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gunpowderdtim · 3 years

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Talk to me about narratomancy? Just whatever you want to talk about it I'm deathly interested

!!!! Today today i had so many Thoughts. To many. It almost rivals March 2020 thoughts

My current running names for the four pillars of Narratomancy are as follows:

Universal Story

Narrative Role Filling/Casting Call

Story Echoes

Narrative Flow/Narrative Imperative

Each of these refer to VERY different things within the concept of Narratomancy. I will do my best to describe them. I have coined every term here but narratomancy, to which I believe the honor falls to @lucky-sevens

Keep in mind this is 50% theory, 20% headcanon, 30% canon, and that you do not have to agree with me.

Universal Story

Universal Story refers to the story of the universe, not stories in the universe, the story of the universe. In other words, the story of ‘Dr. Carmilla & The Mechanisms’

This section of Narratomancy is a tad more meta than the others, as it does in some form rely on real-world events to define it, as well as having little to no in story inpact on anything. Maki created the mechanisms universe, clear and simple. She founded the band, and hashed out the earliest lore. Dr. Carmilla is the main character of the universe, not of all the stories, but of the universe. Essentially, Universal Story refers to the fact that Doc C is the main character of the universe, and that the mechanisms are her side characters, in the story of the universe. I have taken to viewing it as doc carmilla stuff is the story of the universe, and the mechanisms is a spin off of that. Both are just as canon, but not specifically canon to eachother. Regardless, the universes story is Carmilla, from starting on Terra, to Aurora, through Loreli, into creating The Mechansims, all of that. All of that is the story of The Universe. The Mechanisms backstories are included in this, of course, because they are part of Carmilla's tale, not the other way around. Through this, I conclude that The Mechanisms are a spin off, focusing on the mechs rather than Carmilla. After all, The Mechansisms are a vessel for telling stories, for fleshing out the universe.

Narrative Role Filling/Casting Call

This refers to the mechs penchant for falling into narrative roles similar to troupes that they represent, or basically acting as a crutch for a story to continue. In OUATIS, Jonny acts as The Prince figure in sleeping beauty. He saves Briar. In being The Prince, he allows Snow's forces to attack cole, and win the war. Without that whole escapade, its likely the war would have stretched on years longer, and not have ended as it did.

Or, Ashes as Hades. What do mythological Hades and Ashes have in common? Hades was eaten by his father, Kronos, because there was a prophesy that told Kronos that his children would usurp him as king of the titans. Ashes figured out Mickey was the snitch, Mickey realized beforehand and lead Ashes into a trap. Killing them because he knew that they could ruin him. Basically, a parental figure betrays the child figure due to them knowing the child could ruin/destroy their position of power. As well as, if Ashes were not Hades, the Suits would not have met, and because of that the story of Ulysses Dies At Dawn would not have happened.

Continuing, while I am not nearly as much of an Arthurian legend person as I am a greek mythology person, some quick google searches revealed a similar similarity between Merlin and Brian. Basically, Merlin and the lady of the lake. She was basically his apprentice/a lady he was in love with? She basically betrayed and killed him after learning all out magic from him. Brian brought a priest back to life, only to have the priest betray and kill him. The tying together point here is clearly the "someone you helped betrays and kills you." That or, the fact they are both magical. Beyond this, If Brian were not on Fort Galfridian, Galahad would never have sought out the grail, and the entire plot would not have occurred.

In The Bifrost Incident, the Mechanisms do not take narrative roles in the way they did in prior albums. But this does not exclude them from being vital points in the story, after all, if Ivy were not present Lyf would not have been able to recover the data on the Black Box)

In all of these situations, (barring Jonny as The Prince) the Mechanisms have had some sort of connection point in the Roles they assume, as well as in their roles, changing the story so that it can continue to the ending presented in the albums.

Story Echoes

Story echoes are, to be blatant, simply canon. No argument, no theorizing, just canon. Refers to the fact that in the mechanism's universe stories 'echo' or basically repeat. In Kofi's fiction for HNOC, its shown rather blatantly that there are more Arthurs in this universe than just the one in hnoc.

In those burning instants, he’d feel the weight of it all, and know it was true. The golden age that never came; the city that stood at the dawn of a world instead of in its dying embers. And beyond – to a myriad of Camelots and a thousand thousand Arthurs, unfathomable worlds apart, each different, each fighting the same hopeless battle.

I know there are other examples of this, but they do escape me right now.

Lastly,

Narrative Flow/Narrative Imperative

This one is also directly canon. On the mechanisms blog, this post defines it rather well.

In the ask, the asker asks "...Do you heal injuries at an abnormal rate, or can you not be injured?"

In the reply, it is stated.

It depends on the narrative imperative - sometimes a Mechanism might die for a while, and only come back later when it becomes more fun, other times they’ll just heal/ignore wounds as they take them. It’s not something they can control, but tends to follow a rough logic of whatever works best for the story.

This is just canon, no arguing or stating otherwise. A mechanisms ability to heal depends entirely on what's best for the story.

Other examples in canon where this comes into play would be as follows:

GPTVTMK. In gptvtmk, Jonny's severed head is there. Is talks. It moves. In one of the fictions, it's stated Jonny cannot separate his heart from his body. Therefore, these are contradictory. Under normal circumstances, this would be a plothole. It is not here. Under narratomancy, Jonny was capable of being a severed head due to the fact that that would be best for the story.

OUATIS. Jonny walks through rounds and rounds of bullets.

HNOC. This example is a bit different from the rest, as it is not about a Mechanism. Galahad does something pretty fucking impossible.

And so Galahad stood and walked into the corridor. The guns trained on the preacher and opened fire.

Say what you want about faith, but it can have powerful effects on those that have it. It can keep you from faltering as the bullets start to slam into you. It can keep you walking as your legs are shot to bloody stumps. It can keep you laughing as your lungs are filled with shrapnel and lead. It can keep you smiling as half your face is blown away. It can keep a man like Galahad standing tall until the guns clicked dry.

It is my belief that this is another example of narrative imperative. Under normal rules, Galahad could never have done this. But his faith, his beleif, kept him going. And that was good for the story.

So. That wraps up my narratomancy ramble for today. hope yall enjoyed.

*EDIT: Nastya does say it's nanobots. My opinion is: it's both. The nanobots are narrative driven <3

#the mechanisms #asks

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thatisaname · 4 years

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You know those annoying 'actually everything is connected' theories ? Well, I've got one about The Mechanisms' albums

(Please hear me out I swear it's good)

The Bifrost Incident ends with a world-ending catastrophe. The Gods arrive into the world, dragged in by Odin's train, and they destroy it.

What's the first sign of their arrival ? Communications breaking down.

Civilization-ending catastrophes and communications mysteriously breaking down... Doesn't that remind you of something ?

Yep, that's it: the catastrophe mentioned in Holder of the Grail.

This unknown catastrophe that cuts Fort Galfridian from the rest of the world and destroys an entire civilization could very well be the one that starts in Terminus.

Meaning that the events in High Noon over Camelot could be the direct consequences of the events of The Bifrost Incident.

But it doesn't stop there.

Arthur survives. He is, as Mordred puts it, "the once and future king". To our knowledge, he was never officially called King of Camelot but sure enough, he kind of was the King of this place. But... what about after ? If we see Arthur again in the Mechs' canon, it means there's a strong chance he will wear the title of King.

And who is the only character in the Mechs' canon who ever wore the title of King ?

Now hear me out.

After the events of Ulysses dies at dawn, all hope seems to be gone. Ulysses dies in peace, but all hopes of revolution seem to have faded away. The Olympians' grasp on the City seems impossible to challenge in the slightest. But one day, a strange ship crashes in the middle of the darkest street of the City.

Out of the wreckage climbs a man, with a half-empty pistol. He takes a look at the strange new world around him, and nods gravely. He has a destiny to fulfill.

Arthur will be King. That's the lasts thing Mordred told him, and he won't let this last thread to his past disappear. So, he gets to work. In one month, the whole city has heard of him. In one year, even the Olympians fear him.

When people ask him if he's really going to fight the Olympians, the man who calls himself Cole laughs, and answers calmly that it's not the first time he takes over a planet.

The City learns to fear his name and his gun. To many, he's just another crime boss. Some rumors start to spread, saying that he is an Olympian, just like the others. And this gives Arthur an idea.

Arthur starts to take a stance against immortality and the Acheron. He uses his men to spread anti-Acheron propaganda, calls out the Olympians' corruption and even manages to expose the Sphinx scandale using Oedipus' old research. The oppressed people of the City follow him and many of the Olympians' men turn against their old masters. A year later, he launches the first world-wide rebellion the City has ever known.

General Cole utterly beats the Olympians, and executes them all - which takes a little longer than expected, but still, finally works. He seizes all of their research and locks them away. He is elected King of the city, now renamed New Constantinople.

(PS: Hades doesn't stop the rebellion and just escapes. Mainly because they've run the Acheron for so long they got a bit bored of it. Also, because Brian seems to really like Cole for whatever reason.)

At first Arthur's reign is calm and prosperous. King Cole grows old and stays merry. But eventually people start realizing that Cole's longevity might not be natural. His subjects, especially the older warriors who fought at his side during the Revolution, start to get a bit suspicious: what if Cole had used the Olympians' technology to extend his own life ? What if he had become an Olympian in the end ?

Arthur didn't become immortal, but he did use the Olympians' research to extend his life far beyond his normal lifespan. Now that he is King, he refuses to let death get in the way of his destiny.

You know the rest: King Cole turns into a bloodthirsty monster, and finally, General White's rebellion puts an end to his reign and his life.

Now you're going to say: "But Arthur and Cole are so different. How could Arthur become Cole ?"

So first of, Arthur turned evil only after almost a millenia of technology-expanded life which definitely caused damage to his mind. As Jonny says in Once: "the technology that had extended his life throughout the millennia had warped his mind as it had withered his body".

(Which, by the way, is also what seemed to happen to those who were "brought back" from the Acheron in Ulysses, cf Orpheus' backstory)

But Cole isn't that different from Arthur:

- Cole and Arthur both fight with a gun, and both seem very skilled at it.

- Cole is paranoid. Which would make a lot considering Arthur's backstory: just when he was about to save his world, Arthur saw his two lovers being shot in the back by his own son, who then proceeded to completely destroy the world, sparing no one but him. Nobody in the universe would be more afraid of betrayal than Arthur.

- Cole is driven by a thirst for conquest. Arthur was too: in the very beginning of HNOC, he takes over Camelot and establishes a personal rule on the city. With good intentions, sure, but still.

- They have the same outlook on fear.

Remember when Arthur said that ?

Well...

Yeah...

(Also the three little pigs could act as a sort of dark reflection of what Arthur, Guinevere and Lancelot once were: three unbeatable warriors, matched by no one... except this time they're not united by love for the other two, but by fanatical devotion to a leader)

So, in this theory, the "ending" of the Mechs' universe would be pretty optimistic. No matter what insane authoritarian rulers will try to do to stay in power, justice, truth and love will win in the end - even if it requires a lot of suffering and death to get there. Or, as Arthur said:

#the mechanisms #the mechs #jonnathan sims #jonny sims #jonny d'ville #the bifrost incident #high noon over camelot #ulysses dies at dawn #once upon a time (in space)#arthur #king arthur #arthur the mechs #ashes o'reilly #brian #i'm sure it probably wasn't intended #i understand authors have themes #take it more as a headcanon

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lucky-sevens · 4 years

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mechs deep lore compilation post

so! maybe you’ve read the other compilation post i made of basic lore/how to get into the mechs! maybe you want to know more! or maybe you’re a fan already and want to see how deep down this rabbit hole you can get!

well, good news for you: i have gone down the rabbit hole and hit bedrock only to find maki yamazaki standing by my side with a pickaxe! it is time for mechs lore part 2: electric boogaloo also known as ‘wow blue have you considered sleep’

rest under the cut!

i’ve tried to organize this, but given how many random facts there are, it’s hard! decided to start off with lore for each character (in order of them joining the mechs in-universe), including all the carmilla lore at the end; then move into general world lore/a bit of album lore, and finally more obscure/unknown facts, such as explaining the whole scuzz thing! also, citing the sources has been difficult, as a lot of things are from, say, old twitter posts and the like. there might be less links here than you all would like, but bear with me- compiling all this lore is quite difficult!

disclaimer: unlike stuff like the wiki, this includes a lot of my own theories and red stringing, and while i’m noting if something’s fanon or canon, the fanon may occasionally make its way into my theories!

links to the songs will be mostly TheVoidSings’ youtube lyric videos, as i don’t want to find the links to all the different platforms they’re on and the videos are lovely and accessible!

also- i’ve done some significant editing on the mechanisms wiki, as have other talented people- go check it out! it’s a good source of lore!

now on w/ the actual post!

crew

jonny d’ville

his lore is fairly concrete, but since he’s an unreliable narrator, we don’t know what bits can be trusted! his backstory song is one eyed jacks, which gives a pretty clear picture of events, but here in his crew bio he says that he made up new texas, and doesn’t have a very good memory of events in general. (it’s implied that he didn’t lie about killing his father, but we don’t even know that for sure.) a note: unlike the others, we don’t know what happened to his heart in order for him to be mechanized.

the aurora

the aurora’s lore is a mess. here’s what we know for sure, which is an edited version of what i have on her wiki page, (where i have also given a list of her known physical attributes);

she started off as a moon, but was weaponized and turned into a ship. she initially was a navy ship, but mutinied and joined the rebellion, participating in the october revolution, in which nastya died and was mechanized. this may have been her choice, but it is more likely that carmilla and/or jonny forced her into it, as they are the ones who won her from the cyberian navy.

when they stormed the ship, a woman was trapped inside- specialist 278 tereshkova, presumably aurora's programmer. What her and aurora's relationship was like is unknown, but aurora did not make any attempt to save her, so it may have not been positive. before dying, tereshkova managed to program a final distress message into aurora, as well as coding the mechanisms' blog.

she’s likely to be based off of the historical battleship aurora, like nastya is based off of the historical russian princess anastasia.

now, it’s time to get into the main theory about her: that aurora used to be briar rose! i’m collecting all the evidence on it, as well as all the evidence that can disprove it.

here’s a refresher on briar rose’s whole deal, taken from ‘the aurora strikes’-

The Rose Reds were the most effective of the soldiers created from Rose's genetic material, but they were not the first. Rumours spoke of an early prototype, known as the Briar Rose, that had malfunctioned and slain everyone on the desert moon of Briar, where she was being grown. But she was not dead. As the Mechanisms discovered, instead, she slept, at the heart of the defence grid that surrounded New Constantinople. The grid was composed of Thorn-class gun emplacements and was virtually impenetrable. And in its centre, the Briar Rose slumbered, plugged into the system, her anger, her rage, her hatred and her fear, fueling the machines, and focusing their gun turrets.

the main support for the theory here is that over time, briar rose could have fused to the moon, which is one of the very few conditions in which a biomechanical weaponized moon seems plausible and not just like a collection of vaguely cursed words. however, in the fiction ‘by any other name’, which is some collected lab research on briar rose, there’s this line- “During transportation and integration of the specimen, take all precaution and care.”- key word here being transportation. so she must have been moved off the moon.

the fiction i cited to disprove the theory actually has something that further supports it, though- the presence of a mysterious woman in king cole’s lab, who could be carmilla. hood, the revolution’s hacker, notes on a picture of her ‘[No idea. The others I’ve been able to find evidence of, but she’s a fucking ghost]‘. the description is a bit off, though, as she’s described as a short, pale, woman with hair long enough to be pulled back and carmilla is quite tall and has short hair- as well, in a later part of the fiction, the woman is killed and does not revive. however, there’s also another who could plausibly be her, noted here- ‘A tall woman sits opposite Prof. Root with a tray of her own. From her stature, it is conceivable she was one of the figures in the chemical suits. They talk sporadically, but the audio is heavily corrupted.’ she isn’t one of the ones killed later on, either, so that’s possible.

