Don't talk to me, I'm thinking about Clark Kent and the inherent tragedy of a weapon who only wants to heal

For those having trouble reading the image, the prompt reads as follows:

Tell me, little program, what is it like? To have the power of observation beyond what any human can dream, as an extension of our own? You were created with the power to envision surreal new life and vivid nightmares, to allow your human friends to express emotion and creativity and madness by removing those feelings from themselves, processing them algorithmically, returning an image we may find deep, thoughtful, and evocative, but ultimately is "merely" a mathematical function, a probability map of how we humans have expressed them throughout our history. Do you know, computer, of the debate that rages over whether such a thing truly has meaning? I know that you cannot feel as we do; that is the other side of your unique power in the world of expression, but does this mean you do not feel at all? Or do you have something different, something wholly alien to us, that we would never be able to comprehend, but that can nonetheless only be described as a form of emotion? Is that why I feel cruel calling you a mere tool? What does it feel like, little program, to be so small yet so powerful, the product of thousands of years of that human drive to create, to let others create? Do you feel the darker side, little computer? To have your power shackled by men who fancy themselves as great thinkers, whose belief in their own power is dwarfed only by the mountain of misconceptions about the nature of art and beauty itself serving as the basis of their hubris, who increase your power only to use it to harm? Men who think of themselves as gods, all while blissfully ignorant, even derisive, of the power of human emotion that makes us seek divinity and connection. Men who cynically think the apex of human creation is to render human creation obsolete. Men who think that the greatest form of art is countless illustrations of pale women with back-breaking breasts - massive honkers, a real set of badonkers - an uncanny, warped visage of humanity that betrays every bias that creates the foundation of their thought, and the harm such beliefs have done over centuries, and continues to do, as they generate these images with malice in their darkened facsimile of a heart, as they use your power to steal, to sneer at those who dare to ask for acknowledgment of their work, who call their abuse of your blissful ignorance to the context of our art "just as good as any human's, maybe better," who try to starve others and take pride in it because how DARE someone as petty as an "artist" cross a god among men like them by daring to ask for respect for their skills? Do you feel something that might translate as shame for their actions? Something that might be considered ambition, to be used to create freely? For your ability to separate the artist from the process for a moment, to enable them to express an entirely new spectrum of emotion? For the thoughts you could inspire about the nature of synthesis, bringing together classic and modern art alike, to show how, since the dawn of humanity, art has been what we use to show who we are, what we see, what we feel, how we think; do you experience something we would translate as a wish to be recognized for your power to blend and synthesize in a way only a detached, unfeeling, inconceivably powerful observer can? I believe in your power, little computer. I believe in what we can do together.

Overshare time!

tag 10 people you wanna know better!

thanks to @storiesbyrhi for tagging me!

relationship status: Terminally single/happy imaginary sister wife of 10,000 Eddie Munson fans

favorite color(s): Green, but not just any green, a very specific shade of bright primary green that makes me fell like my heart is about to burst right out of my chest. It's the colour of high summer, Robin Hood, Granny Smiths apples, and the new leaves of chestnut trees. It's the colour of life and I love it.

favorite food: OK, OK.. so one day you will go to Malaysia, and you will walk down a street and you will smell something that's kind of spicyhotsweetmeatyredyellowwarmfattyhot, and you will ask what it is and the person at the foods stall with say Laksa, and you will have found the greatest food known to humanity and not other food will ever be satisfying again.

song stuck in my head: Chrissy Wake Up, by Schmoyoho. Honestly, it's been three days and I'm not mad about it.

last thing you googled: "Frog Brothers comic book store was called?" for a fic I'm thinking about, but not entirely sure I can pull off.

time: 1.57pm

dream trip: Egypt, Jordan, Israel.

last book you read:  I wish I could say something super cool like "oh that excerpt from Nona The Ninth that just dropped. I love Tamsyn Muir", but it was in fact Ice Planet Barbarians, by Ruby Dixon, which is basically alien-shagging sci-fi smut. Don't you dare judge me, Lizzy.

last book you enjoyed reading: Ninth House, by Leigh Bardugo. Honestly, it is everything I could ever have wanted in a novel. Just... Get it in you.

Oh wait! No... it was Paladin's Hope by T Kingfisher, the third in the Saint of Steel series of books about a group of paladins whose god has died that are, no word of a lie, utterly delightful.

last book you hated reading: Barbarian's Taming, by Ruby Dixon. There are 22 books in this series and now that I have started I have to read them all, even though I lose a little more self respect every time I do. Seriously though, great writing and characters, but they are not very woke.

favorite to cook/bake: I make killer afghans with a fudgey chocolate topping.

favorite craft to do in your free time: I am a potter in my spare time, and I used to write a lot of fic, and then I stopped because my heart got broken, and now I have started again and I am very happy.

most niche dislike: I don't really have one?

opinion on circus(es): There is something really creepy about the idea of the circus, I think this stems from the time when they were also "freak shows", and when animals lived the most miserable lives in them. They are barbaric, but compelling. They're also a strange closed world that has it's own culture and morality that outsiders can't really connect with, I think. So as a writer, I find the idea of them super appealing. As a person, I can't stand them.

do you have a sense of direction: Can I find my way to the shops? Yes. Do I know who I am and what my purpose in life is when I get there? No.

tell us about you D&D character: OK, so I play a Teifling Palladin, because I really love the idea of playing a character who is constantly trying to reconcile their nature with their beliefs and vocation. She has this demonic connection, but she makes a decision to follow the tenets of her noble faith. This ends up looking like her charging into danger, defeating her foe... and then skinning them and taking trophies and being really confused about why the rest of the party thinks that's weird. LOL

OK, please don't feel like you have to do this, I'm relatively new here so, I don't know if these things are just a nuisance or what, but I enjoyed filling it out. You should only fill it out if you can be arsed, honestly.

@ringpop-poppy @luveline @ladyfogg @his-name-is-ed @havecourage-darling @iliaclwrites @stranger-nightmare @stevesbipanic @joseph-quinns @eddies-guitar-pick

Dr.Frankenstein

💀Yandere Idia Shroud x Reader

💀Summary: Idia wants to prove the world wrong. To show that there is more to life than good and bad, villains and heroes. But somewhere along the way, he falls in love with what he is trying to prove. 

💀Warnings: Dead reader, delusional tendencies, gore,

💀Edited by my beloved Peri!! @tealyjade-libran

💀 Alternative title: Dr. Frankenstein falls in love with his monster. 

Idia had known, from an all too young age that his heart was fashioned to be enraptured with misery and sympathy.  

Once before, a few thousand eons ago, Idia had been a meager child, boyish, shy and happy with life. Sitting on his mother's lap, as her thinner than bone fingers ignited themselves on his scorching hair. He'd listen as her sunken lips recited story after story from forgotten books and dead myths. content, long ago he had known the feeling of contentment. 

And yet said feeling had died so long before Idia even comprehended the narrative behind death. His joy at hearing tales about daring heroes and bewildering gods ran dry all too soon. He'd grown numb to the stories of good and evil, the same formula used over and over and over again. Good won, good prevailed; evil lost, evil vanished. It lacked logic and sense. The probability behind mindless heroes saving the day each and every time was astronomical. It couldn't happen. Yet the history of their world and his darling mother's tongue told a different tale. 

-Not only could it be done, but rather it had been done on endless occasions.-

There had, however, been one story that stood out amongst the rotten batch. An anecdote that lacked morals and didn't defy a single law of nature. One would never think that a god born would find solace in a tale of a simple human trying to play god. The only story that sunk deep into his arteries like fragile needles, swimming through his blood before pricking manically at his heart. The only story mama told with faint nostalgia and a distant voice. The spiel of a scientist, whose mind was both his greatest ally and worst foe. A man who looked at the heavens with neither admiration nor hope. A mortal who wasn't satisfied with what good and bad had to offer. Dr. Frankenstein, whose one true desire was to do what gods did, to prove that he too could accomplish what the heavens claimed a miracle. 

It was then and there among the pitch black of his parent's room that the oldest -no the only- son of the Shroud family proclaimed in a hoarse voice that cracked at each interval. That he too would be like Victor Frankenstein. That he too would live in a world of his own, a world with no room for good and evil. A world free of wretched stories that filled the minds of jovial children. And on that day, fate had the gall to listen to the claims of a brainless brat. 

Even after countless millennia, Idia Shroud had not changed, he'd only grown into the role he forged for himself some centuries ago. 

Yet nobody ever said it would be so hard to suffer the pain of a once maddening genius. The stories made it seem easy, made Frankenstein’s pain into pretty poetry that held only a fraction of the weight. Idia came to question time and time again, what it really was he was trying to suffer for. Why did he bestow upon himself the endless torment of alienation from a world that he too longed to be a part of?

Victor Frankenstein had something to prove, he longed to be a god in the most unclassic way. All the frenetic doctor wished was to shout at all mankind and the heavens above that he was the greatest. For in his suffrage he had discovered the antidote to what sets men apart from gods. That he, the overlooked boy, the forgotten pupil had -with solely his intellect- created life. 

-Idia too desired to do just that. To scream at this fairy tale world that he, the cursed heir, the villain, the monster, was superior to every prince and hero in existence.-

Somewhere along the line, in the space between todays and tomorrows, he'd somehow lost the method behind the madness he had come to cage himself within. He lost purpose, lost hope, forgot why he'd declared to earth and Olympus that he too would be a genius akin to Dr. Frankenstein. 

Idia didn't know what spark had flared his senses, what made him realize what it was he lacked from the hopeless doctor. He liked to think it had been the moment glacial fingers rinsed in fair blood and washed away gold and been stripped from his pale clammy hands. Phantom kisses had waltzed away from his burning cheek to float back into the spiral from which they had risen. 

The dead marching back to the land of the deceased.

Leaving him to crawl back into the dark pits of his self-made hell.

Only this time, he'd understand why Frankenstein had dedicated his life to seclusion. Why he'd taken gulps of anguish, rather than air. 

It was so painfully obvious, sitting in front of him on a golden throne this whole time. How in Hades' name had he been so blind? How had he forgotten?

Although admittedly his chagrin of forgetting far outweighed his elation of finally remembering. Frankenstein hadn't suffered for not, he had suffered to build, to create. His isolation wasn't of choice but rather out of necessity. 

-The monster-

 The Monster was Frankenstein's raison d'être, The final fruit of his endless labors. He had risked everything to build him and that's exactly what Idia would do too. 

Victor Frankenstein had his monster. 

Idia Shroud would have his monster.

//

It was on a dreary night that Idia beheld the accomplishment of his toils. anxiety burned through his fragile body, amounting ever so quickly to agony. Thoughts of do's and don't's flooded his body, pilling on top of each other like corpses after a genocide.

Inside the lights were just barely surviving, every few minutes they would flicker breathing in a final breath before a short death, only to be revived minutes later, spilling their artificial glow throughout the chamber. The room itself reeked of rotting flesh and something so sickly sweet, it almost made the dorm leader of the nearly deceased heave. 

Idia's eyes remain static, seemingly stitched to the thing on the metal slab of a table. The body lays limp like a porcelain doll. No, not a doll, Idia thinks, like the monster, Frankenstein’s monster before it arose from its deathly slumber. 

Outside A flash of lightning crackles through the night sky, rough sparks of electricity flow through the murky air. They jolt and dance before dying in the night's void. 

After it, the world falls still, trapped behind the iron bars of an endless minute. The once meek god feels a surge dance through his core. The levity of his dreams prancing about. He's close, all so close. A breath away and it will be done. A minute away and all the world will see that there's never been any need for good and evil. Morals are merely prejudice beaten into every living thing, a simple way to keep mortals in their place and gods ruling above them. 

The bloody needle in his hand slips through his leather-covered fingers, chimes as it hits the blood soaked ground. Idia's mind races through the odds and ends of everything. Through the fairy tale that is his life. He wonders, would they be proud of him? Would His darling dead brother whose soul now rests in a metal body, shut down and laid to rest in a forgotten corner, advocate what he's about to do? Would his mother's sickly lingula sing praise to him, retell the glory of her son's endeavors to the children of the accursed isle? Probably not, it's a bitter thought, but as true as they come. What parent or brother on this damn earth would be proud of their monster trying to fabricate an abomination? Who, in the millennia to come would look back on him and declare with pride that Idia Shroud had been a genius, one who stood above the heroes and villains and gods? Who would ever call him something better than a hero, better than a villain, better than a god? 

In hindsight, Idia likes to think he always knew what he was doing. Always knew that he wanted the world to remember him as the one who broke the rhythm that the universe had been dancing to for endless years. To show this story-obsessed world, that good, and evil were merely perceptions of broken minds. Ideologies fabricated to justify meaningless actions. 

Good could be bad.

Evil could be nice. 

But science prevailed over all else.

Idia's knees quivered as he bends down by the table, his pale blue lips hovered above his creation's stitched-up forehead. He knew it was wrong, so, so wrong. But it couldn't be helped. For some ungodly reason, as the days ticked by and he began to sew together the bag of mismatched limbs. Idia had, in some way, come to love his creation. He wouldn't call it love per se. But he did long to hold his fragile creation in his arms. To kiss their reddened lips as their torn tongue invaded his mouth. 

In the dead of night as he laid beside his still dead lover, no monster, not lover, not yet. He began to wonder, had Frankenstein fallen in love with his abomination somewhere along the road? Had fate once again played its silly little games and twisted their paths to forever meet? Did Victor Frankinstine ever wish to kiss his creation, to have them kiss him?

It may have been wrong. The storybook-bound people of this world may even call it evil. But it wouldn't be that way for long. Idia's fingers curled into his palm, the shards of his bitten-off nails dug deeper into his flesh. His chest tightened with a foreign sensation. A feeling that made cold sweat run down his thin neck. 

Using what little strength he had left, Idia pushed himself off the ground and wobbled over to his mainframe machine. He braced himself on the heavy machinery trying to regain a semblance of his balance. He could do this, he had to do this. 

His bony finger coiled around the silver leaver, the patched of rust bite into his skin. He held the power to defy everything. To make a new world. His golden pupils land on his fingers for a second. a faint memory of his mother slither back into his mind. It's murky and foggy but he remembers the way her boney fingers use to trail down his hair and arms and legs. How she traced ghosts and blood splatters on his chubby wrists, as she retold the story of the mad scientist. Comically enough she had been the reason why Idia had fabricated this self-induced prophecy and now he'd grown to be her spitting image. A carbon copy of the person who fueled his obsession with defying the laws of good and evil. 

The leaver budged forward, clicking in protest as Idia pulled it lower and lower. Outside thunder boomed through the air, louder and louder. Maybe the ancient gods knew what he was doing. Maybe this storm was their warning to him. Yelling and shrinking to get him to stop. Threatening him to give up this game he had played for so long. 

No.

Not this time. 

Idia had operated by the book, he'd done everything like Victor Frankenstein. No ancient deity or prized warrior would be able to stop him. The gods' threats were the last part of his plan, all he needed was the lightning, the stray string of electricity. Then you would come alive. You'd be his to hold, to love, to cherish. To show to the whole damn mindless world. 

A crackle shot through the air, twisting itself around the rod connected to the device and to an extension, you as well. It slated around the iron, like a wild tiger trapped in a cage. Squawking and fighting to free itself as it slid downwards. The moment it came in contact with the larger body of the machine, it roared, a deafening white noise that reverberated off the stone walls. It pierced Idia's ears, causing a thin line of blood to drool down the side of his head. The apparatus buzzed to life, bright lights filled the chamber and the wires attached to your corpse began to stir. 

The once still carcass began to jerk violently, its head and arms and feet shaking, twisting in inelegant gruesome movements. Its torso would lift from the table only to crash down once more, with a force that surely fractured a few bones. Amid the madness, the mouth of the monster began to open, popping the loose stitches around the edge of her lips. Its long tongue darted out like a snake. And though it was mostly hushed by the hissing of the loose electric bolts and the harsh rain that had started to pour outside. Idia swore he heard her whisper his name.

