#but!!! the collector was also trapped!! for no reason!! and it fucked him up BAD!
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nano day nineteen
words today: 3047
words total: 42967
more good progress today! realized how hard it is to write a conversation between two people who do not speak the other's language! usually whenever i write firefly talking to people its either in her pov (she tends to understand others better than they understand her) or its like, eda, king, or luzmari. eda who is soul-bound to firefly. king who can See Dust and thus lowkey read minds to an extent. and luzmari who is. well she doesnt have any special power shes just lived w firefly for long enough to understand.
needless to say the collector is Not good at owlspeak. they will be one day! but that day is not today.
its always so fun when the characters sort of run away from you. king and the collector weren't going to start fighting until the last chapter--but they certainly disagreed! so now the fight's started sooner, which is good overall, i think--i've still got the big whammy saved up for that last chapter, and they've spent the entire story drifting apart. its a good way to kick off the final third of this fic.
my favorite part of what i wrote today:
“Quite frankly,” King says, and he shrugs them off, “I don’t even think you understand that you’ve doomed the entire Isles.”
He recoils, and his head stings as though King clawed him, but there’s no wounds he can see. Still he doesn’t remember how to breathe. The world is blurry at the edges. King’s stardust is so far away and thundering.
“I—” Their words catch in their throat. “What did I do?”
“You aided Belos!” He looks so much like his dad. With the snarl ‘n the anger ‘n the way he towers over them, ‘n they cower back further, wanna bare their teeth but it’s all blunt so what good would that do? “Without you, Belos’s would’ve never been able to start the coven system! To cut down all the palistrom trees! You talk a whole lot about missing how things were when you’re the reason they aren’t like that anymore!”
“He said he would free me!”
“Oh,” King snaps, and his eyes cut right to the center of them, piercing, “and you believed him?”
“I don’t.” Everything is going fuzzy. They keep blinking to keep how many Kings there are straight. “I was trapped. I didn’t wanna be trapped! I didn’t do anything to be trapped! I just—I just, I was good good good and your stupid dad trapped me! So it’s his fault!”
“Somehow,” King says, “I really doubt you did nothing.”
#nanoblogging#chatter#my favorite part about this argument is how neither of them are wrong <3#the collector did help belos doom the world. without them theres no coven system or draining spell#and belos wouldnt STOP his goal of Killing All Witches but it sure would not have been as effective#(probably woulda still happened tho. the collector gave sigils + draining spell but Palistrom Tree Murder was a belos original)#but!!! the collector was also trapped!! for no reason!! and it fucked him up BAD!#kings dad overreacted and doomed the collector to this awful life where he had no contact w the outside world#and no contact with DUST which is. lets just say. very important to becoming a Person#and with that on top of his siblings who very much do not see mortals as people....#not of course that king and the collector know this lol <3#the eight year olds are fighting.....#this isnt even the most devastating. im saving that for the end. oh ho ho its BAD#but we gotta get to watching and dreaming somehow!!#sorry the collector is my favorite owl house character okay#just. i love them <3#and a grove of palistrom to you
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Kinda curiouso - what's the breakdown on Slashers that voted to let Marcus live Vs voted to kill him Vs abstained?
Wow, sorry I took so long answering this! I kept meaning to type this up on my computer and got distracted.
Voted to let him live: 11
Danny, obviously
Pyramid Head, because he didn't go to all that trouble to find and fuck him just to see him die like a week later
Amanda, got the full story from Danny and decided Marcus sounded like an interesting person
Evan, he really just wanted to piss off Michael and doing the opposite of whatever it is he wants is just a sure fire way to do it... also he may or may not have already decided he liked the bratty ginger and reeaaallly didn't want to see him dead...
Thomas, isn't about to sit back and see his knew friend die! Marcus was nice to him! And he didn't even scream the first time he saw him!
Caleb, isn't about to vote to kill someone who was just dragged bleeding and terrified into the Realm without knowing why first. Danny did a good job arguing for the vet's character, and the old cowboy got curious.
Max, just followed Caleb's lead because he didn't care enough to pay attention to what was being discussed.
Sally, just wanted to disagree with Herman
Philip, he's not really a bad guy, he's just been dealt some really shitty cards. He's not going to vote to kill the adorable surprising guest that's just been dragged to the Realm unless he does something to endanger them. Also Pyramid Head scares the crap out of him.
