe. You guys think he’s too stupid to say much or just stuck-up?”

“Definitely stupid,” says Fray in the painful scrape of his rusted-over voice, loud enough to catch all three of them off guard. There’s a shocked silence until he looks back at them and winks, and then giggles send up after him like a train of bubbles.

They peel off when he’s about a block from the tailor’s. Just as well. Fray pauses in the dark overhang of the tailor’s doorstep to pull his scarf down and palm his throat. The heat from his hand does little against the stain of discolored skin, blanched pale and blue against his dusky skin. It bleeds down his neck like a port-wine stain, a slashed jugular bleeding ice.

Fray thinks he is maybe supposed to be dead, with the way that ice-white blemish hugs his neck. The skin is cold and hard, and it glitters at him whenever he looks at it in the mirror, like crusted snow.

Well. Nothing to be done. Fray fixes his scarf and pushes his way into the relative heat of the tailor’s.

Warm air licks at his face. He sighs in relief, stopping for a moment to relish it as it caresses his ears and cheeks. The shuffle of fabric and leather draws him out of his reverie for but a moment, long enough to cast a glance toward where Elle’s apprentice sticks her head out from the back. “Oh! Mr. Fray! Got more?”

Fray gives her an apologetic nod, unshouldering his pack to pull it open. From within he produces no less than five shirts, all of them damaged in exactly the same place and exactly the same way. Each one is black—he learned that lesson a long time ago, not to wear anything but black against his skin—and each one has perfectly round holes burned into the same spot on the forearms. They’re as big as eggs, two on each arm. One of the shirts has similar burned holes in a long row down the spine, all identical and evenly spaced. Elle’s apprentice looks the garments over and tuts. “There won’t be much of these left to repair at this rate, you know,” she scolds. “One day I’m going to refuse you until you at least tell me how you keep getting them.”

Fray nods and has the decency to look embarrassed.

She scoots him out posthaste, telling him to return in two days. He should really learn how to repair his own clothes. It’d be a way to pass the time if nothing else. And to avoid awkward questions.

That’s all Fray has in front of him for the rest of the day: passing the time. He meanders. He picks up and loses more trails of children, none of whom get to see the sword. He finds lunch in the form of beaver steak and turnips at that place that has a jester on its sign. He pings back and forth slowly between shop after shop, recognized at each one, buying nothing.

Mostly he thinks, stopping at a mirror in one store to surreptitiously peek beneath his scarf again: this frost thing would have looked cooler if it had gone over my heart.

Because Fray’s kind of … done everything around here. A couple times. Often with encouragement and enabling from strangers who see his bright eyes and dull hair and go oh! Fray! Come in! He’s done everything, including worry about the cold-dead magic stuck to his throat, but nothing’s changed. Now he just thinks it’s ironic he got a neck wound only after his voice skedaddled.

If the frost-rot weapon had connected with his heart instead of his neck, Fray muses, he would probably be dead. That seems like a more vulnerable part of him. Which—that might have been interesting, to see what happened if he died. But that would come at the cost of him probably not being alive anymore.

Which itself probably hinges on whether or not he counts as alive.

He gets a snack as he makes for the Merchants’ territory. The doughnuts are gone. The sausages he buys aren’t nearly as good as he wants them to be. He’s nearly out of the market when he’s waylaid by a tall, dark woman with wide eyes, the most visible thing in her bundled-up face. “Aren’t you the one who saved the city?” she says, breathless. “From that break-in?”

This is one of those questions where the answer makes him feel like a jackass, no matter how factual it is. But he nods anyway, meekly. The vibes on this woman aren’t great. He’s not sure how much he wants to admit to her.

Her wide eyes go wider, until Fray thinks they might eclipse the rest of her face. “Saint,” she breathes, all awe and devotion. Fray almost cringes. “The Children are with you.”

He doesn’t know how to react until he remembers to capitalize that “C”. Oh. One of them. One of those cuckoos that worships the arcane frost that sits outside their little dome waiting to kill anyone it can. Fray gives her a weak smile and hopes it’s not very encouraging. “I would walk with you, Saint,” the woman says, catching up his left hand as she slips to his side. “Allow me to feel your presence.”

Oh, son of a bitch.

There are people you do not want to piss off, and those people are the Children of the Frost. They’re a religion? Cult? Club? Something. They’re fans of the cold nightmare outside this pocket of survivability. Really into Frostbitten, he thinks. Most of them seem a little moonblinked. Unfortunately for him and everyone else, they’ve wormed their way into the council seats. They run half of Far Haven.

She starts walking before Fray can pull back, and as she is nearly as tall as Andrei, she does a marvelous job of pulling Fray along like one of those toy ducks on wheels. She’s power walking, even. They’re still headed where he needs to go, to the outer bounds of the dome, but there are fewer and fewer people here as witnesses. Fray does not love that. Fray’s of the belief that the Children need babysitters.

There’s just one person left in sight when Fray finally locks his knees and digs his heels in. He pulls his hand away and the woman rounds on him with alarming speed. “Something the matter?” she asks sweetly, looming.

Fray puts his hands up and shakes his head, then throws a thumb over his shoulder. I need to go that way. He could get to the Merchants’ from here, yes, but he could get there from a couple streets over, too, and those streets have lights. And people. It’s not that he feels in danger—Fray very rarely feels like he’s in danger from anything—but something about this is making his skin crawl.

The woman watches him with eyes that seem much too large for her skull. “Oh, of course,” she says, as if in a daze. “But, brother in the snow, would you grant me one favor?”

Well. He’s the favor guy. It would probably not go over well if he turned down what is evidently such a big fan. He makes a point of not actually nodding, but he does pause and wait to hear her request.

The woman says, “May I see it?” Her voice trembles. “Your kiss?”

Fray mouths the words what the fuck? before he can stop himself.

“Your mark?” the woman tries again, grabbing the plush fabric of his coat when he tries to back away. “The gift the frost left you. Grant me this, let me gaze upon it, Saint Fray of the Frost.”

Before he can think better of it Fray pulls her hands off with a firm grasp, and squares his shoulders before he shakes his head. To emphasize his point he crosses his arms in front of him, the universal gesture for no. No on several levels. No on the levels of stop-calling-me-that and who-the-fuck-are-you-anyway. (And perhaps most importantly, no-one-gets-to-see-that.)

“I understand,” the woman says after a long pause. She sounds a million miles away. Her hand lifts again, drawn toward his scarf as if it was magnetized. “At least then allow me to fix your wardrobe.” Her fingertips brush the very edge of the scarf. The hair on the back of Fray’s neck prickles and shivers, and that’s his signal to leave.

By rights he should have been out of there before she could manage anything. He would have been, except his foot slips on the iced-over cobbles when he tries to retreat. The woman’s fingers sink into his scarf and it tears away in her hand as he pratfalls hard. The cold air strikes like a serpent at his exposed throat, and he swears he actually sees the glitter under his own chin as the uncloaked moon falls upon him.

The woman is agape. She falls to her knees in fervent prayer. Fray wonders if all the Children are actually fucking insane, or if he lucked out. For now he snatches back his scarf and sprints back up the road. Not as fast as he can go, nowhere near, but more than enough to put a few blocks between himself and the Child. He weaves through a few other snow-crushed buildings and through the edge of the red-light district just to be sure he’s not followed.

God. That probably won’t lead to anything good. But there’s nothing to be done about it now.

Fray shakes himself and sighs and politely waves off the folk pulling double shifts on the world’s oldest profession. He tugs the scarf tighter against his neck. There’s nothing for him here, either, not until he figures this frostrot thing out.

---

It’s dark, the borders of the pasture empty of lights or people. The yotes shine dull white, glossed with blue icicles melting off their fur outside the embrace of the permafrost. They snarl and yap at him with eyes as pale and empty as the moon. He is between them and the Merchants’ wool flock. If these creatures get loose among the merinos, not only will Fray not get paid, but will probably not go a week before someone tries to assassinate him. The goodwill he’s won does not, he suspect, apply to the pragmatic Merchants.

And then he’d have to kill the assassin, and it would just be messy and he doesn’t want to piss off the Merchants.

But he’s not worried about that.

They’re not enormous, the yotes, but their skinny bodies are lithe and fast and hard to predict. There’s six of them. They have claws and superior weight. They have greater numbers. They have those ice-bound teeth that shatter into frostrot the moment they hit blood.

Fray has the sword.

The yotes mouth at each other, excited and riled. Only two of them seem to stop long enough to notice that Fray has set his arms before him as if he held a shield and a blade. For a moment he looks idiotic. In the next, he looks inhuman.

The shield ripples out of nothing across his arm, held there only with the humming of the gold-tinted implants set into his flesh. The air fills with the smell of singed cotton, the superheated elements too much for the fabric to resist. In his opposite hand the implant on his wrist makes a dull thrum, and suddenly the pretend sword in his fingers is not pretend at all. It is, instead (as Fray thought the first time he saw it), a fucking knight’s broadsword. The blade is made of light, and it sits easy in his practiced hand. Both armaments glow and roil like molten gold, not adorned with any boss but a constantly shifting pattern of faint hexagons. He knows from experience it’s not just them: his eyes are lit up, too, glowing gold, those hexagons mirrored by his pupils. Fray checks his grip on the sword, raises the shield, and charges.

There would be no point in detailing the fight. It lasts around seventeen seconds.

The yotes on the ground, now mostly divested from their heads or guts, lay still. Fray approaches one, ever on guard, and nudges its crazed face with the flat of the blade. It’s already dissolving into that sludgy, slushy substance so many frost-touched creatures return to if they perish outside their domain. It’s gross. He wipes the blade off on the clean snow to its side, despite not needing too, and then the blade dissolves from sight. The shield follows, and not long after the dull hum of the implants dies down and goes back to matching his heartbeat. (He hopes it’s a heart he’s got in there.)

Well. That’s his job finished, then. Nothing more to be done here.

Fray stands there for a long time, watching the corrupted bodies melt into the snow.

---

It’s not that the drop in his mood is unexpected so much as Fray doesn’t know how to mitigate it. Right now, curled on the nest of blankets he calls a bed, he feels like he’s in free-fall and he does not know why. It’s always worse if it’s a culling job like this one. He’s developed a sick kind of sympathy for the creatures he cuts down. They aren’t normal animals. Most of them were once, a pack of wolves, a flock of ravens, things the frost struck down before reshaping into its own kind of native inhabitant. They don’t eat. They don’t even kill, some of them. They just carry the frost with them, trying to bring it into the places the Chasm has not yet fully swallowed. There’s no understanding in their white marble eyes. They don’t know what they’re doing.

Fray tries to remember how he got here, to Far Haven. He’d been journeying, he thinks. He’d just done something he was grimly, blackly satisfied with. He could feel the stain of its gratification on his soul. He has no idea what it was, but he thinks he knew once, and he knows it was—

… he knows it was worth what he had to sacrifice. It has to have been.

Only, he wishes he knew which part of him had been used to pay for it. His voice? His memory? The flesh that had been excised from his arms and the golden implants set in their place? All of it, or a combination?

Does it matter?

No, is the answer he arrives on again, trying to sink further into the warmth of his bed. It doesn’t. He’s here now, he’s helping people, he’s doing what it feels like he’s supposed to be doing. That should be enough.

In his dream, Fray is again in the underground chamber that keeps the entire city warm enough to survive. The implants’ roar as they form the golden sword shakes him down to his teeth. The thieves are very annoyed that he’s here. In front of him they argue about who betrayed their plan to extract the generator’s heart and let Far Haven freeze to death, a few hundred miserable lives less valuable than their payout will be. Fray does nothing but keep an eye on the young woman that’s accompanied them, the one who looks fraught and sick with guilt. She barely looks past girlhood.