we know carmilla knew aurora when she was a very young moon and raised her practically from birth, so if she is one of those two people, it would make sense.

in ‘the aurora strikes’, aurora pushes to save briar rose- nastya explains this as ‘she can not bear to see another biomechanical organism in pain’. in my own writing about aurora, i interpret that as her having very high empathy, but there could be a more personal connection here. this is also notable as the only time aurora is mentioned in-album beyond jonny calling the mechanisms ‘the crew of the starship aurora’.

nastya rasputina

nastya’s backstory song (cyberian demons) was only performed when they were still dr. carmilla and the mechanisms, so it’s harder to find! thevoidsings has made a lyric video of it here, though, and it gives another very clear picture of her backstory! there’s also the fiction of the same name, which i didn’t understand upon first read-through but is basically a nastya character study, covering different points in her immortal life.

her performer went on hiatus for a while, and as an in-universe explanation, the cyberian sequence was written! in which nastya flies aurora to cyberia, infects herself with a computer virus, and transmits it to the entire planet, causing it to explode. this is all in the cyberian demons fiction i linked above, and with it are two other tangential fictions- one presumably just before those events, and one that’s an outsider pov.

there’s also out, which i’d suggest reading rather than just looking at my summary; basically, nastya has a crisis over aurora changing so that it’s harder to recognize her love, and ends up leaving the ship to float away into deep space- this is presumed to be her death, but that is never confirmed and nastya seems to assume she will wake up at some point.

ashes o’reilly

ashes’ whole deal is quite straightforward, which is a nice break from aurora and (to a lesser extent) nastya! their backstory song is lucky sevens, and it’s elaborated on further in their crew bio; interestingly, ashes was the one most into the idea of immortality at first, and also gave clear consent to carmilla.

ivy alexandria

we don’t know that much about ivy, which is fitting, as she doesn’t either! the most clear information we can find about her is in her crew bio, which can be summarized as: she grew up in a library!

archive footage explains more about her memory situation. she has no memories of anything before she was mechanized, according to this line ‘[...] she can tell you dates, and places, and body counts, she can list for you the exact circumstances of each event of her long, long life (at least, every event since that time, long ago, among a maze of bookshelves in a library that, awake, she can no longer describe to you, though once she knew its every turn by heart, when a woman stood over her and offered her eternity: before that, there is nothing at all).’ she also processes her memories differently than most people- they’re more like records, instead of things that affect her emotionally. (archive footage is also beautifully written and very much worth reading!)

the toy soldier

would say it has concrete lore, but it’s also almost solely responsible for fucking up my timeline and the album lore, so i’m rather angry at it. nevertheless, its entire backstory can be found in the fiction ‘the story of the toy soldier’. additionally, there’s a short story about its time fighting in the revolution of once upon a time (in space); presumably, this is the first time it did so, though it was likely in the war at least twice and possibly even three times. the mechanisms were only watching the second time, though it’s not out of character for it to have participated in the war again, and there’s also the dr. carmilla song, eleven, (which is about a war and uses a lot of rose symbology so it’s likely the revolution) where it is present. notably, carmilla had left the mechanisms by the time once upon a time (in space) takes place on their timeline, and the toy soldier is the only one there. at first, i interpreted that as carmilla meeting the toy soldier before it had met the mechanisms, but there’s two inconsistencies there: firstly, it doesn’t recognize her when it joins the band, and secondly, in the song they leave together. this increases the likelihood of it having been in the war three times.

we actually have a recording of the toy soldier’s first time joining the band- the mechanisms @ lashings! (part one / part two / transcript) there’s also a note of that show in the story of the toy soldier! they bought it because jonny was in jail (x). interestingly, that show is the first recording of rose red, and it’s later noted jonny was in a rose red prison!

now it’s time to get into the main theory regarding it, which also will factor into the write-up of ulysses dies at dawn later! i personally subscribe to this theory, or at least, most of it.

here is frankie @byron-von-raum‘s post- the theory here is that the toy soldier is the rebodied mind of the widow’s fiance. i’m not going to get too into that part, as i don’t personally incorporate it into my lore and more importantly frankie already has a post on it! read that if you’re more interested!

the most important bit here is the evidence it collects regarding the toy soldier living near labyrinth; in one of the pictures from the toy soldier’s backstory, there’s a dionysus brand wine bottle. the consensus he comes to is that the toy soldier lives in a colony of earth that trades with labyrinth, and while i think that’s possible, the all-encompassing nature of the city makes it more likely that they would have a minimum of outside communication, so the toy soldier would just be from the city proper. i will get into the impacts of this/expand on it more in the world lore section!

another thing: the angel has an out of character explanation! if you look at photos of old mechs gigs, jessica law looks similar to the drawing of the angel in the story of the toy soldier! their voice being stolen was most likely a reference to that.

drumbot brian

brian’s backstory is laid out in his crew bio! i’d summarize it, but to be honest, it’s already a summary, so i’d suggest just taking a second to read that! sadly, this is all of what we know about it. the priest from his backstory was apparently made almost immortal in some twisted form of mechanization, and has never forgiven brian for it/is still trying to hunt him down (x).

his bio is also where his morality switch is introduced! (interestingly, it takes a far lower role/is mentioned far less in canon than in fanworks.)

there was originally going to be a backstory album about him called indistinguishable from magic. this never happened, but ben below is working on a new one called the wanderings of drumbot brian! no more knowledge on this currently.

the main theory about him is that he had some kind of alliance/is lying about something to do with carmilla! we know from maki that carmilla didn’t go out of the airlock (more on that in her section), and when brian is questioned on what happened to her, he doesn’t give a concrete answer. this is in contrast to all the other mechanisms, who assume she fell out an airlock. here’s what he said:

I will not point fingers and lay blame. I do not know how it came to pass that Dr. Carmilla left this vessel, whether by fair means or foul, and so I will not engage in this painful discussion. I hope she did not suffer, and that we may forgive the perpetrator of this deed.

he’s speaking very formally here. (fucking nerd). well, no; legitimately, this is not the normal way he speaks in other contexts. he could be masking something. we know that even when he’s lying, he’s not good at it, and this comes off as clearly odd. in support of this, i believe one of the songs on his unwritten backstory album was called ‘the doctor’s demise’ (though i could be remembering incorrectly).

there’s not much more evidence we can draw on here to come to a consensus, though!

something else to note- i’ve written this other meta about his prophetic powers! feel free to read if you’re interested in that aspect of his character!

gunpowder tim

of course, tim already has a whole mini-album to himself (gunpowder tim vs the moon kaiser), but there’s a couple more niche things about him, though not as much as aurora and ts!

mainly, the implications that he destroyed the sun. there’s an old mechanisms tweet that states he 'was floating in the wake of a detonated star’. additionally, there’s this old blog post, which turned into a bit of a fiction! the figure speaking is not named, but given the other mechanisms who speak (therefore knocking them off the possibilities list) and the fact that the post was made around the time tim joined, it’s likely that it’s him. now, he says this:

“It wasn’t the deep space that drove me crazy,” he said, his voice low, calm and polite. “It was the sudden realisation that I was entirely responsible for the destruction of my entire civilisation, and happy for it.”

though destroying the moon and his other actions in gptvtmk could possibly count for this, it would fit more if he had destroyed the sun.

both those posts also imply that he was floating in space for an incredibly long time. i don’t know how he survived if so, but it seems very likely that’s what happened.

i considered these posts being too early/having a changed canon now, like the odd use of different pronouns for some characters in the earlier fiction, but they seemed to have gunpowder tim vs the moon kaiser mostly worked out by the time tim ledsam officially joined, as they perform it at the only recorded gig from that year with him (port mahon 2011), which was around when the second blog post was made!

marius von raum

we don’t have a written backstory or backstory song to go on for him, but kofi young (his performer) is working on a full album about him called ‘the death of byron von raum’!

the blog post kofi made about it as a summary is the main source of marius lore that we have! i’d highly suggest reading it, but the main points are:

1. it’s going to be very dark and tragic, and shows that marius at heart isn’t really the kind of comedic figure that he comes off as in the band! ruth @thedreadvampy (the mechanisms’ official artist, as well as morgan’s sister and kofi’s partner) has also made a tumblr post that connects to this!

2. the world he’s from used to be high-tech, but has devolved over time into 18th century levels of technology! what this boils down to is; what we assume is marius and an unknown friend (more on this in raphaella’s part) manage to discover ancient technology and attempt to use it! all we have here is this quote om the blog post- ‘In the middle of this, two kids hiding from the soldiers discover an army of ancient mecha and use them to fight back, but only end up plunging the world into further chaos.’.

3. anime protagonist marius!

we also have this small piece of writing, screenshotted here (monogoggle...)-

[image id: a screenshot of writing, most of it out of view/hard to make out. it’s also in the middle of the line, so the breaks are off. however, it looks to say ‘at the controls of RISML/cockpit is cramped and d[...]/has his monogoggle over his/controls are uncomplicated/the neural interface. They [...]’ end id.]

raphaella la cognizi

i’ve been very deep down the mechs rabbit hole for over a month now, and yet i’ve found hardly anything about her!

there’s a small theory i have, though it doesn’t have too much supporting evidence! in marius’ backstory, it mentions two kids, and raphaella and marius joined together (first mention of either of them is together, in this facebook post!) when questioned about marius and raphaella, nastya says a story instead of stories (x). (that post also clarifies that carmilla was not involved in either raphaella or marius’ backstories!) this could potentially point to raphaella being the other person from marius’ backstory. the evidence against it is that if raphaella featured that heavily, r. l. hughes would have said something about the album as well instead of it just being kofi talking about marius, but it’s still interesting to think about!

there’s also a theory that she was the preacher’s daughter from brian’s backstory, but the only real evidence there is that she could have used his tech to mechanize herself (which her doing is only fanon!) and that she performs ‘lost in the cosmos’.

dr carmilla

this is most likely going to be the shortest section, as it’s basically another crew member; that being said, there’s a lot of lore here!

if you haven’t listened to the carmilla albums, i’d really suggest doing that! there’s two- exhumed and (un)plugged and ageha prototype edition! the story there is harder to put together than in the mechs backstories, especially because the songs are mostly out of order, so i’ve decided to just straight up summarize my interpretation, along with what we have to go on from maki, instead of framing it like a theory, as that’s the easiest way! still, please bear all this with a grain of salt- it’s most likely to be contradicted in the new album maki is working on.

carmilla and her girlfriend loreli lived on a planet called terra. for their childhoods, it was a fairly okay place to live (though i elaborate on this a bit in the world lore section!) however, it was bombed; most likely taking the role of an alternate universe hiroshima, as the blurb on her bandcamp says ‘Dr. Carmilla tells the twisted tales of a dystopian future following WWII having ended very differently.‘ after this, the planet sunk into a nuclear winter.

loreli got sick and died; or, she should have, but carmilla saved her by turning her into a vampire as well. this resulted in loreli losing her morals and becoming abusive towards carmilla. carmilla was too deep in love to see this, and stayed in the relationship for several years.

we don’t know what happened to make her strike out on her own, but eventually she did, and created the mechanisms. while with them, she recognized her own failures with loreli, and left the mechanisms (which they all believe was caused by jonny d’ville pushing her out an airlock, rather than her own volition.)

from there, she traveled back in time to the point where loreli was dying, and let it happen- potentially burying herself and loreli alive, which she survived due to her immortality and loreli did not.

however, she was trapped underground for a hundred years. when she is finally found and dug out, she starts enjoying herself (i.e. committing murder). for some unknown reason, she clones herself multiple times, creating the in-universe version of maki yamazaki.

the mechanisms assume she pursued them after she was pushed out of the airlock, and that that was what eleven was about, but i’m not sure why she would do that, given that she left them of her own volition. because of time shenanigans, it could have been far later on her personal timeline; maybe she simply wished to reconnect with them after all those years.

that’s all we have; we don’t know if she died, or anything like that!

world lore

all the folktales and normal history the irl mechs work off of also exist in-universe! (for an example- the toy soldier and ivy start reciting the walrus and the carpenter together in lashings, and the mechs also do alice in wonderland as a song.)

we know the alternate universe theory is correct, mostly because of this piece in the fiction on kofi’s blog-

He’d feel the burden of that task pressing down until it felt like it’d crush his chest, and he’d wake every day gasping for breath, feeling older than he ever had, older even than Ector.

And as he screamed inwardly, Galahad would meet his gaze with those crazed eyes of his and grin, and Arthur would know again that whatever had spoken to Galahad was moving him too.

the mechanisms are most likely traveling between several alternate universe versions of folktales, and occasionally alternate versions of earth! (cyberia, tim’s earth, terra...) this is likely why everyone in their stories is human, and is actually low-key evidence against drawing them as aliens (though ofc feel free to have fun!)

i was initially going to put all the album lore in its own separate sections, but a large amount of it is how it intersects with other pieces of lore, and the rest isn’t necessarily niche enough to cite here? my personal advice is that if you want to learn more about the albums, read the fiction! i have a compilation post of all the fiction up on this blog, and you can find it on the website here!

let’s start with the mechanisms’ roles in ulysses dies at dawn, though! we know for sure ashes is hades, brian is the oracle of delphi, and the toy soldier was a nymph (which is actually quite worrying, considering what that means and the inherent issues with consent there, but i digress.) tim most likely took on the role of achilles (more on that here). then, we know some of the mechanisms’ activities and can guess their roles from that. raphaella was helping athena on her research, marius was psychoanalyzing the olympians, and jonny was committing mass murder. it’s a common theory that one (or three) of the mechanisms was cerberus, but sadly i couldn’t find any evidence towards or against that.

i said in the toy soldier’s section that i would talk more about the implications of it being from labyrinth here! the main thing is the fact that, for it to join the rose red war, the city must have interacted with king cole at some point. it’s a risky thing to pose a theory on the toy soldier’s allegiance towards a certain group, but the fact that it seemed to stick with the rose reds here might also mean that the city was, in fact, under king cole’s power. this fits in nicely with the greek mythology aspect of it all; king cole, in that universe, could have been a stand-in for the figure of kronos/saturn!

a few other theories on how the lore intersects:

1. high noon over camelot takes place after the bifrost incident! in terminus, we see communication breaking down, and that could have been the reason the station was isolated. the mechanisms go from it to the bifrost incident, but as they canonically travel in time, that’s not enough to disprove the theory!

2. arthur becomes king cole eventually! this is mostly going off of the fact he’s called ‘the once and future king’, but also the fact that cole used to be considered a good king.

a few loose pieces of worldbuilding:

people from new constantinople seem to be longer lived, and their culture is built around age as a concept. the older you are, the more wise and important you are. specifically, in this fiction, snow is dismissively noted as ‘barely fifty’ and king cole’s age is held up as evidence to why he’s a good ruler.

terra, carmilla’s planet, has two major languages; high terran and low terran! high terran is a more regulated, formal way of speaking, specifically something that only the rich and privileged tend to know. there are many dialects, but the grammar is dictated by the capital. low terran is a creole language formed from several others, including high terran, that most children are taught in school as the baseline. (though they might speak a completely different, less widely spoken language at home!) carmilla speaks low terran but not high terran (although she pretends to know the latter.)

the mechanisms were all (or mostly all) at fort galfridean at one point; don’t have the source to hand, but marius apparently became a prophet to the saxons for staring into the sun for a very long time.

if you’re looking to draw album fanart, there are a few things i know aren’t as widely known; the ones i can think of off the top of my head is orpheus having a ‘foppish haircut’ (the type of thing that falls under that definition is narcissus’ undercut), and snow’s disfiguring scar. there is also official album art; i, personally, have not seen much of it, and i’d encourage coming up with your own character interpretations.

one last theory- it’s highly likely carmilla was involved in the events of the bifrost incident. in the mechscord (sadly, invites are closed due to the difficulty with handling the boom in the fanbase) maki yamazaki has mentioned that part of the criteria for picking a mechanism is ‘good friend for lyf’. at first, i assumed that she meant good friend for life, but when asked on that she was worryingly cryptic (as tends to happen), and she made a joke earlier in character as doc c about accidentally calling odin. though immortal lyfrassier edda most likely became fanon just so they could become a mechanism, this is a piece of evidence towards them actually becoming immortal.

my personal headcanon is that to gain true immortality (which maki has said king cole and the olympians do not have) you have to have some kind of eldritch component, so carmilla had to go to odin for aid. this is supported by the fact that in drive the cold winter away and cyberian demons, their mechanisms are noted as having a rainbow sheen to them!

other lore

scuzz nishimura

scuzz has built up a bit of a reputation for being the ‘cryptid mech’, but her lore is really quite simple! she was a member of the band back when they were doctor carmilla and the mechanisms, but left before they became more popular, so there’s not too much knowledge about her. she appears in this fiction and the only two recorded gigs from that era (lashings and homesick). she’s also visible in several photos!

i know i’ll get people in the notes asking for photos of her if i don’t include any, so have this;

[image id: a cropped picture of scuzz nishimura, looking tired and resting her head on her hand. she looks to be wearing white gloves and some kind of sweater or waistcoat, and her hair is cut short. her cello is also visible, as is someone else’s hand. end id.]

we don’t know too much about her; all we really have is that she was their cello player!

assorted things with no explanation

there’s this old piece from the wayback machine-

[image id: a screenshot of what looks to be the fiction page from a old site for dr carmilla and the mechs. the writing reads;

Writing

( The Aldwich Horror } A short story in which Dr. Carmilla attempts to solve the mysteries of the Aldwich Horror, the strange appearance of a new crew memeber and several zoologically dubious pets.