Samara, likes to play with new people, although Rin and Sadako try to keep her away from anyone new. She wants to get to know the new play thing...
Carmina, much like Philip, she's really not a bad person at heart. She abhorred playing the Entity's game and has yet to kill since escaping. She didn't even need to be convinced to vote in his favor.
Voted to kill him: 6
Michael, mistakenly believed he'd either hurt, or planned to hurt Thomas. The idea that Ghostface was stupid enough to allow it or possibly even have facilitated it only made him angrier and less willing to listen to Danny's side of the story.
Kenneth, just really likes hurting people. Especially innocent people. Especially-
Blight, was hoping if they won the kill vote he'd get to use him as a test subject. They may be trapped in this hellhole of a Realm now, but that doesn't mean he can't continue his research!
Herman, was jealous and more than a little offended that his fellow Slashers were going to a vet of all things for medical care. No. No, his feelings are not hurt! Not in the slightest...
Charlotte & Victor, argued longer about whether or not they got one vote or two. Once it was decided they'd only get one no matter how they voted, they threw a fit and decided on kill.
Rin, immediately voted kill. Doesn't care. Doesn't need a reason. Kill.
Didn't vote/Didn't get a vote: 14
Freddy, abstained actually. Why? He's a shit stirrer and it wasn't clear who was going to win yet.
Anna, wasn't present. Unknown to the others, she was being held captive but the Collector. (would have voted to kill him)
Adiris, was out looking for Anna. (would have voted to let him live)
Dredge, there's still a debate among the Entity's Slashers whether or not he's sapient enough to get a vote (he is, would have voted kill at the time... he wanted to eat the body.)
Sadako, the whole thing made her uncomfortable and she abstained. Still got mad at Samara for her live vote though.
Kazan, no one knows where the hell he is! They haven't seen him in almost twenty years! (Would have voted live, just to fuck with Danny. He knows Ghostface is scared of him and bullies him for fun.)
Demogorgon, doesn't get a vote. Less intelligent than Dredge, but still way to fucking smart for an animal.
Ji-Woon, wasn't present. (would have voted kill just to listen to him scream)
Wesker, wasn't invited. Didn't find out about it until much later. (would have abstained just to see how it would play out, plan course from there)
Nemesis, wasn't invited, wouldn't have been allowed to vote even though he's smart enough to do so (Wesker knows this, but doesn't care. Nem would have voted kill in hopes of getting to do it himself. He doesn't get out much)
Pinhead, wasn't present, no one wants him there anyway!
Lisa, wasn't there. She's chilling in the Florida everglades and doesn't want to be disturbed. (Would have abstained so she could go back to chilling with her pet gator)
Legion, was trapped in the Lament Configuration thanks Frank (Would have only gotten one vote, but they would have voted for live if only to keep Susie from never shutting up about what could have been with the cute twitchy ginger and aw why is he running away from me?)
Jason, wasn't there and no one was about to leave the show to go get him. (would have voted to let him live, much to Michael's unending ire. What, he likes red heads!)
I think that's everyone? If I missed anyone let me know, and I'll make a react for them <3
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Alright cause I’m in a mood and I’m tired of seeing it , I’m going to throw my hat in the ring and probably piss some people off.
The Collector is not just a ‘misunderstood/confused’ kid who needs to be taught empathy.
They are a morally GREY being, who while may indeed have disconnects on mortals morals, is not EXCUSED or completely ignorant to these acts and comments being fucked up in a human/witch/mortal view.
&& yes im doubly talking to the people who seem to think that theory is an unpopular one because i can count on one hand how many people DON’T think thats the case, and i see it 4-5 times each time im in the tags.
But because I’m not going to just whine that other people disagree, I’m going to fully explain my counterpoints to a lot of the stuff I’ve been seeing.
Lets begin.
1. “ They’re called a ‘child’ of the stars in canon”
Yes; while they are called a ‘child’ this could be a title due to the form they take. As they are petite and look young.
From what we’ve seen, the collector as a being takes a lot more similarity with a deity / demi-god type being. Which would fit seeing as they are set up to be King’s foil / a being similar to a titan. && Titans are set up in canon to be ‘gods’ of the isles. It is not uncommon in mythology for gods / demi gods / god like beings to take child-like forms or forms of other things to seem more harmless than they are.
2. “ The collector looks young! They’re definitely like 4-6 years old like an ipad toddler! They’re just a kid!!”