They fight. It gives him more trouble than it feels like it should. After one of the men shoves a strange gauntlet against his throat and squeezes, after the glittering death of frostrot embeds itself in his neck—after Fray cuts him down and rushes to recover the ancient battery and shove it back into the squealing generator—he remembers the girl.

He finds her clinging to the edge of the magic runoff and its mile-long drop into a red-tinted black, her arms bloody and slipping against the steep concrete. I’m sorry, she wails as he runs to her, I’m sorry, I didn’t want to do this, please help me, please, please. I won’t tell anyone what you are.

He stops in the middle of reaching for her hand, startled stiff by her last words. Just for a moment. Just long enough that when her weakening arms seize and fail her, his dive to grab her is just that little bit too late.

She falls, and Fray watches in horror. In his dream, he can see her panicked face right until the very end. When she hits the ground impact shocks him awake, and he staggers off to the washroom to vomit up greasy doughnut batter and undigested sausages. In the mirror, the inert embrace of the arcane frost—the kiss of death—glitters in the candlelight, clutching his throat like a lover. The implants start to hum as his heart speeds up.

Fray wishes he knew her name. He wishes she could have told him what he is.

But there’s nothing to be done about that now.

---

Thank you for reading!!! as promised, Fray's character sheet. We're playing a hack of AW called Burned Over, and I'm playing a class called The Weaponized, which is what led to me calling Fray "RoboCop Link" until I settled on his name.

#saint fray #corgiwrites!#apocalypse world #northern echoes #writing

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nerdishpursuits · 2 years

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Maybe I’m not the biggest Tolkien fan, I’ve read the LOTR trilogy and of course watched the movies several times. I’m really enjoying rings of power. Maybe because I’m not all deep on the lore? It’s basically the show taking the world building, mythology, etc Tolkien established and made a fan fic like show around it. I appreciate that they’re layering their interpretation on top of it while the characters we know and love are in the story so we have a starting point of understanding what’s happening. I for one REALLY MISS fantasy shows that have heroes and are hopeful! Unlike the gross mysoginystic and violent game of thrones type “fantasy”. I love reading your thoughts.

I’ve read all of Tolkien’s books and, imho, this is very much not the hill to die on. If this were the case, no book adaptations should be made. All authors should “roll in their graves”, their readers frothing at the mouth because said author’s legacy is being ‘tarnished’. I find stories are not a static thing. And the way we view and interpret them are quite different and bound to change as time goes on.

In my case? I’d not heard of this book series until the movies were released. I remember walking to high school back in the day and the poster for the Fellowship catching my eye. Especially Arwen and Galadriel, even if they weren’t center focus. I’ve always been drawn to fantasy so I was intrigued. I LOVED the movie when I went to see it. Was blown away, even. To this day it remains one of my favorite cinematic experiences. So, high on said feeling, I went and purchased the books.

Now. Imagine my utter disappointment when Arwen was mentioned but in passing (I think she makes it on a total of three pages in the entire LotR trilogy, if my memory serves me right) and Galadriel also doesn’t feature prominently. At least we got a little more of Èowyn, but even that was meager. Anyhow. Teenage me was totally expecting Arwen to save Frodo at the Ford. The fact that the books had that scene totally different? It was a huge letdown. Still, I continued to read the books. Mostly because I enjoyed the use of language.

That being said, I will always love the movies more. And it’s why, nowadays, I love the show. Teenage me would have be enraptured to see Galadriel as a main character. To see a youthful SHE-Hobbit claim center stage. To see a POC dwarrowdam played with such aplomb. Too have such cinematography oh the small screen. So, I welcome every AU fanfic vibe this show gives off. To me, it’s more than welcome. Gimme all the AUs. As if the Tolkien fandom isn’t awash in those. “The male elves don’t have long hair, boo hoo” . I’d rather they have short hair than being distracted by bad wigs. (they don’t make ‘em like they used to)

Not to mention, they don’t even have the rights to tell most of the stories related to this verse. It’s but a fraction of a very convoluted whole (most people need a guide to put the events of The Silmarillion into perspective; if I’m not wrong there was such a guide on Dumblr at some point, probably still is). However. Lo and behold. That’s such a thing as creative license. Praised be.

And like you mentioned. We have a few key characters we’re already familiar with. And a host of new ones that we’re getting to know. And it would seem, so far, that this show won’t take the route of shock value. Hopefully, it’ll walk its own path without gross misogyny and endless violence against women, nor will it abound in gratuitous bloodshed and gore. Which reminds me. This aspect is also one of the key factors that has me enjoying The Wheel of Time so much. Not to mention the leading character is sapphic (which in my book, makes it a 100% better).

Long story short? To me? Both Rings of Power and The Wheel of Time are an ode to beauty, especially when it comes to cinematic visuals. And they have strong female representation, each with her own agenda and definitely not there to prop up the male characters. Nor do they feel like token, afterthought plot-lines. Color me a happy viewer. I can’t stomach the likes of GoT anymore. Let’s have timeless stories where we root for the heroes, where we watch them make mistakes and grow, where we get to become invested in their journey without the entire “the moment a character is beloved they’re killed off” and “we’re staying ‘true’ to the medieval times and therefore raping and humiliating women is the norm” kind of nonsense. It’s fantasy for crying out loud. I miss the times when all the suffering of a character paid off. When there was a delicious slow burn to relationships and character arcs were satisfying and rewarding. I miss those days. I find myself hopeful, cautiously so, that we might see those days renewed.

#the rings of power #lotr: the rings of power #anon #replies #text post #about this blogger trash

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nightcreations · 2 years

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@lightcreators asked “ there are no heroes , no villains . just people with different agendas . ” ( draco @ loki, science )

What a peculiar and oddly inspiring thought to consider. In the world of humans, many considered such definitions as good or evil to be so black and white. To be so, forth coming in what they considered to be either or. But really there was such a grey area wasn’t there? People were driven by their motivations and by their own personal agendas no matter what they were. Some could call them selfish and others could call them selfless, it was all in the eye of the beholder. “In my own experience, so very few have come to have that understanding.” He muses with a curious tilt of his head, dark strands caressing along pale features. “This world is so fueled by their own agendas that it really baffles the mind how they can label some as good or some as bad.”

#{ responded / voices from the muses }#{ interactions / oh raven wont you sing me a happy song }#{ muse / loki }#lightcreators

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stenka-razin · 2 years

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Every Band That Ever Played Maryland Deathfest

Playlist gotten boring? Love Maryland history? Just want to read a bunch of stupid band names? Look no further! Listed below are all (by my count) 794 acts to play MDF since the festival’s inception. All bands played once, except where noted.

Devourment (4X)

Aborted (2X)

Internal Bleeding (2X)

Malignancy (4X)

Circle of Dead Children (3X)

Brodequin (3X)

Incinerate

Saprogenic

Nemo

Severed Head

Scumbitch

Suffocation (5X)

Dying Fetus (3X)

Pyrexia

Skinless (4X)

Leng Tch’e (3X)

Severed Savior

Mortal Decay (4X)

Foetopsy (2X)

Drogheda

Suture

Putrid Pile (3X)

Psychotogen

Lust of Decay

Rupture Christ

Spinefed

Sublime Cadaveric Decomposition

Necrophagist (2X)

Soils of Fate

Abuse

Commit Suicide

Malamor

Retch

Wasteform

Gored

Goratory (2X)

Artery Eruption

Swarm of the Lotus

Fleshtized

Internal Suffering

Neuraxis

Bile (2X)

Ion Dissonance (2X)

Profanity

Pig Destroyer (5X)

Phobia (3X)

Rotten Sound (6X)

Repulsion (3X)

Bodies in the Gears of the Apparatus

Biolich

Man Must Die

Arsis

Dehumanized (2X)

Misery Index (6X)

Rompeprop (3X)

Vomit Remnants

The Red Chord (2X)

Macabre (4X)

Inhume

Exhumed (3X)

Screaming Afterbirth

Prophecy

Guttural Secrete (2X)

Kill the Client

Warscars

Lord Gore

Wormed (4X)

Gronibard

Abscess (2X)

Regurgitate (2X)

Cryptopsy (2X)

Amoebic Dysentery

Magrudergrind (6X)

Despised Icon

XXX Maniak

Splatterhorse (2X)

Bodies Lay Broken

Ghoul (6X)

Impaled (5X)

General Surgery (5X)

Immolation (6X)

Embryonic Cryptopathia

Electro Quarterstaff

Cenotaph

Catheter (2X)

Yacøpsæ (2X)

Cliteater

Sanity’s Dawn

Gorgasm (2X)

Alarum

Butcher ABC

Anata

Machetazo (3X)

Demilich (3X)

Haemorrhage (3X)

Vital Remains

Quills

Total Fucking Destruction (3X)

Mucupurulent

Municipal Waste

Embalmer (2X)

Sayyadina (2X)

Disfear (2X)

Severe Torture (2X)

Unholy Grave (2X)

Cattle Decapitation (2X)

Pungent Stench

Dismember

Saprogenic

Flagitious Idiosyncrasy in the Dilapidation (2X)

Nunwhore Commando 666

Gorod (2X)

Skitsystem

Cock and Ball Torture

Gorerotted

Vomitory

Extreme Noise Terror

Brutal Truth (2X)

Putrescence (3X)

Exhale

Fuck the Facts (2X)

Jigsore Terror

Odious Mortem

Retaliation

Birdflesh (6X)

Cripple Bastards (4X)

GUT

Dead Infection

Malevolent Creation

Zyklon

Skarp

Afgrund

Torsofuck

Ingrowing (3X)

The Day Everything Became Nothing

Squash Bowels (3X)

Martyr

Grave (2X)

Decrypt

Defeatist (2X)

Trap Them (3X)

Keitzer

Kalibas

Waco Jesus (2X)

Behold… The Arctopus

Defeated Sanity (3X)

Flesh Parade (3X)

Coffins (3X)

Fuck… I’m Dead

Monstrosity

Anaal Nathrakh (3X)

Copremesis

Infected Malignity

Japanische Kampfhörspiele

Engorged (2X)

Gruesome Stuff Relish

Hellnation

Gadget

Dead

Blood Duster (2X)

Nuclear Assault (2X)

Hero Destroyed

Triac

Gnostic

Pigsty

Withered

Venomous Concept

Victims

Drugs of Faith

Maruta

Pretty Little Flower

Unearthly Trance

Crowpath

Weekend Nachos (2X)

Wolves in the Throne Room

Complete Failure

Agenda of Swine

The Endless Blockade

Lair of the Minotaur

Kill the Client (2X)

Splitter

Despise You (2X)

Yakuza

Krallice (2X)

Antigama (2X)

Bolt Thrower (3X)

Sigh

Cephalic Carnage (3X)

Mayhem (2X)

Asphyx (3X)

Hail of Bullets

Atheist (2X)

Napalm Death (3X)

Absu (2X)

Aura Noir (3X)

Deströyer 666

Ex-Dementia (2X)

XBRAINIAX

Swarm of the Lotus

Nekromantheon

PLF (3X)

Iron Lung (3X)

The Communion

Tombs (2X)

Jesus Crost

Birds of Prey

Watain

Gride (2X)

D.R.I. (3X)

Howl

Sulaco (2X)

Obliteration

Jucifer

Verbal Abuse

Deceased

Wolfbrigade (2X)

Portal (2X)

Honkey Kong

Rottenness

Surroundings

Massgrave

Crucifist

Gridlink

Black Breath

Captain Cleanoff (2X)

Capitalist Casualties (2X)

From Ashes Rise

Converge (2X)

Nazxul

Fang

The Chasm (2X)

Sadistic Intent (2X)

Possessed

Incantation (4X)