( Disinterration } A cautionary tale about exhuming corpses.

end id.]

‘disinterration’ is most likely a reference to the carmilla song exhumed, but i’m unsure about ‘the aldwich horror’. the most intriguing bit there is ‘the strange appearance of a new crew member’. i’ve researched the other aspects in an attempt to figure this out. aldwych is a closed london tube station- it served as a bomb shelter during the blitz, which is interesting as both carmilla and tim have backstories involving the world wars (though only carmilla’s is world war ii specifically; tim’s is wwi). the zoologically dubious pets are most likely the octokittens, which we know the toy soldier brought on board, so it would have to be in a place on the timeline after ts joined and before carmilla left. the only mechanism that joins in that space is gunpowder tim, so it’s possible that he is the new crew member.

the mechanisms blogs have a lot of incidental lore, so if you’re this deep in i’d suggest looking at my compilation post of some of my favorite posts of theirs!

and that’s it! we did it! i can finally go to sleep now. i’m so tired. please. i am going to die. i have homework. thank you all so much. please consider coming to my funeral service.

#the mechanisms #the mechs #my posts #compiliation post #meta

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herding-octokittens · 4 years

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Finally found the time to go watch the Death to the Mechanisms livestream (and then go listen to the songs that got cut out on Bandcamp), and I HAVE MANY TEARS THOUGHTS! (This is somewhat chronological, but only barely, and way longer than I intended)

The entire band just keeps pulling out more instruments! Marius switches from his violin to whatever that is in Thor and I had to do like a quadruple take. I’m pretty sure I counted like 17 guitars on stage at one time. Ivy has a trumpet. When did that happen? I don’t know, I’m just rolling with it. The Toy Soldier breaks out the tambourine. Cool! Guess that’s happening now!

Oh my gosh, Ashes and Tim singing together as Loki and Sigyn? I love them so much! Their voices are amazing!

Poor Lyf having to deal with Ivy, Raphaella, and Marius for sixty years... How many violins has he summoned? Where do they go? Does Lyf ever take them away and now they just have an evidence room entirely devoted to Marius’s violins? I can totally see all three of them just randomly pulling instruments out of nowhere. Ivy has a never ending supply of recorders and flutes and then one day Lyf stops by and she has a full on trumpet and he just walks away to try and quit right then and there. Raphaella has a grand piano once.

That laugh in Red Signal? When Lyf has finished the Yog-Sothoth chant and Jonny just starts his maniacal laughter?? That right there. That’s what I’m here for.

Squamous. Squamous the second. Squamous3. All the squamous.

Raphaella’s new wings! Shiny and pretty and bright! I am very gay!

I legit didn’t notice when the Toy Soldier got on stage, I just heard it harmonizing in Lost in the Cosmos and was like “That’s new...”

“That was fucking depressing.” You want some livelier music? Yeah? Great! Here’s this upbeat jazzy blues song about the crime boss god of the dead and everyone losing everything they ever had in horrible, heart-wrenching ways!

Just because your prophecies are true doesn’t mean they’re useful, Brian. See: every Greco-Roman myth ever. Those oracles were really bad at making sure people actually understood tf was going on. Also, I really love Brian’s voice and I’m sad he doesn’t sing in more songs.

I mean, it is totally humanly possible to sing and play the drums and the guitar and the banjo and the accordion at the same time. Totally.

Jonny really goes for it as Galahad, and I give him all my respect. Fuck yeah! Top ten religious zealots of all time! Like the mice in a hat!

“No bearing on the validity of his baptisms.” Did you get baptized by him? Jonny?? Did you??? I need answers!!!

“Speaking of motherfuckers,” When were we talking about motherfuckers? I mean, I’m not complaining, Riddle of the Sphinx is a really fun song, but when? Where? Context? ...Nope? Cool.

“You’re projecting.” “Again.” “I really don’t think I am.” “Again.” No, you are definitely projecting, Jonny.

Moons in love? Gravity? Death of millions of people? End of entire civilizations? Lesbians? I don’t see a difference...

When Tim, Raphaella, Brian, and the Toy Soldier are doing the round at the beginning of Rose Red? All the feels!!! It’s one of my favorite Mechs songs ever because my summer camp sings it (albeit, different verses), and so having a full round going brought me back to good times! Y’know, back when people could gather in groups of more than three and sing together about depressing lacks of weddings. Good times!

And then the Toy Soldier starts singing again in Rose Red and now my heart is pumping and I’m about ready to straight up leave college and go on a madwoman rampage across the universe committing war crimes and having an over dramatic tragic wlw love story!

“But that’s not the death you came to see.” Nope! Not ready! You’ve already killed every single character in all of your albums, and then sung all the other death songs in this one single concert. I do not need this!

Jonny mentioned Nastya and I just had to pause and stop for a minute or twenty.

The music keeps shifting when they’re all dying!!! Raphaella’s harmonizing as she dives through a black hole, Blood and Whiskey playing behind Marius as he’s eaten alive, Lost in the Cosmos on the violin was when the dam of tears really broke, and then when Jonny calls them all the Toy Soldier’s friends???? NO! TOO MUCH!!

Gunpowder Tim died because of a fucking seatbelt... I don’t know how to deal... Such a mood...

Jonny watched Marius die. Jonny watched and timed and he was definitely waiting for Marius to come back to life so he could mock him, and then he didn’t and now I’m crying even harder.

And then Laid in Blood??? The book is closed so I’m going to go binge read fanfiction and pretend that didn’t happen.

“Sing along if you still know the words.” I, in fact, do not still know the words. I am a blubbering mess trying to stifle my everything because my roommate is currently asleep.

“It’s been ten years!” “Erm, ten millenium...” What even is time?

“The Toy Soldier as Jessica Law!” That doesn’t seem right, but I don’t know enough to say otherwise.

“Your humble first mate.” “First ma-” “Wait what?” “I know what I said!” It happened! He said it! He is the First Mate!

So that happened. I am crying a lot. If anyone wants to talk about literally anything Mechs related, please hit me up! Otherwise, I am probably going to be randomly spamming the tag this weekend...

#finally found the time to listen and so here I am #the mechanisms #the mechs #death to the mechanisms #dttm #death to the mechanisms livestream #jonny d'ville #gunpowder tim #marius von raum #drumbot brian #ashes o’reilly #the toy soldier #raphaella la cognizi #ivy alexandria #nastya rasputina #the aurora

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girlfriendsofthegalaxy · 3 years

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tuesday again 1/26/21

i always feel like i should do something special for the last tuesday of a month but i never know what that thing should be

listening my girlfriend is a witch, by october country. they’re from california, this was released in 1968, and song sounds like it and exactly like the album cover art. wiki says this band is “folk rock” but i don’t know that i quite agree with that? i can hear a surf rock influence, but there’s also a disco sort of underline? as always please remember i am partially deaf and my musical opinions should be taken with a full pound of salt.

i’m not on tiktok bc i’m old and it feels precisely tailored to eat up all of my time. my sister and my best friend ARE on tiktok and they send me a carefully curated selection (many a day) of the “best” ones. this song has been on a bunch of em

undefined

youtube

reading absolutely jack shit bc i have a no-fic-rec policy for the reading section

watching blue submarine no. 6. i have a lot of conflicting feelings about this. let’s get the good shit out of the way- postapoc sea setting is CANDY to me. good ship design. every submariner i have ever met has just been the weirdest fuckin person and i think that’s carried through here very well. there’s some fun military maneuvers here that are more complex than your typical anime battle scenes and that’s neat. there’s a sad disheveled anime boy i think is nice to look at. the very early CG has a charming amount of jank to it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiOgsBagzyw

navy go brrrr

the bad- the plot is tenuous to nonexistent. the ending feels cheap, rushed, and unearned. i don't know if i’m missing some stuff, culturally- it feels like there are parallels being made here to japanese submariners in wwii and the pacific theater but i don’t know bc i’m a dumb american and nobody seems to have looked at this obscure four-episode OVA with a critical historical lens.

the very ugly- the creature design is initially interesting but after ten seconds you’re like “whoa hey this tribal society of mutated beast people is actually quite racist” and it does not get better throughout the series. the lead enemy admiral is an infantile shark dog man with dreadlocks. the special lady sea creature people are just tits out all of the time and there’s a very uncomfy scene with them that i don’t know how to feel about but wish it were trigger warned in some fashion.

further sidebar: why must we be either naked or in a skin-tight suit to pilot a mech when our male counterpart gets to wear a normal ass flight suit. why does anime do this (i know why but like. a rhetorical why).

playing pc still broken (upside down smiley face emoji here) so i’ve been combing through my phone like “wtf is in here, what did i buy and mean to play” and the answer is 2018′s Heaven Will Be Mine, also here on Steam.

Heaven Will Be Mine is a queer science fiction mecha visual novel from the creators of queer cult horror visual novel We Know The Devil, about joyriding mecha, kissing your enemies, and fighting gravity’s pull. Follow three women piloting giant robots in the last days of an alternate 1980s space program fighting for humanity’s future—or ditching their jobs to make out with each other instead.

this? this is candy to me. this is a good ass video game. i played through one route last night and i cried. i cannot talk about any of it without major emotional spoilers.

making i was going to say this is a fallow week bc have been too fucking busy to make anything, but then i remembered a thing i’ve been meaning to do that took like ten minutes.

as previously stated, i haven’t done shit this week other than pull my amaryllis out of hibernation(feels a little spongy, concerning) and feed my sourdough. i always feel really bad when i have to throw out sourdough starter, so i’m going to dry the discard and see what happens in like a year? question mark? you’re really supposed to dry the fed, very alive starter but i don’t want to feed it twice this week and this is a very low-stakes experiment. i suspect, when/if i revive the dried discard, it will take much longer with more feedings to become an active healthy thing again but we’ll see! do not stay tuned to this one, PLEASE change your dial.

no pics bc it’s just sludgy dough on parchment paper on a cookie sheet

#tuesday again #tuesday again no problem #guess what i'm awake and very tired and i will not remember to post this in the morning

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sam-roulette · 3 years

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rip to the alt Sasha survives s3 “the slaughter ritual is a battle of the bands wherein one of the 4 main mechanisms albums has the key to ending the world” crack au for being quite literally impossible to write

so here’s how it was meant to go down:

- Jon gets kidnapped by Alfred Grifter himself and when he’s returned to the archives he has all 4 Mechs albums and also punches Tim in the face in a slightly slaughter-induced haze

- Jon immediately snapping out of it and being so apologetic he tells Tim to punch him back so they’re even. Tim, tiredly, tells him that no. He is not going to punch him back. “You don’t have to worry about if it hurts,” that’s. Not The Point.

- there’s some slaughter juice on the albums so everyone starts getting a little bloodthirsty, a fact that becomes apparent as the Archives splits along party lines- Jon is convinced High Noon Over Camelot is the world-ender, while Sasha insists that it’s The Bifrost Incident. Tim’s on Sasha’s side; Martin says he’s impartial but implies Jon may have a point, and only chooses Once Upon A Time to keep up the veneer of not being biased.

- Sasha manages to convince Tim to grab Ulysses Dies At Dawn so that none of the other possible combatants have it Just In Case that’s the one that ends the world so that she can stop him. Tim questions who’s gonna stop Sasha if he can’t get close once Red Signal starts and she says not to worry, I’ve got a plan

- the plan is she gets Not!Sasha out the basement to be her bandmate, promises it that it can eat her after the competition and (it can’t because of ) threatens it with a suspiciously high voltage taser. She has no plans to let it eat her later. She is a liar

- Tim, predictably, does not take this well. Sasha tries joking that he doesn’t get her “artistic vision” and Tim says he doesn’t know what he’ll do if Sasha gets taken again. The argument gets more heated from there.

- Turns out, things between Sasha and Tim didn’t get magically better once Sasha was spat out the table at the start of s3

- and in fact Tim has been more distant and unsure of how to act around her, since even if she’s His Sasha, he has NO memories of her- just what Sasha says and vague half-recollections that he can’t tell if its something the Stranger put in him or if its the hazy remnants of this woman that he loved once.

- Sasha finds herself being treated like a stranger by Tim, and while it’s not really bad per se- Tim isn’t cruel to people- it still Hurts when she tries to reach out to him, when it looks like he’s obviously hurting, and he just. Doesn’t Open Up. It doesn’t help that he can’t be in the same room as Jon for long and that he can’t look Martin in the eye, and it doesn’t help that it’s only after Literally Threatening To Leave that Jon cracks and admits everything that happened in s2

- The day of the contest is getting nearer. Martin is suddenly very suspiciously good at the violin despite never having lessons growing up, which he jokes is a “natural affinity for strings”. He’s been on the phone a suspicious amount.

- The day before the contest and tensions are high in the Archives. Jon’s locked himself in his office to do “vocal exercises”. Martin hums everywhere. Tim and Sasha are coordinating on The Bifrost Incident, but Tim keeps it strictly professional and terse, and it’s slowly driving Sasha up the wall.

- Finally, Tim says, “During this... we won’t hurt each other, right? While we’re in there- we can keep our heads on straight.”

- “Of course not.” Sasha replies, immediate. “You’d never hurt me.”

- “... Right.”

- The day arrives and it’s revealed that Jon, Martin, Sasha, and Tim are the Only combatants. It was Grifter’s game to get them to fight each other the entire time, in a strictly organized battle-like way. Not!Sasha gets a pass as Sasha’s “pet” and Sasha very quickly steps on its foot to keep it from saying anything that might disqualify them.

- Listen the actual battle itself ? Is messy as fuck to figure out. like we never actually properly figured out the rules. we have a spreadsheet of like which number placement every song in all 4 albums were and everything and while some combinations would’ve made for some SICK turn based combat would’ve been an absolute Nightmare to actually carry out

- each song actually has an effect and transforms both the stage and audience as the show goes on- so there’s a bit where Jon has The Hanged Man Rusts and that garners complete silence as it accidentally prophesies the rest of the story, Thor causes Sasha to actually begin to spark with lightning, cool stuff

- the only truly comprehensible bit was round 4. Hellfire, Sirens, Cinders’ Song, and Sigyn.

- Hellfire sees Jon give into the Slaughter energy more than any other point as the entire audience starts fighting each other in religious ecstasy, the other stages where the assistants are isolated beginning the melt and warp. Sasha helps Tim back up just before he slips into the flame below and Martin tries to climb higher as the hands of congregation reach for him, or past him, or to grab Anything

- Sirens cuts through the last bit before it all goes truly to hell as Tim picks up a guitar and starts lulling everything down to a sense of normalcy. There’s a moment, at the intersection of when Jon stops trying to scream the last dying cry of Gallahad’s maddened ramblings and the audience returning to their seats and his voice acapella filling the hall- we can chase away your worries- where there is Perfect Clarity. Tim could stop after this moment. Before the end of the verse, he could stop, and maybe it’d put an end to this.