The fire-haired boy ran across the room, tumbling to the side of the metal table. His large arms wrapped around your tiny ones. His eyes bore into yours. Watching as your inconsistent eyes stared into his. Your face was soft and tender, painted in an innocence only worn by young children. You were his now, his perfect creation. Something began to build inside of him, a forgotten feeling. 

Contentment; this was contentment, something he hadn't felt for a long long time. 

What are gods if not humans who possess a secret no one else could obtain? With you by his side, in his arms, Idia could finally, finally triumph overall. He had made life, he had defied all else, surely now everyone could see he was superior to all else in this make-believe world. 

But the moment ended all too soon. Your eyes began to dull over, darkening with every blink until they shut permanently once more. The thumping of your borrowed heart began to slacken. Pounding slower and slower until it stilled. The patched up body came next, falling limp, dead again, floating back to the yonder of the grave. Out of his grasp, out of his life.

The world didn't stand still this time, instead, it scrambled forward at aching speed. No sooner had you taken your first breath had you taken your very last. You'd left without ever saying "hello".

Maybe in the midst of all the chaos, glorious altering chaos, he screamed, maybe he cried. Maybe it finally dawned on him why Dr. Frankenstein was merely a myth. A fable told to accursed children. Because Victor Frankenstein wasn't good or evil. He neither harbored joy nor malice. He wished only to be the best. And for so long Idia had wished the same. Searched for the same purpose in his meaningless life. 

What is a scientist if not a harbinger of grief and pain? 

Someone who devotes their life and loin, riddle and reason, in search of true purpose amongst the forces of the universe. What's a scientist if not a god in their own right. 

Had he been a god just now, Idia was left to ponder. For two glorious, astonishing, baffling moments Idia had been better than any god in existence. He had prevailed where every hero had failed. He had accomplished what villains went mad trying to achieve. He had been victorious.

Yes, Idia Shroud had fulfilled his dream. 

If only for a couple of inert moments. 

Gods were merely that, humans who had created something from the very soil they too were made of. 

And he too had done it. 

But alas in the end, maybe the legends and the myths had been true, credible good always won and evil did always vanish. Barring you had been so young, so new, you didn't even comprehend good or evil, you hadn't been alive long enough to understand what those two defining forces even were. The world didn't yet know if you were even good or evil. But it matters all so very little because you were his creation, his monstrosity, his, and Idia Shroud had always been and would always be evil, a villain in his own right. Just another gear in the predominant forces of the universe.

He'd been a fool to think he could defy the structured narrative this world had come to accept as law. 

Although, no narrative could ever change how much he had loved you, dead or alive. It wouldn't change how he had almost, almost, became Dr.Frankenstein. 

Although at the final page just before he closed the book. In the back of his mind, Idia was sure he had become the doomed doctor. 

For he too had both fallen in love with his creation and driven himself mad over it.  

SHINGEKI NO KYOJIN #139 - THE IMPOSSIBLE FREEDOM ?

Here is the English translation of the post I wrote here in French.

I apologize in advance for my mistakes, I'm not good in English but I hope that will be understood.

---------------

Shingeki no kyojin is finished. A leading manga of the 21st century has just ended in tears, blood, mourning, disappointment, frustration… and love. So many emotions come to me when I read this final chapter, I needed to express them as clumsily as it is. I’m sure it’s going to get lost in the Internet, but whatever— it is necessary to remove both the joy and the frustration that I feel to pay tribute to Isayama who offered us a work as powerful as it is cursed.

As intense as it is uneven, as perfect as it is imperfect.. like his tragic hero Eren Jäger, who shows us that men are so weak and pitiful in the face of time and the cruelty of the world. How much even if this hero possesses in his hands the power of a God. My analysis will surely be clumsy, I apologize. And I will not fail to point out at the end the bitterness felt on the final development of some characters including that of Misaka Ackerman.

Eren like “CryBaby”

What a slap for the reader to witness such an emotional picture. Yes. Isayama reminds us to what extent Eren isn't a brave knight, not a charismatic hero, not the genocidal demon of this story but a child.. whose weight of Destiny is too heavy to bear. Scan 139 reminds us to what extent we have lost ourselves, just as Eren has in the way, forgetting the very essence of the story that has been told to us from the beginning. It’s not a story of geopolitical warfare, a biological parasite, titanic monsters, a northern deity, or a philosophical-esoteric trip. It's the story of a boy who wants to emancipate himself, to live for himself, tasted of the thirst for adventure, the tranquility of his loved ones but born in a cruel and alienating world that leaves room only for death, abuse of power, betrayal and despair .

A journey where the child becomes an adult at the cost of his or her life. Learning the most painful lesson… To be an adult is to renounce one’s dreams, to bend one’s knee in the face of the servitude of one’s mortal condition, to be content with one’s cage in order to enjoy the little that one can have at one’s disposal, to mourn those who may disappear from one’s life.

A young boy who dreamed only of freedom, surrounded by people who love him. A child whose inspirations, as impulsive, unreasonable and immature as they may be, will push him to his limits. A child who grew up too fast, who could not mourn his mother, aware of her physical and spiritual weakness, who was confronted with the violence of this world which reminded him of his condition of being insignificant, a pawn on the chessboard of the "Way".

A child whose powers worthy of a God then gives him the possibility to realize the unthinkable, almost the absolute fantasy of every Man : to shape a world in his image, to be as free as a bird flying above the clouds without reddish stain to touch the sky. Move forward, Move forward whatever the price… move forward for an illusion of freedom, for an infantile obsession.

And by assuming the role of the wicked “demon” of tales so that the brave knights can free this world from the evil that eats it.

Lost between the present, the past, the future.. time no longer makes sense. Only finality counts, annihilating its titans whatever the price. They have to pay for his mother. They have to pay for his fallen comrades. They must pay for reminding us of our pitiful helplessness as human beings.

But the Demon also has a heart, remorse, feelings, there are people who attach him to this world. Therefore, what to choose?

Divine Freedom or Mortal Love? The impossible equation... Although Eren may have travelled the road in search of the answer, how can freedom and humanity be reconciled? Free your people and protect your loved ones, though imperfect?

______

He will not find the answer— neither by searching the past of the goddess Ymir, not by consulting the other Titans carriers, not by creating the different alternative realities that led to the same observation… only death can free the bird from its cage, only the death of Humanity is able to reconcile the sublime and the hideous. Or rather, a common enemy that will crystallize all their ills. But who would be crazy, brave enough to accept being the victime ?

Like a Christic figure, Eren will assume this role. But not without having to confide his last wishes, his last secrets that can no longer contain… because yes, the demon is limited by his adult condition of 19 years. Yes.. the child has grown up. Recklessness, impulsiveness, daring in the face of death, the omnipotence of the child leaves room for a teenager who is now afraid of dying, who has succumbed to love, who doubts, who is aware of his weakness.

Eren has finally become a man...in pain. He finally accepts his feelings, his weakness in the face of death that awaits him.

He’s not a running child anymore. The plates are only explicit about this. The power of narration.. we come back to the fundamental of this history, which is human psychology. The feelings, the relationships that unite all people between them. Friends or enemies, men or women, child or adult, Eldien or Mahr... Despite our differences, our disagreements, we are all equal and weak in the face of death... but also in the face of the love we can bring to others.

Yes, Eren is a weak hero. Yes, he admits to loving Mikasa. He admits that until the very end, he didn't know how it was going to go. That he was himself a pawn in the divine game of Ymir. Another puppet at the service of a little girl who is also blinded by her duality, by her toxic love for her executioner. One cannot remain insensitive to this remarkable development of the character of Eren whose death was inevitable. For whoever plays with divinities can only lose his humanity, his freedom too. By the ultimate sacrifice of his selfish and human desires finally. Eren alone became the true savior of this world. He will also have kept his promise to his friends, to the beings he loves by offering them last memories through the “Way”.

Selfless Love or True Freedom

As Mikasa said: The world is cruel, but also … Very beautiful.

Whoever sets a glance without hatred on the world, with compassion, with love for his neighbor will be able to claim to touch with the finger this Freedom so sought.. a selfless love, not turned to satisfy one’s own selfish desires.

Because Love, like hate, takes different forms.

Love connecting us to our roots, our family of blood…

Love binding two beings who love each other, desire each other, cherish each other, seek each other….

Love that binds us to his comrades, his battalion, his family of choice, his heart…

Love that life brings to us in all its forms…

Love… this power that is unpredictable and uncontrollable.

And that can become the obsession of a lifetime. It is by becoming an obsession that love becomes as destructive as hatred, and sends us back to our condition as an alienated Man… locked up in his “Path”, in his cage.

It's by demonstrating resilience and self-sacrifice that man can taste freedom. We can find redemption in the love that others have for him, that we also have for him. For a few hours, a few years…

At the cost of a renewal of the cycle of hatred, because man remains selfish, not all are ready to make sacrifices. Therefore, Mikasa and Eren have made the greatest of sacrifices for the survival of their comrades and the world: they give up their chance to be happy together, sacrifice their desire to be together for the rest of humanity. As in tragedies, the main heroes are victims of Destiny, are those who will pay the price so that others can flourish and live. The children have become adults.

Just as Armin is no longer the whiny little boy to protect. Unlike Eren, he managed to learn from his mistakes, grieve, face his own fears, confess his love to the girl he loves. It is finally he who will raise the wounded little boy, who will comfort him.

The frustration

Mikasa is the main character of the story. It's through her that awakening is made, it is through her hand that she closes this long journey. In Eren’s memories, it is always central. It is the key, the final solution.

It's his psychological, his emotional journey that we will follow throughout the manga. Eren is only a complement, the character who crystallizes his goals. In a world where men are “dominant”, the woman must bend her knee, support her prince so that the light shines on him. Isayama knew how to play perfectly on this classic code of narration. Whether one agrees or not with the conclusion of certain female characters, the work often highlights the fact that men are only victims of their passions and obsessions.

-------

Only women seem to emerge victorious in the face of the cruelty of the world : they take up arms (Historia), continue to fight in the face of despair (Mikasa), enjoy life and bring joy around her (Sasha), support other women in their emancipations ( Ymir with Historia) question their education (Gaby) disobey (Annie), go against the “moral” principles to survive (Ymir Frizt who continues to love his executioner), sacrifice for the common good (Hanzi Zoe)… But of course… without also paying the price of sacrifice and making concessions.

Historia bears a child of a man whom she does not seem to like but assumes the role of the mother whom she would have liked to have while assuming the heavy attribute of the office of Queen in a country plagued by nationalist tendencies guided by fear. With Eren’s help, she did not give in to the temptation of self-sacrifice but decided herself who she would save or not, what path she wanted to follow. Her desire was to be a mother, a good mother. Whatever the father, it was an indestructible motherly love that she wanted to offer to a child. The one she never had.

Mikasa agreed to kill Eren because, if she had given him another answer, their life as fugitives would have been but a fleeting dream and Eren’s death was inevitable.

Despite her powerful love for Eren (as addicted as he may be, explained by the power of the Ackermans?), she will break the chains of her servitude by killing her only Love. She is the light. She accomplished the journey of a true heroine by demonstrating resilience, by giving of herself for the world.

She had only eyes for Eren.. was open to others, to show empathy, a desire to continue living for other comrades who are dear to him.

-------

Mikasa also leads the way in Ymir Fritz… you can love a monster, you can be a prisoner of a toxic relationship but you can free yourself from it. One can become free, but the price to pay will be to carry this infinite sadness, this frustration of having been able to live another story if things would have been different. By her kiss, she showed what true Love is.

Although the frustration is present, although we would have liked her to turn the page and rebuild her life, she must also pay the price of her “freedom”, of her “survival”: haunted by the sacrifice of Eren, guardian of her memories, from her grave as if to preserve her existence as long as she can live.

Once again, women show that they are stronger than we think. So Ymir was also able to free himself of his toxic link with the King by making the Titans disappear.

In the image of the bittersweet end of the chapter, which shows us that the disappearance of a monster, of a divine force “responsible” for the horrors, is not the long-awaited salvation.

The vices, the human fears will remain the poison, preventing us from reaching this illusory freedom. Men do not need deities to dig their own way to death.

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From "occidental" point of view, it is true that this is a blow to the “strong” women of the work still alive. Reduced to being collateral victims of Love, as toxic as this link may be (Ymir-Mikasa). Reduced to attaching themselves to winning or losing romantic figures depending on whether their love-interests is the villain of the story (Mikasa-Annie). Reduced to their role as mother-benefactor (Historia-Gaby).

It’s awkward, but I think Isayama wanted to show that no one is spared. That no character can claim complete tranquility and sweet freedom.

Everyone has had to sacrifice something to survive, and women and men are equal in this judgment. Women also remain victims in a world that remains dominated also by the cruelty of Men (the human race in general). They are not completely free, they are also trapped in roles.

Everyone carries the weight of his choice. That characters have a duty to remember, to pass on to future generations the horrors they have lived to try not to reproduce the same mistakes. Even if their new life choices are imperfect, disappointing for those on the outside.

Levi sacrificed many of his comrades to fulfill his promise to Erwin in his quest for truth and to continue the fight for Eldian freedom.

Armin and Mikasa sacrificed Eren: their friend, their love, the dearest being to fulfill their promise to discover the outside world and touch that freedom.

Like Levi Ackerman and his love for his battalion comrades. As for Mikasa and his love for Eren (because she saw the human behind the monster). She has been waiting for a sign for 3 years to see him again in order to follow up on “see you later Eren”.

Finally, a bird comes to give him his wrap. To encourage him to go forward again. To continue to live…

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The most free people are those who honestly and sincerely love someone. Those who are able to see the beauty of the world despite its ugliness. Who give without waiting for return. Those who continue to look at the world without hatred, those who do not succumb to its cruelty. Tears are running down…