Melechesh

Autopsy (4X)

Sinister

Necrophobic (2X)

Eyehategod (3X)

Pestilence (2X)

Nirvana 2002

Pentagram (2X)

Entombed

Obituary (3X)

Cathedral

Tragedy (3X)

Buzzov•en (2X)

Extortion

Lack of Interest

Miasmal

Noisear (2X)

Shitstorm (2X)

Witchaven

Marduk

Kylesa

Pulling Teeth

Nails

The Impalers

Inquisition (2X)

Hooded Menace (2X)

Acid Witch (2X)

Doom (2X)

Dropdead (3X)

Blood Freak

The Kill

Cretin

Mammoth Grinder

Creative Waste (2X)

Innumerable Forms

Masakari

Ghost

Last Days of Humanity

Doubled Over

Bastard Noise

Repugnant

Dead Congregation

Bad Acid Trip

Nightbringer

Oak

Visceral Disgorge (2X)

Neurosis

Corrosion of Conformity

Funebrarum (2X)

Nocturnal

Voivod

Exhorder (2X)

Impaled Nazarene (2X)

Hail of Bullets

In Solitude

Nunslaughter (2X)

Cianide (2X)

Avulsed

Coroner

Nuclear Assault

Citizens Arrest (2X)

Orange Goblin

Malignant Tumor (2X)

Nokturnel

Gravehill

Agalloch (2X)

Rorschach

Needful Things

Die Pigeon DIe

Extermination Angel

Nasum

Setherial

Unsane

Negură Bunget

Today Is the Day (2X)

Nashgul

Castevet (2X)

Winter (2X)

Tsjuder (2X)

Noothgrush (3X)

Horna

Archgoat

The Devil’s Blood

Black WItchery

Dragged Into Sunlight (2X)

Looking for an Answer

Bloody Phoenix

Infernal Stronghold

Mortuary Drape

Bethlehem

Sargeist (2X)

Nausea

Yob (2X)

Ulcerate (2X)

Rwake

Cough

Agents of Abhorrence

Coke Bust (2X)

Backslider

Godflesh (2X)

Artillery

Demigod

Morbid Angel (2X)

Brujeria

Confessor

Anvil

Deviated Instinct

Morbid Saint (2X)

October 31

Hellbastard

Electric Wizard

Saint Vitus

Pentagram (Chile)

Church of Misery (2X)

Morgoth

Demonical (2X)

Disma

Cobalt

Abigail

Pallbearer

Deiphago

Noisem

Pelican

Evoken (2X)

Ahumado Granujo

Ambassador Gun

Antaeus

Vinterland

Revenge (2X)

Aosoth

Loss

Anhedonist

Kommandant

Asthma Castle (2X)

Speedwolf (2X)

Ascension

Integrity

Contrastic

Cruciamentum

Carcass (2X)

Righteous Pigs

Benediction (2X)

Convulse

Down

Ihsahn

The Melvins

Broken Hope (2X)

The Obsessed

Weedeater (2X)

Iniquity

Venom (2X)

Sleep

Manilla Road

Sacred Reich

Pagan Altar

Midnight

Glorior Belli

Ringworm (2X)

Hellshock

Sete Star Sept

Full of Hell (3X)

Heartless

Old Lines

Infest (3X)

Terveet Kädet

Vitamin X

Massgrav

Eddie Brock

Like Rats

Wake

Disciples of Christ

Kromosom

Tinner

Ilsa

Crowbar

Seven Sisters of Sleep

Sourvein

Torche

Whitehorse

Aeternus (2X)

Enthroned

Putrisect

Bolzer (2X)

The Church of Pungent

Stench

War Master (2X)

Diocletian (2X)

Mutilation Rites

At the Gates

Cancer (2X)

Mgła

Necros Christos

Sólstafir

Taake

The Ruins of Beverast (3X)

Dark Angel

Entrails

Goat Torment

God Macabre

Nocturnus AD

Orator

Sacrifice

Sarke

Tankard

Unleashed (2X)

Bongripper (2X)

Candlemass (2X)

Gorguts

Graves at Sea

My Dying Bride

Pseudogod

Soilent Green

Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats

Windhand

Wrathprayer

Endorphins Lost (2X)

Final Conflict

Mesrine

ACxDC

Pneumatic Slaughter

Archagathus

Excrutiating Terror

Extinction of Mankind

Sick/Tired

Stapled Shut

Theories (2X)

Victims

БУТ

Death Toll 80k

Enabler

Internal Rot

Left for Dead

Maruta

Ratos de Porao

Conan (2X)

Iron Man

Jex Thoth

Mantar (2X)

Primitive Man (3X)

Ufomammut (2X)

Usnea

Darkened Nocturn Slaughtercult

Drawn and Quartered (2X)

Vattnet Viskar

Adversarial

Demoncy

Gnaw Their Tongues

Impetuous Ritual

Knelt Rote

Thantifaxath (2X)

Bloodbath

Lock Up

Vallenfyre

Artificial Brain

Master

Blood Red Throne

Bulldozer

Solstice

Razor

Serpentine Path

Twilight of the Gods

Arcturus

Einherjer

Fulgora

Morpheus Descends

Triptykon (2X)

Vulcano

Neurosis

Skepticism

Amorphis

Masacre

Primordial

Prosanctus Inferi

Origin

Mobb Deep

Homewrecker

Nekrofilth

Noxa

Triac

Agoraphobic Nosebleed (2X)

Chainsaw to the Face

Inter Arma

Lycanthropy

Martyrdöd

Corrupt Leaders

Early Graves

Grin and Bear It

Melt Banana

Mother Brain (2X)

Pizzahifive

Spazztic Blur

Water Torture

The Offering

Crypt Sermon

Claudio Simonetti’s Goblin

Earth

Demonic Christ

Svarttjern

Secrets of the Moon

Angelcorpse

Auroch

Saturnalia Temple

Grave Miasma

Craft

Phobocosm

Mitochondrion

Zhrine

Mystifier

Centinex

Gruesome (2X)

Paradise Lost

Horrendous

November’s Doom (2X)

Khold

The Haunted

Samael

Deranged

Hirax

Hail of Bullets

Exciter

Testament

Hellbringer

Tulus

Atrophy

Denouncement Pyre

Nocturnal Graves

Desaster

Interment

Demolition Hammer (2X)

Shed the Skin

Wombbath

Bongzilla

Satan

Jungle Rot

Disgorge

Skullshitter

Ground (2X)

Sick of Stupidity

BruceXCampbell

The Afternoon Gentlemen

Hemdale

Whoresnation (2X)

Priapus

Gets Worse

Severed Head of State

Negative Approach

Dead Church

Sick Fix

Six Brew Bantha

Sanitys Dawn

Test (2X)

Excel

Crud

Samothrace

Dopethrone

SubRosa

Acid King

Tiamat

Cognitive

Decrepit Birth

Torture Rack

Skeletal Remains (2X)

Nordjevel

GosT

Vader

Chepang

Occultist

Organ Dealer

Stormtroopers of Beer

Siege

Father Befouled

Necropsy

UADA (2X)

Usurper

Exhumer

Root

Disparo

Myxoma

Flash Out

Fissure

Goolagoon

Meth Leppard

Fiend

Fucking Invincible

Insect Warfare

Encoffination

Kerasphorus

October Tide

Nightbringer

Acheron

Behexen

Oranssi Pazuzu

In the Woods…

Akercocke

Night Raids

Genocide Pact

Die Choking

Junior Bruce

Suppression

UxDxSx

Terrorizer

Bestial Evil

Torn the Fuck Apart

Gutted

Gateway to Hell

Khemmis

-(16)-

Coven

Bound by the Grave

Durian

Cognizant

Gonkulator

Lord Gore

Sublime Cadaveric

Decomposition

Integrity

Petrification

Perdition Temple

Abhomine

Morta Skuld

Blood Incantation (2X)

Sinister

God Dethroned

Future Terror

Horrible Earth

Pavel Chekov

Plagues

Stimulant

Blurring

Reeking Cross

Gasp

Prong

Helmet

Ritual Necromancy

Phrenelith

Pessimist

The True Mortem

Dodheimsgard

Master’s Hammer

Satyricon

Destroyed in Seconds

Pure Hiss

Neolithic

Bandit

Fluoride

Violation Wound

Pulmonary Fibrosis

Viscera Infest

Wormrot

Enemy Soil

Suffering Hour (2X)

Ascended Dead

Dusk

Sinmara

Arkhon Infaustus

Opera IX

Churchburn

Spectral Voice

Come to Grief

Rippikoulu

Voivod

Inhumation

Embludgeonment

Outre-Tomb

Regurgitation

Daeva

Vanum

Obliteration

Zemial

Disharmonic Orchestra

Naglfar

Tormentor

Asylum

Ampallang Infection

Dissasociate

Tomb Mold

Indian

Carnivore A.D.

Deletere

Dead in the Manger

True Black Dawn

Blood

Brutality

Scour

Borknagar

Deicide (2X)

Sorrower

Neckbeard Deathcamp

Coffin Dust

Grotesque Organ Defilement

Mortician (2X)

Majestic Downfall

Tchornobog

Lich King

Merrimack

Abyssal

Mortuary

Fleshcrawl

Messiah

Vault Dweller

Ordeals

Hard Charger

Beton

Hell Bent

Hummingbird of Death

Accused A.D.

Lowlife (Cryptic Slaughter Tribute)

Warmask

Yautja

Rottervore

Frizzi 2 Fulci

Malformity

Mortiferum

Scattered Remnants

Pyrexia

Massacre

Monstrosity

Graveyard

Spite

Panzerfaust

No/Mas

Cloudrat

Sulfuric Cartery

Retching Pus

Blood Feast

Scorched (2X)

Pink Mass

Vio-Lence

Cerebral Rot

Cardiac Arrest

Enforced

Imprecation

Onslaught

Coroner

Cavalera (Return Beneath Arise)

Crosspitter

Napalm Raid

Bowel Erosion

Throaat

Cadaveric Incubator

Malignant Altar

Miasmatic Necrosis

Deeds of Flesh

Schirenc Plays Pungent Stench

Necrofier

Destruction

Triumph of Death

Sacralegia

Divine Eve

Nocturnus AD

Hypocrisy

Profanatica

Dark Fortress

Sacramentum

Shock Narcotic

Zombie Assault

Warfuck

Human Effluence

Antichrist Siege Machine

Gravesend

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newsunbow · 2 years

Text

I posted 9,121 times in 2021

11 posts created (0%)

9110 posts reblogged (100%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 828.2 posts.

I added 45 tags in 2021

#hasbro - 7 posts

#hasbroverse - 6 posts

#hasbro heroes - 6 posts

#hasbro universe - 6 posts

#gi joe - 4 posts

#inhumanoids - 4 posts

#g.i. joe - 3 posts

#new sunbow - 3 posts

#sunbow - 3 posts

#air raiders - 3 posts

Longest Tag: 40 characters

#truth is i'm not a big consumer of media

My Top Posts in 2021

So Inhumanoids is one of the 'forgotten' Hasbro properties of the 80s, but I personally find this a great shame as I think it has a ton ton of potential.

Firstly, you could go for a 'cosmic horror lite' route. Rather than the Inhumanoids and mutors being common knowledge to humanity, the Earth Corps are the only humans who know the truth. They know that if they tried to go public with their knowledge they'd be labeled as crazy, so they basically have to work in secret. Blackthorne and Inhumanoids are more sutble and insidious in their schemes, and overall tone of the show is darker and creepier.

I'd like to also see more creatures, both Inhumanoids and Mutores. The new Inhumanoids could have their own agendas and are generally in conflict with each other. Sometimes they may ally with each other, sometimes with the Earth Corps to further their own agendas, although these alliances are rarely permanent.