- His eyes land on Sasha. Before he can stop himself, the verse is finished. Sleep in peace and serenity. Then he can’t stop singing anymore, and Sasha watches the drowsy smile suddenly bloom across Tim’s cheeks

- It’s when Martin, never once looking in Jon’s direction, jumps from his platform to Tim’s that Sasha knows something’s wrong. Because she wants to do the same thing. So she takes a page out of the real Ulysses’ playbook- she has the Not!Them tie her to one of the beams on her stage and promise, no matter what she says next, to never untie her. Not until someone else starts singing

- Just as Sasha predicted, she starts getting odd herself. Tim is looking in her direction, so longingly as he sings that she Knows it could only really be for Her, that he wants her to just lay in his embrace and be well taken care of- and she stops wanting anything beyond it. So she struggles. She hisses and bites and kicks and screams to try and break free of the rope while Tim smiles, beckoning, so they can finally have that reunion they’ve both wanted. The one where they hold each other and say that it’s okay, that they have each other, that it’s Safe

- Someone unties Sasha. It feels like Tim’s arms around her and she melts, no longer recognizing the pretty man singing on stage. Not!Tim looks back at Tim from across the gap, holding Sasha tenderly, and grins. Tim stops singing, for just a moment, surrounded by legions except for the sole person he wants to see most in the world, in the arms of something that doesn’t even look remotely like him

- The moment’s enough and, as Martin sees Jon looking strangely adoringly at Tim, he realizes that wait a fucking minute. And immediately gets so jealous he hijacks Tim’s spotlight and restores actual equilibrium with Cinders’ Song. Tim is once again left alone on stage, strangely desolate against the large setting.

- Sasha regains her balance and tries to answer it all with Sigyn, but the Not!Them refuses to stop looking like a mockery of Tim. Jon is kind enough to take Lyf’s narration while Not!Tim is “kind” enough to take Loki’s lines. Sasha tries to appeal- why back away? This time I’ll stay; come stand at my side as we make them pay...

- When she sings “remember your wife!” Not!Tim says, “I don’t recall,” playfully, mocking. He mocks when he says “She’s still enthralled,” one part disgust for Sasha’s feelings and one part gleeful accusation to Tim- look what you did to her. She still feels the effect of your song, even now.

- anyway long story short everything gets more and more screwy as everyone is magically made to forget that they’re supposed to be stopping this thing and start only wanting to be the one to get to their finale quickest. Blood and Whiskey sees Sasha nearly lose an ear from a bullet. Underworld Blues has Tim nearly causing hell to freeze over with his chilling plea as Orpheus. No Happy Ending signals the first of the audience member deaths.

- It also signals when Grifter leaves weapons on the stage and has the team go at it. It’s not really so bad, at first- Jon and Martin forget about fighting somewhere along the way and kiss, Sasha is knocked out for a few seconds and is somewhat conscious, which is Not a good state to enter Red Signal in, and Tim is trying desperately to figure out where to go next

- Tim has Ties That Bind as a last attempt to gain control of the situation and very nearly manages to snap Sasha out of the absolute maddened hell state she’s about the enter. If only he could find it in himself to omit some lyrics- if only he could find it in himself to be less bitter when singing I was betrayed by the one I was to wed.

- There was no more love there - my heartstrings long since cut...

-There was no more love there.

- “Ah.” Is Sasha’s last coherent thought, “I see.”

- “So that’s how it is.”

- Martin’s mic cuts out. Jon’s mic cuts out. Tim’s mic cuts out on the last line.

- Sasha picks herself off the ground, slowly. Far more slowly than the words falling out of her mouth. Not words- an incantation. A Chant.

- y’ai ngah Yog-Sothoth...

- turns out Jon’s not the only one who can do a mean incantation. And unlike Jon, Sasha’s had some vocal training at some point in heavy metal. Make of that what you will

- The guitars kick in at the end to dive straight into Ragnarok I and Alfred Grifter announces that the winner is Sasha James amidst the screaming and destruction of the roof caving in reverse, showing a blood red sky. The Not!Them has disappeared, presumably already running into the faceless crowd to find a new body for the incoming new world Jon’s trying to get to safety and Martin’s begging Tim to hide, that there’s not gonna be getting through to Sasha now

- But Tim knows the album because he worked with her on this. For this scenario. Just in case. He knows it’s safe enough to move when Sasha-as-Sigyn questions I know this man, why is he here...? Knows to hold still, make himself as small as possible, when she begins Ragnarok II. The crowd isn’t so lucky and they melt into each other, a mosh pit of rock n roll violence that flashes and gleams with pocket knife and piercing and heels and nails. Just barely manages to make a run for it as Sasha takes on the final lines as the Void.

- Envy your dead for now unfurled / this madness follows to consume / your world.

- Tim is just close enough in ear shot to yell, not even attempting to sing at this point with a throat as dry as his is, “You- don’t I know you?” The world tries to skip Ragnarok III to get to IV. Tim tries to be louder even with the rubble giving way under his hands, “Weren’t we friends?”

- The gentle piano kicks in instead. Tim could nearly cry with relief when Sasha turns his way and, even if she doesn’t look like she fully gets it yet, answers, “Once- I remember. And now, when it ends...”

- In harmony. The first they’ve managed in a long while. Where are you going?

- “For vengeance...?” Sasha left uncertain. Answered in a songbird lilting voice, “For love.”

- There is no mention of death. Only an immediate harmony as they both sing Perhaps that’s enough!

- The guitar that comes on isn’t the end of Ragnarok III. It’s the lonely riff of Thor as Sasha hauls herself up with a drum mallet she steals from the broken down remains of backstage. Sung, almost like a tune a soldier marches to, fury like thunderbolts burns in my veins...

- She smashes Grifter over the head and feeds him into the mosh pit to be torn to shreds. As his shriek of laughter echoes off of the walls, she takes the mallet to the lonely speaker at the back of the hall, playing the final riffs, and destroys it.

- The world stops ending. Everyone is left in the wreckage, passed out and bloody. Jon pokes his head out from a trap door in the ground. Martin mutters from offstage somewhere. Sasha is heaving out breaths as she stares at the broken equipment, still clutching the hammer she threw in the works.

- Cue the moment where she finally turns to face Tim. They look at each other. Then, they’re grinning, and they’re starting to run. They end up toppling onto the ground together, laughing with wild relief, arms tight around each other the entire way through as Tim’s the first one to let loose the first catharsis tears.

- Tim tells her that was the coolest damn thing he ever did see. Sasha says she’s sorry for almost ending the world to have him see that, and Tim’s just going are you kidding ??? This was the best way this could have ended up!

- And Sasha says that it wouldn’t have happened if not for Tim stepping in like he did. And Tim says he’s sorry too, for everything. For the way he acted, and Sasha says that none of them were in their right minds, but Tim still insists that being in right mind or Not, he made some shitty choices there-

- and of course Sasha kisses him. Tells him he was simply brilliant. And Tim grins and kisses her and tells her that no no no SHE was absolutely brilliant, she had TRUE star power-

- and it’s not like before. Tim still can’t remember everything, and the memories Sasha has of the Archives before the Not!Them leave a sour taste in her mouth after she’s released. Tim is gonna need a long time before he can really go back to being his cheerful self, and Sasha needs time to come to terms with missing so much of her own life. But

- But at least they can lay together at night and find a little peace and serenity in the interim.

#tma #man we had so much planned it felt like a waste not to tell anyone #use this idea if youd like i guess but also hgvjb good luck doin it buddy #also ev erything's below the cut bc there is truly. So Much oh no

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im-the-king-of-the-ocean · 3 years

Note

5 for Nuts and Dolts, because the hug in the trailer is still on continuous loop in my head and the only thing better than an angsty hug is an angsty hug AND KISS 8 for Data Farm, because I'm weak for the idea of Oscar being unexpectedly prince-like and making Penny feel like a princess (or the other way around) I can't remember the number, but the interrupted kiss for rosegarden No pressure to do all of these, I just couldn't decide on one ship because I love all of them

(as a brief refresher: Data Farms Fic Link, Rosegarden Fic Link)

...and here’s to finally being able to answer this ask and revealing the ridiculous (sort of) secret plan I’ve carried out over a month (or two maybe idk) and what’s now a six-chapter fic!

(no, I’m not joking, this (Rose Puppetry) was literally A Thing bc I’m Like That)

So, to explain, way back when I was doing requests for this kissing meme, it was around the same time that you introduced me to the Mechanisms music, and then the Magnus Archives after that.

Subsequently, I thought it would be really cool to make one of these three requests Steampunk-themed. I decided on the Nuts and Dolts one bc, when I first listened to Once Upon A Time (In Space), I associated Ruby and Penny heavily with Rose and Cinders (I think it was bc the album was brought up in reference to Souls or something like that? Also Rose Puppetry was my alternative solution to just derailing Souls completely into Being A Steampunk Fic).

Anyways, I started out with the intent to do a short oneshot where Penny breaks into a facility to save Ruby, which would be reminiscent of the final attack on Old King Cole that led to Cinders being reunited with Rose.

Except then I got carried away by world-building (bc it was so freaking fun) and Rose Puppetry became an entire multi-chapter fic all of its own.

For the record, I think I originally @ you when I posted the first chapter bc I was going to say that the fic was a response to this prompt and then quite literally forgot to actually say that anywhere. I then realized that, if I kept quiet about it, I could turn it into a surprise, which seemed like a fun thing to do, so I went for it.

Anyways, I hope you enjoy the end of Rose Puppetry!

5. Throwing their arms around the other person’s neck, hugging them close before kissing them passionately on the lips.

...

Rose Puppetry Ch6: The Tale of Little Briar and the Huntress in the Cottage

Summary:

A century ago or so, Atlas set out to conquer the world. Penny was built to be a spy, an infiltrator meant to find weaknesses in Vale’s defenses before the invasion.

She did. Then she fell in love. And rebelled against the kingdom that had created her.

Ch1. Ch2. Ch3. Ch4. Ch5.

Every child in Patch knows of the Huntress who lives in the cottage on the outskirts of town. Their great protector, who keeps the dangers of the woods at bay so they can go about their lives safely. No one knows, not really, where she came from. The youngest kids among them generally want to ask, but their parents usually shush them before they can try. It’s considered improper, prying into what should be left well enough alone.

Briar knows more about the Huntress than any of her peers, but you’d never catch her boasting about it in the school yard. No sir. She can keep a secret extremely well, she can. Well that, and she doesn’t want the Huntress to be upset with her and ask her father to not allow her to make the weekly deliveries anymore. Briar loves visiting the Huntress’s cottage, with its duck pond and its thick bramble of roses. But, most importantly, she loves being let inside and allowed to watch the Huntress work for just a little while.

For, in addition to being their protector against the scary monsters that lurk in the woods, the Huntress is Patch’s one and only mechanic. There used to be more, of course, but that was back before Briar was born and they all got called off to fight in the Great War against Atlas.

Briar once asked if the Huntress fought in the Great War, too. She remembers how the Huntress fell silent, the gloomy expression that had seamlessly eclipsed the Huntress’s entire being, and quietly swore never to ask again. It’s not important for her to know, Briar decided. Not like learning how gears, cogs, and screws all fit into machinery and make things like the big clock in the tower in the center of town work.

It’s a sunny day. A few wisps of clouds linger in the sky, but not many. Briar skips home from school, humming a happy tune of her own creation as she goes. She briefly pauses to scratch the noses of the cows who’ve wandered to the fence of their pasture bordering the road. The cows moo at her and sniff Briar’s fingertips for treats.

“Sorry, I don’t have anything for you today.” Briar giggles as their chin whiskers tickle her. “If I have time after I visit Ms. Rose, I’ll try and bring you all back something, but I make no promises.”

She continues on her way, only stopping in the Mech Field to pick a collection of bright, cheerful wildflowers. Briar pauses to consider the ruins of the old war machines, but Ms. Rose once warned her very sternly not to get too close to the fallen mechs without her supervision, so Briar doesn’t. Instead, she takes a spare hair ribbon out of her school bag, ties it snugly around the stems of her wildflowers to keep them properly bunched together, and heads home.

Her mother has the weekly grocery basket for Ms. Rose waiting when Briar arrives. She helps Briar securely fasten it to the deliveries bicycle and situate the flower bouquet on top so the bumpy ride won’t jostle them too much.

“Keep an eye on the time,” Briar’s mother gives her the usual warning. “And, if it starts growing dark, have Ms. Rose walk you home.”

Briar rolls her eyes. She’s big enough to come home all on her own, even after sunset, she thinks. Still, she promises, “I will!” before taking off on the bicycle.

Smoke lazily drifts into the sky from Ms. Rose’s cottage’s chimney as Briar makes her approach. The huntress’s dog, a great, big creature with a lumbering gait and a lolling tongue, appropriately named ‘Wolf’, runs to greet Briar as she approaches. She slows her bicycle to a stop and dismounts.

“Hey, Wolfie.” Briar scratches behind the dog’s ears, and gets licked enthusiastically for it. She laughs. Wolf dances excited circles around Briar as she walks over and leans her bicycle against the cottage. “Stop that!” Briar commands Wolf, only half serious. “I have to get the groceries inside!” She nudges the door open and walks into the cottage.

“Ms. Rose? Are you here?” Briar calls out.

“In the workshop, Briar!” Ms. Rose yells back from somewhere deep inside. Briar grins. With some care, she shoves the groceries in the refrigerator. Ms. Rose will organize them however she pleases later, after a few more hours of work, at least.

Briar goes to hurry through the kitchen, but remembers herself, and pauses at the sink to fill a pitcher with water for her wildflower bouquet. She carefully lowers the flowers in and unties her hair ribbon from around their stems. Then, after tidying the bouquet a little, Briar walks further into the cottage. She doesn’t go immediately to the workshop, but to a room Ms. Rose only recently granted her permission to enter.

Briar pauses and takes a breath in the doorway of the bedroom. It’s always a bit weird to do this. She’s never actually met Ms. Penny. Not back before, when she was awake. Ms. Penny doesn’t know who she is. Never had the chance to, really.

Regardless, flowers always make Briar feel better when she isn’t feeling well. With Wolf padding loyally at her side, Briar approaches the bed where Ms. Penny serenely sleeps and situates the bouquet on the table beside it.

“Good day, Ms. Penny,” Briar speaks politely, for she’s never spoken to a mechanical person, or one who’s never woken up, before Penny. Briar still feels kind of odd about that, but, since she first stumbled across Penny’s room, she’s been determined to try and make her feel better (if that’s at all possible).

“Spring’s here. The first of Mr. Oobleck’s lambs were born the other day.” Briar starts her usual, short, babbling update about life in Patch. “They’re extremely cute. I’ll draw you a picture, so, when you wake up, you won’t have missed seeing them.”

“She’d like that, I think.”

Briar jumps, and spins around. Ms. Rose stands in the doorway, leaning against its frame. She smiles softly at Briar, and joins her by Penny’s bedside. “Penny never…I think she always lived in cities before we met.” Ms. Rose takes a deep breath. “I’m not sure she’s ever gotten the chance to see a newborn lamb.”

“Then this will be her first time,” Briar says confidently.

“Yes.” Ms. Rose smiles sadly down at Briar. “Run along to the workshop now. I left today’s assignment out on the table for you. Try to see if you can get started on your own. I’ll be along in a moment.”

Briar does as she’s told, but not before stopping just outside the bedroom and sneakily poking her head back in to watch Ms. Rose gently smooth Penny’s long, soft copper curls and place a kiss on her forehead.

“Don’t wait too much longer to wake up, my love, alright?” Ms. Rose whispers.