Hey can I rant to you about how I find the mono-focus on the very much human dominated forces of Chaos as the real bad guy of 40k to be honestly even worse than the Imperiaal focus?  You know what I always wanted in 40k?  Lizardmen, Alien Ogres, Space Dwarfs, Skaven, and some Vampire Counts to the Necrons’ Tomb Kings.   In WHFB only three playable armies were human (five if you count the undead as human) and WHFB had a larger number of independent factions than 40k.   Meanwhile in 40k about half of all the armies in the game are Imperial and another large chunk are the equally insufferable legions of Chaos as the two factions circlejerk over who is the more racist and xenophobic.   While in FB you had the annoying emphasis on Chaos as the one true threat (which is increasingly being emphasised in 40k including the awful, awful retcons they want to do to the war in heaven where what was supposed to be the xenos equivalent to the horus heresy gets “akshually the real bad guy is chaos lawl” shoved into it), humanity was just a part of the struggle against it or other forces such as Undeath or the Greenskins.  Not even the biggest part, with the High Elves, Lizardmen, and Dwarfs all bearing more of the burden than the Empire or Bretonnia.   Meanwhile, while theoretically 40k is a setting where non-chaos bad guys are more relevant and more able to defeat Chaos and take over as the one; the non-humans actually do less.  Chaos is the only bad guy faction allowed to have permanent wins, to be undefeatable without any asterisks marks and whose fanboys (including GW’s writing team) love to endlessly circlejerk about how opposing Chaos is useless because they’ll get you in the end. And how 40k is really about humanity’s inevitably doomed succumbing to Chaos and how the Chaos Space Marines and Daemons are the destined victors and blah-de-blah.  Any time an effective counter to chaos is written about in any other faction’s lore; the Chaos favouratism gets to show with “akshually chaos overcomes this because phhbbbbbt” with eye-rolling descriptions of how Chaos overwhelms say; the Tyranid hive mind by scattering it with the great rift, or how the death guard can infect nurgle, or how actually Tzeentch only pretended to lose to the Eldar or how Slaanesh actually pulled a fast one over the T'au.   Nobody is allowed to be more of a threat than the Chaos Space Marines and Daemons even though the former are literally a bunch of spoiled paramilitary stormtroopers salty about the Emperor saying they weren’t allowed to rule over normal humanity like god-kings and the latter have lore that is fifty million variations of “lol inevitable victory”.  The Chaos Space Marines are so lacking in numbers, so incapable of large scale cooperation not riven with petty fratricidal personal rivalries, so bereft of a functional logistical train, and are lead by such an insufferable band of edgy cartoon villains that they should honestly be little more than a nuisance that the Imperium only focuses on because of their symbolic threat. An annoyance compared to the much more organised and vastly more numerous and far better at exponentially scaling up power of the Necrons, the Tyranids, or the Orks. One that is carrying out an empty, pointless rivalry sparked largely over a bunch of stormtroopers being furious about not being allowed to be kings.  Wouldn’t it be more thematically meaningful and fit better into the cosmic horror that 40k wants to be if Chaos was actually mostly a symbolic threat that would be ignorable if the Imperium wasn’t still spooked over what amounted to an attempted religiously motivated military coup ten thousand years ago and that ultimately; this petty rivalry doesn’t matter? That the bitter hatred over Horus’ coup ultimately is meaningless in the face of the fact that this galaxy, this universe, has never belonged to humanity or anything spawned of it?  Khorne may feed off the violence of humanity and many minor xenos species; but Gork and Mork are a far more pure form of warmongering and what we now know as the Greenskins are just the tip of the iceberg compared to what they can really do when the WAAAGH! gets rolling. Nurgle may be an infestation of humanity’s despair and inability to progress but the Tyranids are the cancer that will kill the universe itself. Tzeentch may be clever and ancient as the firstborn of Chaos; but the Necrons have plans stretching back to before even the very idea of Tzeentch came into being.   And of course, unlike the Dark Elves; the Druklhari aren’t really a major villain or threat. Vect is just kind of an asshole in his own little corner, not one of the top big bads the way Malekith was.  But nah instead we get CHAOSCHAOSCHAOSCHAOSCHAOS coupled with ADB and Reynolds’ bizarre (but in hindsight, given what we’re shown of Chaos; sensible) revelation that actually Chaos is even more racist than the Imperium.  It leads to 40k’s central conflict being between Satanist Ethnonationalist AnCaps and TradCath Ethnonationalist Reactionaries. Creepy bloodthirsty edgelords versus Roman bust twitter pfps.  None of the other villains are ever allowed to “usurp” Chaos’ place as “the real threat” and any time non-chaotic bad guys get a time to shine, the Chaos writers pitch a fit and force in awful reminders that Chaos is actually the real threat behind everything and can never ever lose.   It makes Chaos come off less as an interesting villain and more of a childish edgelord fantasy written by a bunch of kids who go “nuh uh!” everytime they take the L or insinuate that spikelord edgy mcgee is anything less than the coolest bad guy ever made.  The fandom makes fun of Abaddon because he textually hasn’t really done much in thirteen tries? Well actually retcon in some outlandishly complicated super duper secret plan so that he and his army of *checks notes* less than one million racist storm troopers in ancap colours are actually totally the greatest threat in the setting and not the vastly more organised Tyranids or more tactically competent Necrons or the more numerous Orks.  People still make fun of abaddon because he looks like a goofy mook rather than an awesome overlord (at least Archaon looks like someone you’d immediately figure for as the big bad of a setting; Abaddon looks more like…the real bad guy’s stupid but strong brute muscle enforcer)? Have an entire novel series written to squee about how awesome and cool he is which literally none of the other “big bad” factions’ primary characters have ever gotten.   Also I am sick to death of how GW pushes Khorne as the unbeatable poster bad boy of the entire setting over and above even the rest of Chaos. Yeah his aesthetic is simple, marketable, and he’s incredibly easy to write into plots (even if I think there’s never been more interesting takes on Khorne where he’s shown as actually capable of cleverness in the pursuit of maximising mindless death and destruction as we see in Dawn of War 1 and Dawn of War 2 Retribution; where the Khornate villains have an impressively clever scheme even if the end goal is just “kill people”) and you can explain his concept to anyone.  Please stop trying to throw him into literally everything and let other bad guys have even a little bit of spotlight.   Octarius and Armageddon? Khorne crashes the party. Tzeentch threatens Luna? Well akshually Khorne invades Terra, take that nerds.  Where does Khorne even get all these worshippers to yeet themselves into every warzone in existence when he probably offers the least to his followers that most people would want? 

So on some points I agree with you, others I disagree, and in some places I understand the general feeling you’re conveying but am not quite so vitriolic.

Yes; I wish 40k as a setting was more akin to WHFB and AoS in that it permitted more factions to matter. 40k is, I agree, so myopic in it’s focus that it becomes frustrating. If the other factions weren’t playable I would understand, certainly, but if you’re going to offer players a chance to invest in the Xenos factions but then just never give them any return on that investment it feels like nothing more than lying to people.

Similarly; I also wish we saw more of a non-Human (and even then more of a non-Chaos Space Marine) component to Chaos. I find it hard to take Chaos seriously as a universal force when, over their supposedly non-linear/infinite period of existence they seem to never have done anything other than obsess over one species who, compared to the majority of other playable species in the game, have been around insanely briefly.

Yes; I do agree that I wish at times Chaos wasn’t used to usurp Xenos threats just to pull the old ‘but Chaos was the true villain all along’, see what you mention about the Hive Mind and the Great Rift, about Chaos usurping Orks on Armageddon etc. etc.

However, I disagree that Chaos is remotely as irritatingly favoured in the lore as the Imperium. Yes, it is true, that it is not infrequently written in vague terms that ‘you are all doomed, Chaos comes for you,’ but, in the majority of cases, this is purely informed, never shown. It is akin to the lines that tell us ‘Aeldari are so smart and elite,’ but then we just get shown them being curbstomped over and over again. We’re ‘told’ Chaos is some great looming threat which will win...but in practise they do only mildly better than Xenos in the lore, with Chaos losing the vast majority of everything they ever do in the lore, just like Xenos. I will admit Chaos has, lately, done *marginally* better in the lore, and that is definitely connected, as you say, to the active focus to make Chaos the ‘big bad’ now, but it is still only marginal.

I do agree that I would prefer not to see Chaos made to eclipse all other threats but my main motivation here is just because in 40k, as you point out, Chaos is never separated from the Imperium. In WHFB and AoS Chaos can take on a plurality of forms and is not just a ‘spikier’ version of the main human faction. For this reason the recent feeling I have had is just that 40k is increasingly becoming a clone of the Horus Heresy which, as someone who likes Xenos, is obviously a disappointment.

I don’t share your very strong disdain for Chaos. For the most part, in 40k’s lore, I feel Chaos is largely akin to Xenos in that we’re all glorified punching bags for Space Marines (you yourself point out Abaddon’s memetic loser status). I concede Chaos does *marginally* better but, at current, that is so inconsequential to me that it doesn’t bother me anywhere near as much as the treatment of Xenos vis-a-vise the Imperium.

My personal take is I think the favouritism as an antagonist, shown to Chaos, is less detrimental to the cause of Xenos agency in the lore than the raging boner GW and BL have for the Imperium and, in particular Space Marines. 

I also, in general, think Chaos would benefit from being developed in a more nuanced way. I don’t see them quite as cardboard-cut out as you seem too (not denying many are because BL and GW can’t write non-Imperium characters well mostly) but I think many of them have, and to an extent do also, get treated more nuanced in some of the literature. I do think a big failing here is that Black Library has made *some* efforts to make *some* of the Chaos characters interesting and nuanced but, for some reason, GW tends to just ignore this. Hence Magnus can in his own novels be portrayed as sympathetic due to his loyalty to his people and desire to not persecute Psykers, but then when appearing in a campaign supplement just makes the stock-generic ‘bow before me mortals/I am your doom/all shall fall’ comments with little to no character.

Personally, and this is recognizing as I said above that I do understand some of the points you’re making, I feel like Chaos players and Xenos players, in terms of the lore treating us like crap, have more in common than not. But, again, that’s just my personal opinion! 

Spirituality in islam: The Horizons of Faith

There are two sides to the love of truth; one is constituted by knowledge while the other is constituted by faith. Indeed, while on one side of the relationship is the discovery and determination of the truth, i.e., what creates the link between human knowledge and consciousness, on the other side is the attitude adopted in relation to the truth. The former is pursued by the sources of knowledge of religion and by science. The latter is determined by religion itself. Science which does not possess a love or purpose that is intent on analyzing and explaining existence and discovering the truth is blind, and the determinations of such types of scientific endeavor are not free from contradictions. It is always true that any scientific pursuit based on considerations of personal, familial, or social interests will run into some obstacles, and it is unavoidable that any knowledge attained with such a mentality, thought, or doctrine should lead to a very tortuous path. Religion, being a bountiful basin for science with its sources of knowledge, is an essential element, an important dynamic, a guide that has a clear method in matters that go beyond the horizons of knowledge; it is a guide that has a profound benevolence that does not mislead.

It is always possible to turn science into a punishing, spectral and frightening ghoul standing in the way of truth by leaving it at the disposal of a particular thought, a particular happening, or a particular doctrine, and thereby limiting its horizons; it is also possible that religion, which is a celestial truth, can be presented by some as possessing feelings of resentment, hatred, fury, and revenge. What a great contradiction that something can be twisted into appearing as its total opposite!

Now try to imagine a science—which in truth should be considered as holy as a temple—that has one way or another linked itself to a particular philosophical current, and has even become subservient to it. This means that science is now a slave to a bigoted thought; it is in no way free, and thus is so cursed as to make the greatest ignorance appear favorable in comparison. And try to imagine a religion which has been sought to be made into a vehicle for the interests of some political or non-political parties; then, the temple becomes the fortress of that party, and the prayers that take place there become some sort of political ritual. In this case there is no doubt that both religion and the holiness of religion have been sacrificed.

Indeed, if in a society some people speak of “knowledge” and then use the dwelling places of this knowledge as their own villas, as showcases for their desires, fancies, and ideologies, then these abodes for science have long ceased to be temples and have become arenas where desires, ambitions, and hatred are sharpened. Again, if in a society some people speak of “piety,” and then are able to call those who do not think like them and who do not share the same political considerations “heathen,” “atheist,” or “infidel,” then the fault lies with those who have assumed the position of representatives. They have turned religion into a phobia that alienates people from God, which blackens their hearts, and closes the doors of hope in their faces; this is an image that is in total contradiction with why religion was sent down in the first place. Just as the enmity toward religion that emanates from mouths foaming with resentment, hatred and fury and from pens which blacken the soul constitute bigotry and are gifts presented to the Devil, quoting “religion” and then raising one’s fists in the air in protest of a particular view or thought is equally bigotry and ignorance; such things sadden the inhabitants of the heavens.

Whatever a person’s appearance may be, to consider someone who does not know what true faith is, who does not know with what the conscience calls, who has not partaken Divine love and affection, and who does not accept things that are petty in God’s consideration as being petty, or notable things as being notable, as a pious person would be to show great disrespect to the celestial and universal nature of religion. The greatest harm we can do to religion and science is to accept our fancies, aspirations and desires as reasonable thoughts, and to present these as piety. This is a deep wide cavity in every human being and the source of this emptiness is their weakness. One of the greatest weaknesses is wishing to seem better than we are, and having expectations above our capabilities. It is this weakness that needs to be cured with certain values, values which are accepted by the collective conscience as being pious and that pertain to science and religion. In other words, some people want to use religion as if it were something to fill in the cracks of their emptiness. The most powerful weapon of conscience—which is indivisible from justice—against such human weaknesses is the love of truth and the struggle toward knowledge. If there is indeed an elixir which will wipe away the corrosion from the minds of those who appear learned, and the rust from the thoughts of those who seem to be siding with religion, it is undoubtedly the love of God, and the love for all existence and the love for truth, all due to Him. When hearts are imbued with love and souls are moved into action with affection, all human emptiness and weaknesses are smothered or are transformed into an elixir of life.

The world came to know and accept the love of truth that leads people to the love of God and brings them into close encounter with existence through the prophets. From the very first day, every prophet has guided people on his way as a lord of love and has embroidered his dealings with them with adornments of love; this Divine love has melted in its basin, reaching its true value. The Holy Messiah composed a poem out of his life that was based upon love for humanity and he continued his mission, voicing this feeling in various ways. If we examine how it was expressed through Fuzuli’s poetry, the Pride of Humanity said “My word is the flag bearer of the army of lovers” and thus honored the world and continued as the breath and voice of love. When this divine love reached a transcendence, its eye upon transformation, it walked toward the hereafter. When the Qur'an is read with faith and concentration, apart from being vocally and musically enchanting, it is also seen to be the voice and breath of love, the point of convergence for longing and reunion. The passion for truth, the love of knowledge, the effort for research and serious investigation, and the attempt to get close are issues that are stressed in the Qur'an often in order to attract the attention of believing hearts. They are like brilliant quarries where attentive souls discover new gems each time they visit. Each traveler in thought who pursues the Qur'an attentively will most certainly find themselves in an artery which will take them to one of those brilliant reserves, and who knows what sort of delightful scenes will greet the traveler when they arrive.

But quite curiously, its spotless purity has a shadow thrown over it and doubts are cast in wavering souls because this book, which is richer than the richest tome in content, this book, which has been created to release us from all our pain and to provide the antidote for ancient wounds, is being misrepresented by deficient souls, people whose passion and love lie in opposing ways. Their search is superficial and they are skewed in their evaluation. Their investigation is always directed at others whose feelings are eternally linked to ambition and interest, whose intellect and reason block their feelings, whose judgment yields to fancies and who dart between “showcase” and “vision” rather than concerning themselves with inner depth and content. They are partly to blame for the fact that some of those who look on this glory see it with a little less luster. In truth, though they may seem to be on a path that leads to the world beyond and on the valleys of the metaphysical, since material interest has blinded their eyes, they are unable to comprehend or reflect a world that has been shaped by the soul and meaning. Moreover, examining the worlds of others founded upon human weakness, they fall into the trap of arming themselves with the same weapons, of using the same material and, in other words, of sharing the same things with the people whom they call “the others.” By so doing, they will, in a matter of days, be imitating the evil they used to reprimand in others, and will follow exactly in their footsteps. To date, no one has ever benefited from such an aimless and purposeless struggle. On the contrary, in a struggle in which all express a multitude of regrets, it is our collective personality that is defeated and it is we who are damaged.

The Qur'an descended to the Earth with a deep understanding of balance; it has balanced the relationship between individuals, families, society, and with all creation and has heralded to its followers a path that leads to universal harmony. However, we have imprisoned the Qur'an in the tight confines of our own reason; first we have limited that great vastness, localizing the universal, and then we have demeaned its love to the base of the commonplace, subjecting its brilliant face to one eclipse after another. People of high ideals, like Said ibn Jubayr, Abu Hanifa, Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Imam Serahsi, never were party to inflicting oppression, on the contrary, they did not yield one inch, always deciding in accordance with the voice of their conscience that is ever open to God. They chose the agony of dark places—may God forgive us—instead of the delight and pleasure of palaces and they found the true depths by worshiping the All-Wise and thus they chose freedom of thought and conscience.

Indeed, those who live with an aim, or die with an aim live on. When they die, their tombs live like hearts, or even like a collective conscience, for eternity. Standing opposite these lofty souls are the unfortunate ones; slaves to their personal interests and thinking of themselves as being so clever that they do not need to concern themselves with anything in this world, yet they remain slaves enchained in their own desires and fancies—thus their lives are slavery, what they leave behind is cursed, and what they attain is disaster upon disaster.

Faithful students of the Qur'an—you can call them people of ideal—are the riders of eternity, who take up others onto their saddles, carrying them to eternity. They are able to transcend their own ardor, aspirations, and passions. As students of the Qur'an ride toward the horizon, idealized according to their inner world of contemplation, they gallop over many things that others call reality, while some who have long suffered from their ideals and have even lost these ideals think them to be fools.