There may be one or two Inhumanoids who are explicitly good, although maybe only one of them is willing to side with the Earth Corps while the other doesn't trust humans at all. Maybe one of them could be a giant deer creature like the God from Princess Mononoke or the Ritual.

You could also have tribes of Mutores who swear loyalty to evil Inhumanoids, although with individuals among them who a willing to go against this for any number of reasons, both selfish and altruistic. Likewise, you could have individuals among the "good" Mutore tribes who are either unwilling to work with humans or are just in it for themselves.

Basically you'd get a kid-friendly take on Games of Thrones mixed with a Creepypasta/Cosmic Horror Story.

13 notes • Posted 2021-04-04 13:55:03 GMT

At this point in time, the Transformers franchise seems to be the one of the only series of the 'Heroverse' that Hasbro seems to be really invested in, with the most comic book, film and television adaptions, with G.I. Joe a distant second and most of the other franchies barely making any appearance at all (My Little Pony does fare much better, but it really doesn't seem to fit the Heroverse in my opinion so I've chosen not to count it. Sorry.) Hasbro considers these to be risky and is mostly reluctant to green-light them.

Some are understandably frustrated with the attention Transformers gets. But what if Transformers were the key to reintroducing these other properties? You could integrate these properties and their characters into the plot of a Transformers show. Yeah, that's pretty much what happened with IDW's Revolution story-line, the only difference that the Transformers would be the main focus and the others could be cameos and cross-overs that could spin off into their own shows if they prove popular enough. Basically the Transformers could be the metaphorical vehicle to bring these franchises back from the dead.

14 notes • Posted 2021-06-01 07:01:03 GMT

Okay, so I have a bit of a confession to make.

I just got an ask for my thoughts on the Transformers/Star Trek crossover, and it caught me off guard because I haven’t actually read any of the Transformers comics apart from the My Little Pony one.

I haven’t watched many of the GI Joe or Transformers cartoons, etc.

I really only just started getting into it because I was (and still am) really into Jem and the Holograms, and I got into the obscure fact that Sunbow writer considered all the Hasbro properties to be working on as part of a shared universe, that sent my overactive imagination into a absolute frenzy and lo and behold, here we are.

I know there are going to be some gatekeepers out there grouching how I’m not a ‘true fan’ or the rest of that bullshit but screw it, I’m having fun with this blog and I’m not shutting down. If the fact that I haven’t consumed that much Hasbro-verse related media really bothers you, you can always unfollow me.

At the very least, I hope my blog can be a fun resource for fanfic writers? Whatever. I’m doing this for me and me alone. Well, whatever you take away from this, I genuinely hope you all the best. Take care ;)

15 notes • Posted 2021-01-20 04:50:46 GMT

Random Bad GI Joe Headcannons

Before joining the Joes, Gung Ho used to moonlight as a male stripper in a gay bar

Duke, Scarlett and Snake Eyes are a polyromantic threesome

When the really weird stuff happens (aliens, kaiju cryptids, ancient advanced civilizations, etc) Tunnel Rat 100% cannot handle it and tends to loose his shit -- "@#$% this man, I did NOT sign up for this!"

25 notes • Posted 2021-05-06 02:43:21 GMT

67 notes • Posted 2021-08-21 12:53:42 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

#my 2021 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

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cosmic-navel-gazin · 4 years

Photo

In which I chronicle my Legacy of Kain journey and bridge it with your boy Adam Warlock! (Part 5 of many, and MASSIVE, I MEAN, HUMOUNGOUS SPOILERS for Soul Reaver 2 and the 1970’s Warlock)

Awwwwwwwww yeah we are going there, these compositions are most definitely on purpose.

This is where I realize that my true purpose in this world is to draw and talk about obscure or forgotten works of fiction, and I embrace this destiny.

Ladies and gents, laughing times are over (not really though), sh*t gets very real again.

I guess it’s a bit late for this but if you have even the slightest interest in checking any of these properties out, do yourself a favor and go experience them first hand. If you just want to see me lose my mind and don’t really care about spoilers then please, proceed.

You know, when I started this little crossover of sorts, I was just having a laugh you know? It was just a cute little thing, I’ll write this one post and maybe I’ll get enough material for a second one and that’s it. THIS IS THE SEVENTH POST (even though it says Part 5).

Never, and I do mean never in my wildest dreams did I think I would be here one day, talking about having your past and your time-travelling-future selves meet and clash, of seeing your sanctimonious attitude and overall the worst about yourself personified and given free reign to go on bloodthirsty crusades showing off how much of a hypocrite you’ve bee- but wait, I am getting a bit ahead of myself.

I’ll get there I promise, let’s go back a bit.

Where we last left off, we managed to travel back to an even more distant past than we’ve been before. To the time of the great Vampire Purge, so that Raziel can meet this infamous ancient vampire who knows all the lore and might have the answers we seek on what exactly is causing the corruption of our world.

As we step out into this era of History we notice the fields covered with the Sarafan Order banners, and the impaled corpses and chopped-off heads of vampires. No different no doubt from the kindness vampires showed mankind later when they gained the upper hand during Kain’s 1.000 year old reign. Raziel seems a bit distraught by the sight since he assumed the Sarafan to be virtuous and heroic:

“For all the butchery of Moebius’s crusade, this massacre was somehow more chilling. The killing fields of the Sarafan betrayed a kind of orderly ruthlessness, the cold-blooded righteousness of the true believer.”

“Here at last in the flesh, I beheld my former brothers-in-arms, the warrior-priests of the Sarafan order; their lives devoted solely to the annihilation of the vampire plague. And while I confess I felt a twinge of longing, a pang of grief for what I had believed was my lost virtue, I regarded them now with none of the reverence I formally felt. For I had seen the human face of the vampires, and now I beheld the monstrousness of these men.”

While on the topic of genocidal holy wars, my boy Adam here had a bit of a run with a similar pious little group that goes by the name of Universal Church of Truth, who were going about doing a bit of cleaning throughout the galaxy:

Things don’t go so well:

Interestingly enough, I’ve learned of a deleted cutscene for Soul Reaver 2 that plays out very similarly to Adam’s first encounter with this “holy” order. There was this minor female vampire character that was being hunted down and would be executed by vampire hunters right in front of Raziel.

This scene was probably removed because they knew that almost 20 years later there would be some asshole on the internet trying to compare their games to obscure marvel comics of the 70’s.

But yeah bummer for Adam here, we’re a couple of pages in and he’s already failed to save someone. However, through the power of the Soul Gem, he’s able to retain her soul for a brief moment, letting us know more about these holy inquisitors:

Some of these methods don’t seem that far off from the Sarafan, especially on the twisting of good intentions part, but on a galactic scale:

Aye, a great bunch o’ fellas all around, if you submit and “fit in”:

Damn.

Hush Adam, I’ll get back to your predicament give me a moment. I just want the good people at home to keep both this church and the Magus, the god they worship in mind for later.

Now, back to the game. In the Sarafan Stronghold during the first hour of gameplay, Raziel made comments on the vampire he’s currently seeking while looking at some stained glass depictions:

“So this was the legendary Janos Audron - reputed to have been the most ancient and diabolical vampire to have ever existed. According to folklore, he lived high in the cliffs of Nosgoth’s northern mountains, and preyed mercilessly on the defenseless villagers below. His reign of terror ended when the Sarafan finally hunted him down and tore his throbbing heart from his still-living body. (…) But I wondered - could Janos Audron truly have been as monstrous as depicted here? Or was this merely artistic licence by the Sarafan, who sought to lionize themselves by demonizing their darkest enemy?

Keep these stained glass images in mind, they’ll also be important shortly. Neetheless to say, the hype was very real to meet this Janos Audron.

And as I kept hearing about this gentleman, I thought: “I really love this cast of pricks, where everyone speaks in half truths and is hiding something and has some hidden agenda, but you know, I kind of wish there was some slim ray of hope, of goodness and honor, just some good old plain chivalry and honesty. Maybe this Janos lad won’t be as bad as he was depicted back in the Sarafan Stronghold.”

It took us a while but we’re finally make it to his retreat.

I really love the entire segment, the hopelessness and feeling of dread while making your way through this place, probably my favourite puzzle area of the game. I also really love the music and architecture here.

When we do make it to the top, BOY OH BOY were my prayers answered!

Lo and behold, enter Raziel’s new daddy/mentor figure, my man JANOS AUDRON! Proabably the one decent and kind creature I’ve seen yet in these games (if you don’t count helpless human npcs who are just trying to live their lives but are caught in all these wars, slaughter and destruction).

FINALLY an understanding, moderate, compassionate man in the midst of all the lies and deception. I love him! Oh and he has what seems to be a Romanian accent. Maybe a nod to the granddaddy of all vampires: Dracula? I think his design is cool as well, so that helps.

Before we go into huge lore dumps and while on the topic of having a brief father/mentor figure for your protagonist when he’s utterly lost, alone and confused, I thought I’d bridge it with Adam’s own once foster parent, the High Evolutionary:

From the few minutes you get to know these dads they’re very different characters with different backstories and motivations. Janos is this sad lonely old man, the last of the ancient vampires and one who has been keeping himself alive solely for his sense of duty.

While the High Evolutionary was once a man called Herbert Wyndham who performed an experiment that evolved him into a godlike being. This experience proved to be such an assault on his senses and perceptions that he chose to encase himself in this armour. Like the name suggests he is obsessed with genetic manipulation and tampering of various kinds, it is his life’s ambition.

Despite his somewhat villainous appearance, he’s never portrayed as such from what little I’ve read, he’s just…a bit creepy. Like, he takes Adam in and is super stoked about adopting him, but he also values him not so much as a person per se as you and me would, but more as one would value an impressivly carved piece of work:

I don’t know, maybe it’s his metal face that doesn’t emote much; his sometimes questionable morality; maybe it’s the fact that Adam was 5 years old at this point, a baby boy, and this pink armoured deity is super hyped about him; there’s something a bit unsettling about this guy. Have some more dubious quotes I’ve stumbled upon:

All in all, I think he did care about him, in his own strange way:

Anyway, what’s important is that these adoptive dads serve a somewhat similar purpose, and that is to push/urge our ”“”“"heroes”“”“” (I say with many quotation marks) into a more benevolant role: to guide them in their messianic mission and save a corrupted world. Basically there to provide a chance for them to be good boys. Up until now their track record leaves much to be desired, and they’ve been quite lost on what they’re supposed to be and do.

Raziel:

“So it’s all true, then - what Kain and Vorador have told me - I really am some kind of unholy vampire messiah…”

Janos:

“Unholy? -no. Messiah… perhaps.”

Raziel:

“I don’t like that word - it smells of martyrdom.”

Janos:

“Raziel, your role in this world’s destiny is more crucial - and more benevolent - than you’ve allowed yourself to believe. Your journey will not be easy - dark powers are allied against you.”

Oh and both dads give their sons their toys (Soul Reaver and Soul Gem):

Back to the meeting with Janos, we finally learn tons of things, both new and others that have been hinted at throughout, namely:

Janos has been living a life of a recluse, alone, on top of the Aerie;

Janos knows of Raziel (some old legend I think) and has been waiting for him to hand him over the Soul Reaver, saying it is the key to save Nosgoth;

The Pillars of Nosgoth were erected by the ancient vampires and they were the rightful guardians. Janos was called to be th 10th guardian, the Keeper of the Reaver;

Over time this ancient race started to die out, with their history slowly being forgotten;

Humanity prospered and since the Pillars choose their guardians from birth and vampires were no longer born, humans were called to be their guardians but were “wholly ignorant of their true purpose.”