Fam, even if they were a ‘kid’, which they are definitely not. they look more closely to gus in height and build so like (12-14).
But again they are certainly NOT comparable to a MORTAL CHILD in all legitimacy. The collector is not a kid, if we are to take canon, where they existed long before phillip came to the isles, (long enough to have been trapped by kings dad hundreds of years prior), and have not changed since, there is no aging. there is no growing up. This is an ageless being.
(which leads to my next point:)
3. “ They just need to grow up and be taught proper morals by someone! / Belos was just a bad role model! ”
Again, for that logic to make sense, they would have had to be in a position for the ability to change / start out innocent. They existed for hundreds of years BEFORE phillip existed in the isles. && from what we know was trapped quite a long time before that. If they were simply innocent and corrupted by Belos, why would Kings dad need to trap him in the first place? Why would he go OUT OF HIS WAY to make a symbol PURELY TO HIDE KING FROM THE COLLECTOR.
This is not a quirky coincidence. This is not a throw away joke in CANON this is a very important point they made sure to emphasize. If the collector was never a problem before Phillips influence, there would be no reason for king to remain hidden from the collector, especially to the EXTENT he was. (The whole island, the collar, the guards?)
With him being set up as a foil of king, would also make sense, as king is set up to grow and change, and learn. While the Collector is ageless, and is likely the way he was thousands of years ago and will remain that way. They seem to be set up as a being who is far more disconnected from mortal lives/way of life than the titan ever was.
4. “ I just think it would be interesting if the collector was just a misunderstood lonely kid-god who needed to be adopted!”
A couple things,
A, that power dynamic would never make any relationship with a witch/human/mortal being and the collector a healthy one. Sorry. not sorry. Power dynamics like that are automatically unhealthy I don’t care how much genuine connection u put there. Theres no way for a mortal creature to be friends or otherwise with a being that could wipe them out of existence with a flick of a finger.
B. I’ve seen this EXACT take with so many characters in the fandom and its getting so tired. Amity, The blight twins, Hunter, Steve, you name it I’ve seen it. Please pick a new take I’m begging you. Having every character in a media be the exact same is not interesting or fun its not.
C. You can add depth to an antagonistic / morally grey character without taking away that they are in fact, an antagonist or morally grey. (cough belos apologists cough)
D. King. The character you’re talking about is literally King. King is literally set up as a deity (Titan) Who can learn, grow, and has bettered himself over the last few seasons. He’s literally a kid, and has been adopted by Eda. You want another king. We already have that. Lets have something different now.
5. “ The collector is just a kid so its okay that he helped with genocide and made jokes at mass murder! He’s a kid who doesn’t understand empathy”
Uhhhhhhhh lemme ask you---when did you ever meet a 4-6 year old who went around laughing at genocide/ trying to murder people as a default? If we’re going to go all the way with ‘hes a little kid!’ narrative, then lets be honest with ourselves. Kids are usually the ones with the MOST empathy and compassion by default. Hate and aggression are LEARNED behaviors. You do not start out this way. But please, show me evidence that this is a default state of kids, because you must be around some really disturbing children.
** && if you’ve gotten to this point and start with the ‘but phillip!’ nonsense, please read my previous points because you didn’t.
6. “ Its SO unpopular to think the collector is a kid I’m being victimized for having that opinion!”
No. You aren’t. Literally everyone in the fandom agrees with the kid thing--to the point where ive seen more ‘ipad kid’ edits of the collector than actual interesting dynamic art. If this is the opinion you wanna have. sure fine whatever makes you happy. More power to you. But don’t cry that someone is victimizing you when someone else disagrees its really gross.
I’m tired of this fandoms weird fixation on everyone needing to conform to the favorite opinions or they’re bullies or smthn. Having different takes on media and characters is what is supposed to make fandom spaces fun. Does that mean i cant put my own counter into the ring? No
. Me making this post doesn’t isn’t going to do shit to dissuade people with the kid-llector nonsense and i know that. But if yall can talk so can I.
7. “ You just think the collector is pure EVIL!!”
No, I don’t. Actually. I even agree with some of the interesting points about the collector having a complex about being alone for so long. Where i draw the line is excusing the collector’s shitty behaviors and saying he just ‘doesn’t understand’ or is a good person deep down.
Thats not interesting when its your take on every character.