Briar slips away, feeling a little guilty about spying on such a private moment. She doesn’t know why Ms. Penny sleeps, what caused her to fall into her lasting slumber in the first place, but Briar does know that Ms. Rose came to Patch to have a quiet, safe place to repair her.

The assignment Ms. Rose set out for Briar that day is a small music box. One that had, in all likeliness, played a lovely melody at some point, but has long since worn out. Repairing it shouldn’t be the hardest of tasks. Not now that Briar is a handful of months out of transitioning from ‘kid who gets to watch the Huntress work’ to ‘unofficial mechanic’s apprentice’.

Ever so carefully, Briar removes a tiny, rusty gear from the music box with her tweezers and sets it aside. She looks to Ms. Rose, who smiles reassuringly back at her. Briar finds the replacement gear, plucks it up with the tweezers, and goes to insert it right where it needs to—

“Hello?! Huntress are you here?” A voice shouts into the cottage. Wolf scrambles up from lying under where Briar’s feet dangle off her stool and barks loudly. Briar jumps. Her tweezers fall out of her hand. The replacement gear goes flying.

“Just a moment!” Ms. Rose calls back. She helps Briar retrieve the gear from where it’s fallen to the floor. “Think you can work on your own for a bit?” Ms. Rose asks. When Briar nods, the huntress wipes grease and oil smudges off her fingertips onto her leather apron and goes to see who has come asking after her aid.

Briar half listens to the ensuing conversation about a broken down car on the road as it drifts through the cottage to her. Ms. Rose briefly returns to the workshop for her portable tool kit, and then leaves to go repair the automobile in question. She promises she’ll check Briar’s handiwork upon her return. Wolf ambles back over to Briar. The dog circles a couple times to settle, and then returns to napping.

For the next couple of hours while Briar works, things are quiet and peaceful. She finishes repairing the music box. With bated breath, Briar winds it up and sets it down on the worktable. A soft tune fills the air. Briar can’t help but smile.

Too excited to wait until Ms. Rose gets back to show off her success, Briar carefully scoops the music box up in her hands and carries it to Penny’s room. She puts it down by the wildflowers she brought earlier, and lets it play its song a second time.

So caught up on listening to the music box’s melody is Briar, she doesn’t catch when it’s joined by the sounds of other mechanisms whirling and clicking. Ones that have long remained at rest, but, at the sound of a comforting song, rouse again.

Movement catches Briar’s attention. Before she realizes what’s happened, a pair of bright, dazzling green eyes meet her own. They almost seem to glow, as if they’re lightbulbs that have spent a long, long time charging up and want to celebrate the chance to finally illuminate.

“H-hello?” The voice is hoarse, creaky with disuse. It’s nothing like Briar imagined it would be. “Briar?”

Briar blinks rapidly. “You know me?” slips from her lips before she can stop the question.

“Of course.” Tentatively, Penny moves to push herself up in a sitting position. One of her hands slips before she can put weight down on it. Briar rushes forward to help support her. “Thank you.” Penny smiles gratefully at Briar. “To answer your question, I heard you. The days you came and talked to me and brought me flowers.” She pauses. “I’d very much like to see Mr. Oobleck’s lambs.”

“Oh.” Briar takes a minute to process this. “I didn’t think…” she’s not sure what to say. She’s imagined this moment hundreds of times, but, now that it’s happening, Briar’s mind is frustratingly blank.

“It’s alright.” Penny gives her a small, soft smile. “It’s not everyday someone you’ve only known as a ‘sleeping lady’ wakes up.”

“I-err-yeah…” Briar pauses. “If you don’t mind me asking, how could you hear me all those times? Since you were asleep?”

Penny inhales deeply and exhales, the clockwork of her body moving with the motion. “It’s a bit complicated. A short explanation would be that, even without enough power to function normally, I could still record audio.” Penny shoots a knowing smirk in Briar’s direction. “I would love to give you the fully detailed explanation. Later. If you don’t mind, there’s someone who’s long overdue for a hug, I think.”

Briar’s eyes widen. “Oh! Ms. Rose! Of course!” She scrambles up to fetch Penny a walking stick to lean upon as she gets up. “She went out to repair someone’s car. I think it’s just down the road!” Briar hovers, ready to support Penny if she needs help with walking. When Penny makes it to the doorway on her own, Briar relaxes a little.

Together, with Wolf keeping pace with them (and Briar would swear the dog is keeping as much a careful eye on Penny as she herself is), they make their way outside.

Penny pauses, and looks up at the blue, blue sky. She blinks. If she were capable of crying, she probably would have. “I never dreamed I’d see it again.” Penny whispers. She turns to look ahead, down the road she and Briar intend to walk, and sees someone coming toward them on it. Penny gasps.

There is one sight that Penny dreamed of, longed for, during her oh so very long slumber. One sight, her vague, ethereal thoughts could never quite capture, but tried to constantly. The person she sees on the road doesn’t quite fit the picture Penny remembers. The person is no longer a youthful maiden, but a full grown woman. Her black-red hair is longer, kept in an untidy braid over one shoulder. She’s wearing the garb of a mechanic, and not combat dress. Branching scars, leftover from a (Grimm) time Penny would very much like to leave in the past, dance across her skin.

“Ruby.”

Penny breathes the name out at the same time Ruby sees her, stops, and stares.

A moment passes where no one moves, where the world is held frozen in shock. Anxiety ripples over Ruby’s face. Worry that needs no verbal words to describe it. That Penny won’t love this older version of her. That this person she had to grow into while she patiently waited for Penny to wake up isn’t someone Penny will be able to bring herself to love.

Penny takes a step forward, and then another. Her walking stick is cast aside as she recalls how to push her legs into motion as fast as she can. She runs, reaching Ruby in the blink of an eye. Eager to vanquish all the anxieties she sees in her beloved, Penny takes Ruby up in her arms and spins her around and around. She laughs, causing Ruby to laugh with relief too.

They’re together. Nothing, no war or conflict or spiders who want to control them, can get in the way of that any longer. They may have once been puppets in a grand scheme, but they’re free now. Free to do whatever they wish, as long as they wish.

Penny stops spinning Ruby around. She holds her close, drinking in the sight of Ruby’s sparkling, silver eyes. Without thinking about it, they press their foreheads together and simply gaze at each other.

Later, they’ll let Briar commit a condensed version of their story down on paper. A fairytale, it will be. One only a handful will actually believe there’s truth to, but that’s just as well to them. Right now, this moment? This moment is just for them.

Ruby wraps her arms around Penny. Penny leans in. Their lips find each other. Tentative, unsure, aware they have a lot to adjust to again with each other (but eager to get started). The kiss is soft and sweet. A promise of many, many more to come.

They don’t live happily ever after. For Penny and Ruby’s story doesn’t end here. It goes on, with many days full of love, and equally as many filled with struggle as they learn each other’s embrace again. There are moments when the scars of the past threaten to consume them, and moments filled with nothing but laughter and joy.

Overall, though?

Penny and Ruby live together for a very, very long time, and that time together is largely marked by their shared happiness.

#rwby #nuts and dolts #ruby rose #penny polendina #steampunk au #rose puppetry #whirls writing #not the first time i've gone overboard on a request #but the first time i've waited until literally the last chapter of the fic #to reveal that that was the plan all along

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project-stormblessed · 4 years

Note

1-50

Alrighty!

1. What color are your socks?

All of my socks are either completely black or black and gray. Lol.

2. Have you ever lied about your age? Why?

Only once when I was like, 12 or 13 making a second Youtube account lol.

3. What is something you regret in the past month?

Becoming distant and isolating myself from most of my friends. Quarantine has not been good for my mental health tbh.

4. Do you believe in love at first sight?

Honestly? Not sure. Part of me doesn’t, and part of me does. Can’t really get either part to agree one way or the other.

5. When was the last time you wrote someone a letter on paper? Definitely well over a decade ago. Honestly can’t remember.

6. How old were you when you first learned how to ride a bike? Who taught you?

I was 11 or 12, and it was my older brother Jack who taught me. He also taught me how to drive lol.

7. Do you get along with your parents? Why or why not?

We get along well enough. Now that they’re retired the house is a much calmer environment.

8. What’s your favorite season?

Spring. I love seeing everything in bloom—the colors are very pleasing to me. I love seeing lots of green, and lots of lush plantlife.

9. Do you currently like someone?

Hmm, not entirely sure about that one. I guess I don’t really have any strong feelings for anyone in particular. Maybe. 👀👀

10. Have you ever used an Ouija board?

Nope, and I don’t plan on it.

11. What’s the last song you sang?

It was a song for choir this past semester, though I don’t remember the title that well or the composer.

12. What’s your favorite scent?

Never really had a favorite scent, honestly. My sense of smell has been pretty dull/weak for as long as I can remember and I’ve never really given much thought to any favorite scent.

13. What’s your favorite urban legend?

The Roswell UFO incident of 1947. It sparked my interest in aliens and UFOs at a very young age, and is probably responsible for a good deal of my love for sci-fi.

14. What’s a bad habit that you have?

Poor self control when it comes to time management. I tend to let myself get absorbed in things.

15. What’s a strange habit that you have?

Hmm. Totally blanked and could only come up with “making noises and pretending to be a mech of some sort when moving around my house”. That’s all I got.

16. What’s the first instrument you learned to play?

Piano. I started learning at 8 years old.

17. How would you describe your ‘type’?

Y’know funny enough I’ve never really thought I had a type. However reaching my mid-twenties has made me realize that my ‘type’ is kind, compassionate, goofy, and nerdy/geeky.

18. Would you rather stay in or go out?

Depends on the company, I guess. Though, usually I prefer to stay in anyway.

19. What was the last thing you said to your mom?

“I’m taking Dax out.” When I went for a walk with my dog lol.

20. Do you want to get married someday?

Definitely didn’t used to. I’m at the point where I’d be down if my partner wanted to, though I’m not sure I’d wanna spend a shitload of money on a wedding. Guess it depends on financial status at the time and the preferences of my partner.

21. Have you ever snuck out?

Nah, though I never needed to. My parents typically let me leave house whenever I wanted to as long as I told them who I’m with and when-ish I’m going to be home.

22. Can you sing well?

I can match pitch pretty well, but I can’t produce pitch un-aided. Usually. So kinda. I’m ok at best, all things considered.

23. What’s an embarrassing thing that happened this week?

I went off on some of my friends over something kinda silly because my mental state as of late hasn’t been all that great.

24. When was the last time you went sledding?

Uhhh, definitely more than ten years ago.

25. Have you ever liked/do you like someone you know you can never be with?

You kidding me? That’s like, all of my crushes ever. Maybe that’s an exaggeration but honestly it’s certainly FELT that way each time.

26. Do people often mispronounce your name?

No, though I have known a few people throughout my life that said “Bin” rather than “Ben”. I eventually realised it was an accent thing and stopped giving a shit very early.

27. Would you like to live in another country?

Yes, actually. For no small number of reasons. I’ve always wanted to live in Italy ever since I visited when I was 15.

28. Do you like to watch ghost hunting shows?

I definitely used to. I don’t really watch tv much in general anymore, though.

29. Who was the last person you said “I love you” too?

My mom.

30. What’s something you’d like to be better at?

Social interaction. Speaking in general. I’m MUCH more articulate in writing/typing than I am speaking.

31. Have you ever stayed up with someone who was sad?

Yes, and I’m always willing to do so.

32. What was the last thing you cooked?

I helped my good friend prepare some bomb ass ramen a few months back. I guess that counts.

33. Do you think you’d make a good parent?

I’d like to think so, yeah. I would make sure my children know I’m always there for them and will support the hell out of them.

34. Do you have trouble sleeping at night?

I don’t, but my dipshit body does.

35. Where is your best friend right now?

All of them are either playing video games or asleep.

36. How long does it take you to get ready in the morning?

Factoring in every aspect of the morning ritual, about 40 minutes. That’s if I’m going somewhere like work or school. If I’m staying home then there’s no getting ready for anything but sitting on my ass lol.

37. How late do you usually stay up at night?

Depends on the time of year/what I’m doing the next day. Right now during quarantine I average anywhere between 2am and 6am. I’m trying to fix that currently.

38. When was the last time you cried and why?

The last time I truly cried was sometime in 2015. I was listening to Breaking Benjamin’s latest album and feeling exceedingly lonely/depressed. It wasn’t a great day.

39. Have you ever won a contest?

None that I can remember, honestly.

40. Can you draw well?

Lol. No. I have very little visual artistic talent or skill.

41. Would you ever date someone you met on tumblr/the internet?

Definitely, though obviously I wouldn’t just jump right in. I’m down for long distance relationships, too. But obviously mutual trust and emotional connection would have to be established first.

42. What was the last thing you ate?

Some brownie fudge M&Ms lol.

43. Do you think you’re/you’d make a good boyfriend?

I don’t really know. Never been in a relationship so I don’t have anything go off of. On the one hand I’m super understanding, laid back, and accepting of boundaries. I just want to make sure people feel comfortable and safe around me. On the other hand I’m also forgetful and very selfish when it comes to my time. I also obviously have plenty of emotional trauma/baggage (who doesn’t?) that tends to impede how I interact with people, so. 🤷🏼‍♂️

44. Have you ever had a near death experience?

Not that I can remember, and I hope I never do. The closest I think I ever came was when I fell off a ropeless bridge into a dry riverbed at 4 years old. Got a concussion from that.

45. What do you think people think of you?

Well, my anxiety tells me I’m annoying and boring. The logical side of me tells me most people in my life enjoy my company, so I guess there’s that.

46. What is your middle name and do you like it?

Don’t feel like sharing my middle name here, but I will say I don’t dislike it. Kinda neutral.

47. Are you close with either of your parents?

Kinda. My parents were often emotionally distant/abusive to my brothers and me growing up, and it’s left me rather stunted emotionally, and generally unwilling to establish a deeper relationship with them. We’re a bit closer than we were when I was a teenager, but honestly not much.

48. Do you like yourself?

Generally speaking? No. There are parts of me I’m proud of, but honestly I often find myself wishing I was someone else. I’m far from the self-loathing I experienced when I was younger, though.

49. State five facts about your appearance—

1. I’m 6’1”-ish.

2. Definitely just a bit chubby.

3. Blue eyes.

4. Currently sporting longer hair because I haven’t had a haircut since about September.

5. I have a number of faded scars on my arms from various self inflicted/work related injuries. All of them were caused by extreme clumsiness/poor spacial awareness.

50. State five facts about your personality—

1. I’m super goofy—I make lots of weird noises and motions.

2. I tend to ramble about things I’m interested in, particularly hyper fixations.

3. I like to think I’m a pretty compassionate human being.

4. Extremely awkward, but strangely that doesn’t show because I’m apparently a social chameleon.

5. I’m an observer, but also an overthinker.

Whew, that was a lot! Thank you, friend!

#asks #answered asks

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voltron-s7-8-rewrite · 5 years

Text

Launch Party

This is part of my Voltron Season 7 & 8 re-write. If you are interested start HERE

Outside of one of the Garrison’s medbay rooms, Romelle, Allura, and Coran watch through the window as doctors perform scans of Luca -the Altean who was found in the Komar mech-, trying to find a way to remove the Hoktril from her head.

Romelle begins to quietly share how she and Luca knew each other, but were never really friends. Despite that, she had always admired Luca and the strength she showed after her family had been chosen by Lotor. She says Luca had so much faith, and always believed she would eventually be chosen and unite with her father and sisters.

As the doctors move, Romelle catches sight of the Hoktril sticking out of the girl’s head and looks away, grieved over what has been done to her.

Allura sees her reaction and steps up, hugging her as Coran puts a hand on each girl’s shoulder. The three stand together, mourning for Luca and the unknown status of their people.

________________________________

As several months have passed since Voltron defeated Sendak and the Kormar mech, Humans have taken great strides to regaining their footing, thanks in no small part to the Rebels and Blade’s assistance.

While Earth is still healing, spirits are high as communication and defenses across the globe have come online. With those in place, the Paladins now feel that Earth is in good enough shape that they can leave.