The Circle of human guardians is led to believe (by whom we do not yet know) that vampires are a cancer in the world. Janos warns that “with their vampire purge, the members of the Circle have assaulted the very architects of the Pillars they are sworn to protect (…) With every vampire they kill, the humans are slitting their own throats.”

Janos being a cool level-headed guy here when Raziel says he must hate mankind for all the suffering they’ve brought to him:

“They fear what they don’t understand; and they despise what they fear. But no - I do not hate them.”

I find it funny how Raziel asks if humanity should be forgiven for trying to exterminate the vampire kind and doesn’t realize that: one, he himself was exterminating vampires just a couple of moments ago back in SR1; and two, how he is just like how Janos describes humanity to be:

“They don’t understand what they’re doing. They are simply unenlightened… and vulnerable to manipulation.”

Again, this last line, completely unlike a certain blue shambling corpse I know. Not like him AT ALL.

Then, as they head inside, we learn something odd as Janos presents Raziel with the Reaver. You see, the two times Raziel has been close to the Soul Reaver still in its physical form, reality started to bend and distort (I show it off in this previous post).

When we met Kain and decided not to kill him, he explained that when: “two incarnations of the blade meet in time and space, a paradox is created, a temporal distortion powerful enough to derail history”

This distortion, or sense of displacement however, is nowhere to be found now when Janos presents the blade to him. Raziel feels nothing and says that “this nothingness is somehow worse…” and to get it away from him.

We learn the Reaver was forged by the same ancient vampire race that erected the Pillars (which we’ve seen hinted at when we explored the land and came accross all sorts of old murals).

But now THIS is when the game first impales me through the heart.

Me and Janos are interrupted by the Sarafan warriors who arrive carrying Moebius’ Staff (which disables vampires to the point of being barely able to move at all).

And of course! OF COURSE! Of course the moment my boy Raziel finds a truly positive influence in his life to guide and enlinghten him, and that was willing to put himself in danger in order to save him… he is axed! HEART RIPPED FROM HIS CHEST!

And by whom you ask? Who would do such a deed and kill my last ray of hope?

WHY, ME!

TWICE!

“Me” because I was the one to open an entrance to Janos’ up until then impenetrable retreat, and literally me: human Raziel of the Sarafan that lived during this time period and was head inquisitor!

A bit different from what was depicted back at the Sarafan Stronghold, we found several centuries later (putting the same image here again so you don’t have to scroll up to compare, am I swell or what?):

The Sarafan escape with Janos’ heart and the Reaver, while wraith Raziel has a final moment with Janos.

This part destroys me:

Raziel:

“Forgive me; I’m sorry… I failed you.”

Janos: (gently)

“No, Raziel. Perhaps this was my true purpose - simply to save your life this once.”

Raziel: (distraught)

“While I have taken yours…”

That last bit is probably my favourite line-read in the entire series so far (which is the most impossible thing to choose since there are so many great ones). But I think it’s the overwhelming sadness in Raziel’s voice that makes it memorable, you’ve never seen him feel like this for another creature.

Breaks my stone hardened heart every time I listen to it. And here’s why I think it’s an effective emotional scene, even though we only get a few minutes with Janos before he is murdered - it is because of contrast. Up until now everyone you meet is some degree of a bad or manipulative person, and you don’t really have a true friend or someone to confide in, there’s no one that really brings out the best in Raziel and it sucks because there is potential there. So when you introduce the apparently only decent and noble person in this god forsaken land and you’re so used to by now suspect and mistrust everyone, it is impactful because he was truth and honesty in a sea of deception and moral relativism. He was my light in the midst of the fog and the one who saw good in me. And right when you’re finally relaxing and getting confortable the game pulls the rug from under you.

Now, while on the topic of having your past and future meet, there was a little something about the meeting between Adam and the Universal Church of Truth that I’ve been saving up until now. If you remember, Adam was interrogating the young woman who was killed by the inquisitors about the church and the god they worship. When suddenly:

Good news is, Adam must’ve taken a left turn somewhere and ended up on the set for “Monty Python’s Life of Brian”, where he learned some latin:

This helped him quickly figure out the Magus’ identity:

Learn your dead tongues kids, you never know when it might come in handy when meeting your time travelling, thousands of years old future-self:

So as you can se, we have a similar self-discovery journey going on but reversed in a way. In Raziel’s case you play as his future self, who time travels back in time, meets his past self and sees what a hypocrite he’s been his entire life. In Adam’s case you follow his present self, who meets the Magus (his future self), who has travelled back in time 5.000 years, in which time he has built his empire. Meeting and confronting said empire/future self, leads Adam to see what a hypocrite he’s been his entire life. You see, both Adam and Raziel have always been their own worst enemy (their own shortcomings and character flaws). So it would be only natural that we get embodiments of the worst in them: Raziel, the human Sarafan Warrior and the Magus, their past and future selves respectively.

Oof, this was a long one, and I’ve reach the character limit. In the next post I’ll elaborate more on their characters and different selves; and we go through the roller-coaster of emotions that is the endgame for both these stories.

Look foward to me losing my mind even further while I go into time travelling, paradox shenanigans… oh, and look foward to happier times with COSMIC SUICIDE! See you in the near future.

#the infinity legacy #legacy of kain #soul reaver 2 #raziel #adam warlock #the magus #marvel comics #marvel cosmic #this post drained my spirit #my fan art

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hyper-juice · 3 years

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it appears i have been tagged by the lovely @roxasboxas to unveil my myriad wips, since only a third of them ever see ao3 anyway,,,,

Rules: Post the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Send me an ask with the title that most intrigues you and I’ll post a little snippet of it or tell you something about it! And then tag as many people as you have WIPs.

.....i’m not gonna tag anyone. i have way too many wips. and i dont know fic authors on tumblr,,,

behold! my working titles! because most of my draft titles are horrendously stupid. sorted by fandom.

witch’s heart:

why so sirius (this one is... old. about room assignments)

desu2:

coworkers, of sorts (posted as a snippet on this blog once, has seen revision since... the sequel to ping i never finished)

loz:

history makes the record stutter (first two chapters are done.. chapter three: the horse girl link agenda)

t4t (written at 2am mainly, what if zelda and link were both trans <3)

lord of heroes:

imagine a dragon (avillon and dragon hcs, coupled with outside perspective on lord)

isekai astrid (what it says on the tin)

kingdom hearts:

two introverts and a really weird cat (yes yes my longest fic. newest chapter in the works: lea and vanitas talk)

sora’s mom deserves the world (good boys.odt (tiarwc) verse canon backstory to the convoluted oc i made of sora’s mom)

crack theory (the one where riku is related to a certain someone we all know and loathe)

data boy shenanigans (good boys.odt verse prequel to how data sora & riku escaped the computer)

one step behind for every step ahead / bad man does stuff for life (potential sequel to the seer sora fic that went nowhere because i dont know where i’d even take it)

genshin impact:

chars with mommy issues volume 1 (klee and albedo both have very similar issues)

chars with mommy issues volume 2 (rhinedottir causes problems and fixes some of them)

benny’s adventure team bonanza (the bennett + chongyun team up i posted a prologue of once)

azure striker gunvolt:

vs falcons / gunvolt brainworms (falcon character studies. i got two of em done! a miracle)

cyborgs vs superheroes / gunvolt brainrot (the bnha x laix fic i never continued but still have ideas for even if i dont rlly care abt bnha anymore)

alas i’ve lost the horrendously edgy bad end asg2 copen fic. be glad.

feel free to ask abt my oc verse also it lives in my brain so much. like just in general. shapeshifting idiot and runaway demon cause shenanigans trying to solve god’s messy divorce.

some of these are files on my laptop. some of these are notepad pages on my phone. some of these are notepad pages in a miniature notepad in my pencil case. quality depends.

#Feli speaks #thank u for the tag i'm gonna send u an ask now

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dmsden · 4 years

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Building Blocks - How to construct a stable campaign

Hullo, Gentle Readers. This week’s Question from a Denizen comes from foxycipher, who asks, “I'm still very much a novice DM (I've only DMed a partial campaign that fell apart due to my lack of preparedness), and I'd like to ask for some advice. My DMing style involves chaining locations, "important" NPCs (read: NPCs that my players actively interact with and force / help me to make a backstory for), and encounters out into an overarching plot, and I'd like to be able to do it more smoothly. Could you provide some tips on how to build an interesting (and more stable) campaign this way?”

Hi, foxy. You’re in luck! This year, I’m writing a series of articles called Campaign Basics. The idea is to give campaign building advice and build a campaign through examples of that advice. I’ll try to give an overview here of where I’m going.

First, you need some idea of a story. Even if the story is “a group of adventurers travels around and loots every dungeon they find”, that’s a basis. I personally find it more interesting if you have some idea of where you want the campaign to end before it begins. Even if you just have a one-line “elevator pitch”, this will help you do all the other work. “A group of hometown heroes confront a doomsday-level menace and help repair a shattered alliance” (my Shards of the Shattered Pact - Seowyn’s Crossing campaign) is a pretty good elevator pitch. “A fallen angel wants to kill the god they once served, and the heroes must stop this from happening,” (the Angel of Chaos campaign I’m developing in my Campaign Basics articles) is another. Campaigns don’t have to be this big. “A group of adventurers must choose who to trust as they try to recover a stolen treasure in a major city” (Watedeep: Dragon Heist) is just as good. The point is to have an overarching plot idea to use as a foundation for everything else.

It’s good to have a strong campaign world to set things in. The world of Tol was in the works long before I had the idea for the campaign I’m now running, and I intend to use it as a setting for other D&D campaigns down the road. You can create your own world if you enjoy that, or you can use a published setting like the Forgotten Realms. For me, personally, it’s important to be able to answer a few questions, like, “I want to be from the halfling homeland. What’s it like there?”

I like to have a title and theme in place when I begin working, even if I allow both of them to change and evolve as time goes on. Once you have a theme, especially, it can inspire a lot of stories and campaign elements. If you’re running a “points of light” campaign similar to the default of 4th edition D&D, that’s going to feel very different from running the “cold war” campaign that Eberron is made for, or the “ruins of the past” campaign that I have set in Tol.

I think it’s important to have a homebase for the PCs. Whether it’s a tavern in a major city, a farming village surrounded by the ruins of fallen kingdoms, or a keep on the border of civilization, having a homebase can give the PCs a strong foundation. It gives them NPCs to become emotionally invested in. The evolution of the people and stories in the town can help make your campaign world come alive. Not everyone has to be important to the story, but there should be some NPCs that they care about just for their own sake.

I always like to have a major villain or organization of villains (or both) to be able to give a face to the evil that the PCs are constantly coming up against. Adziel, the Angel of Chaos, is the main villain I’m developing for the campaign of the same name from my articles, but there are other, lesser villains serving the angel’s plans. I’ve mentioned a harpy, Jetharia, and, back in my Worldbuilding articles, we had Keldek the Betrayer, the evil cleric in the Caves of Chaos, and the traitor in the Keep on the Borderlands (no spoilers). As I worked on my Angel of Chaos campaign, I would tie all these lesser villains back to the Angel. I would be careful, however, that not every plotline ties to the Angel, unless the PCs are specifically on the Angel’s trail. I don’t want every dungeon and every evil to be the Angel’s doing. There should be other powerful villains with their own agendas, like dragons, beholders, and the like.

Once I had all that in place, I would develop some ideas for the first adventures open to the PCs. If you want, you could do what I did with my current campaign. You could develop the first part of the adventure, while leaving the second half more nebulous. Then, once the PCs are committed to what they’re doing, you can develop the second half of your adventure, tying in elements related to your major villain. I used this in my Shattered Pact campaign, where I had the minor villain Tarkantus, who I would’ve inserted into whichever adventure the PCs explored first.