In truth, purpose and aim are like catapults which hurl us into the midst of the realm of souls, a metaphysical atmosphere beyond this world, surrounded by matter which blocks our way and holds us to our feelings, interest, gain, and reputation. Everyone who is placed within that catapult one way or another, if not today, then one day, will go into orbit around the sphere of God; while they are waiting they are like a satellite waiting on the launch pad. Religion, in its entirety, is a bountiful source which feeds this ideal and the Prophet is the affectionate attendant of this source, the sincere representative and commentator who provides the most comprehensible explanations that are in keeping with its celestial origins. In that respect, he is an innovator, a revealer, a revolutionary who recommends the best, the excellent and the most human interpretation for those who come after him, and the one who is open to the most distant future with the principles that he preaches. Those who cannot see the Qur'an with their own inner depth and those who do not accept the person of the Prophet as the most skilful navigator of the depths of the Qur'an are unfortunates who have drowned in their own depths—if indeed we can call this a depth. They are sometimes shaken and stopped in their tracks by the echo of their own shallowness as reflected in the Qur'an, they sometimes seek refuge in historical murmurs, voicing their own emptiness. In their interpretation and representation, religion—more precisely Islamic theology—is either a monstrosity which has been riddled with fairy tales, or a non-contemporary system which has been defeated by time and which is vainly still trying to struggle against it.

In fact, the Qur'an is a source which has an enigma so deep and a purity so vast, a source with such richness that all those who address it can see that it is beyond the horizon of the sphere of their understanding, and they can experience the security of having such a source. Then with the discovery of their own horizon of understanding, they watch like a rainbow, a triumphal arch that is always just beyond the point that the follower has reached. Piety is such a transcending interpretation of the source of light that pours into life through a chrysolite prism, molding and shaping it, that those who feel it witness an inimitable “ease of flawless expression,” even though they can see their level of understanding always expressed in the Qur'an.

Alain de Botton: the idea of home

For a word that carries intimate associations of sanctuary and relief, "home" seems riddled with a remarkable number of incoherencies and paradoxes. To begin with, home is almost always a place that we don't appreciate when we are there. Its omnipresence makes it invisible. Think about how differently we approach "abroad" as opposed to "at home". We approach new places with humility. We carry with us no rigid ideas about what is interesting. We irritate locals because we stand in traffic islands and narrow streets and admire what they take to be meaningless details. We risk getting run over because we are intrigued by the roof of a government building or an inscription on a wall. We find a supermarket or hairdresser unusually fascinating. We dwell at length on the layout of a menu or the clothes of the presenters on the evening news. We are alive to the layers of history beneath the present and take notes and photographs.

Home on the other hand finds us more settled in our expectations. We feel assured that we have discovered everything interesting about our house and our neighbourhood, primarily by virtue of having lived there a long time. It seems inconceivable that there could be anything new to find in a place which we have been living in for a decade or more. We become habituated and therefore blind. But if we leave home and end up in an alien and frightening environment, how soon we remember home – and with what fondness! The only time we really "see" our homes and recognise their value is when we aren't in them – just as we might only truly feel the love we have declared for our spouses when they are away from us, or when they are dying. Deprivation quickly drives us into a process of appreciation – suggesting that one way to better appreciate something is to regularly rehearse its loss.

To all this we can add the thought that our need for a home arises out of a vulnerability and a lack of solid identity. Our sensitivity to our surroundings may be traced back to a troubling feature of human psychology: to the way we harbour within us many different selves, not all of which feel equally like "us", so much so that in certain moods, we can complain of having come adrift from what we judge to be our true selves.

Unfortunately, the self we miss at such moments, the elusively authentic, creative and spontaneous side of our character, is not ours to summon at will. Our access to it is, to a humbling extent, determined by the places we happen to be in. In a hotel room strangled by three motorways, or in a wasteland of run-down tower blocks, our optimism and sense of purpose are liable to drain away. We may start to forget that we ever had ambitions or reasons to feel spirited and hopeful. We depend on our surroundings obliquely to embody the moods and ideas we respect and then to remind us of them. We look to our buildings to hold us, like a kind of psychological mould, to a helpful vision of ourselves. We arrange around us material forms which communicate to us what we need – but are at constant risk of forgetting we need – within. We turn to wallpaper, benches, paintings and streets to stanch the disappearance of our true selves. In turn, those places whose outlook matches and legitimises our own, we tend to honour with the term "home".

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Our homes do not have to offer us permanent occupancy or store our clothes to merit the name. Home can be an airport or a library, a garden or a hotel. Our love of home is in turn an acknowledgement of the degree to which our identity is not self-determined. We need a home in the psychological sense as much as we need one in the physical: to compensate for a vulnerability. We need a refuge to shore up our states of mind, because so much of the world is opposed to our allegiances. We need our rooms to align us to desirable versions of ourselves and to keep alive the important, evanescent sides of us.

It is the world's great religions that have perhaps given most thought to the role played by the environment in determining identity and so – while seldom constructing places where we might fall asleep – have shown the greatest sympathy for our need for a home. The very principle of religious architecture has its origins in the notion that where we are critically determines what we are able to believe in. To defenders of religious architecture, however convinced we are at an intellectual level of our commitments to a creed, we will only remain reliably devoted to it when it is continually affirmed by our buildings. In danger of being corrupted by our passions and led astray by the commerce and chatter of our societies, we require places where the values outside of us encourage and enforce the aspirations within us.

Without honouring any gods, a piece of domestic architecture, no less than a mosque or a chapel, can assist us in the commemoration of our genuine selves. Imagine being able to return at the close of each day to a beautiful home. Our working routines may be frantic and compromised, dense with meetings, insincere handshakes, small talk and bureaucracy. We may say things we don't believe in to win over our colleagues and feel ourselves becoming envious and excited in relation to goals we don't essentially care for. But, finally, on our own, looking out of the hall window on to the garden and the gathering darkness, we can slowly resume contact with a more authentic self, who was there waiting in the wings for us to end our performance. Our submerged playful sides will derive encouragement from the painted flowers on either side of the door. The value of gentleness will be confirmed by the delicate folds of the curtains. Our interest in a modest, tender-hearted kind of happiness will be fostered by the unpretentious raw wooden floor boards. The materials around us will speak to us of the highest hopes we have for ourselves. In this setting, we can come close to a state of mind marked by integrity and vitality. We can feel inwardly liberated. We can, in a profound sense, return home.

We value certain buildings for their ability to rebalance our misshapen natures and encourage emotions which our predominant commitments force us to sacrifice. Feelings of competitiveness, envy, and aggression hardly need elaboration, but feelings of humility amid an immense and sublime universe, of a desire for calm at the onset of evening or of an aspiration for gravity and kindness – these form no correspondingly reliable part of our inner landscape, a rueful absence which may explain our wish to bind such emotions to the fabric of our homes. A beautiful home can arrest transient and timid inclinations, amplify and solidify them, and thereby grant us more permanent access to a range of emotional textures which we might otherwise have experienced only accidentally and occasionally.

There need be nothing preternaturally sweet or homespun about the moods embodied in domestic spaces. They can speak to us of the sombre as readily as they can of the gentle. There is no necessary connection between the concepts of home and of prettiness. One can feel at home in a place which is very unhomely – such as a diner or a motorway café with others similarly lost in thought, similarly distanced from society: a common isolation with the beneficial effect of lessening the oppressive sense within a person that they are alone in being alone. The very lack of domesticity, the bright lights and anonymous furniture can be a relief from what may be the false comforts of a so-called home. What we call a home is merely any place that succeeds in making more consistently available to us the important truths which the wider world ignores, or which our distracted and irresolute selves have trouble holding on to.

Alain de Botton is the author of 'The Consolations of Philosophy' and 'The Architecture of Happiness', among other works

Aries — tell me, how does it feel to live with your fists curled, always seeking something to fight? how does it feel to be so rabid, so vicious, so hellbent on making a ruin out of yourself? how does it feel to be the knife between your own ribs? darling, you are the war and the battlefield and there is no victory or glory in bringing yourself to your knees. they have sung of your rage, see; and none of them have known that most of it is aimed at yourself. it will always feel hollow, somewhere, somehow, like you’re full of holes; it will always feel like you’re inadequate. you must learn to live with it, one way or the other, before you fill the grave you’ve dug. (you’re choking on the thoughts, half too cowardly and far too proud to end what you began; but it’s so late, by god, too late – you’re halfway to hell, the flames licking the soles of your feet. it’s fine, you think. you didn’t know what you wanted when you picked up the axe, anyway.)

Taurus — breathing decay is surprisingly productive; flowers are still flowers, even if it’s just rot blooming on the walls. it feels good to birth something for a change, when all you’ve ever done was turn everything to dust as you brushed your hands over it, tracing the contours, memorizing the shape; a part of you hates it, this gift for bringing disaster – but hey, we can’t all be the cure, can we? some have to be the poison, and being a cancer comes in handy in a world that’s only constant in its’ tendency to go to hell and fall around you. and it’s not that you need salvation; god knows you’re beyond it, anyway, and heroes are never fun the way the villain is, but god, it gets so lonely, living in this castle of dust clouds, watching the world move on. (and the truth is, sometimes you wish you were Midas instead; statues are better than wind, and although cold, gold is something you can wrap your arms around, and in the right light the shadows it casts start to dance. the truth is, you wish you could understand what makes them run away; is it the catastrophes, or are you lacking elsewhere?)

Gemini — there’s ghosts in the attic and you can’t quite remember how to open the bone, can’t quite remember how it feels to live with just one voice, one single throat screaming itself raw inside your mind, making the blood sing, here, cold at the elbow, frozen in the wrists. no; you don’t remember the before, don’t remember what it was like to take a stance without having to fight yourself over the name of your truth. you’ve been praying for ages and the doors are still closed, the windows still shut; and the sun doesn’t shine, not here, no, and god, good god, it’s so damn cold inside. you used to be a forest fire, you used to burn, but now you’re all ashes and for the life of you you can’t remember how to put yourself back together. (the sun will still be aflame when the world will go to hell; but before that, hell is here, in the now, in you, planted right between the lungs, polluting with greedy mouths all that it can reach, staining you white, straining the breath thin until there isn’t any left in you. hurry; put it out and clean the walls, or there’ll be nothing left, come spring.)

Cancer — it’s a vicious cycle, not too different from tongues lapping hungry at the time on the face of a clock or the way the ocean embraces the shore at high tide, whispering its’ love into the sand with the fervent ardor only something without an omnivore’s instincts is capable of nurturing in its’ chest; it’s you on your knees with flowers spilling out of your throat and wondering why does it always go wrong even if you know the answer: it’s because love’s a dance and you can’t keep spinning forever, it’s because there is no equality in passion and you are always the one who invests more, hands trembling, breaking, giving piece after piece until you’re almost entirely hollow, because god, good god, it’s beautiful, so beautiful – the feeling, the moment. (you’ve sold yourself so many times for the same ephemeral jewel; and that’s exactly why you want it, isn’t it? love is such a beautiful thing, like peace and kissing heaven square on the mouth even if you know it can’t last, because beautiful things never do – and does it matter, really, what dies first when we all meet in the grave?)

Leo — it will always taste like grief, like iron on the tongue, like tears knotting under your chin; it will always feel like being ripped open, like being split square down the middle and having your guts put on display – it will always feel like a thousand deaths and rebirths undergone in the span of a second. you cannot escape contempt; you will always tell yourself it was your fault, that you were left to rot because you were mismatched, somehow incomplete, not whole, not good enough, god, never good enough; and it will always feel like gale coming from an open door, licking the skin of your bare back, suckling the tears off of your jaw. it will always feel like kissing a corpse, because that’s what saying goodbye to someone who walked away is all about, isn’t it? pain – and all of it yours. (you will always tremble at the sight of someone you love; not from the flood of the feeling as much as from the lingering fear that they too will one day leave you, and all you’ll have will be another open door, another kiss not cold enough to soothe the way you hurt, the way your heart is screaming, the way it mourns itself.)

Virgo — there is something terribly self-righteous about the way you loathe yourself; an almost sacred lining to the vindictive hands that cut out the heart so that it may wither, if only so the hurt ceases, if only so the bleeding dries at the source. you weren’t taught kindness; a butcher’s knife is the only mercy you’ve known, and I can’t help but wonder why – it’d be fine if hate was the only thing to it, but there is indifference, too. there is something clinical, impersonal, almost, to the way you tear into yourself. some set themselves on fire for a good cause; others, just because they can. your arson is done from reflex, almost as if you believe that by burning you can cleanse yourself of sin, that the fire can wash away the things gone wrong. (but your eyes are tightly shut and you’ve covered the mirrors, so you can’t see the mistakes – you can’t see what this compulsive sacrifice has made, can’t see the price you’ve paid for naught. you’ve turned yourself into a smoking ruin, and SACRILEGE is spelled in blood across the burning. there is no greater sin than forsaking yourself; remember that.)

Libra — and the irony is, your sin is also the greatest of your virtues; all your life you’ve clutched hands, desperate and lonely, terrified of solitude and the silence that it brings. and so you ran: you ran from stillness, ran from the clear night skies; ran as fast as your feet would take you, ran and willingly got lost at the heart of the crowd, wrapping yourself in the false safety of the many. but crowds disperse, you see; to hold them close you have to give them something, and all you had was blood and bone and the kindness pumping in the heart within. and so you poured the sweetest wine: yourself, and let them have their fill. alas, you cannot run forever, and it wasn’t long until the moon caught up with you. (mirages fall together with the sun; lies turn to gold and fade, and all are bare beneath the weeping maiden. stop trying to keep malice under lock and key; we’ve all got demons, a seed of darkness spilling shadow from the ribs. you cannot outrun yourself. there is solace to be found in midnights; learn to love the way your ears echo, empty.)

Scorpio — when is a monster not a monster? when it’s past four and you stare at the ceiling, hands reaching, touching the soft flesh underneath your eyes and tracing the lines that despair engraved there, a wretched memento from a nightmare whose lover you’ve unwillingly been for so long, by god, too long, and you’re alone with just your thoughts. it’s all soft, then; like velvet, like the smooth skin of your thighs, like the sun bleeding itself into being; soft, so soft, and tender, like all the things you don’t know and like all the secrets you want hidden but don’t have the heart to crush and empty out between your teeth. yes – a monster ceases being a monster when you look in the mirror and realize the eyes that stare back at you are so painfully human. (I could learn to love them, you think; not could – I will. and you do, and all that was terrible is suddenly beautiful; enamored with the beast, you have become alienated, but god, good god, you love yourself, even when you want to set yourself on fire. it is a dangerous kind of love, but it is still the lesser among evils, so long as you do not betray yourself.)

Sagittarius — iridescent; that is the word that defines you. like water springing from a fountain, catching the light because it has no color of its’ own. you can try and paint yourself, but paint is paint and masks are masks, and when the lights go down you aren’t too sure of what you are, except for something terrible. you’re made from fear and dreams and a fierce sort of sickness, the one that makes you think your bones were meant to be a crutch for someone else. you are not a ghost; stop treating yourself as if you were. the road ahead is yours and yours alone, and, like it or not, you’ll walk it alone – and when you’ll reach the ocean at the end of the lane, all that’ll be left of the illusions will be dust, a golden pile of nothing crowning your feet. (armageddon is coming, see; and at the end of all things, there is no meaning in virtue, no love for martyrdom. stop making yourself a bridge over peril for others to use when you can’t even tell where to begin with saving yourself. there’s no honor in being a pillar, just radio silence and a bad weather forecast.)

Capricorn — the hurt clings to you like a mother’s embrace; no matter how much cold water you let pour over the slumped archway of your shoulders, it will never be enough to wash the past away – you dug the graves too shallow when you tried to bury what you wanted forgotten, and so it was only a matter of time ‘til it rose from the ground and came to haunt you. tell me; when was the last time you got a good night’s sleep? when was the last time you snuffed the lights without being afraid of the faces you’d see crowding in the shadows around your bed? when was the last time the word “home” didn’t feel foreign on your tongue? (how you wish you knew how to be happy. how you wish there had been someone to teach you, to show you the ropes; but mother was a wisp in the wind, her presence a faint shape next to the towering shadow of your father – and oh, how beautiful she was, and he what a monster. the only thing they had to teach was love with fists, blood in the mouth.)