The Paladins of Voltron, Blade of Marmora, Rebels, and Garrison Command sit in their final meeting, going over The Atlas’ upcoming launch and mission. The plan is that The Atlas will first head to the Altean colony to try to recover any Alteans there, then to find while where the Komar mechs came from. Once they are found the hope is that the forces can unite and end the war once and for all.

With everything thoroughly agreed upon by all factions, Shiro stands and tells those who will be leaving with The Atlas, that because this is their last day on Earth for some time, they should go spend time with their loved ones. With that he dismisses the meeting.

As everyone leaves, Lance and Hunk pull the Paladins and Shiro aside. They explain that since they never got the time to have Romelle’s victory party after Sendak’s defeat, their families -who are staying on Earth- wanted to have a going away party for the Paladins before they leave. They ask if they would be up for that, and they all say yes, loving the idea.

Lance says the only problem is, since it’s last minute their families need some supplies; he asks if they would be willing to help get the items. Everyone agrees, and lists are handed out and they break into teams.

As they head out, Shiro stops Keith and asks him for a favor.

________________________________

Shiro, Matt, N-7, and Hunk head out to gather dinner supplies in the market that’s been set up in the ruins of Plaht City. Hunk is really the only one who knows what to get, while the others are there to assist with carrying everything.

The all the shopping goes smoothly until Shiro hears a familiar voice, and is horrified to see Slav walking around the market.

Shiro ducks down to hide, pulling the others with him. Hunk says that Slav isn’t that bad, but Shiro asks him to think about what Slav will have to say if he sees the ingredients they’ve picked; cause he’s certain Slav will find them all to be the wrong size, color, or shape and somehow that will cause a cataclysmic event ending with the destruction of all reality. Hunk will have to put all the food back and pick only the ones that Slav chooses.

Realizing his food is at stake, Hunk agrees with Shiro’s point and from there it becomes a game of trying to get the supplies without being spotted by the Bytor. Eventually, Slav leaves the market and the group are able to get the rest of the stuff they need in peace.

It’s then that Shiro then realizes what time it is and heads off, saying he has something to finish before tonight.

________________________________

As Keith, Krolia, and Kolivan -who had been invited to come along by the mother and son- head out for their tasks, Keith explains that they need to make a detour. He leads the two over to his hoverbike, which he and his mother get on. Kolivan is unsure about the primitive craft. It’s only when Krolia gets annoyed with his questioning of the vehicle and orders him on that he begrudgingly obeys.

Keith tells the two to hold on and takes them on a ride through the desert. Krolia loves it, while Kolivan holds on for his life.

Arriving at their destination, Keith gets off the bike as Krolia looks around. She freezes in shock as she recognizes the small shack. Noticing her reaction, Kolivan asks where they are. She tells him it was her home when she lived on Earth, though there was once a house that’s no longer there.

Keith explains that after his father died, there had been a freak lightning strike. The house burned down, but the shack survived. No one wanted it, so it was just left there. After Shiro was declared dead and he was kicked out of the Garrison, this was the only thing he had left.

Krolia heads to the shack, gently running her hands along the porch frame before entering.

Keith and Kolivan give her a minute alone before Keith begins to follow after her. He pauses, noticing Kolivan staying behind and asks him if he’s coming. Kolivan says that he figured this was something personal for his family. Keith says it is, that’s why he should come too. Kolivan is taken back by that statement, but is honored by the statement and follows him in.

Inside, the two find Krolia walking around every square inch of the shack, smiling at items she recognizes. Keith disappears into the small room in the back as Kolivan looks around, studying the small shack Keith had called home.

The Black Paladin returns carrying a book, he hands it over to Krolia telling her it’s a gift for her, though Shiro asked to borrow something from it. Opening it, Krolia is overwhelmed at the pictures of her husband and Keith during the short years they had together before his death. Kolivan approaches curiously, and she turns and shares the pictures with him, much to Keith’s embarrassment.

Keith explains that while most of the pictures were lost in the fire, somehow this album ended up in the shack, so it was spared. Krolia hugs Keith, thanking him for the precious item.

After Krolia composes herself, Keith says that they should get going to start the tasks they were given.

As they head back to the hover-bike, Kolivan suggests that the three of them come back later to get the remaining items the shack holds, that way Keith and Krolia can have them as they travel. The mother and son appreciate his suggestion, and agree to it.

________________________________

Lance and Pidge end up with the job of looking for games and decorations to bring to the party, at least that’s what they were told. Their real job turns out to be babysitting Nadia, Sylvio, and Hunk’s cousins. Neither are thrilled about it, but Lance, use to being made babysitter, takes it in stride. Pidge however, not use to this scenario at all, decides to make the best of it by laying down rules on how the kids are to behave.

Lance tries to warn her to stop, but she doesn't take the hint. The children are unimpressed by her demands, and as soon as they get to the bazaar set up in the former Plaht City Mall, become overly excited and run wild, breaking every one of Pidge’s rules. Lance says he told her so as they try to round the kids up and gain some semblance of control.

Eventually Lance has to pull the “Favorite Uncle” card by bribing them with sweets, causing the kids to immediately fall in line. Pidge pouts at this, but Lance gives her some sweets as well, telling her it will take some time to learn the right tricks for her newly appointed ‘Aunt’ status to the kids.

Pidge is still sulky until the kids follow up and call her ‘Aunt Pidge’, which brings out a smile.

Once all the party activities and decorations are purchased, Pidge, Lance and their charges start to leave. However, before they exit, Pidge notices a vender selling “Killbot Phantasm 26: Revengifiance”. She and Lance rush to the vendor and demand to know how much it costs. Realizing they don’t have the money for it, Lance says he remembers then passing by a coin fountain back in the mall.

He and Pidge run to find it, as the roles are reversed and the kids now bemoan their childish caretakers, trying to get them to stop being so embarrassing.

________________________________

Back at the Garrison, Allura, Romelle, and Coran have the task to get deserts. However, rather than going out to find some, they decided to try to re-create Altean recipes using Earth ingredients.

Very quickly they realize they are in over their heads, as the Earth ingredients that look like things they knew from Altea/the colony are completely different from what they expected. On top of that, they end up mixing up similar looking ingredients with each other and reading the measuring utensils wrong.

When they finish, the three Alteans stand in the midst of the Garrison’s ruined kitchen, it’s appearance looking more like a crime scene in need of a Hazmat crew. Romelle comments that recreating recipes is not as easy as Hunk makes it look.

The three glance at each other and seeing the state of disarray they are all in, break into fits of laughter. Allura and Coran’s laughter slows, but Romelle’s continues until she breaks down into sobs.

She apologizes, trying to regain her composure, but nothing she does stops her tears. Coran and Allura both pull her into an embrace. Romelle shares how she can’t stop thinking about Luca. How she can’t stop creating horrible scenarios her mind about what happened to her and the other colonists and how she feels responsible for it all; thinking that maybe if she had stayed, or at least warned the colony about Lotor, things would be different.

Allura tells her that if she stayed she would most likely be in the same predicament as Luca and the others. And that if this is Haggar’s doing, as they believe it to be, that there would have been no way to have stopped her. She assures Romelle that she did the right thing by seeking help and going to warn Voltron about Lotor. Thanks to her he no longer threatens the universe, or their people.

Allura then laments that they didn't immediately go and find the colony after his defeat, saying that she bears the blame for that, as she should have pushed to go. Romelle, argues against that, saying Allura didn't know that his would happen, and even if she did push, they couldn't have gone to the Colony due to the state the Lions were in.

Coran takes the opportunity to then point out that they both are right, neither of them are to blame. The only person who should be held accountable for this is the one who did it. He says whether it’s Honerva, or someone else who created the Hoktril in their universe and did this to Luca, they are going to do everything possible to find them and make sure that they will never hurt anyone else.

The girls agree, and the three hug before once again looking around the ruined kitchen, wondering how they are going to clean it. It’s at that point that Shiro steps in. Seeing the mess, he’s immediately on alert, asking if they were attacked.

The Alteans fess up to their goals, and he laughs, offering to show them where they can get some fruits to serve as dessert.

The three agree, and as they go to get cleaned, Shiro stops Allura and asks her for a favor.

________________________________

Evening rolls around, and Lance and Hunk’s families set the party up in one of the Garrison’s large rooms that they were given permission to use.

Keith, Krolia, and Kolivan show up. Lance is both shocked and unnerved to see Kolivan dressed in casual wear. Krolia spooks him further by warning him that Kolivan’s in such a good mood he might even smile. Kolivan is unimpressed by the teasing and heads into the party, a chuckling Krolia following him.

As Keith goes to follow, Shiro pulls him off to the side, asking Keith to come with him and Romelle for a minute.

Krolia is called over to where Colleen, and Lance and Hunk’s mothers are sitting. The four proceed to talk and share tales of their children. Gushing over how proud they are of them. Lance, Matt, and Pidge are embarrassed, while Hunk finds it sweet. Allura agrees with him, saying they should be happy that their mothers show their love by sharing stories. Unfortunately for her, that’s when Coran steps up and starts talking about Allura’s youth, causing her to quickly regret her words.

________________________________

As the night progresses, the families partake in different activities. Shiro, Lance’s brother, and Hunk’s dad get into arm wrestling competitions, with none of them being able to take his new arm down. When they team up and try to jump on it at once, it just ends with them breaking the table and dog piling on poor Shiro.

Keith and Romelle oversee the kids as they take rides on Kosmo, and play with Allura’s mice and Pidge’s space caterpillars.

Pidge and Lance’s sisters conspire together, sharing secrets and dirt they have on Lance, which makes him nervous. Hunk joins the girls, sharing things he has on his best friend, causing Lance to shout in outraged betrayal.

Watching all of this from her seat, Allura turns and looks where Shiro had lovingly set up a display of pictures he spent the day gathering of all the family members who are no longer with them.

There is a picture of his own parents just after he was born, then one of him with his grandfather, there’s a picture of Keith’s dad in uniform -borrowed from Krolia’s album-, a picture of Marco and Lance’s father from Marco’s graduation, one of Hunk’s aunt and uncle, as well as a sketch of Bandor and Romelle’s parents that he had Keith draw earlier with Romelle’s guidance. Finally in the midst of these pictures is Allura’s hologram, the image of her parents shining brightly.

Loving looking at the faces of those who have passed, Allura stands and grabs a glass. Gently tapping it, she gets everyone’s attention. She apologizes for the interruption, but felt there were things she needed to say.

Taking a breath she starts by sharing her experience, and the feelings she went through when first woke from her 10,000 years of slumber; how she had gone to sleep a daughter and a princess, and woke an orphan without a home.

She says she knows they have all been through the experience of losing loved ones, but as Keith once told the Paladins, ‘even when loved ones are physically gone, they are still alive within those they touched.’ She says they will always feel the missing presence of those they lost, but they will continue on, keeping them alive through themselves and their bonds with each other.

She tells them that she once said she believed the five Paladins were brought together to create Voltron, however, she now sees that it went beyond that. They were brought together because they were all meant to be together. Each one of them had pieces of themselves missing, and like Voltron itself, it was only when they came together that they were made whole.

She says that through them she’s found a family and home again. She now knows that no matter what happens going forward, they will always be a part of each other. She raises her glass to those there and toasts them as her new family.

The others join in her toast, then Keith raises a second toast to the one who holds them all together, the heart of Voltron: Allura.

Afterwards everyone comes together to take a family photo.

Notes:

The picture is a mixture of traced screenshots, and my own non-traced drawing. Wanted to do more for this rewrite, but after making this (and a couple others I trashed). I realized it would take me too much time, and I didn't want to become exasperated and drop this re-write cause of the art.

I know I’m not the only one who took issues with Shiro’s statement of “Be with the ones you love.” only for the story to be about Lance and Allura getting ready for a date. So, I tried to fix that.

I wanted this story to absolutely cement, once and for all, that not only are these characters a team, but they are a family.

Some of this might be overly cheesy, like with the family photos and all, but I wanted to give them all some peace and happiness before I beat the crud out of them throughout the rest of this season rewrite.

Course I took out all references to the original Voltron. While it’s a nice idea, the only nod I thought worked was when Allura tried on her original counterpart’s outfit. All the others made no sense and I immediately started questioning it.

The Earth was under siege for three years, how did they get a cartoon studio up and running so quickly? Is that why is the animation quality so crummy in the future? Why would the animation studio change the gender of Pidge, and the color of Allura’s skin? Wouldn’t there be backlash? I thought this show was set in an alternate universe to the original series, are they pulling a Digimon Tamers where the old show is both an AU and a TV show?

Some are silly questions, but they are still questions.

So, because of this removal, the scene where Hunk and Lance are talking about the show is gone. Which means I have the immense pleasure of Thanos snapping Lance’s line, “Keith and Allura? No, it should be Lance and Allura!” out of existence.

I hate that line so freaking much.

To me, more than anything else in the show, that one line completely destroys any potential relationship for Lance and Allura.

First it gives Lance’s character a disgusting feeling, as it implies that he feels he’s owed her. On top of that, it makes no sense from a character standpoint. Back in S6E2, he tells the mice,

“I don’t have anything to offer her. I’m just a boy from Cuba.”

Now, just a couple of months later, he has this entitled, ‘She should love me, not him!’ mindset? I’m sorry, where did this come from? Why has he taken a sudden 180° on this?

No, nope! This kind of implication is not going to happen here. Not to Lance, not to Allura. They deserve more than that.

Also, why was both Lance and Pidge’s homes in perfect condition after three years of global war? I mean, we saw the shape Plaht City was in, are you telling me that their homes were untouched in all of that? Or are they just getting special treatment because they are Paladins, so their homes were rebuilt first?

Likely it just comes down to the creators not caring thinking, and just doing whatever at this point. But that’s why I had the party set at the Garrison. . Yes, I know it's silly, but I am super happy to have changed the pun title to a different pun title, while still being the same pun.

Thank you for reading, have a nice day! NEXT

#voltron #keith voltron #princess allura #takashi shirogane #lance voltron #voltron pidge #hunk #romelle #MyVoltronSeasonSummary #mywritings

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leapingtitan · 5 years

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Promare Original Soundtrack Review

Alright, it’s been a while since I’ve done one of these and this is the perfect candidate. I have waited for this Sawano OST for almost 8 months, ever since Sawano was confirmed to compose for Promare, and now it’s finally here.

A little side note to my followers who aren’t aware: Promare is an anime film by the duo behind Kill la Kill (Hiroyuki Imaishi and Kazuki Nakashima) and the 2nd time they got Sawano to compose for their project. And boy, was it worth it. I have been hyped about Promare since I first saw the announcement after finishing KLK and before Sawano was confirmed as the composer. And at long last, it’s here. The movie is still gonna take a while to come out internationally, be it at the movies or as a disc release, but the soundtrack is out and that’s what I’ll be talking about today.

This marks the first original, non-sequel Sawano anime work since Re:CREATORS which was... almost 2 years ago. That’s a lot of time, and 2018 was a... questionable year for Sawano’s discography filled with average and low-effort sequel works and an abundance of Jpop songs as part of the [nZk] project. But anyway, here is the review to the soundtrack of Promare, composed by Hiroyuki Sawano! As usual, I’ll be sharing my thoughts on each track individually before discussing the soundtrack as a whole. Let’s get right into it!

01. Inferno (vocal: Benjamin, mpi)

Here is what I like to call the “sub-theme vocal track” of Sawano OSTs that follow this pattern. This is basically the “Track #1 that’s a vocal song that could be the main theme but actually comes before the main theme” (similar to God of ink from R:C and Perfect Time from NnT), and a pretty neat one at that. I was looking forward to this track ever since I heard it in the OST CM and it’s honestly very pleasant. Ben and mpi have a lot of synergy as vocalists and the lyrics, plus overall tone and production are very good.

I am generally not a fan of more bright, upbeat and playful vocal songs but this one doesn’t really come off to me as that kind of track. It’s very “everyday” especially the verse and the chorus is super catchy and memorable. Overall, a very solid track. I also really like how Ben and mpi alternate now and then especially with the first and second verse/chorus instead of just having them all sing the same thing. They do that, but only in the last chorus and it sounds like a nice ending to it. The choir in some of the parts (which Sawano himself is part of) is also very nice.