I hope this helps, foxy. Definitely read the Campaign Basics articles as they come out, and I’ll develop these ideas in more detail.

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memeingovermemes · 5 years

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sonic forces -- sentence starters:

feel free to change titles / pronouns / places where appropriate !

❝ how i hate him . ❞ ❝ the boss means business this time ! ❞ ❝ is everyone okay ? ❞ ❝ behold the power of my ultimate masterpiece ! ❞ ❝ what are you - ? how are you doing - ?! ❞ ❝ i'm trying , ___ , but these readings are all messed up ! they don't make any sense ! ❞ ❝ despite the overwhelming odds , a rag-tag resistance formed banding together to continue the fight . ❞ ❝ despair is a luxury we don't have . ❞ ❝ i'm an optimist , but i'm also a realist . ___ is gone . ❞ ❝ if we're going to win we have to do it without them . ❞ ❝ we have to show them that strength doesn't just come from numbers . ❞ ❝ happy to see you're all still alive . ❞ ❝ sorry , i'm still not used to saying that . ❞ ❝ doesn't look like much . ❞ ❝ who's up for an old-school style jailbreak ? ❞ ❝ i'm sorry i wasn't smart enough . ❞ ❝ ___ ? you're ... you're alive ! ❞ ❝ i mean , everything happens for a reason , right ? ❞ ❝ your savior is no more . ❞ ❝ i can taste your terror , child . all that anxiety and doubt ... it's delicious . ❞ ❝ give in to your fear . ❞ ❝ flee , screaming , and i'll let you live . ❞ ❝ the clock is ticking , boss . ❞ ❝ none of this is good , ___ . that's why it's called " war . " ❞ ❝ oh hey , sounds like the party's started . want to let me go and join in ? no ? of course not, you hate fun . ❞ ❝ getting out of your chains does not make you free . ❞ ❝ the only thing inevitable here is my foot kicking your butt . ❞ ❝ are you here to rescue me ? ❞ ❝ your concern is touching , ___ . ❞ ❝ look , ___ , i know you just got back but we're spread thin . can you take care of this ? ❞ ❝ i've got six months of payback i'm just dying to spend . ❞ ❝ this wasn't part of my agenda , but i'm always happy to crush a hero . ❞ ❝ does anyone but you believe your lies ? ❞ ❝ seeing is believing . ❞ ❝ well , look who's back from the dead . ❞ ❝ glad to see i left an impression . ❞ ❝ i don't know anything about you ! not even your name . ❞ ❝ so , what's your favorite color ? do you like long, romantic walks on the beach ? what's the source of your power ? you can skip the first two questions if you like . ❞ ❝ as i predicted . you're not even worth the effort to finish off . ❞ ❝ i failed ___ . ❞ ❝ you let the hedgehog live ? that is a great source of concern ! ❞ ❝ he has beaten you for decades , yet i defeated him in our first encounter . ❞ ❝ i don't have time for this . ❞ ❝ look at you fighting like you've got a chance to win . it's adorable . ❞ ❝ you know what they say, the anticipation of the end is worse than the end itself ! maybe not in this case though . ❞ ❝ nice moves , but if you hog all the glory , how am i going to look good ? ❞ ❝ i think i used up all my wishes for the rest of my life , but it's worth it ! ❞ ❝ i was so worried . i thought you were ... ❞ // ❝ you worry too much . look , i'm perfectly fine . ❞ ❝ three days , huh ? a lot can happen in that time . ❞ ❝ they have mass and form , but no heart and soul . ❞ ❝ the problem is , they may not be real , but their powers are as formidable as the originals . ❞ ❝ i thought up this strategy in about a minute and a half . ❞ ❝ there's no finer group that i'd want to fight with . ❞ ❝ time to save the world, people ! ❞ ❝ and as if to answer , the world sends me a trembling child . ❞ ❝ fine . i will teach you fear , then pain , and then ... well , at least the fear and pain will end . ❞ ❝ i remember you . you ran from me before . ❞ ❝ you survived then , but you throw it all away now . curious . ❞ ❝ wow , he's got like ten terabytes of selfies ... ❞ ❝ like a dream so real , if you bump yourself in it , your sleeping self will bruise ? ❞ ❝ why would they bother making a fake out of something that already isn't real ? ❞ ❝ simply ? last i checked the death egg is a heavily fortified ... well , death egg . ❞ ❝ well , you know , it's just crazy enough to work . ❞ ❝ you're too easily distracted . that's not a good trait for a distraction . ❞ ❝ i don't have legs . neither do you , dude . ❞ // ❝ don't remind me , dude ! ❞ ❝ and by " tactical retreat " you mean to say , " flee with our tails between our legs . " ❞ ❝ shut up and just follow me . ❞ ❝ i just want everyone to get home safely , okay ? ❞ ❝ welcome , ___ . glad you could make it to your funeral ! ❞ ❝ good-bye , ___ , my soon-to-be-eradicated nemesis . enjoy all the nothing ! ❞ ❝ tsk , tsk . since you always destroy the power source of my weapons , i decided to learn from my mistakes . ❞ ❝ maybe he'd have more friends if he didn't talk about himself in the third person . ❞ ❝ this is it - our last opportunity to bring peace back into the world . ❞ ❝ did you miss me ? ❞ ❝ i trust you're all ready for oblivion ? if you're not ... oh well . ❞ ❝ target reconfirmed . extermination mode initiated. payback inevitable . ❞ ❝ that's just a special effect, right ? ❞ ❝ the sun will fall upon you all . boom ! the end ! your pathetic lives are over . ❞ ❝ make peace with your fate , because your lives are now over ! ❞ ❝ i'm in a class all my own . ❞ ❝ time to put-up or shut up, ___ ! ❝ wrong , loser ! the things that can't be defeated are heart , soul , and the bonds of friendship . ❞ ❝ no , wait ! i can still fight ! ❞ ❝ you never fail to surprise me , ___ . ❞ ❝ oh , come on ! now what ? can't we ever just win and have that be the end of it ? ❞ ❝ a true winner always keeps his trump card hidden until the end . ❞ ❝ what have you done !? ❞ ❝ your plan will end like all your plans do: with you sitting in a pile of busted robot parts wondering how you failed so badly . ❞ ❝ i guess this is good-bye . ❞ ❝ what ? you're leaving us ? ❞ ❝ man , the first time i saw you stumbling around , i had no idea you could pull this thing together and see it to the end . ❞ ❝ i've changed my mind about you . ❞ ❝ it's not like you just waited till the last minute to come in and act all cool saving the day . ❞ ❝ a single person cannot restore the entire world . ❞ ❝ hey , you're taking off , too ? ❞ ❝ you gonna keep moving forward ? ❞ ❝ heh , you and i aren't so different . ❞ ❝ see ya later , buddy ! ❞

#rp #roleplay #rp meme #sonic #sonic the hedgehog #roleplay meme #sonic forces #sentence starters #rp starters #roleplay starters #long post #tw: death mention

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equalseleventhirds · 4 years

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What are your reasons 👀

e.g. my reasons for Elias = Kepler are that they’re both huge condescending bastards about everything, it’s about their personality and how much I hate them

dsklfdsdj ok REASONS why elias bouchard is most like rachel young out of the w359 antagonists

(i will say first off, in VIBES he is most like cutter, in that they are cheerful horrible immortal old men trying to end the world. i absolutely see where kepler and elias are both condescending bastards tho, and unlike cutter elias and kepler do not have a miranda pryce to adore, which imo is a major characterization thing)

but in BACKSTORY and JOB and ARC he is, horrifically, rachel young bcos (under cut for LONG POST):

bureaucracy

no really they are both just. such bureaucrats. like i know elias owns the institute, but his whole demeanor and actually the way he runs shit screams middle fucking management??? scheduling… hiring… training… performance reviews… terminations… i know the ceo at my job doesn’t do that stuff. i can only assume elias does it bcos he enjoys it, but it still makes him a whole bureaucrat.

i know cutter does some of that but that’s for special occasions. other than that it is rachel running around getting all the little but vitally important bits done. i mean when we first meet her she p much tells cutter she’s doing impossible shit for his goals. which leads me to:

working for a more powerful evil force, but totes willing to do whatever evil thing is necessary to further that force’s agenda

for all his grandiose dreams, elias is not the beholding. elias is not even the most important avatar for the beholding, he’s just managed to manipulate the Archivist for his own means. really he just works for the beholding, and is hoping that by bringing its big end-of-the-world plans to fruition he can achieve immortality

do i even need to explain how rachel parallels this

(p much both of them were like ‘it’s not like i particularly want to kill everyone but that’s what my boss wants and then i get what i want so…)

and they both tried to serve a greater purpose/achieve immortality/end the world bcos of a similar sort of fear:

“I realized life is short, and the whole “truth, justice and the American way” thing takes too long. It wasn’t boredom. It was urgency.“

“But as he compiled his taxonomy and codified his theories on the grand rituals, I began to develop a very specific concern. (…) I began to worry that if one of them successfully attempted their ritual, then I would be as much a victim as any, trapped in the nightmare landscape of a twisted world.”

neither of them appear to have any family/friends, or at least not any friends who they wouldn’t sacrifice in a heartbeat for their plans. actually both of them express like, mild contempt/confusion about the people they meet who DO have people they’re close to.

(like i said: cutter has miranda pryce. elias does not. rachel also, clearly, does not, and even urged cutter to sacrifice pryce for his plans. which, of course, he did not do.)

fucking nosy! real fucking nosy!! elias is a beholding type all the way and rachel was formerly andrea nash, journalist extraordinaire!!

fascinating in this case bcos both of them learned a ton of stuff but somehow not quite enough stuff, or at least did not always put things together properly. andrea had a story, but not the story; jonah tried his ritual over and over but was always missing something.

they both eventually figured it out, but only bcos of cutter & gertrude

andrea/rachel’s ‘i have to enter this code into my phone’ gambit is VERY MUCH like elias’s ‘if you kill me you all die too’ gambit. more death on his part and more information leaking on hers, but similar safeguards.

in a super weird way gertrude was to elias what kepler was to rachel; someone they were almost on equal footing with (but with fluctuations in power dynamics), who worked out how to put a wrench in their plans, then was killed for it

…parallels wrt ‘the greater good’ and ‘sacrificing your employees’ and then ‘dying relatively alone except for ur killer and not having anyone know how or why you died’ between kepler and gertrude will. not be expanded on in this post. it’s not about THEM.

“you came from just enough money to understand how big the gulf was between your family and the people who actually have a chance in life”

that one was said about rachel, but consider jonah–who was certainly some kind of upper class person in his day–actually somehow still requiring funding from the lukases & fairchilds. they have real money; he, somehow, does not.

“andrea nash isn’t your name. in fact, it isn’t even your third name.” vs jonah magnus/james wright/elias bouchard/who knows what else

yeah fine cutter also is this, but look… rachel’s v similar to cutter in general. just not quite.

which actually is how i see elias so!

got to explain the Big Evil Plan to the protagonists. rachel does it off screen but she still did.

pretended to be all caring and nice to at least one protagonist to get them to come work for the big evil company

the pure amusement in rachel’s voice when she introduced minkowski and eiffel vs elias purposefully putting martin in the archives after the dog incident…

Unfortunately Sexy Voice Actually. don’t judge me.

and finally: i really really hope that elias dies like rachel did; simply, ignobly, not even in a big boss battle, not even actively trying to stop the heroes, just fucking dying.

#ineskew #that got very long!#i kept coming up with more reasons as i typed it #i may come up with more later... we will see #for the record i rly like rachel a lot more than elias but that might just be bcos i love evil ladies #if u consider their actions she is not actually like... a better person at all so #wolf 359 #the magnus archives

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kyloreyorgana · 4 years

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STAR WARS 9 ! TROS SPOILERS !