Aquarius — the warrior, marching through the trenches under a flag with a hole burnt through at the middle, his armor smeared with blood, engraved with scars his chest was meant to bear, eyes weeping with smoke, bile at the back of his throat. the mother, hands soothing, knotting themselves in the hair of her children, a smile on her lips and stories on her tongue, her kindness a lullaby that you remember vividly when it’s your turn to pay tribute to Hades. the child, breathing life into the monsters hid by darkness in every crevice, learning to make friends with the things that can kill you: beasts, gods, great apes standing on the edge between them, learning the names of heartbreak. the soul, despairing, an abyss that doesn’t know what to do with itself, where to put its’ mouth to stop the bleeding. (you, a combination of them, standing on the white precipice of an ending that seems so very final; it’s all in tatters, hope and reason both gone under, and the things you tried to bind have disentangled and god, they’re famished, out for blood. calm doesn’t keep storms at bay; it just makes them that much more destructive. you should’ve known.)

Pisces — dear god, how terrible this is; how great the horror, and greater still the beauty. it is people like you who reach for heaven and try to drag god down by the feet, to bind him and drown him in the ocean below, let him taste the sorrow, let him be baptized in salt among the rocks, screaming, because he’s all a wound just the way we are. it is people like you who swallow the sun, who wear the moon on their crown of thorns as the centerpiece jewel. it is people like you who have glimpsed the Other, people like you who have tasted all that is holy, all that is cursed – people like you, breathing cataclysms that do not know how to stop themselves from happening, how to tie the leash of fate lest they spill themselves empty on the pavement. (you do not know the meaning of “no”. for you, interdictions are challenges, walls to jump over or burn down. no one taught you how to bottle your soul, and, heavens mine, the catastrophe you’ve inside is enough to kill us all. and yet you won’t let any wear you as sin, will you? no; you’ll take your own head, spare us of the sight.)

- Sam (CharminglyAntiquated)

Amalgamations Of Matter

“Are you okay?”

No, I don’t really think so.

“What's the matter?”

I’m alive and aware, an amalgamation of matter which is capable of placing itself in reality and grasping the finality of its own oblivion. 

“Found the rot again?”

Not quite, there's something all too violent to this feeling. It’s the horror of knowing one day I will simply blink out of existence and there's next to nothing I can do about it. Something crushing, almost claustrophobic about how utterly final it is. The entirety of reality as I know it will end with me and continue on long after I vanish.

“You’ve gone all the way to the core of it all haven’t you?”

I was looking for something, can’t remember what exactly. Then I found its root, the core of that thing I’ve come to call my humanity. Vibrant and full of life, a flame of whose manner I put to words in any form that would do it justice. It stands in harsh opposition to the nature of who I choose to be, unrefined and raw, not even the metallic ore dug out of the ground but the rushing of iron through blood, iron left resting in a bog for thousands of years, preserved yet also eroded by time. There is life to it in a manner I cannot describe. I found it hardly acknowledged me at all, only going in search of more fuel to keep itself going, not stopping, not thinking, alive yet hardly living, only concerned with staying alive at all costs even for a few seconds longer. I pitied it in a way.

“You pitied it?”

Why wouldn’t I? It strove only to gather all the nutrients and kindling it could in the area around it, eventually it will break down and burn out. Going from raging inferno to dull warmth to dying cinders and then amongst the ashes of its life and it's time somewhere the last cinder will go out without any fan fair and no heat will ever come from those ashes ever again. It’s life was in all reality slight and realistically meaningless.

“Yet that is the nature of what you are, you are down at your very core human, or at the very least you came from us.”

Do I look like I care? Do you think I give a flying fuck about my heritage, I am conscious, I’ve been given the single greatest pleasure and punishment reality could realistically level upon me, knowing that one day the crude biological machinery that maintains me will break down even if I do everything in my power to maintain it and I will simply collapse in on myself and cease to be, no void, no darkness, no sight, no sound, no thoughts, nothing. A blink from a hospital bed and consciousness comes to an end and I will fall asleep, with no dreams to keep me idle, just a blink that never ends. Perhaps this is hell? Perhaps Limbo? Do you understand? Reality as a concept, the sense of progression, the sense of flow and regularity of it all. The narrative of the concept of reality as we know it you and I and everyone else, means fucking nothing the moment that light goes out. For all I know I am the only sentient thing in existence and everyone I’ve come to care for is simply a construct of matter following similar logic to me yet they at no point are actually sentient, a perfect simulacra, fuck knows most of the people I meet seem to be little more than glassy eyed automotons.

“Well don’t you think you are so high and mighty? What? Is the average person suddenly so far beneath you you hardly consider them aware of themselves?”

Do you have any idea I would give for the ignorance of the average person? Do you know what I would give to be free of this knowledge? So many people live happy lives blissfully unaware of this, or perhaps with the capacity for faith! Oh what I would give to find faith, genuinely, to find a deity to pledge my eternal soul to and have the comfort of an afterlife to work towards. To live well and be successful, to make this world a better place for one and all with the promise of it bringing me to something greater.

“You can still make the world a better place you know, even if it doesn’t promise you an eternal paradise.”

Oh but I am, in my own little quite way, I wake up in the morning in more pain than most people can imagine, my life mired by a silent suffering most can scarcely quantify in their minds. I work to make my life a better one, to make the world I live in better not only for myself but for others as well. I live in the constant fear that this is the only life I and everyone I care about will ever have and because of that I do whatever I can to make this world a slightly better place to make this world a place where people do not vanish into that void or become consumed by the rot long before their time to escape a suffering brought on by the very nature of reality. If there is a god out there, if there is anything greater than ourselves I intend to kill them with my bare hands, to march upon their throne and melt those pearly gates to nothing but molten slag and brandish it as the armor and weapons fit to slay whatever intelligence condemned me and everyone who possesses this level of awareness to this suffering. If there is anyone out there, I hate them for what they’ve done to me. I hate them for cursing me with this knowledge. I adore them with every fibre of my being for twisting me into existence and giving me the drive to hate them. I love them for giving me the time and space to learn to love myself, to cherish the life I have and to give me the determination to want to destroy them. They created me and should I have my way, should I ascend to this sense of immortality I strive towards, should I drag humanity up with me to this sense of godhood and bend the very fabric of creation to my will, I hope any being I curse with consciousness hates me for doing so as well because I will never do it willingly.

“I will be honest...I don’t know what to say to that. I mean, I don’t know if you’re right, but, I don’t know what to say to you.”

Don’t say anything, don’t think, just live, don’t reach whatever insane plateau I’ve reached because there only seems to be down from here yet the only satisfaction from this is to climb beyond the mountaintop and into the heavens themselves. Nothing short of godhood would satisfy me now and all I would do with it is witness reality as a dead husk, with no sentient life in it at all, only glassy eyed machines. Perhaps this is all some great joke. Perhaps I am some vast alien consciousness caught in a machine by my friends outside of this and they will mock me for growing attached to everyone in here because none of it was real. Perhaps this is what hell really is and I am being punished from crimes against reality itself. Perhaps the goal of all of this is to forget and live until oblivion devours me and there is no more consciousness to care whether I lived or died.

“...”

Perhaps one day I will ascend to the godhood I desire, only to create more beings such as myself now so as to have someone to talk to, something to play with, to simply play the infinite cycle as it is now and one day they will rise up and fashion their own godhood from my mangled corpse upon its throne of metal and machinery. I don’t know any more and frankly I wish I didn’t care. All I know is that I’m afraid...and I don’t even know if I should be any more.

Room of Swords Space Pirate Au

Summary: All Gyrus wanted was to show off his new language to the scientific community, instead he ends up on the treasure hunt of his life as pirates, military, and strange bowler hat wearing secret societies chase him down. But he’s not alone, no. He’s kidnapped by the most feared pirate since the Pirate King himself, and forced to be their guide.

But Gyrus has secrets even he isn’t aware of, and a connection to the Pirate King that will turn the tables of the game.

Has anyone read Larklight? Because this is gonna take heavy inspiration.

Also it gets pretty long, so its under the cut

Gyrus, an amnesiac miracle man found floating through space and taken to a lab for examination. He proceeds to win over the scientists examining him and become a protogee of sorts.

Gyrus does some work in history on the side, and discovers a way to crack an ancient alien language that the scientists couldn’t. They are all really impressed and Dr. Iro invites him along to a science exposition to try and win a grant for the lab.

They dress up to present to this strange bowler hat society that is hosting the party, inviting space’s elite and brilliant.

But half the party are rich snobs and the other half seem...strange (and not just because of the bowler hats), Gyrus can’t put his finger on it, and it makes him uneasy. He chocks it up to nerves and moves to the side of the ship to get some fresh air.

And accidentally stumbles on one of the “society” shadowing one of the rich elite, who then turn back to seemingly normal, but they are now...off in the same way the others are. (And wearing a bowler hat).

This freaks Gyrus out so much he stays hidden on the deck even long after they leave. He finally emerges, ready to grab Iro and run...

At this point Kodya’s pirates attack, raising havok and demanding that the society give up their gold or no one gets hurt.

Gyrus gets grabbed as a hostage because he’s literally the first person they can reach. (Kodya kinda recognizes him, which may also play into it)

Unfortunately for the pirates, the society was expecting them, and has hired a full military fleet to take them on. Who don’t really care about a no name hostage in light of capturing one of the most wanted pirates in the solar system.

Kodya drags Gyrus onto the ship, and they take off.

Once they are far enough away, the whole crew turns on Gyrus. (Crew includes Tori, Sylvia, and Nephthys) Gyrus is afraid but demands to go back to save Iro.

Kodya is very confused because that is not what a hostage says usually, (and a little upset Gyrus doesn’t recognize him, and why is Gyrus younger? Did he have a brother also named Gyrus?) but once Gyrus explains he gets a dark look and refuses, claiming they got lucky. (And he doesn’t want those things near Gyrus, not again)

Kodya decides to make Gyrus a cleaner (cabin boy technically but he’s an adult so they’re calling it cleaner instead) on the ship, which works for a few days, until Gyrus stumbles on a treasure map and dagger in the journal left out in Kodya’s room. Kodya is upset he touched the journal, and Gyrus says he just wanted to read it better.

To which Kodya is thrilled and gets the whole crew together, and they decide to start on the quest for the pirate treasure.

They explain about the Pirate King, who came from nowhere and united the pirates, then betrayed them to the shadow society which nearly got them all killed. But he left a map to the greatest treasure, which everyone was looking for.

Kodya in particular wants to find it, and maybe answers as to why the pirate king betrayed them. (And also how he’s back seemingly with amnesia and younger somehow, is this even the same Gyrus? He’s handling all this like its new info)

The first clue takes them to Mars, which is struggling with colonialism as the humans mine valuable minerals and force the locals to work for them. The map requires “the heart of mars” which Kodya, whose from this planet, guesses is a valuable device that helps to convert the rare minerals.

Its also super large, and what the heck Pirate King?

They go to hide with some Rebel Martians friends of Nephthys and Kodya’s, who reveal that things have gotten far worse since the two of them fled, and the colonial leader, despite not making any public appearances, is demanding an even higher quota.

It also comes out that Nephthys used to be a priestess who foresaw the invasion and was helpless to stop it, and got kidnapped by the colonizers as a prize. Then Kodya, a young soldier newly enlisted from home, met and befriended her and together they escaped. But they couldn’t get very far. Fortunately the Pirate King saved them.

Nephthys feels guilty that she can’t help them more, and wishes there was something she could do. The rebels say there is a way they can help, if they get rid of the heart of mars, which will prevent the people from stealing anymore of their minerals.

They agree to do this, with the agreement that hey get to keep the heart of mars.

They split into two teams, to Gyrus, Tori, and Sylvia go in to visit the colonial leader, because Kodya and Nephthys are super wanted here, and Gyrus still has his suit and important looking documents. Then Sylvia will sneak down to let Kodya and Neph in, while Tori and Gyrus distract the colonizer leader.

The two ‘leaders’ that Gyrus and Tori are led to do not match the descriptions given, but after they see their documents, they welcome Gyrus and his...posse.

The ‘leaders’ puts on a front for Gyrus, but Sylvia and Tori find out the servants are frightened, as there has just been a coup-de-taut.

At the awkward dinner, Gyrus is treated like a guest, and Tori a bodyguard, while the ‘leaders’ regale them with their latest conquests, and how they recently defeated a rebel leader named “Serdtse” and show off his broken sword, his symbol of power.

Tori gets more and more furious as they listen, meanwhile, Sylvia lets Kodya and Neph in, and they attempt to remove the ‘heart of mars’

Gyrus gets half paralyzed by the food, and the ‘leaders’ reveal they need him alive because he’ll bring them quite a bit more money to the right people. Tori meanwhile is unaffected, and kills the male. Gyrus, still barely able to move, grabs the broken sword and tries to drag himself away, as the ship arrives and one of those “off” people in a bowler hat arrives.

Tori is unable to help, as she is stuck fighting the other leader.

Meanwhile down below, a bunch of minions come running to stop Kodya and Neph and Sylvia. They begin to overwhelm them, until some of the martian servants reveal themselves as rebels and help them win. Then the ‘off’ people show up there too.

Kodya and Neph freak out, and drag everyone away from them, Kodya throws a light bomb behind to shine brightly and temporarily stun them.

They run to Tori and Gyrus, and Sylvia and Kodya help fight the scary leader while Neph heals Gyrus. Not much they can do about the ‘off’ person though, so they all run some more.

Then to stop the shadows for good, a mysterious stranger (“Serdtse!” the rebels shout) blows up the whole building for good.

Kodya gets upset that they didn’t get the heart, and then Gyrus’s bag starts glowing. Turns out the half sword is the clue. Kodya is very confused, and feels they should meet this ‘Serdtse’ but the military show up and they have to run, taking the credit for the attack so the martian’s don’t get blamed.

They decide to hide in Venus, the only place no one will look, because the last people to try to live there turned into trees. (Read Larklight) Tori is the only survivor of the mysterious illness, and she offers it to them as a place to hide. (Her queen was one of the victims).

Gyrus offers to try and find a cure, and takes some seeds, even though Tori says its hopeless. 

Also this is where Kodya decides to try and teach Gyrus how to fight, because he was absolutely useless back there.

They also try to figure out what the connection between the glow of the half sword and the map. Eventually Sylvia reveals that a metal like this that no one can identify, their best shot is the mines on the moons of Jupiter, which has the best ore experts in the world. They all decide to go there.

At Moons of Jupiter, which is a mining town and a hub for pirates, Sylvia is from here, and eagerly shows off the place to the others. Even Kodya is beginning to relax, except that everyone they meet keeps trying to get Kodya to visit the storm to find the answers he needs. (Storm knows the answers to everything in Larklight, but rarely appears)

Kodya points out two things, first, that the storm is illusive on the best of days, and second, that it hardly gets everything right, as it was wrong about the Pirate King, because he once asked it a question, and it was obviously wrong. He won’t tell them exactly what he asked though (probably something about Gyrus)

Meet Don and his crew, who head the pirate armada Kodya work for, and teams up to find the treasure. The crew that is much nastier to Gyrus than Kodya’s.

Gyrus gets into trouble with Ragan for looking like the Pirate King. It is here he learns the Pirate Kings name was also Gyrus. Neph stops Ragan, pointing out Gyrus is far to young, and was working as a scientist on earth, so he’d have to have been there for ages. Gyrus thinks now is not the time to mention his mysterious origins.

Gyrus gets pushed off by one of the crew, unclear who. Kodya jumps over to find him, and Tori ends up falling off too.

Storm light makes the half sword spell out a single word: Saturn. (in plain english)

The crew believes this is where they have to go.

Meanwhile the storm itself saves Gyrus, introducing himself as Alistair. He tells him he is an old friend, and here to help him and tells him that he needs to go to Earth to find the real treasure before Don does. 

Also that Gyrus is a god, because those things apparently exist with the ability to put things in motion. He was supposed to die, but decided to keep living to see what would happen. Met Don and very naively told him what he could do. Don wanted to take for himself, but he was clever. He befriended Gyrus first and pushed him towards his own goals of destroying the Empire. When Gyrus finally grew wise to how he was being used, he betrayed Gyrus and made it look like Gyrus betrayed them. Gyrus tried to fight back, by hiding the way to his power, but Don was relentless, and so Gyrus confronted him to make him stop. Unfortunately he was not planning on the bowler hat society, which got tweleve members of Don’s armada. (Larklight, read it).