I have two complaints about this track, however. The first one is that outside of the guitar chords and drums, the instruments are barely audible in the mix because of the percussion. You can make out some of the guitars but overall it sounds a bit drowned out. That, and it ends a bit suddenly without a proper outro to tone down the last chorus. Those are still very much nitpicks though, great track otherwise but not my favorite vocal song on this soundtrack.

02. PRO//MARE

And now we come to the actual instrumental main theme of the movie. I have genuinely missed original Sawano works because most of the modern ones have this thing where he names the main theme after the show it’s made for, and it’s just a really cool pattern that never gets old to me.

PRO//MARE is the newest entry to this category and it’s the orchestral track that was heard in the first half of the 2nd trailer. Part of it was also showcased at AnimeJapan at the Promare section. Personally, this is one of my favorite tracks in the album. I love how unpredictable the structure is and the subtle synths and guitar give it a unique flavor that make it stand out from the typical Sawano orchestral tracks. The strings part at 1:55 is my favorite part and it’s just amazing. The main melody is also very nice and overall, it’s a very solid main theme that gets its purpose across. On top of that, this has to be one of the best uses of fake choir Sawano has integrated into an orchestral track.

On top of that, it also does not have a 2nd half and has a pretty good length for an instrumental track. This actually makes it more solid and doesn’t give the feeling of Sawano not knowing how to make a track longer without a 2nd slow half. Overall, very good and again, a big highlight on the album for me.

03. GAL-OTHY-MOS

After 3 years of no woodwinds, it was time to go home.

Okay, here is an absolute banger. Galo (the protagonist)’s theme marks the return of woodwinds in Sawano’s works which is something we didn’t think would happen at this point. And oh boy, this one is big.

Right off the bat, the flute establishes itself very nicely alongside the overall Japanese/ethnic sound the track is going for, which I need to talk about on its own. It’s so freaking cool how unique this theme sounds like with the whole ethnic soundscape mostly because of how appropriate it is for Galo as a character. A side note about Promare, the movie is basically about firefighters who use mechs called “MATOI” which, aside from being a cheesy Kill la Kill reference, are banners used by Firefighters in the Edo period. It’s just so sweet how the overall sound comes together as a character theme.

The track itself is dope. Aside from the ethnic melodic elements it focuses on standard band percussion and orchestra, which is pretty nicely mixed if I might add. The arrangement of the strings stands out among Sawano orchestral tracks and I love the ostinatos throughout the track. Structure and melody iis also very strong.

The 2nd half leaves a bit to be desired as it’s basically a slower version with some instrumental changes, but other than that it’s not that interesting. Still, overall very nice and another highlight for me.

04. Λsʜᴇs (vocal: Gemie)

Another vocal song, and this time it’s Lio’s theme... well, of them. I like to think of this as the main theme among all the other tracks that use the same leitmotif. Anyway, right off the bat, Λsʜᴇs instantly reminds me of RE:3343 and ABYSSwaltz from Re:CREATORS. This also marks the return of a very nice vocal technique that I’ve missed in Sawano works which is layering a whispering of a vocal line alongside the main vocal line with both lines being the same. Adds a very interesting “ethereal” sound to the vocals in a track that is already pretty ethereal on its own.

The strings here are nice but of course, Gemie’s voice is the highlight and boy did I not know she can sing this high. The wailing/non-lyrical part after the chorus is very powerful and personally this is one of the best Gemie songs for me. There is another version of this song later on which I prefer more, but this one is also very nice.

Lyrics are also quite interesting, as expected of cAnON. and her particular choice of vocabulary.

05. WORLDBIGFLAMEUP

Say hello to the track with the best song name on the OST and one that perfectly describes the Sawano fans’ reaction to the soundtrack dropping. This is the initial teaser track that played all the way back then and our first sample of Sawano’s work for Promare. (Well, technically it was the strings part in GAL-OTHY-MOS but we just assumed it was the same track).

WORLDBIGFLAMEUP is, to put it short, awesome. Instead of an all-out bombastic orchestral Sawano track, it’s more of a tense, emergency and action type of piece that goes at a fast pace and overall delivers a feeling of uneasiness and chaos, which perfectly captures the whole “Fire” aspect of the movie’s concept.

Instrumentally, I have to say this is one of my favorite instrument choices Sawano has done for an orchestral track outside of the usual strings and brass. It partially has some ethic elements here and there with the dulcimer which adds a whole new layer to the rhythm of the piece.

And then there is the gamelan which is probably my favorite instrument in this entire track and what makes the whole track what it is for me. It’s so cool and the little quiet sections where it’s more audible are probably my favorite. That’s just all I have to say. It’s awesome.

The 2nd half of the track was a thing I had a problem with initially because it’s another “2nd slow half” to fill up track space, except this one has grown on me. I like the piano addition though overall it sounds like the track was slowed down in Audacity or something... I just think the overall arrangement makes it a better fit for the fast pace of the first half and not the way it’s presented in the 2nd half.. that is until it gets to the main part with the band percussion. This is where I would make a PotS/<X9> joke, but this one is actually pretty cool and pure headbang material, especially the last part. I mostly have to thank @shifter-lines for getting me to like this as much as I do now, haha. Yet another highlight for me and a very good track.

06. PROMARETHEME

So, GAL-OTHY-MOS was the first of two tracks to have woodwinds return and that’s something we’ve known about since the initial recording tweet. This is the 2nd, except it’s a tin whistle instead of a flute and boy does it sound good.

PROMARETHEME legitimately sounds like Sawano went full Zimmer/Powell and made a Kung Fu Panda track because it’s so awesome with the tin whistle it’s hard to put it into words. Oh yeah, and it’s an orchestral version of Inferno that was actually made before Inferno itself. This is one of Imaishi (the director)’s favorite tracks as far as my knowledge goes and one of the sub-themes for the movie.

Overall, it has a very powerful start with, again, the tin whistle and the choir part after the main chorus is equally awesome. I initially thought it was going to go into a 2nd half after that pause but it was just that, a pause. Overall, a pretty neat track... again, that tin whistle.

07. BangBangBUR!...n?

Hoho boy, here it is. I am not ashamed to use this joke for the 10000th time since this OST released last week, but this piece is an absolute Banger. It’s pure fire and is my favorite instrumental track on the Promare OST.

This was initially first played in a very obscure CM in Japan that came out around the same time as the initial teaser and didn’t show any new footage, but it had a bit of this track playing and I loved it.

BangBangBUR!...n? is one of those tracks that don’t need a good and powerful lead melody to stand out. The overall sound design and instrument choice for this piece is freaking amazing and I highly recommend listening with headphones for the full experience. The bass, the beat, the synths and the guitars, plus the synth ostinato and combination of electronic kicks with additional distorted drums to add to the rhythm is absolutely incredible. It’s an awesome track in every way.

The strings portion makes it even more awesome by adding a melody to it and repeating the previous part, essentially building onto the foundation it sets for itself beforehand.

The 2nd half is probably the best 2nd half Sawano has ever done if we count slow arrangements in the same piece. Instead of just slowing down the first half, it changes up the arrangement a bit and sounds like a semi-ambient dark piece while maintaining the coolness factor of the first half. The strings are equally awesome. By the way, this is the director’s other favorite track and he loved the demo Sawano initially showed him. Of course he did.

Overall, absolute banger and again, best instrumental track on the OST for me. Go listen to it, and if you haven’t seen the first 5 minutes of the movie online yet, go do that as well. This track is used perfectly as an establishing piece for Promare and what it is.

08. NEXUS (vocal: Laco)

We come to the first original Sawano Laco song to be officially released! (Because Zero Eclipse is taking forever). NEXUS initially gave me a much different impression than the one I have right now. When I heard it in the OST CM, I didn’t really like it to be honest.

Like I’ve said in the past, I generally dislike “happy”, playful vocal songs because it doesn’t feel like they have any emotional impact for me while I’m listening to them and this is pretty much what I expected.

Instead, I get a 90s pop song that has one of the sickest drum productions I’ve ever seen. Seriously, those drums are insanely good. It sounds like typical four on the floor type of beat at first, and that’s what it mostly is in the chorus, but the drums in the verse are insane. You can, to quote someone else here, internally feel the rhythm and it’s amazing.

The synths are super catchy and compliment the vocal line really good and, again, sound straight out of a 90s pop song. Laco’s singing itself is also pretty good and I think she stands out as an OST Sawano vocalist with a different tone to her voice than Gemie, Eliana and... someone else whose name I can’t remember. Weird.

Anyway, the vocal effect in the intro with the reverb/semi-choir sounds dope. The lyrics for the song itself are kind of weird, though.. and from what I’ve heard, this track was kinda overused as a battle theme in the movie. And, although I think it can fit under said circumstances, I don’t think using it for every battle scene would benefit it, especially the chorus which is my least favorite part compared to the rest of the tracks. It just sounds... but overall, the track is great, Laco’s singing is great and the production quality is very high. Great piece overall.

09. BAR2tsuSH

We come to the big baddies (well, some of them) villain theme. This and WORLDBIGFLAMEUP are the closest to being a KLK-esque track on this OST and this one is pretty good. It’s the “group villain theme” for the Mad Burnish, also part of the song name and it’s a pretty neat one at that.

Instrumentally, it goes ham with the scratchy synths and the edgy guitar chugs around the middle of the first half. Also, the rhythms of this song are sick. I like how it goes into a different drumming pattern after the first two measures in the synth portion and the main part is also a nice Sawano orchestral vocal track. Great alternating melody between the synths and brass with a nice ending to it.

The 2nd half is unfortunately a bit weak and doesn’t really do anything interesting with the first half other than the typical “slow it down, change up the instruments” thing. It’s not bad, just nothing outstanding either. Overall, a nice piece. That’s all I have to say.

10. DeusPRO召す

Next up we come to the theme of a character who is so important to the plot, they have barely shown anything about him and his last name, Prometh, literally has the name of the movie in it.

Deus’ theme is super cool and unique. Right off the bat it establishes a unique soundscape with some interesting synth ostinatos that make you think you are listening to a factory/laboratory theme in a video game. The rhythm elements with the brass coming on later on are also very nice and this is another like I think can hold its own without a powerful lead melody in a similar matter to BangBangBUR!...n?. Not quite as good at it but still very good nonetheless. I can totally lay back and listen to this.

The 2nd half gets interesting because it brings up the PRO//MARE (main theme) melody and does some interesting things by layering the synths and drums from the first half over it and it works pretty well.

I mean... you know you’re an important character when your character theme rearranges the main theme of the movie you’re in.

Overall, this is a dope track. Wish I could say more but I’d be repeating myself.

11. fanFAREpiZZA

Next up is the track with the most questionable song name for someone who hasn’t listened to it. The first half is exactly what it says. A fanfare sort of victory theme and a pretty good one with some cool synth over it that almost sounds like it’s a continuation from DeusPRO召す. The only thing that’s weird is that the brass here is sampled... not entirely sure why when all the other orchestral tracks have actual brass recordings. It’s a bit weird but it doesn’t really sound that bad. It’s a pretty nice track. Can’t say anything else.

...Except about the 2nd half. “piZZA” is in the title as well and... it’s a comedic track. Harmonica, catchy beat and nice guitar going on in the left channel. I love it. It’s the only comedic/everyday laid back track on the OST and a pretty good one at that. Watch the 11-minute prequel to the movie if you want to see how it’s used. It’s pretty darn sweet. Again, I want to say more but.. that’s about it.

12. Λsʜᴇs ～RETURNS～ (vocal: Gemie)

And here is the better version of Λsʜᴇs, in my opinion at least. At the cost of the ethereal feel of the original, this one slaps on distorted drums and some really cool synths over it and makes it more like an orchestral bombastic track, and a really tragic but good one at that.

One thing that I absolutely love about this one is how the strings and especially Gemie’s vocals are re-recorded instead of reused from the original track. You can tell by the tone of her voice and especially in the chorus where she sings louder and the wailing part which is completely different. Overall, this is a much more chaotic version of the original and an excellent arrangement. I love 6/8 orchestral Sawano tracks and this one in particular reminds me of Ω from Guilty Crown which is one of my all-time favorite orchestral Sawano pieces.

Very good piece and yet another highlight of the soundtrack.

13. 燃焼ING-RES9

The Burning Rescue theme is yet another arrangement of Inferno which I guess fits-context wise. Anyway, on my first listen-through, this was my least favorite track because unlike PROMARETHEME it didn’t do anything interesting with the Inferno melody. At least, those were my thoughts at the beginning. Also, it kinda sounds like it borrows the drumline from Before my body is dry in some parts.

Regardless, like NEXUS, this track has grown on me and I think the guitars in the start make the whole thing a lot better for me. It also has a nice little outro section going on there which I also like.

Overall, I don’t have that much to say about this one apart from what I wrote above. I prefer Inferno and PROMARETHEME more to this one but it’s still alright.

14. BAR2NG4女14yoN

Next up we come to yet another absolute banger and a highlight for me. When I first saw the teaser visual for Promare and informed myself about what it was and from who it was after watching Kill la Kill, this track is very close to the kind of music I initially imagined for Promare. A fast, electronic, upbeat sort of battle theme that’s super uplifting. Also, another one I recommend listening to with headphones.

The drums in this track, like NEXUS, have insanely good sound in the mix and are basically the main instrument of this piece. Overall, it’s a more rhythm-focused track rather than a melodic one. Also has some sick guitars going on there that remind me of bL∞dy f8 a little bit. Then comes Gemie with the (uncredited) vocals that add a sweet layer to the already upbeat piece and a melody so it’s not purely rhythmic. Overall, very uplifting and an absolute banger.

I can mostly say the same about the 2nd half which is also quick and synth-focused but doesn’t have vocals. It’s more neutral/concentrated in terms of sound and less “playful” than the first half and imagine some high-altitude, high-speed fight scene happening in the movie with this playing in the background. The synths add to the overall mood of the piece and it’s great. Again, great drums and great rhythm all around. Definitely a highlight in the OST.

15. 904SITE

...I don’t know guys, he still might not be the villain.

Okay seriously. There was a point before the Promare premiere where they stopped trying to hide the fact that Kray was the antagonist of the movie and this theme playing in the OST PV was basically like “nah nah fam what are you talking about.”

Anyway, right off the bat, this is my least favorite track on the soundtrack. It’s not bad, I just prefer everything else over it. And the track itself is a bit...well... it’s an arrangement of BAR2tsuSH and a slow one at that... and that track already has a 2nd slow half.

Thing is, this is more of a mood-setter made for a certain scene in the movie. Personally, I don’t enjoy it that much as a standalone track because it just feels very raw and weak, especially since I had the expectations it would be a full-length character theme like GAL-OTHY-MOS, which it isn’t, and it’s not even an original melody for the most part. Overall, it’s not a bad piece, just underwhelming, but regardless, was probably important and used well for the movie, which is what’s important on its own at the end of the day.

16. REG-GIRT

The track that spells “Trigger” backwards. Classic Sawano.

Okay, so for the record I had much lower expectations for this track based on what I heard in the OST PV. Because it’s literally PRO//MARE with synths, drums and guitars layered over it which screams 2018 Sawano and we don’t talk about that here.

But anyway, that’s not entirely what it is. For once, said synths, guitars and drums are actually pretty great even when you do hear that it arranges the main theme instead of being an original track. On top of that, some of the string sections are new and not in PRO//MARE. The main part is probably the weakest for me since it’s very much the original track with the drums over it. This was played in the 3rd PV and honestly, this part in particular is just uninteresting.

The outro itself is cool but for goodness sake... remember my complaint about Inferno ending suddenly? This one ends so suddenly it sounds like it immediately cuts off into silence which is just weird... at least let the instruments echo/fade out. Makes me think it was made for a scene which ends on an unexpected note... wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case.

17. RE:0

No, this is not a Re:Zero reference.