In case this is not obvious enough, this post will contain SPOILERS for the last Star Wars movie, which I’m just now coming home from. These are my first thoughts. I have tried to tag as best I could so that people who mute the tags don’t see my post. Do not proceed f you don’t want to read any spoilers.

You have been warned. Long (and I mean LONG) post ahead.

First of all, I’m happy to be back y’all! Just with TLJ, I come from months (or has it been years already ?) of inactivity to jump right back into the fandom, as obsessed as I was back when I came home from TFA. Which is funny because at the time TFA came out, I had lost all interest in Star Wars and heard so many critics from people who’d seen it and said it was horrible and that Disney basically sold the franchise to the devil that I didn’t even want to see it, to keep the good memories closer to my heart. One night, one month after its theatrical release, I thought “aw fuck I might as well see it, at least for Carrie, Mark and Harrisson” so I went to the cheap theater that was near my home... I had zero expectation, and really I think it’s the reason why I loved the movie so much. I didn’t chose to ship Reylo, this ship whacked me like Harley Quinn’s oversized hammer with the Hades and Persephone aesthetics. When I came out, completely mesmerized with what I had just seen, I jumped on Tumblr as soon as I got home, and I ended up creating this blog just days later. I wanted more and more, fics, metas, fanarts, headcannons, theories, cracks, I could never get enough. For TLJ and TROS, I had lost most interest in the fanfics and the fandom (because as much as I love the movies and some people in the fandom, most of it can eat shit as far as I’m concerned). I heard so many critics of TROS already, I was afraid I was going to be disappointed. But I loved it. Only Star Wars can make me go from utterly uninterested to “Wow I can’t wait to see this new Star Wars in theater, what a time to be alive”, to a stage of total obsession that lasts for months. And that is the reason why I don’t give two shits about anyone disliking the movies. It’s sad you didn’t like them, but it made me feel the same way I felt right back when I was a child watching the original movies with my father. It feels like home. And that is the best thing I could ask for.

Like in TLJ, I cried as soon as I heard the first note of the opening. The last Skywalker story, the last time I ever see my Space Mommy on the big screen...

I know the Reylo community is about to be nuts. The whole movie, like TLJ before it, is basically a series of things we’ve already done in fics and theories. I am 100% positive I have read a fic where Rey and Ren try to hold back a ship with the Force and Rey ends up involuntarily shooting lightning. Whichever one of you did it is probably going to have a stroke in the theater. I nearly did.

And really, I wish I could see the look on the Antis’ faces when they see the movie. I’m sure it is a sight to behold. I wanted to scream “TAKE THAT, BITCHES” more than once. As in TLJ.

My biggest fear was what they would do with Leia. I knew Disney said they wouldn’t use CGI and chose to stick with the scenes Carrie had already shot, and I was afraid it wouldn’t honor Leia’s legacy. Well I... have mixed feelings. While the way they used Carrie’s scenes and made it look like she really is here is to be lauded, it sometimes feels like Leia had nothing interesting to say but they tried to put her in a dialogue anyway, because she needed to be seen doing (or rather, saying) something in the Resistance. And about her death... I still can’t put my finger on what exactly I didn’t like about it but I felt like something was missing. Watching the scene, at first I didn’t know if she was having a heart attack or if she stabbed herself or chose to give up her life because she somehow felt it was the moment, I’m still not sure just why she did what she did. I wish they put something more to motivate her decision and explain what exactly she does. I don’t know, a flashback of Leia holding baby Ben, a little more dialogue, something. Not just Leia suddenly getting up and going to bed whispering her son’s name.

I knew I was going to be disappointed. Among all the celebrities’ deaths, Carrie’s is the one that affected me the most, and believe me I was a wreck when Bowie passed. I miss her, I think about her every single day. And Leia deserved more, much more. When I saw TFA, part of the reason why I loved the movie was that, even though it pained my heart that Han and Leia’s son turned out this way, I thought they would make it right. I spent hours imagining a scene in the 9th movie where Ren would defeat Rey (incapacitate her the Skywalker style cutting her hand or something) and approach to give the killing blow, and Leia would enter the scene, pick up Rey’s lightsaber, look her son dead in the eye and say “Over my dead body, son”. Because Leia would never give up without a fight, even with her son. And she would get her son back, and her story arc would have been completed. I would have paid good money to see this.

Episode 9 was supposed to be Leia’s movie, just like ep. 7 was Han’s and ep. 8 was Luke’s. When Carrie died, I knew it would be compromised and it broke my heart, because Leia deserved better. She lost everything. Her parents, her planet, her father, her husband, her son, her brother, the Rebellion, the Resistance, everything. She fought all the way, all her life even faced with the worst odds she never gave up hope, she inspired hundreds of people to keep fighting for what is right, and she would never have a satisfactory ending. What a fucking heartbreak. She didn’t even get to see Lando. Leia deserved more. Every little girl in this world who grew up with her as a role model deserved more. But c’est la vie, as we say in French... My only solace is that I know fanfics and fanarts are going to make me feel a little better about it.

Of course I cried every time I saw her on screen, and especially when they honored her body, as we all honored Carrie when she passed away. This was one of the many fanservice moments, and surely the one I liked the most, although there was some concurrence (more to it later).

Another thing I didn’t like is what they did to Poe’s character. Many people disliked TLJ because of it, which they attributed to a political agenda of hate on men. This is so ridiculous and has already been debated enough that I won’t get into it. I did like the evolution of his character in TLJ, because for me it was an interesting character development as well as a good message: wartime is not only about barging in fights head first, shoot first think later, as is, let’s be honest, everything Anakin ever does. At one point, the narrative of the reckless hero who saves the day when a situation seems impossible and everyone begs him not to do it gets old. Sometimes in war, you have to think ahead, to plot, and yes, listen to what your allies have to say. And it actually was a good critic of toxic masculinity. Could the conflict between Poe and Holdo have been avoided with minimally sane conversation ? YES. But the message was here (as were Holdo’s hair and dress and WOW gurl) and I thought that was it, and Poe would evolve into a wiser person.

But this Poe is, at least in the first half of the movie, not very likable. Hear me, I never really liked Han Solo (never been into macho men) but I really loved Poe in TFA because he was genuinely nice and brave. Here, he’s bitter and annoying. I told myself that he was jealous of Rey because he heard of Finn’s crush on her and he wanted to keep Finn all for himself, which I know is just a crack headcannon, but hey, anything to make it better I guess.

Of course, I’ll never forgive Disney for not making FinnPoe a thing, when even Oscar Isaac ships them hard. And trying to make Poe flirt with the other girl (whose name I even forgot and whose face we didn’t even see, now tell me again how Star Wars has been corrupted by feminists... sigh) Speaking of, it is me or did two women kiss at the end ?

I liked the new droid, it reminded me of my puppy. But at the end, it was just another fanservice moment, it didn’t really do anything useful onscreen apart from being cute and funny.

When Rey was finally revealed to be a Palpatine as I hoped, I giggled like a wee girl. Watching TFA, I begged the old gods and the new that they wouldn’t make her another Skywalker, because it would’ve spoiled the Star Wars spirit for me. The whole franchise, in my opinion, is a story about fighting for what you believe is right, no matter who you or your parents are or where you come from. Even though Luke and Leia’s ended up being Vader’s children, they weren’t the only meaningful characters. Anakin was basically a Space Jesus and went from a total nobody to the Chosen One. I didn’t want Rey to be a Skywalker because it would mean that your importance would only ever lay in your bloodline, and that is depressing and totally against the spirit of the Rebellion/Resistance: no matter who you are, you can fight for what is right. For this reason, I wished for Rey to be either a real nobody or Palpatine’s granddaughter, which is also why I liked the fact that Han and Leia’s son turned out bad, even though it made me sad for them (Leia didn’t deserve this). No matter your bloodline, you can always make things right, or fuck up badly if you let yourself be taken away. And, of course, the reveal that Rey and Kylo Ren are two sides of the same coin (aka one of the many times where I picture us Reylos screaming CALLED IT in our seats) was exactly what I hoped for, a beautiful balance. I didn’t share Palpatine’s implication that a Palpatine and a Skywalker are meant to work together, though. That is not how I choose to interpret this duality. That is not what they end up doing, anyway.

Speaking of that old pal Patine, seeing the trailers I feared I would feel nauseated that they chose to reanimate the Big Old Villain, just like they reanimated the Even Bigger Death Star in TFA (how lazy can you be ?). But I enjoyed it. What saved it was Palpatine’s will to be killed by Rey to perpetuate the Sith rite of passage. I don’t even care if it’s cannon or not. I was afraid they would recreate Vader’s dilemma in ROTJ with Rey, but I liked the choices she made. And the throne scene worked for me. Like the rest of the movie it was flawed, for instance we don’t even get an explanation on how he survived. Just like we don’t even get what Finn wanted to tell Rey, even though it was emphasized several times. Was it a love declaration ? What happened to the rushed romance with Rose in TLJ ? (What happened to Rose, actually). While we’re at it, why did Palpatine want Ren to kill Rey ? So many questions. So many flaws.

And, of course I cannot comment this film without mentioning my sweet star-crossed lovers, Rey and Ben. First, I’m really eager to see your reactions. We did it, Reylos! Years of hate and slander and we were right all along. Let’s rejoice.

I like Rey’s evolution. For the moment, I don’t feel like I have too much to say about it (which is fine because this post is way too long already). I like the way she handles her emotions, I like her choices and her character evolution.

And Ben. Oh, sweet Ben. Although I think the part where he gets his old mask fixed wasn’t necessary, I kinda like what they did with him as well. I must say though that I liked his hair in TFA better. Oh boy, I loved Kylo Ren but I absolutely adore Ben Solo. And I think the way the movie depicts him even surpasses some fics. The moment when Rey gives him the lightsaber and he gets up and does the Han shrug ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I almost lost my mind. This ties with the hommage to Leia’s body as my favorite fanservice moment.

And their relationship... Look, I know I wet my pants really enjoyed myself in TLJ when they held hands, but that scene felt rushed even for me who ships them with the force of a thousand suns. Like many things in TLJ (and, as I said, also in TROS) it felt like things I had already seen in fanfics, but in the fics I enjoyed the most Rey had tried to kill him at least 5 mores times before even agreeing to have a one-on-one conversation with him. Their romance in TLJ felt like it was hormone-driven, but I get Johnson couldn’t really do a slow burn in 2 hours. When Leia died and they both felt it in the Force, I could feel that Rey wanted to touch him, to confort him, to grieve with him. I’m glad she didn’t. It wasn’t time. And I really like that she told him she wanted to hold Ben’s hand, not his. And Ben, the Dork Knight, finally realized that if he wanted The Girl, he shouldn’t, you know, threaten her and chase her but get back to the Light Side like she begged him multiple times. Because he really isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, this is apparently what makes him choose to tip over. That or the fact she saved his life. I was still frustrated by Leia’s death so I don’t know if I’m not entirely convinced because it happened just after, I’d have to watch it again. I liked Han’s moment, though.

And in my opinion, Rey and Ren’s fight on the wreck of the Death Star is as good as Anakin and Obi-Wan’s. My Reylo heart will always have a special place for their couple fight in TLJ (aka the best non-sex sex scene in cinema, don’t @ me) but I also liked this fight in light of their relation. Surprisingly, it reminded me more of their fight at the end of TFA, when we see Ren holding his blows and Rey barging in. I thought it was endearing.

The end. Oh my god, the end. I can’t wait to see the first gifs and I really really can’t wait for the HD gifs, because oh boy, I now only live for Ben Solo’s smile. That’s it, I found my will to live, my depression is cured. And the way he handles Rey’s body with the utmost care (while Finn apparently watches it and does or says nothing). And that kiss... And the SMILE. And the KISS.