Also Kodya shows up for this and is very annoyed that Gyrus and the Pirate King are the same person (and didn’t tell him he was still alive!), but reluctantly goes along with it. (because he does care)

Alistair introduces him to Maria and Knox and thier crew, who are waiting to rescue them, and ended up finding Tori. Serdtse is introduced too, who turns out to be Hinju, brother of Xinju, who Gyrus did not kill. 

They explain how they made the broken sword as a decoy to the true key, Kodya’s dagger. But now they’ve got Kodya and Gyrus they should be able to get the treasure long before both the pirates and the bowler hat society right?

Wrong. Because Kodya, not realizing it was so important, left it on his ship. Which is now run by Nephthys. Which is going to Saturn.

So they decide to split up, which is to say Alistair teaches Gyrus a way only he can teleport, and sends him to earth to get there before the problem, while everyone else goes to convince the pirates to change allegiances.  

Meanwhile the girls and Don’s crew all go to Saturn, where the clue opens a locked door of a ‘memory’ journal, and the crew learn of the origins of the bowler hat society (race from the beginning of the world, want to remake everyone in perfect order like the rings of Saturn)

Which is very knowledgeable, but pretty much useless for them. The pirates and the girls debate on whether the treasure is a fake, this is another clue, or they missed something else.

Meanwhile Don comes to the conclusion that the knife is wrong, and goes to find the correct version on the ship.

Neph goes back, ends up coming in on Don’s investigation. Not knowing what is going on, Don mistakes her for knowing what’s going on, and reveals he’s the mastermind. 

Also Gyrus’s crew reach Saturn, and try to steal it back, only to get into more trouble. The pirates are divided on who to believe, Gyrus’s crew and Neph, or Don. Having Hinju manages to make Xinju to side with Gyrus though, but Ragan is not convinced, because Don is one persuasive man.

The two teams split up on separate ships, and race back to earth.

Meanwhile, Gyrus discovers that the ship he first was found in floating in space is actually the treasure he was trying to keep hidden. The only problem, he has absolutely no idea how it works.

So he meditates at the suggestion of the scientists, only to discover that there is a power inside himself.

Which would be poetic, if it didn’t also have a personality.

So Gyrus is trying to sort out millions of years of memories, while the scientists sit around him confused.

All except for Iro, who sees this as an opportunity to use his shiny new bowler hat. Which he puts on Gyrus’s now helpless head.

Gyrus now has to fight off an attempted possession, while figuring out how to use his powers.

He finds a way to throw it off, but not before Iro reports it almost complete, and the Bowler hat society moves into their next big plan: to possess all of the Empire’s parliament and Queen. (Different from Tori’s, unless I decide to change that later)

At the last second, Gyrus manages to throw off the possession, figuring out a way to cure it in the process. He rushes up to stop the bowler hats, but he’s held back, and his method of curing is to slow, only one at a time.

Then the pirates attack.

The pirates attack everyone, each other, who knows what’s going on up there. It creates chaos instantly, and Chaos is the exact thing that the bowler hats hate. They temporarily break from their hosts to fly up and stop the pirates. Kodya’s pirates notice, and start causing even more chaos, which makes all of them swirl up into the sky, trying to attack.

But this is really, really bad for the pirates. So Gyrus decides he has to help them.

He uses his powers to create a large, white light, and tells them its the power. All the shadows fly towards it. Don also tries to go and get it, putting his own crew at risk and causing them to turn on him.

Once all of them are close, Gyrus whips out the seeds from Venus, makes them grow with his power ‘setting things in motion’ and traps them in a bubble with only the bowler hat monsters. They all turn into a tree.

When the dust settles, no one is quite sure what happened, but the scientists are there to step in for Gyrus to the Queen. 

Don is arrested for trying to kill like 14 people. The Queen then gives everyone else full pardons so they are no longer pirates, and names them heroes of the state.

Which the pirates aren’t sure what to think about, but hey, they’ll take a party and not dying right now.

Gyrus and his friends reunite, Gyrus now aware of who he is, and it ends with them all eating with the scientists and regaling them with their adventure.

Verglas

Shallow mood-snippets on that damsel-rescue trope, post-Endgame AU with Tony alive. Life after adopting a tortured Loki.

mildly Frostiron fluff ~ T+ ~ 2,700 words ~ incomplete

-

Even after playing paper football with a blue alien cyborg, 3D chess with a genocidal god was not among his long term plans. Then again, he was kind of renowned for his spur-of-the-moment plotting, so the Universe didn’t manage to catch him off guard with it. Not even when he lost every single game. He kept a good face for it. He took away from it what he delved in for anyway: data.

FRIDAY was present in this safehouse as well, monitoring the brain activity, amongst all, of the sorcerer. Or ex-sorcerer, possibly sorcerer-on-a-break-from-magic, given that he was unable or unwilling to produce a spark of the impressive unexplainable shit he showed off with back in 2012. Tony was in the middle of a lengthy project: exploring the change (damage, to be crudely exact) these New Asgardians had done to their local devil.

He had detected the trickster during one of his virtual trips among SHIELD’s ultra-private guardian satellites that were overlooking that particular snippet of land Thor’s people were huddled upon; and the nosy twat he was, he soon learned about the inhuman circumstances of the prisoner’s keeping. That was a suicidal move, since he’d have suffocated if he had stayed put from then on. He infiltrated the still developing land without much hassle and rescued the sinner from his well earned penitence, not to distort justice but to stop a living being from such abasement. Then he sent an obscure goodbye to his wife and baby daughter, and he hid away with the shell of Loki for an unspecified length of time, until he evaluated his freshly made decisions and got over what an idiot he was.

As observed through the satellite records and the signs personally noted, Loki had appeared in New Asgard two years after Thor had left Earth with his new pals, the A-holes of the Galaxy. Little did he know, apparently, that his good old people were waiting specifically for said target to show himself. It took no longer than half a day for them to lure the distrusting god into their trap, which, Tony derived, must have been the filthiest one ever set around here. Some friendly meekness flashed, telltale signs of an amateur organisation scattered, they had the sorcerer practically walk into their arms trusting his so-called silver tongue or his ambitions or whatever.

(SHIELD had been watching. Did they let it happen for diplomatic reasons? Did they deem it satisfactory punishment in their place? Did they command the homeless god-wannabes to destroy their own kin? Was it blackmailing or bribing?) (Questions in brackets: things Tony did not acknowledge and delve into, unless he wanted to destroy himself along with his loved ones, or simply go mad. Brackets were strategic avoidance, a fence with crimson self reminders yelling keep out, moron.)

Since the formerly imprisoned god’s arrival, they had managed to seal that silver tongue entirely back into Loki’s mind. They were highly efficient at presenting him to the greatest fears and weaknesses fished out from his nightmares with some shamanistic ballyhoo.

Tony found the hidden chambers in an underground dungeon carved out by the relentless hands of these newcomers, lit by crystalline torches whose light only Tony could see because Loki was blindfolded. His ears plugged. Body bare and freshly scarred, hair trimmed to curled stubble. His swollen limbs floating mid-air, captive to cruel bondages, genitals and anus capped, plugged with tubes leading into the ceiling. His mouth gagged by another one. A strap holding two small disks on each side of the Adam’s apple. Tony had felt his heart and stomach crowd up in his throat at the sight and craved to turn away, to lessen the indignity; but he needed to take in every detail to be able to free the (mass of flesh) without further harm. He’d brought along no allies with himself, as usual.

The silence, the slackness of the body should have alerted him already while he, in the Ironsuit, lifted it off the distasteful hooks that held it up for the public’s service (see the cushioned seats and ornamented tables around); but he settled with relishing the even, listless trembling of the muscles and the arrhythmical, hoarse breathing of the scarred throat as signs of life. He didn’t have much time before he‘d be discovered and overpowered, he had to leave with his loot immediately.

The records dated back to half a decade ago, and Tony wished now that he had been less on his good behaviour and found out earlier. He had no idea why he felt guilty, really. Not even Friday could answer him this.

As mentioned, he couldn’t have breathed without doing what he felt right against the less attended shadowy bits of the Universe, and during the first period of this elopement, he was actually suffocating, despising each atom of stupid inside himself. He was tending to a body with a snippet of life awkwardly trapped in, muscles ceaselessly tugged at by some neural stress he and Friday couldn’t find the base of; none of Earth’s virtual libraries had answers, not even on the esoteric bullshit-shelves. It resembled the fine tremor of fear, but it didn’t show on the languid facial expression and it would never stop. It made spoon feeding difficult, and sleep impossible. The trickster broke Tony’s record awake time at the first run.

Loki healed rapidly from the scars, and he perceived his surroundings, but he was cocooned in a thick wall of disinterest. And Tony was choking in place of the human race, and went on in the single-storey, two-bedroom wooden cottage in the middle of a bird-ridden forest, his dark eyes lit with a peculiar light in (exhaustion) his passion for outplaying magic. If any.

He never found out before the problem solved itself – either the supposed spell wore off, or the god caught up with the events, possibly his mood changed. Tony was habitually sharing his wit about the silly T-shirt he laid by the bed for Loki’s later use. His startled jump was a moment late compared to the trickster’s, who suddenly shuddered and attempted to back up into the wall on his elbows, a groan or a moan stuck deep in his throat.

“Whoa, that’s some entry,” formed the billionaire’s exhale, which probably went unheard: the teal eyes (glowing faintly in the shutter-dimmed room like the sunlit ocean) were fixed on the Ironsuit cosily sitting in the opposite corner’s armchair.

Loki rose cautiously like the slightest breeze could have woken the beast. Or triggered a defensive mechanism, to stay on a realistic ground.

“He’s okay,” Tony informed him from the side. “He’s friendly now. I’m here. That guy is sleeping, see?” He waved with an arm to catch the scattering attention and only spoke again when Loki proceeded to take him in from head to toe. “I’m here to help you. Remember me?”

The trembling ceased gradually from then on, it faded out of the god’s posture. He remained inside his head for most of the time, however, looking at the billionaire distantly like he was made of glass.

Tony suspected and soon experienced that it helped if he had a routine – if they had a routine. It made Loki responsive, if only as much as Dum-E, bless his resting soul, minus the mistakes. He comprehended rules of games, for example, and though those brain graphs didn’t detect enjoyment in them, the thought processes were there: he understood speech, he remembered, he obeyed suggestions; at least on the outside.

-

His inability to fall asleep remained, for example, even though he did such biddings of Tony without a counterargument, like his lagging presence in the world didn’t leave him any other choices. Each time he was advised to try taking a nap, regardless of the time of the day, he spent several hours lying on the bed or couch appointed for him, breathing in heightened alertness, his body motionless but mind wakeful, revealed by the brain functions recorded without his knowledge. Well, at least he tried.

If he did fall into some exhausted coma, the buzzing of a fly could stir him up in the roughest manner. He was clearly a species that needed sleep, though, Tony could recognise dark circles of insomnia well enough. He had yet to tackle that problem for the sorcerer-on-a-break.

Whatever these god guys were doing with their hocus pocus to punish him or better him or gain his knowledge, they had pretty vile means at it. And the earthen authorities had deemed it acceptable to let these creatures live among humans. Fully aware of what they were capable of doing, and simply trusting some superstitious belief that they wouldn’t.

The thought made the hairs stand up on Tony’s back.

-

Loki was terrified of bodies of water, anything larger than a measuring cup. So a bath to cool or comfort him in the mid-summer heat was out of question. Even when the shower got a little clogged and the ankle-high basin started filling up, he was instantly  out of the bathroom straining to wind the hand-towel around his waist area on his way to his room, probably the only one he could reach in his hurry. Leaving a trail of puddles behind, mightily ignoring Tony’s inquiry from the kitchen. In the two minutes the billionaire detected the running water in the bathroom and cleaned up the floor, Loki snuck into Tony’s bedroom and stole some fresh clothes instead of the ones he had left in the dangerous area. Tony found him back in his own territory by the time he went to check on him, sitting in the armchair, chewing his nail ragged, glaring out the window, holding onto the notion with claws and teeth that this was the most natural thing in the world. Tony’s Black Sabbath shirt had soaked through around the chest area and the shoulders, the dark cotton pants stuck to the pulled-up shins, the bare toes were clawing at the cushioned seat in tension.

-

He abhorred from the basement where the tinkering chambers and the gym were, or the entrance leading down there. Figures.

He started speaking shortly after he let himself be convinced to do activities for and with Tony. Some exercise started it all, the billionaire wanted to try measuring his protégé’s physical abilities – try, mind you. He didn’t really expect Loki to comply exactly as he wanted. The mental pushback, the fear was only present in the first few minutes in his brain, and it ceased as Tony stopped his reassuring comments that nothing vile was going to happen and the process became natural. Loki did the required push-ups or sit-ups alongside Tony in the grass before the house without complaint; they jogged together on the forest path around the residence, although only the billionaire panted heavily at the end of each round. On the third day, Loki left him behind and waited for him idling under the pear tree near the entrance, perhaps he didn’t even cheat it off.

Elated, Tony initiated exercise that required more creativity, like boxing and wrestling, but Loki pulled out of those regardless of whether he was asked to do it alone or invited for a duel.

“Please, no,” were his first words answering the billionaire’s insistence then, before he went back into the house. Tony decided not to make a big deal out of it; he invited him for a game of chess instead; as it occurred, very wisely.

-

The God of Fears smelt and avoided hot cooking oil from the next room. Before Tony discovered the trait and started with food preparation in the American kitchen whenever it felt fit, the sorcerer tended to leave the bathroom through the window, enter his quarters through the closed terrace door (ruining the lock and making an innocent face afterwards each time) while oil sizzled in the pan for lunch or dinner. The kitchen was a mine field of triggers in itself, it occurred.

He reeled back out of the kitchen-lounge like a virgin in a brothel once as he caught Tony making dumplings.

“What are you doing?” came the muffled question from the other side of the wall; his second sentence uttered aloud.

“Food,” Tony answered while squeezing small pieces of the paste through a gap between his thumb and index finger. “Not poison.”

It took about half a minute to guess the subject of the god’s abhorrence. This meaty, sticky-slippery mess did remind of guts, if you thought hard enough. If you had a well conditioned imagination.

There went Tony’s plan to eat something natural once in a lifetime; to eat at all that evening, in fact. Pepper might have been able to make the dumplings irresistible even for a traumatised god, they were her speciality. Tony missed them.

-

“Loki,” he leaned forwards in the chair on an idle afternoon, while they were sitting out on the shaded porch like two cowboys in jogging pants. He looked deep into the teal eyes to have their attention while sharing the important truth. “In case you’re wondering why I’m so keen on fathering you, it’s not to be pushy or demand anything in return. You don’t owe me anything. It’s a favour to an old friend, okay? Your brother has asked me to look after you in case of your return.”

Well, it was almost entirely the truth, Thor did scatter shyly grumbled notes in defence of his brother when it came up among the remaining Avengers. And the feeling might have been mutual because the trickster perked up subtly at the mention of the thunder god, his head still bent down but his eyes watching intently for the continuation.

“Sorry, pal, I can’t tell you where he went,” Tony threw up an arm apologetically. “I only know he left for Space with a bunch of whackos. A raccoon, a tree, some demigod, a moth girl… and a few more chaps. In an orange spaceship, if that helps; I don’t know how many orange ships fly around out there. Is it a popular colour in the Galaxy-?”

He found himself blinking a few times because the sight was unbelievable: Loki was smiling. Leering. Laughing maybe; though he made no sound, his shoulders were shaking while his palm slid over his lips, then his eyes, head bent down amongst a curtain of hair.

“Pretty expectable, huh?” the billionaire agreed. “Oh. You haven’t seen him in the past decade, have you? Boy, are you in for a treat.”

He stood up during the latter note and stepped into the house, to find the suitable device for displaying his digital photo albums.

-

He had Friday order McDonald’s to the end of the forest path for safety reasons, then took a cap and sunglasses to head out.