The collector can have feelings/complex issues and still remain morally grey/chaotic / disconnected with what you or I would recognize as morally right and wrong. The character doesn’t need to be reduced to a little baby who just needs a good role model.
8. “ The collector is short / childish so they’re a child!”
This take always irks the hell out of me regardless of character and regardless of fandom. Short people exist. Short adults exist. I am literally 5 ft. I’ve known several people (full grown adults) around the same height/shorter. We are not kids because we’re petite.
&& Saying someone’s childish personality makes them a child is ableist. There are plenty of people with mental illness who act younger than they are ( and some who aren’t mentally ill that do!). Fully grown adults. This does not take away that they are adults. This alone is not evidence enough to prove he is a child. Unless Dana herself comes out tomorrow and says they’re 10, you cannot definitively declare this as canon. HC it all you want, but again, using that as the reasoning is maybe a take to reconsider.
&& Finally, for those who still want to insist the collector being morally good but misunderstood is ‘canon’
Dana herself literally said the character is morally grey and chaotic. This is not a disputable thing, this isn’t my opinion. She literally said this as canon, as fact.
So regardless of ANY head cannons or opinions, that is one thing that is pure fact.
JUST A DISCLAIMER; This is simply my take on the character, and like everything else on this website, is just that. my opinion. I’m not trying to pick fights with anyone over a tv show. But If I have to see ‘baby’ collector all the time in the tags, I’m allowed to have my own opinions too.
#ooc#long post#(of Moons && Stars);Eshu#ya im goin there#if i gotta see it every 2 seconds then i can put in my piece too#toh
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Can I maybe request The Collector x reader (who is his favorite in the hotel). The reader is always very obedient and good for him and one day one of his victims barges into the readers room and tries to force you to try and help him out of the hotel. Like maybe the victim threatens you with a weapon so you can’t do anything and when Asa finally finds you and kills the victim, you beg him to have mercy because you didn’t want to leave or be bad. How would Asa react knowing that you were threatened? Would he be merciful or would he still punish you?
Thank you!!💕💕
Disobedience | Asa Emory/The Collector x GenderNeutral!Reader | Dark Fic
Hey there!
I'm so sorry it took me a while to write this, but I hope you enjoy what I've done with your request, thanks so much for it! :') <3
summary; See above.
notes; Gender Neutral!Reader; Reader is also a Victim; Reader is his Favourite; Death Threat; Knives; Murder; Blood; Angst; Punishment; Spanking; No Aftercare; Toxic Relationship (duh); Dark Fic.
When your room’s door was suddenly thrown open, you jumped in your seat. You have just been making sure you looked acceptable in your vanity mirror, in which you now saw the person that had decided to just barge in like that. Turning around you looked at the man. It wasn’t the Collector. It was one of his victims. He was panting and had wounds all over his body. Some of them were still bleeding, dripping blood on your carpet.
“You,” the man snarled and stalked over to you, “You’re gonna help me out of here.”
You were going to tell him that he could forget about that when you jumped up from your seat; but once you stood in front of him you felt something sharp poking into your abdomen, stopping you in your tracks.
“Help me or you’re dead. I’m sure you don’t wanna die. Right? Especially not for that monster.” You looked down and saw the hunting knife the man held in his hand. He must have stolen it from Asa. You could see and feel that he was serious about this, if the way he held the blade against your stomach was anything to go by.
Holding up your hands in a placating manner, you took a shaky breath.
“First off, he’s not a monster,” you said, defending your love almost automatically. You were his favourite for many reasons, having become fully his, after you’ve been so obedient and good for him for all these years that he’s kept you already, and after eventually falling in love with him. At least, you were convinced that it was love. “Secondly, I’m not gonna help you! I’m not gonna risk my life and love for a pitiful creature like you!”
“Fuck! C’mon, just- just help me, okay?” the man urged, raising the knife to point it at your face as he talked. “You really think he loves you? That he’s worth staying trapped for? You need help! And you’ll be able to get it if you come with me. Now!”
Looking at him for a long moment, you thought about it. Maybe you could find a way to bring him to Asa directly if you played it smart. It was either that, under the guise of helping him, or dying because you didn’t go with him. Either option was risky. If the Collector thought you helped his victim escape, you would definitely have hell to pay. But it was still better than being stabbed by some inexperienced fuck like this guy.
“Fine! I’ll come with you. Just keep it down, will you? Or else he’s gonna find us before we even have a real chance,” you said at last, hoping that he believed your sudden change of mind.