Judging from how Sawano names character themes after the character themselves, you’d assume this would be Lio’s theme but for me... that’s Λsʜᴇs, and this is the piano version of it. Yep, classic Sawano making a piano arrangement of an existing track. And this one is really good.

I don’t have that much to say about piano solos in general but this one is definitely up there with the likes of omake-pfadlib for me and overall perfectly executes the emotion for me and is a great rendition of Λsʜᴇs. Favorite out of the piano solos on the OST.

18. PIROMARE

The last arrangement of Inferno on the album and a pretty good one at that! It’s another piano solo with some nice touches to the original track, especially towards the ending. Really like it, but I wish it was more of a medley that included more melodies like PRO//MARE rather than just Inferno, but it’s still a very pleasant piece to listen to. Again, not much else to say.

19. Gallant Ones (vocal: Benjamin, mpi)

And here it is. This is the Holy Grail of the Promare Original Soundtrack and the one song I have been most looking forward to ever since hearing the instrumental in the 2nd half of the 2nd PV.

Gallant Ones is, without a doubt, my favorite song on this entire album and by default my favorite vocal song. It’s also straight-up one of the best vocal songs Sawano has ever written for a soundtrack work and I would easily put it up there with the likes of theDOGS. Not quite too close to it but still a huge favorite for me.

This track borrows some of the percussion from BangBangBUR!...n?, as well as the ostinato pattern, except it changes the key and makes a freaking guitar play it. And speaking of guitars, this is without a doubt some of the best guitars Sawano has written in ages, mostly because of the fact that there are more melodic elements than rhythmic ones and that’s something you just don’t see Sawano do with electric guitars nowadays.

Going into the guitars again, one of my favorite production techniques when writing guitar parts is writing two semi-improv lines with one on each side of the panning (channels). And when played together, it sounds like pure fire. Gallant Ones does this with the verse guitars which were originally showcased in the 2nd half of PV2. It’s pure groove.

The percussion is another thing that makes the track what it is. It has a bunch of stuff going on that’s very similar to BangBangBUR!...n? like I already said, but the beat itself is dope and I love it so much.

Vocal-wise, this is far better than Inferno and Suck your blood from Kill la Kill for me. Ben and mpi make an even better duo here, combined with sick lyrics and absolutely lit chorus/vocal melody, this track is amazing in every sense.

If there is one thing I had to mention it would be my initial complaint about the length of Gallant Ones. The track is a few seconds short of being 3 minutes long which is pretty short for a vocal song that starts off like this. However, the more listen to this track (I’ve heard this well over a few dozen times at the time I’m writing this) the less it bothers me. If it had the standard structure of Sawano vocal songs where it repeats the chorus two or three times, it would have gotten repetitive really quick so I think the length is actually a plus here.

Despite all of that, if it was up to me I would have given it an extra 40 seconds or so by adding in the parts from the PV, specifically an instrumental version of the chorus where the guitar ostinato can be heard clearly, or the guitar outro which is better than the actual outro in this song. However, even now those are just nitpicks. Gallant Ones is incredible. Go listen to it.

“YOU ARE THE ENGINE AND THE POWER, LET’S FIGHT THIS TRUTH AND NAIL”

“I AM THE PILOT IN THIS GAME AND THIS TEAM WILL NEVER FAIL!”

...Had to get that out.

20. stRE:0ings

This is another one of those tracks like 904SITE where I don’t doubt that it was used well in the movie but still find its position in the OST a bit meh. It’s basically exactly what it says... a strings + piano version of RE:0 which is a piano version of Λsʜᴇs, which... also has strings and piano. What.

Okay seriously, I don’t mind it on its own, I just think it’s a bit too similar to Λsʜᴇs for me to fullly enjoy it, but it’s nice regardless. Don’t have that much else to say.

21. 火-YO!人

At last we come to the final track, which is the 3rd piano solo on the Promare OST and a pretty interesting one. It’s very dissonant and sounds like it’s from a Guilty Crown Another Side album. Overall, I think it’s nice. Really like how it sounds like it’s gonna go off into a melody then abruptly stops, and the closing section is nice.

Overall, a nice finisher to a great OST.

Conclusion

As a whole, this soundtrack is amazing. This is the kind of music Sawano can make when given proper direction. Of course, he’s worked with Imaishi before on Kill la Kill, and that OST turned out great. This one did as well. It’s a very fresh Sawano soundtrack with a lot of interesting elements, amazing vocal songs and diverse instrumental tracks.

Since KLK is a 2-cour anime show with more music, the music itself is all over the place and there’s a lot of tracks. Promare, on the other hand, likes to keep thinks in flavor but also concentrate on certain aspects, since it’s a movie and has to have a higher level of consistency.

Anyways, after a tough year of average low-effort sequel OSTs, getting this originality back again was very welcome and was well-worth the wait. I highly recommend checking this out if you haven’t listened to it already.

Also, I made a poll for the soundtrack! Make sure to check it out if you do get around to listening to it. Always like hearing what other people think!

Favorite vocal song: Gallant Ones

Favorite instrumental track: BangBangBUR!...n?

Favorite piano solo: RE:0

Favorite song name: WORLDBIGFLAMEUP

Least favorite track: 904SITE

Other highlights: PRO//MARE, GAL-OTHY-MOS, WORLDBIGFLAMEUP, NEXUS, DeusPRO召す, Λsʜᴇs ～RETURNS～, BAR2NG4女14yoN

Overall Album Rating: 9/10

#hiroyuki sawano #music review #promare

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primeadv · 5 years

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SITS DOWN

PULLS OUT 10 GIANT ALBUMS :)))

(this came out way longer than I intended im so fuckgkdsdf sory)

How I feel about this character: EVERYONE WHO KNOWS ME KNOWS I’M IN LOVE WIHT RATCHET. I love him in all iterations of Transformers because he’s always the tired, pragmatic one of the group. In contrast, he’s also almost tiredly optimistic in some ways. He won’t get out of bed, but if someone gets shot in the head he’ll spend however long and beyond to resuscitate them. There’s 2 halves to this--the me who identifies with the beating exhaustion he exudes, and the me who’s in awe that he’ll still fight his way through life. I won’t... get into each continuity...because that’s too much, so I’ll stick with probably the most unpopular version of him and that’s IDW (my impression, anyway). IDW Ratchet gets a lot of flack for being way too sour and like, maybe not selfish, but uncaring. He cares! A lot! He’s always thinking about everyone in really surprisingly thoughtful ways. Like when he’s 90% sure he’ll die due to Overlord and his last words are to promote First Aid to CMO (he’s ready!! god that’s sweet), and to give his hands to Whirl (though maybe a bit blindsided, he’s paid attention to some roots of Whirl’s trauma). Or yeah he’s hella mean to Drift in the beginning, but when Drift is dying in his arms he’s scREAMING at him “you’re gonna make it! You’re gonna be fine because I’m gonna make sure you’re gonna be fine”. He can be an asshole, but he knows the time and place. Death isn’t something to play with--he’s seen probably countless friends die, and he doesn’t want that to happen again. Even now, even after the war. So I feel very confused when ppl act like he’s this mean, cold person. He’s exTREMELY emotional. He’s probably way too invested in everyone’s lives, honestly? He interrupts a round table story for Rung just to reminisce on the veery last time he, OP, and Roller were together in the same room (not even hanging out or anything, just being together one last time. who remembers that after 5+ millions years??). He started an illegal clinic in the bad part of town because he wanted to put his skills to better use! Like! LOL. ALSO, a point that i think is unfair is that ppl think his atheism is just really mean. IT is! But I think it shows just how much of an emotional and extremely, deeply hurt person he is. It gets aggravating when he’s condescending of religion, because there’s no simple logic to it. He reacts the way he does because he’s a hurt person who’s gone through years of trauma and this is his way of coping. Is it healthy or right? Nah, but it’s humanizing. It’s why when he becomes closer to Drift he occupies this weird between space where he snarks but also tries to indulge more in perspectives outside of his own in his own dumb old tsundere way. He’s a person who believes in justice, ultimately, and religion to him doesn’t fall under justice. ALSO, can I say that his inability to say good byes is so.. like relatable? I have rly bad social anxiety, and so I’ve definitely ghosted people who’ve been nothing but really supportive for me. It’s not because I wanted to burn them, but it freaks you out needing to, not even say goodbye, but communicate with ppl. And for Ratchet--how many times was he FORCED to say good bye to friends + patients who were dying beyond his help? Maybe, if he could help it, he doesn’t want to say goodbye. And it’s tragic the times he’s just left, these were people who ended up either dying for falling astray into insanity, i.e., beyond his help. But he learns. He chases after Drift, who he actually said, in a way, good bye to (helping him off the floor after being attacked, also I should point out that a very tiny handful of people were comfortable interacting w/ Drift at all, and how much Ratchet just doesn’t give a shit abt how other ppl think abt him. he’ll help drift off the floor bc t’s the right thing to do). He says goodbye in his old dumb way--First Aid calls him out on it. ALSO his trust in First Aid is super cute. ALSO he’s like.. genuinely nice to Ten (he helped him get a date with Minimus!!!). And he’s not afraid to call out on other ppl’s bullshit (telling rodi straight you dont deserve to be captain which, at the time, was really true). He’s also SUPER smart. Also there’s that post on tumblr that pointed out that Ratchet immediately goes to deescalate conflict. He’s willing to put aside pride and anything if it means ultimately coming to a resolution where EVERYONE involved is safe. The only time he doesn’t is FUCKING OVERLORD who he rightfully, immediately, tries to briefly incapacitate to lockdown his medibay (protect patients/information). Ok I gotta stop I can go on forever just going page to page. Also, despite my love, I can totally point out his flaws. He’s grating when it’s unnecessary, he’s abhorrently bad at communicating, he’s privileged, he’s narrow-minded at times, etc. ec. But again what I love about him is that despite all that, he’ll throw his own self out the window for others’s well-being bc he genuinely, genuinellyyy cares about other people. If only he could care for himself //cries All the people I ship romantically with this character OH god... everyone. He’s my bicycle. ok look, ya’ll know I’m an intense dratchet shipper and I could literally write a god damn essay. ... here’s another essay???!! So, I’ma be real, I wasn’t a super dratchet shipper before. I wasn’t anti (i have no notps), but I was just “yeah they’re cute i guess haha”. But 99.99% the reason why I ship anything is all for super cute adorable fanart. and I kept drawing them because 1) ratchet’s my fav, 2) drift is super popular so I figured I should learn to draw him. And they became the only 2 mechs I could draw. I used to be way more into Scavengers + megarod. I used to only like 1 dratchet fanfic and that’s bc it was less romantic and more plot centric (still a fav tho). Then I kept seeing cute fanart, I would read posts by other dratchet shippers too about what makes them so nice? And I was yeah.. oh yeah. And it doesn’t help that in Lost Light, drift is CONSTANTLY by Ratchet’s side. He’s constantly checking up on him and holding him and touching him, like as if Ratchet is the thing that he needs to make sure, at all costs, is safe. In Drift’s life, Ratchet is the one who appears to him when he needs support the most but is in the most denial of it. When Drift is at the brink of death, overdosed and about to be broken apart and Orion brings him to Ratchet’s clinic. Ratchet patches him up pro-bono and tells him that he sees something special in him. like??? can you imagine how that feels? To have no one believe in you--you don’t even believe in yourself, and yet here’s this person who tells you “you’re gonna be great”. And it totally doesn’t hit Drift in anyway, at least in a way that’s tangible to him, until much later in life. Or maybe it does (hey, how do you weave character narratives when it’s been written by like 3 different ppl shrugs). And that statement means 2 different things to them. To Drift, it’s a reminder that he’s worth something, even if it’s a sliver of nearly nothing to hold onto. To Ratchet, it’s a reminder that the greatness he saw led to the deaths of thousands of people. HEY can you imagine this person you saved, patched up, tried to encourage, ended up being a mass serial killer in the future? (have you ever read Monster by Naoki Urusawa). Ended up killing people you loved? So it’s no wonder that a good part of Ratchet is absolutely mad at Drift. And I think if that was all, they probably would’ve ended up being amicable. But Drift also ended up being super religious and seeing the hand and primus in everything and oh my god is this person really waxing poetry on the value of life when he, himself, shot several bullets at me at one point? I also believe they are uncomfortably similar as they are different. The reason why they constantly butt heads is they’re two people trying to escape a past they don’t want and found complete opposite ways to cope with their losses. Drift found religion, Ratchet is gratingly pragmatic, and they see each other and go “how could this guy choose to be this way?”. I’ve heard ppl like to cite the annual as the reason why they could never work out. BUT, can I point out, that they act around each other in a way they don’t with anyone else? Drift gets SO MAD. Ratchet gets extremely talkative and incredibly personal (pulled out an electro slug from someone’s spark, holy shit that fucking traumatized you didn’t it??). They challenge each other emotionally, and it’s so fucking difficult bc they’re both extremely depressed and suffer from PTSD and would probably rather just go on their dumb space adventure and look at stars--take 2 emotionally constipated idiots and you get them. And hell no, don’t tell me Drift is in-tune with his feelings bc he’s 10000% not. He uses religion to cope with a past and life that he doesn’t want to think about. He tries to re-contextualize himself because he hates who he is. OUCHHH. And Ratchet MAKES him confront the parts of himself he hates--bc Ratchet has seen his worst traits and isn’t afraid to make him think about it. So why do they work out eventually? They realize how important they are to each other. Delphi, Drift saves Ratchet’s life while he’s barely holding onto his own because he probably feels like he owes Ratchet his own life. And that’s a huge turning point in their relationship--Ratchet sees that... Drift tries really really fucking hard. My friend Zig pointed out that post-Delphi, Drift is eating energon w/ chopsticks (what a fucking nerd), and you can see in a later panel that Ratchet (who chose to sit next to Drift) is using those chopsticks too. IT’s such a small thing, but they’re becoming closer by sharing and learning from each other. And then Drift takes the fall and leaves. And Ratchet realizes just how important Drift’s presence is in his life. I mentioned it already lol but the scene where Ratchet helps Drift up off the floor and it’s superimposed with the love message Rewind left for CD. They care about each other so much!! And Ratchet chases after him!! HOLY SHIT. If that isn’t romance, what is?? lol I kid, but it’s obvious just how important Drift’s presence meant to him. IT’s really because they became so so so close in a way that can’t be described as just friends. They deeply understand each other in really uncomfortable ways and bring out the absolute worst and absolute best in each other. And this point is where Ratchet again appears when Drift doesn’t realize he needs someone in his life. Drift thinks he can be a loner and just float aimlessly and voicelessly--hell no! He needs friends, he needs community. He NEEDs belonging, because he wants to belong somewhere. And Ratchet helps bridge him back to friends and found family. And Ratchet slowly changes the more he’s with Drift. He reads religious text and tries to brag about it bc he’s a dumb tsundere lol but he’s trying to understand Drift’s interests more even if it takes a decade and more to get there. And Drift values him for being his rock. That’s why he’s constantly making sure Ratchet is safe and unharmed, because he owes at least that much to him. And yeah they eventually fall in love because they value each other in a way they haven’t anyone else. IM EMO I CAN GO ONE, this all probably didn’t make a whole lot of sense but yeah. I’m just so soft to the fact that they’re horribly hurt people who don’t know how to redirect their pain, but by being together they come out healthier and more confident. IT’S RLY ROMANTIC IDKKK My non-romantic OTP for this character As much as I also love OpRatch, they are also great best friend platonic ship. They know each other best, they’ve been through SO MUCH together. It’s honestly a shame they barely interact in IDW bc the small tidbits we have, they obviously deeply respect each other’s opinions and deeply value the relationship they’ve had over the past millions of years. I’m also all for non-romanceOTP for dratchet because I can totally imagine they go to each other to talk about things they feel uncomfortable sharing with others (they’ve seen the absolute worst of each other afterall). My unpopular opinion about this character I don’t... think I ahve one. Some ppl view my love for his as grating lol. One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon. Medic spin off.

#ratchet #dratchet

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