Oh, dear gods. Oh dear.

I can’t wait for the first fics in which Ben doesn’t die and they live happily ever after on Tatooine or Naboo or wherever they damn want. Or the fics where he is indeed dead and they still share a beautiful relationship (if Force Ghost Luke could get his X-Wing out of the water, I’m eager to imagine what Ben would do with his Force dick, tongue and fingers. Forgive me, it’s getting late and I’m still flustered thinking of their kiss)

And the fact that she declares herself a Skywalker ? I know a lot of people are disappointed in this, but apart from the fact that she completely deserves the title in my opinion when she inherited the will of both Luke and Leia, which is reason enough, she is absolutely married to Ben and deserves her place in that family. Also, it’s again a beautiful way to remind you that bloodlines don’t matter as much as what we choose to do with our lives. And while I’m glad they showed Leia’s Force ghost (I would’ve been really mad if they didn’t) I’m super frustrated they didn’t show Ben’s. What am I to believe, that he gave his life for her, became one with the Force and vanished into litteral nothingness for him to never be seen again ? Like hell I don’t. Again, counting on the fics and arts to right this wrong.

The movie sure has its flaws, and I still have many unanswered questions, like what the fuck is the badge Maz gives Chewie, or how Rey does her lightsaber staff at the end, and I wish they explained some things better. I wasn’t sure if the saber Leia wanted Rey to have was hers or her mother’s. Most of those questions will be answered by bigger geeks than me in this fandom, so I really can’t wait to read from y’all.

I know a whole lot of people are going to hate the movie. The antis, the gatekeeping trve fans (already I’ve seen people say that those who enjoyed the movies are not Real Star Wars Fans and welp, we’re going to see a lot of shit). The manbabies who genuinely believe in a feminist takeover and see equality as a direct threat. I’m specifically happy they will be disappointed while I got the privilege of enjoying Star Wars as much as I did. It’s not my fault, or Disney’s fault even, that they turned out to be on the Empire’s side. And the day has not come when I defend a megacorporation.

Leia was the first SJW. The Resistance lives on. People will always fight against evil, like it or not. I know the world is a shitty place and we don’t have much hope nowadays for things to get better, and Star Wars has always motivated me to keep going and stick to my values and my convictions. I felt chills several times in the movie, like at the end where everyone comes to fight, and now I’m more willing to keep fighting than ever. For Leia.

Godspeed, Rebels!

#star wars spoilers #tros spoilers #star wars #the rise of skywalker #ben solo #rey #kylo ren #palpatine #alright now I go to sleep

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zombiesbecrazy · 5 years

Text

battle wounds, young and old

Summary: “Batman.” He paused at her words, but didn’t turn, instead choosing to continue to key his report into the computer. “You are injured.”

AO3

Now that the battle was over and they were back in the Hall of Justice, Diana could see that Bruce was walking more stiff and slowly than he had been before they had left on the mission, beyond the point of just normal fatigue. He had taken some hard strikes from their adversary, a strange creature that had somehow managed to be half gelatinous blob and half sharp knives and she had wondered at the time if he was hurt, but had pushed it out of her mind while they were still in the thick of things. Now she had the opportunity to inquire. “Batman.” He paused at her words, but didn’t turn, instead choosing to continue to key his report into the computer. “You are injured.”

“I’m fine, Diana.” The typing started up again, but she saw the way that his shoulders tightened under the scrutiny. She turned to Clark with a raised eyebrow. It wasn’t often these days that it was just the three of them on a mission which meant that old familiar routines could be fallen into with a comfortable ease. She watched as Clark methodically observed up and down before frowning to himself.

“He’s not,” Clark said, wiping the frown from his face and chugging down half of his bottle of water. He had ended up with some of the blob creature in his mouth and according to him, the taste was terrible. He spat into the sink with a grimace before wiping his lips. “He’s bleeding.”

The glare that Bruce shot at Clark was so intense that if it had been the other way around Diana was sure that it would have melted steel. It was close enough without the power of Superman behind it. “I have asked you repeatedly to not use your x-ray vision on me”

“And I’ve asked you not to lie about your injuries, so I guess we’re square.” Clark paid no attention to the venom coming from Bruce and drank more of his bottle, swishing the water around in his mouth in an attempt to get rid of the foul flavour. “He’s got a pretty deep gash on his lower back, Di.”

“Mind your own business, Clark.” Bruce growled and it sounded like he was trying to rile Clark up into an argument, but Clark ignored him, which just seemed to make Bruce more agitated and stubborn. “I’m fine.”

Diana sighed. It wasn’t anything new, it had just been awhile since this particular disagreement. “Don’t be foolish. Remove your armor and I’ll help you tend to it.”

“I can take care of it myself.”

“You can’t reach it.”

Bruce said nothing and continued to type, making no indication that he was going to listen to them anytime soon. Diana stared at Clark and tilted her head in the way that she had, the way that she said ‘let me handle it this time’, and without even a hint of argument Clark nodded and walked out of the room, presumably under the guise that he was going to shower, but more to give Diana and Bruce some privacy.

The typing continued for a few moments until Bruce abruptly stood up and walked over to the cot in the room, stripping off his armor as he went, and laid down on his stomach without a word.

His back was covered in scars, and she knew the rest of him was the same way. Twisted, blotchy, stretched and taut, everything inch of him told a story of pain and violence and toughness. He didn’t normally seem to mind Clark and Diana seeing the marks, but when there was a new one, something fresh and raw, was when he shied away, especially in the harsh, bright lights of the Hall or Watchtower.

“Are you ashamed for some reason, Bruce?” She carefully inspected the cut in question. It was two inches in length, just lower than his left kidney, and it was quite deep. Beneath her fingers, she could feel him tremble, but he said nothing, not giving any indication that it was due to the wound or her words. She decided, as she often did, to keep talking as if he had given her a response. “You shouldn’t be. These are the marks of a warrior who has seen many battles and preserved. I was always jealous of my sisters’ scars.”

“They don’t all heal like you?” His voice was muffled, face down in the bed. He had never said the words, but she knew it was something that he was jealous of; the near invincibility that she and Clark shared. It was something that he couldn’t train to be better at and was limited to the abilities of his humanity.

“A few do,” she murmured, examining the site further, and she heard him hiss quietly at the touch and she lifted her hands quickly. “Most do not.” Diana considered her options for treatment, but the answer was obvious. “This is deep. You need stitches.” He stayed quiet quiet as she gathered the supplies and put gloves on. “I’m going to place the lasso on your back as it will work as a numbing agent. It won’t compel to speak if you don’t choose to, but if you do, it will be truthful.”

He flinched as she laid it across his back, draping it in a carefully placed pattern, and once it was in place she could see his muscles relax beneath it. “It’s warm.”

Diana hummed in agreement and set to work. The room was quiet, with only the hum of the computers and lights to accompany them. She knew that Bruce liked the quiet, but she also knew that he liked to listen, and had someone how filled his life with people who enjoyed talking and sharing. “On Themyscira we believe that each scar tells a story of honour and valour of its host.” Diana tied off a stitch and smiled, thinking about how excited they would be, showing their battle scars off to one another, proof of their bravery and sacrifice. “My sister in arms, Hessia, has one of the most impressive ones that I have seen in all my years. It stretches from the top of her left shoulder, crosses her back and continues down her right hip and to her knee from a sword that was blessed by Artemis. It is wide and angry and beautiful to behold.”

Bruce lifted his head, resting his head on his hands, thinking about her words. “How did she get it?”

“It was in a battle with some of Heracles’ men. This was long ago, before Themyscira was a secret, when we were still at accessible among the Greek islands, when we could all travel freely and without restriction from our home between Santorini and Crete.” She smiled, knowing what he probably was thinking about it. “Before you look for it, it is no longer there.”

“Why were the Amazons in a battle with Heracles? Our myths always make him out to be a hero.”

“Yes, but sometimes heroes, gods and Amazons alike can be blinded by their own agendas. None are infallible, even if they say that they are.” She went back to her sutures as she told her story. “He was attempting to capture the Erymanthian Boar, one of his Labours, but crossed a pack of centaurs who were feasting with Amazonian emissaries. What happens next depends on who is telling the story, so I am uncertain what the trigger was for sure, but someone insulted someone else, and battle broke out.”

There was a snort from Bruce. “Just because someone was insulted? That seems rather petty.”

“War has raged through the ages for lesser reasons, Bruce,” she said wisely, “but yes. For three days they battled, blood spilling over the beach, bodies falling on both sides, until Heracles and his men conceded and withdrew.”

“Why?”

Diana laughed, because the reason was ridiculous. “They realised that they were on the wrong island all along and these weren’t the same centaurs that were rumoured to be guarding the Boar.” It was a legendary story among the centaurs and the Amazons. The time that the great and noble Heracles had almost failed in one of his Twelve Labours purely because he couldn’t find where he was supposed to be going. Her half brother had always been embarrassed when it was brought up.

Bruce turned back to look at her momentarily before straightening out again, shaking his head. “All those people were hurt or killed just because someone couldn’t read a map properly.”

Diana cut the thread, and started taping down gauze to cover the wound. “Indeed. I did say the entire situation was rather ludicrous, and that was far from the strangest battle I’ve heard tale of. Or participated in.” Her history, the mythology that humans studied with interest, always sounded so strange when retelling it, even if it were true. “Anyway, Hessia claims that it was Heracles himself swinging the blessed blade that caused her wound, but she is prone to exaggeration. She’s quite thrilled by it.” She gathered up the lasso into its coil, and tapped Bruce on the shoulder. “I’m done.”

He sat up, and quickly pulled his shirt over his head, covering all the marks on his torso again. “Thank you. I didn’t feel a thing.”

“I am very skilled. Athena taught me how to do stitches when I was young.” It wasn’t easy to surprise Batman, so she got a thrill out of the way that his eyebrows flew up and laughed. “I’m teasing you Bruce. It was the lasso.”

He held out his hand in a questioning way and she placed the coil in his hand, and as he had done many times, he inspected it carefully, running his fingers over the smooth glowing strand. “That’s fascinating,” he said more to himself before handing it back. “I’d love to study it some day and figure out how it works.”

“I don’t think that your science will be able to explain it, but you are more than welcome to borrow it some time.”

Bruce nodded and climbed off the bed, still moving slowly, but less rigid than he had been before. He picked up the pieces of his abandoned armour and started to head to the door to take it to his room, but Diana held up her hand to stop him, needing to finish up the intent of her story and say the words that she had said to him before, hoping that this was the time that he took them to heart. “I know you don’t like to show or speak of them, especially with Clark and myself, but,” she gestured towards him. "all those marks? They just tell me off all the wars you've fought in. You have won and lost, but been a valiant warrior throughout." Bruce’s face was blank, but she knew he was listening, considering them, hopefully more than he had done so in the past. "Be proud of how you wear them."

She expected him to keep going without a word, head to his room and disappear into the night, but instead he put his gear down and walked back and stood in front of her, still as a statue until he reached for the lasso hung by her hip again and held it tight. “Diana, I’m not embarrassed. I hide them because I don’t like how they affect you and Clark. You both get upset when I get hurt so it’s easier for me to deal with on my own so you don’t have to see it.” He twirled the rope between his fingers, watching the hue lighten up against his skin. “I’ve earned these, many of them fighting at your side. How could I possibly be ashamed of that?”

He dropped the lasso, picked up his gear and walked out the door, leaving Diana alone with her thoughts of a noble dark knight and the sacrifices he made for all of them.

#whumptober2019 #no.11 #Diana Prince #bruce wayne #clark kent #wonder woman #batman #superman #trinity

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