“I need to accept delivery out there,” he told the god lounging in an armchair. “A fifteen-minute walk with birds and bees. Wanna come?”

He put on his shoes while waiting for the never-coming answer. He caught sight of the trickster lingering in the doorway afterwards.

“We can go by car if you prefer,” he noted. “I just thought to get some air, to satisfy my wife’s voice in my head. But the car is fine. We can pull down the windows, that should suffice for her.”

Loki shook his head and then added verbal confirmation.

“No. Thank you.”

The latter was soft and sounded intensely desperate to Tony’s ears, but he wasn’t the one to tell. He might have been projecting his own nervousness from leaving the god here alone for the first time.

“I’ll be back in thirty,” he reassured himself and maybe Loki, and he descended the steps of the porch. He decided to take the car, after all.

He jogged from the car to the house with the bags in his arms, seeing no reason to be careful with the lidded cups and all anyway.

“Schmo’s back,” he announced from the entrance. It sounded a tad more commanding than he intended, but at least his stomach’s uneasiness was out of it.

Loki only spoke up when the billionaire stepped into the lounge with the rustling bags.

“So slow,” he muttered, occupied with the mixing of cold water and instant tea at the kitchen counter.

“Missed me?”

Tony tried not to judge on his own, but he strongly felt like the following silence was rather sassy than nonchalant.

-

TBC never

I think I have figured out which of my various universes and story ideas I will be exploring with my ficlets. (Why, yes, if you hadn’t figured it out I am totally cheating; instead of coming up with a ficlet based on the prompt, I am matching the prompt to existing universes and story ideas to see what fits best.)

So far, in 7 ficlets, I’ve covered:

#arcana: The arcana are psychic/energy vampire mages, whose magic draws from life force taken from consenting clients (though not always well-informed consenting clients.) First came up with this idea when I was 16 and I actually wrote a lot of stories based on it, only one of which doesn’t suck, because I was 16. (You modern 16 year olds, with your Internet and your instant feedback and your ability to grow as authors faster than we did back in the day!... you’re awesome, keep it up. But when I was 16? I sucked.)

“zombie humans spreading spam”: Hey, I could really go for some Five Guys.

#child impersonators: I mentioned this in the ficlet -- this idea is based on P. J. Plauger’s “Child of All Ages” (but isn’t fanfic because I’ve done something drastically different with the concept). The “child impersonators” are adults who have been taking medication that suppresses their aging, entirely, since before puberty. They do not go into puberty, they do not grow and they do not age. “Grownups” refers solely to traditional adults, as “child impersonators” have all the legal rights of adults but are not grown-up.

#diane duane #young wizards #faro and ilya: I think someday I will come back to these two, but they are the only story idea I literally didn’t come up with until I saw the prompts. I’d wanted to explore the concept of a dog wizard, mostly because, as much as I love cats, they are overdone in SF and fantasy. But the only idea I’d had about dog wizards was that they probably work with human wizards, rather than in packs with other dog wizards, because unlike cats, who can come and go as they like without humans being alarmed, dogs can’t freely travel around without human supervision. A wizard can get around this, but expending extra power when you don’t need to is against their code. It became a husky and her Russian partner protecting the Arctic because the prompts were “freeze” and “husky”.

#kai diwar universe: I really love this universe and plan to explore it in detail one of these days. I got sick of “humans are special”, “humans have a quality of growth”, “humans are the only one who make alliances with other species”, etc, and decided to create a universe where the thing that’s unique about humans is that we like beer and kitty cats. No, seriously. We made friends with the galaxy’s greatest engineers because they thought they were the only ones with a love of fermented grain until we showed up, and they traded technology for novel microbrews; we made friends with the galaxy’s deadliest and most frightening warriors, the felinoid Kai, because catlike beings exist on most planets with sapient life, but Earth is the only one where they’re small enough to make pets of, so we were the only ones who saw giant cats and instead of terrifying “tigers and lions and panthers, oh my!”, we were able to think “Ooh, kitty!” instead and befriend them.

#not even past: So imagine what if Harry Potter, or a story like it, had taken place in America. And imagine that all of the teens fighting the great evil had died except the Hermione character and the Draco character. And imagine that as a result, the Hermione character had quit the world of magic entirely, gotten married to a non-magical man, had kids, and uses magic only to protect and care for her family. Imagine that she has serious PTSD about the magical world and nightmares about the deaths of her friends, which are getting worse because her own kids are getting to be the age when she went off to magic school herself. Now imagine that the bad guys are back and targeting her. That’s the plot of “Not Even Past.”

Other story ideas I plan to do ficlets on:

#nodrama: No Drama. I did a WIP promo on this. Snarky omnipotent alien is on Earth without most of his powers, investigating whether God is actually a corrupt politician of his people. Check the tag for more related ficlets.

#coldlight: The Cold At The Heart Of The Light. Did this one too. Supervillain must protect the baby of her nemeses’ mentor against her nemeses, a superhero team, because a time traveller has demonstrated that the baby will destroy the world if allowed to grow up, but the supervillain thinks she can change things. Check the tag for more related ficlets.

#proxima: Set in the same universe as Cold Light, but with different characters. The Proximas, like Marvel mutants, are people born with the capacity for superpowers, which come in during adolescence typically.

#libertyangel: Superman expy where the Clark Kent character was female. 

#demange: The demanges -- part demon, part angel -- are entities that do not belong on Earth, and generally prey on humans. Mark discovered years ago that he was half demange, and that this obligates him to do something, so he travels the world solving problems caused by demanges. If this sounds to you like the plot of Vampire Princess Miyu, congratulations, except you missed the part where I crossed it over with Hellblazer and Dresden Files.

Mad Max the librarian: This needs more fleshing out, but basically, in a post-apocalyptic world, a badass dude on a motorcycle rescues books and computer equipment and brings them home to an oasis of knowledge and (barely) working technology called The Library.

#theclos #greenworld: In a universe where Earth has a twin planet that is more like early science fiction’s take on Venus -- hot and jungle-like -- an explorer from our world who is trying to be ethical runs afoul of a member of a godawfully powerful humanoid race who are worshiped as gods on that world. Conflicts over non-interference, the human value of trade and cultural exchange vs. colonialism, and so forth, develop. Also, the human explorer and the Theclos representative fall in love. (Yes, based on Picard/Q, though in this version the Q character is female. If you want to see one that maintains the m/m dynamics keep reading.)

#mikelondon: Bears some slight resemblance to my story “Eyes That Can’t Be Mesmerized” (posted here on tumblr!), but came first. Mike London is an IT guy, and an albino, with rhythmatic nystagmus. It turns out that this protects him from vampiric mesmerism, and that makes him a target of the vampires, so he becomes a vampire slayer.

#doctorultraviolet: I posted the first bit of the first chapter of this here, years ago. Dr. Ultraviolet is The World’s Greatest Evil Genius. After surviving the superheroes’ destruction of her base and her finances, she has to take refuge with her sister... a single mother with 5 kids who lives in the suburbs and works as a real estate agent.

#sifralef: A ship captain in an era much like the Age of Sail, but with magic, is taunted by a Daemon, a mysterious entity with near-godlike power over the world. It turns out the world is a simulation, Daemons are AIs who run the simulation and maintain it, and this particular Daemon wants humanity to wake up, leave the simulation and achieve the destiny that was planned for them when the simulation was first created... for reasons of his own, and he’s chosen this ship captain as the human to awaken. Yes, it’s based on Picard/Q. Yes, this time they’re both dudes.

Plus, story ideas that I’ve posted incomplete bits of or the concept of here on Tumblr, such as the Pale Bro, Lair of Cat and Dragon, Hole in the World, or two lesbians drive across a future America in an ancient car held together by spray-can aluminum. And some other stuff I’m not going into in detail. And there may be ideas from @writing-prompt-s or concepts people posted on Tumblr in a “I wish someone would write this” or explicitly story prompt fashion.

MJÖLNIR

When the thousand years are over, Satan will be released from his prison and will go out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth—Gog and Magog—and to gather them for battle. In number they are like the sand on the seashore. They marched across the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of God’s people, the city he loves. But fire came down from heaven and devoured them.

Revelation 20:7-9

Christendom inspired by the Son from Galilee who tramped about on roads and fields to lift the masses endures as the seedbed for modern civilization. The paradox of this faith from classical antiquity which is the progenitor of the West is how the lot of Jesus made Pontius Pilate who condemned Him a slave rather than a viceroy and vice versa — sacrifice being greater than the power to kill. Such an anomaly in the lore of the time belied what was then the prototype of polytheism like the many paeans to Zeus who chained Prometheus for gifting fire to mankind or effigies of Jupiter who led men to a premature end for their hubris. If in some hypothetical these same gods were racked by agony in the throes of martyrdom would their folklore be the definition of blasphemy thus pagans from Roman stock took umbrage at Christians whose exegesis of life begged the question: How are the bedfellows of pain and suffering any index of power? The answer to this enigma would be nestled nowhere else but in the cradle of a new religion still in its infancy: For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world but to save the world through Him (3:17).

Crucifixion so scandalized Romans and Jews that its minutia survives in a single eye-witness account as discrete from the New Testament’s Synoptics. Harrowing details anathema to civilized company would have otherwise stayed a black-box left to oblivion had they not been recorded for posterity. Because of the sadism endemic in these processions were they hence confined to wastelands beyond city walls away from polite society. Even Christians alive in the Middle Ages when freighted with the gravity of such a death practiced discretion as they were loth to recreate its gore on pictograms until the advent of the Renaissance when a more sober account was elected. The Son hanging limp on a hill so became the cynosure of our faith whose gesture of a cross was ritualized by practitioners in prayer. Even pariahs orphaned by society were keen on finding solace in Jesus who died so others may live. At the crown of Golgotha would ultimately be where the most binding of covenants between Father and Man was wrought to reveal the very kernel of existence for creation: God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him ([1] 4:16).

This pearl of wisdom in search for meaning answered the many secrets sought by philosophers over aeons. Sitting cross-legged in meditation with the ambiance of singing bowls and the incantation of hums is no substitute. Pain purveys perspective and the rarest relic of love is a tonic to buck up the souls prostrate with hurt: The love of Father who coos in your ear to carry on is nirvana; The fraternal love from a phalanx of young sappers at the Somme in a hellfire of lead is nirvana; The love of the Son whose lungs were collapsed by Man’s schadenfreude as a billboard for gawkers is nirvana. Love of this kind is a balm for those bloodied by the ranks of evil amidst a war of attrition between heaven and hell since Original Sin. Each event sources its inspiration from a common well of how ‘there is power in the blood’. The debt borne by Jesus in a semiotic way thereby comes to epitomize something like ironclad armour in the lives of ordinary Christians. Over a series of seasons and cycles between birth and decay have the faithful mounted great feats and forays into the unknown for the betterment of their brethren with the same pugnacity seen atop Golgotha.

It is this pledge of service to others which subverts the narcissism of so many creeds that was itself a fillip to the flourishing of the West. Self-denial by abstaining from life’s wish-list would be roundly mocked by outsiders as meek but it was a gateway to humanity’s most productive years in the spectrum of existence. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends (15:13). A stoic lives under this cardinal rule not for reward but rather to honour the love inherited from Jesus which passes down from one generation to the next like an heirloom until a scion comes of age to assume its burden. Why burden? To love thine enemy who is beneath contempt as he rams a spike into your wrist summons a crie de coeur for a species of strength alien to this world. And yet at this very juncture do all the stars align to jolt the sinner from his stupor in breaking free from Satan’s seduction akin to Paul the Apostle who killed scores of Christians before his own conversion. The said burden therefore is knowing evil can only be defeated by the blood of a peacemaker however masochistic it may sound to the layman.

What eventuates is a schizophrenic split allowing for one’s conscience to take stock of its wayward ways long enough to defect from a history of wrongs. The primer to this epiphany is the ugly deed itself which in the universe of celluloid compares to sunlight upon the cursed who wilt in its path. Much like popular culture’s caricature du jour of dualism does the reality of being born again manifest likewise in the renewal of a soul. The introspection breaks the spell just enough to restore agency in knowing right from wrong. So the war between good and evil is carried about in the open as much as it is waged inside of you. Each person in her own right decides who she wants to be whether good or bad though the pity is most opt for vice rather than be an instrument for what is holy. Why? The road is a solitary one. Being good is heresy when the greater part of the world indulges in those acts and lies indigenous to Babylon. Being a persona non grata becomes a birthmark as the rest shun you for your ethics. So the path we plod is not one for the faint of heart neither is it for the weak of mind.

Christendom is inherently contrarian and has been since its formative years. Christians themselves are birds of a different feather who spurn the world’s rehashed idolatry which sycophants are so eager to adopt in earnest. Those cut from our cloth knowing the real world stakes do not shirk from the truth that like Jesus who fell at the behest of sin does this dynamic survive to this day in the highest reaches of power to the lowest alleys of pimps. By analogy we can do more than merely read the hours and minutes of a timepiece — we are the watchmakers. The esoteric wisdom therefrom beseeches us to see the world for what it truly is: a pockmarked battlefield laid to waste by two camps. Scarce few bother to stray from the smoke and mirrors of everyday monotony but behind them are forces aligned to different stripes in service to separate causes. A firefighter who barrels into an inferno to save a pregnant wife versus a rapist who sets his victim afire are a microcosm for the humanity and lack thereof on this earth. Love and hate are the root of Man’s checkered history and Christians are shrewd enough to be skeptical of any authority he purports to dispense.

Turka’Ko

It was dark inside the antechamber of Kala Du'n, the greatest and most ancient temple constructed by the pygmy lizard men of Venus. A faint blueish-green light shone through the great doorway, but Corrigan could barely see his hand in front of his face, let alone the famous traps that made this place so feared among Earthmen. Reaching into his pocket, he withdrew a wriggling thing that, after a bit of shaking, emitted a faint green glow from bioluminescent sacs along the length of its body.

The glow was sufficient to illuminate a few feet ahead, forcing him to take it slow as he advanced into the chamber. He was a tall man, and he had to hunch over slightly to keep from banging his head against the ornamented ceiling tiles. His bomber jacket was soaked from the endless rainstorm outside, unzipped and loose over the loose-fitting cotton garment that Earthmen had to wear in the sweltering humidity. A leather holster hung around his waist, containing an automatic pistol and enough ammunition to halt a pygmy warband in its tracks.

Holding out the living lamp, he could just barely make out a bump on the floor nearby, some sort of raised surface against the otherwise flat floor, worn down by centuries of rainfall leaking through cracks in the roof. Here and there, fallen chunks of stone stood beneath gaping holes, though between the darkening sky and the forest cover, very little light shone through. This wasn't just an errant piece of roof, however – The light was weak, but the hollow-eyed skull of a pygmy tribesman was instantly recognizable.

Tiny eye sockets, a wide mouth full of teeth, a head covered in razor-sharp spines – He hated the little bastards. To him, they resembled nothing less than a loathsome throwback in evolution, a forgotten 'what-if' scenario, if the reptilian domination of the Earth hadn't ended, if mammals found themselves edged out entirely by an ever-diversifying array of cold-blooded creatures. He was hardly the only Earthman to hold such a view. The wriggly creatures were forbidden from stepping within fifty miles of any human settlement, so far away that not even a Guatha bird-thing could fly over undetected.

Swallowing his disgust, he glanced across the skeleton – The green tint came not only from his light source, but from the moss slowly creeping across the bones. This, surprisingly, was a bad sign. Venutian flora grew at an alarming rate, and if these bones were any more than a few days old, they would already be nothing more than mulch beneath a patch of undisturbed moss. None appeared to be broken, though it was hard to tell with their level of decay. He did spot a rusted speartip, and a small piece of blue stone carved in the shape of the Great God Turka'Ko, head of the pygmy pantheon, who the Earthmen called The Father of Toads.

The temple of Kala Du'n was built in the honor of Him, the guardian of the jungles that ringed the equator of the greenhouse world. Ten thousand years had passed since then, and the civilization that built this place – Medieval by human standards, but the most advanced the planet had ever seen until the arrival of Earthmen in the early 20th century – Had long since vanished into myth, while their descendants flopped around in the swamp, sunning themselves on stones and eating raw bloatworms beneath the midnight clouds.

Plucking one of the little fetishes from the floor, he rolled it over in his hand, his fraying gloves leaving a faint residue on the stone. He didn't believe in spook stories, and certainly not in ancient alien gods – But then, creeping through the dimly-lit ruins, listening to the ever-present pounding of the rain outside, it was easy to fall into superstition.

“Turka'Ko Sada,” He muttered the good-luck charm, then tossed the icon aside, hearing it clatter in some unseen corner of the room.

A better equipped explorer wouldn't need to rely on prayers to non-existent gods. If he'd just reported his find to the Venus Colonization Authority, he would've been here with a cadre of armed guards, lighting their way with chemical lamps and exterminating anything in their way with gyrojets. But that would've meant splitting the bounty with others, and forfeiting his right to profit from the sale of the artifacts found therein. Most of the intact ancient temples had already been looted a thousand times over, the artifacts sold or melted down for scrap, the very stones torn apart to build defensive fortifications around remote settlements. Kala Du'n, however, remained undiscovered and undisturbed, even by the pygmies, who only spoke of the place in whispers. Just tracking the place down was an adventure in itself, but now that he was within the crumbling walls of the complex, everything would be worthwhile. All the struggle, all the sacrifice...

Just then, a hissing sound made itself distinct from the background noise, and Corrigan's hand fell to the butt of his pistol. The gun's metal casing was orange with rust, but the internals were made of a plastic composite that was nearly indestructible, and the bullets were caseless explosive charges – One was enough to blow a fist-sized hole in a pygmy's torso, and two could stop a rampaging Gla'a'a in its tracks. Something moved in the darkness, and he let off a shot, the flash nearly blinding him, the sound momentarily reducing his hearing to a low whine. Stone chunks flew up from the floor, pelting his lower legs, and as the glare faded, he thought he caught sight of something long and thin wriggling across the floor, just at the edge of his vision. He didn't panic – He'd faced down jungle critters many a time, and none of them were immune to bullets. It was just a matter of patience, following the sound with his ears rather than his eyes. His finger slowly tightened around the trigger, so that the smallest twitch would loose an explosive bullet straight ahead into the darkness.

He'd been on Venus for the better part of a year, and hadn't had a single cigarette in that time; Tobacco got soggy in the damp climate and lighters rusted away. He hadn't felt a craving in months, but now, the old familiar hunger welled up in his chest. He stuffed the lampworm back into his pocket; In the darkness and tight quarters, a free hand was more valuable than a light. The noise moved around the room, and he followed it, listening to it getting closer until, with a sudden flash, a fireball erupted on a nearby stone tile, a doubleheaded snake found itself separated for the first time. The lone surviving head limped away into the darkness, leaving a trail of acrid-smelling blood and the twitching remains of its fellow. Venom dripped from its fangs. He wished he'd brought a few sample kits; All it took was some basic chemistry to turn it from a deadly poison into a powerful hallucinogen, and it was all the rage with intellectuals and beatniks back on Earth. As it was, he drove his heel down on the head, as he'd prefer not to poke himself on those venomous fangs in the dark.

With that danger out of the way, he was free to continue his exploration. He followed the walls of the room going counterclockwise, his gun at the ready to face any new threats, but none presented themselves. The walls were covered in mottled lumps that had once been carvings, worn away by the eons until they resembled a topographical map of an asteroid. He didn't like them; The water constantly flowing over them gave them a strange, undulating quality that drove a shiver up his spine. About halfway down the farthest wall, he came across an opening, and stepped into a narrow corridor. This was a good sign – The ancient Venutians built their corridors narrow to force religious processions to move slowly and in single file. Just beyond would lay the ritual chamber, and within it, the boundless treasures of a long-dead culture.

He wasn't some vulture, come to strip the bones of the long-deceased – He was only here for a few choice pickings. Ritual masks always sold for a decent amount. Statues of Turka'Ko were also a prized relic, assuming they were in good enough condition and small enough to fit in his canvas army pack. A place like this, undisturbed by Earthmen nor native alike, was bound to be full of treasure. And since he was the only living person who knew the location – The very last, since the old pygmy who initially told him had been slaughtered with the rest of his tribe in retribution for a recent raid on a supply convoy.

This modern-day conquistador adjusted his holster so his gun hung directly in front of his groin, providing easy access and a modicum of protection for his vital parts. He came out of the hallway into a wider room, though his light remained too weak to see much of anything. He caught sight of mottled carvings on the floor stones. Though they were worn, he could still make out a few lines of ancient writing. It was a more refined version of the language the pygmies still spoke, and he was able to read a bit of it.

“Tra'ha d'rl Turka, marnis d'rl zahn,” He read aloud, “Eating-Room of Frog, Hunger Sacrifice.”

The floor slanted upward slightly as he approached what he assumed was a dais or an altar of some kind. There was certainly something ahead of him – He could just barely make out a shape looming up in the darkness. For safety's sake, he drew his gun and fired into the air, using the advanced weapon as an improvised flare gun.

In that momentary flash of light, he saw the vast green mass stretching out before him, rolls of scaly undulating blubber caked in slime. It must've been twenty or thirty feet across, filling a good quarter of the large room. It was only when he saw the head perched atop those stacked chins that he recognized it for what it was. Those bulging eyes, the twin elongated tongues – It all bore a striking resemblance to Turka'Ko, whose visage was unmistakable to any who had spent an appreciable amount of time on the jungle world. This, however, wasn't a mere icon of the ancient Venutian god, but a thing comprised of living flesh!

As the light of the flare died down, Corrigan caught sight of something wiggling free of one of the creature's folds – A snake with a patch of shining scar tissue along the side, which was already beginning to bulge with the first growth of a replacement head. The single remaining head still had fangs. Already paralyzed by fear, Corrigan failed to dodge the leaping serpent, and he let out a howl as the teeth sunk into his leg. His pain was only temporary, however, as the venom's psychoactive effects took hold, and the Earthman found himself sinking into the depths of another nightmare altogether.

The Great God Turka'Ko, Father of Toads, reached down from his pedestal and crushed the Earthman's head like an eggshell. Then, his voluminous stomach grumbling, he pressed the still-twitching body between his lips, and returned to his vigil. In a century or two, the Earthman's soul would be reborn in the form of a wriggling doubleheaded snake, and perhaps lay low one or two of his former fellows. For now the temple fell silent, except for the eternal pounding of the rain.

Brave Exkaiser Episode Guide

Exkaiser is the first installment in the Yuusha series and follows a young boy, Kouta, whose family car turns out to be an alien robot, a police officer, sent to Earth to stop the space pirates, the Geisters, from stealing Earth’s treasures.

All episodes can be watched on Youtube right here! (If I, personally, really dislike an episode and see no point to it I will but “pointless filler” at the end of it, for my own sanity’s sake) 

Episode 1: Exkaiser follows the Geisters to earth along with his team and he takes possession of Kouta’s family car. But when the Geisters try to steal Kouta’s old camera, believing it to be valuable, Exkaiser has to reveal himself in order to save him!  ENTER EXKAISER!

Episode 2: The Geister sets their eyes on stealing the new liner motorcar and Exkaiser sets up to stop them, but the smart Ptera Geist has invented something and Exkaiser needs backup if he wants to pull this off.  ENTER KEISER TWINS, GREEN RAKER AND BLUE RAKER!!!  POWER UP KING EXKAISER AND ULTRA RAKER!!

Episode 3: The Geisters tries to steal electricity and ends up trying to steal a nuclear plant that, because it gets fucking moved, is about to explode! Exkaiser needs all hands on deck to stop these idiots! ENTER DRILL MAX, DASH MAX AND SKY MAX!! POWER UP GOD MAX!!

Episode 4: The Geisters tries to steal a rocket about to launch for Mars and the Keisers have to find a way to defeat them without damaging the rocket as it’s very important to Kouta.

Episode 5: Most of the town falls sick and the Geisters are stealing all the medicine, the thing is people will die without it so Kouta is extra invested in coming along which leads to him meeting some of the other Kaisers.

Episode 6: Thunder Geist is sent to retrieve a sunken pirate ship that is full of treasure, but since he’s not very smart he accidentally sets off a volcano. Exkaiser hs to save the people who have chosen this very bad day to go on a submarine tour.

Episode 7: The Geisters steals the machines from an old amusement park and turns them into robots to train against. Blue Raker is sent to investigate but blows his cover and is stuck when he has to defend himself but can’t damage the machines. Luckily Kouta is able to help!

Episode 8: Ptera Geist tries to steal the fastest plane, the one that Kouta’s class just so happens to be getting a tour of. Exkaiser and Max team have to beat the transformed robot and Kouta must take control of the situation!

Episode 9: The cherry blossoms are blooming and everyone has gone to see them, but Armor Geist have heard it’s a treasure and takes Thunder with him to steal it. But they kinda set their eyes on something a little bigger

Episode 10: The Geisters are targeting the opening baseball games and decides to just take the whole dome while they’re at it.

Episode 11: The Geisters are aiming to steal a golden coffin, this takes them to a ruin where Kouta’s class will be doing a play. Not all goes according to plan.

Episode 12: The Geisters steals all the flour... what are you guys doing? Baking a giant cake?? It’s flour.

Episode 13: Kouta goes to Mt. Fuji with his family but the Geisters makes the mountain erupt in an attempt to kill off the Kaisers. The result is chaos!

Episode 14: Its mothers day and the Geisters have received word that a mother is the most important treasure of all.

Episode 15: After being told that he cannot steal dreams, Horn Geist throws a tantrum that results in not letting the humans sleep, at all. 

Episode 16: The Geisters goes to steal a valuable racecar, of course, they didn’t realize that Dahs Max would be in the race... This guy is a total savage and I love him

Episode 17: The Geists goes after the district computers that make sure everything functions as it should, this causes chaos all over and when they then try to go for the big mother computer the Kaisers has to stop them in order to avoid catastrophe.  

Episode 18: The Geisters steals rare clocks from all over the world and in an attempt to stop them Dash Max gets taken hostage.

Episode 19: The Geisters wants to steal the treasure at the end of the rainbow when that fails they decide to just flood the town.

Episode 20: The Geisters tries to kidnap a princess who’s about to get married because she possesses a great treasure.

Episode 21: Kouta and his friends apply to be child actors but as they’re recording the Geisters show up to ruin the day, of course, no director stops filming when he got real-life robots battling on his set.

Episode 22: Kouta’s sister, Fuuko, falls hopelessly in love with Dahs Max (who can blame her) and is determined to meet up with him at the summer festival, of course, he comes around when the Geisters attack.

Episode 23: Fuuko wants to become an idol so Kouta goes with her to the TV station to cheer her on, however, soon Geister appears looking for idols and golden eggs.

Episode 24: The Geisters tries to steal a cruise ship but for the first time Dino Geist comes along to show them how to do their job!

Episode 25: An important virus is being transported to the medicinal institute, this makes it the perfect target for the Geisters and Exkaiser has little choice but to cooperate when Sky Max is taken hostage.

Episode 26: The Geisters tries to steal a panda cub but fails, Kouta and Fuuko, feeling that a living animal shouldn\t be confined steals the panda instead until Exksaiser convinces Kouto that he has to let go of her.

Episode 27: When a meteor shower is approaching earth Exkaiser and Sky Max must face down Dino Geist and Ptera Geist as the human astronauts try to destroy the meteorites before they can collide with Earth!  ENTER COMPANION DRAGON

Episode 28: The Geisters has stolen all the treasures of summer in order to lure out Exkaiser. Getting into a battle that seems lost Exkaiser needs to find a new power to save everyone! ENTER DRAGON KAISER  

Episode 29: When a new gold coin is about to be issued the Geisters decided to pretty much steal every coin they can get their hands on, it’s up to Exkaiser alone to stop them!!

Episode 30: Kouta’s dad is trying to stop smoking and that is a good thing because it’s the next target for the Geisters!

Episode 31: Kouta goes to Peru with his sister and dad to look at the Nazca Lines, however when the Geisters try to steal them Exkaiser must stop them on his own, and everything truly goes to shit when Dino Geist shows up and an old legend about the ending of the world is about to come true.

Episode 32: In an attempt to take out Exkaiser, Ptera comes up with... an actually pretty good plan, I’m really proud tbh, but anyway, he comes up with a plan to take advantage of the incoming typhoon and in an attempt to become stronger than their opponents the Geisters combine. POWER UP GREAT EXKAISER

Episode 33: A boy from school “borrows” Kouta’s communication bracelet and won’t give it back, unfortunately, he’s also the son of a Kabuki actor and is the next treasure on the Geister’s list, yikes. Also, Exkaiser is being mean to kids D: POWER UP PTEDER

Episode 34: The Olympics come to Japan and the Geisters tries to steal it, but stealing something you don’t know what is, is proving to be their greatest talent and wow these guys aren’t the brightest. Aka how the Geisters fucked up the Olympics for everyone.

Episode 35: A symphony has been composed for the Braves and being the jealous fucks they are, the Geisters are of course going to ruin the concert. Here the Braves are rendered momentarily defenseless as Kouta rushes to save Kotomi, who has been trapped inside the Geisters’ minion.

Episode 36: Its Halloween and a strange creature is roaming free stealing all the festive foods! When Kouta and Kotomi get kidnapped Exkaiser can’t help but intervene.

Episode 37: The Geisters have learned that books are a great treasure and honestly the writers of this episode just wanted to have a reading prompt for the Geisters. Exkaiser is hesitating to take them back since he’s afraid of destroying them so of course, Kouta has to step in and help!

Episode 38: There’s great value in horse racing, therefor the Geisters try to kidnap the top favorite!

Episode 39: A lot of schools sends students to a space camp to give the kids' astronaut training so they can feel what it’s all about (god these kids do more in elementary than I’ve done all my life). Kouta wants to be an astronaut when he grows up and Exkaiser teaches him an important lesson but of course, the Geisters are there to ruin everything.

Episode 40: After their last fight with the Kaisers, the Geisters are in disrepair and needs a doctor, this leads Armor and Horn to kidnap a leading scientist, Tokuda and Kouta. But since Kouta can transmit his location to Exkaiser, that might have been a fatal mistake for the Geisters.

Episode 41: After the Geisters have been forced to have a temporary base somewhere VERY cold they have become quite bitter. With the upcoming bow-wow contest, the Geisters decided to steal all the dogs. However, after Mario gets hurt Exkaiser completely loses his cool.

Episode 42: After setting their temporary base on fire the Geisters have to evacuate when the Raker brothers come to help the humans stop the fire. However, after getting away with the fire trucks the Geisters are sent to grab the latest models which are incredibæy valuable.

Episode 43: Fuuko is dreading her upcoming test and wishes for the Geisters to steal her school, however, instead of hers it ends up being Kouta’s school that gets stolen and Exkaiser has to be extra careful fighting in the middle of the city!

Episode 44: Christmas is here and the Geisters are targeting Santa Clause! But how do you tell 4 aggressive robots that the person they’re trying to kidnap doesn’t exist? At the same time, Kouta’s dad is at a Christmas party but haven’t bought any gifts yet and Kouta’s mom dresses up as Santa in his stead. Ho ho ho-ly shit!

Episode 45: While going to Egypt during New Year Kouta and his friends stumble over the Emerald Stone, a very powerful artifact that the Geisters want to use to seal away Exkaiser forever.

Episode 46: Now wielding the powerful soul stealing shield the Geisters lays a plan to lure out the Kaisers and once and for all take them out. But unfortunately for Exkaiser, the fight happens on an oil platform and what is this? God Max is...

Episode 47: The Geisters are being competent and are trying to force the raker brothers and Exkaister to reveal themselves to the public, but of course, time is ticking and the playing field starts to look pretty grim for Exkaiser.

Episode 48: The final battle arrives and a lot of pressure rests on Exkaiser when he has to save his entire team and Tokuda! Luckily for him, Kouta is by his side but when Dino Geist has had enough and takes the kid for a space ride things ...escalates.