The man sighed in relief. Then, he pulled you forward by your wrist and got behind you, poking the tip of the knife into your back.
“Lead the way. If you think about bullshitting me you’re dead, okay?” he snarled.
Swallowing thickly, you nodded, “Yes, okay.”
You had to play this really smart, then. You also had to make sure neither of you fell victim to any of the traps Asa has built into the corridors. You knew them like the back of your hand, sure, but that didn’t mean you couldn’t accidentally trigger one anyway, considering your current situation.
Carefully navigating through the hallway just outside your room, you were able to avoid all traps. After all, you went this one up and down every single day. This one, you could walk through with your eyes closed. It was all the other ones that worried you.
The man behind you was breathing heavily and shakily. He was terrified. And he should be. You were going to lead him straight to Asa, who was going to cruelly and brutally murder him, then. It was the fate he’s chosen by deciding to try to escape, though. You couldn’t feel bad for him.
Guiding your way through the many corridors to where you knew Asa would be at this time - his examination room - you were able to avoid all the different booby traps just so. It was mostly luck than anything else, though.
“Wait, where the fuck are you leading me to?” the man hissed, pushing the knife into the skin of your back as a warning.
“Out,” you simply replied. Dying could be considered that, could it not? Out. Freedom.
The door of the examination room to your left opened and Asa stood in the doorway with his own knife drawn. He was looming over you both, or at least it felt that way. He had such a presence that it stole your breath away when you saw him standing there. You were mesmerised.
Quickly and without as much torture as you had expected from him, the Collector ripped his victim away from you and slit his throat deeply, leaving a huge gash that spurted blood all over you, as you still stood right in front of them. You closed your eyes out of reflex when the blood hit your face.
When you opened them again, Asa had discarded the corpse for now, letting him slump to the floor. He looked down at you. There was no way for you to read his expression. But his entire being just screamed danger to you at that moment.
Your breathing picked up, your heart started beating rapidly, your vision swam. You were panicking now.
“H-he threatened me!” you blurted out, frantically trying to minimise your punishment, “He wanted me to help him escape and threatened to kill me if I didn’t! So, I said yes and led him right to you. Please, you have to believe me! I didn’t mean to disobey!” You could taste the copper of the victim’s blood in your mouth as you spoke. It was disgusting. He was disgusting. This pathetic man, who thought threatening you was a good idea, was the reason why you were in this situation, now! You have always been so good and obedient. You could only hope that the Collector would show mercy and at least let you live.
Asa cupped your cheek in his hand and wiped some of the blood away with his thumb. A shuddering breath escaped you. Hesitantly, you looked him in the eyes. You could only guess that his eyes hardened, rather than softened, like you had hoped; but it was difficult to tell due to his contact lenses.
“You know you’re my favourite,” he said softly, “But I can’t let this go unpunished. I understand that you were trying to still do me a favour, despite everything. That’s why I won’t be too harsh on you.”
“Thank you,” you whispered obediently.
Without another word, Asa led you into the examination room. That didn’t exactly sit well with you. It meant there would be blood involved. Or perhaps he just didn’t want to go all the way back to your room with you. At least, you hoped so.
“Undress,” the Collector ordered.
Instantly, you jumped into motion and took all of your clothes off.
Once you were naked, he patted the metal examination table, “On your stomach.”
Exhaling slowly to steady yourself a bit, you laid down on the table, pillowing your head with your crossed arms. He didn’t comment on it. That was a good sign so far. Everything else wasn’t, though.
Then, without any warning, Asa first struck your buttocks, making you flinch and cry out. He followed up with several more hits, one harder than the other.
So, spanking it was.
When he paused, you knew it was your turn to speak.
“Thank you. I’m sorry,” you whimpered.
He continued relentlessly, striking you with a force he had never used on you before.
By the time he stopped shortly again, you were crying violently. Tears streamed down your face, snot and spit covered the lower half of it, and your body shook with your sobs.
“Thank you, sir. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry! Please, I’m sorry!” you cried out in-between sobs.
But Asa didn’t stop. He only continued, until you could barely breathe anymore. You were in so much pain, your mind wasn’t able to catch up. You could feel it all throughout your body and not at all at the same time. It was horrible. You deserved it, though, didn’t you? You shouldn’t have disobeyed him like this, despite the threats to your life.
At last, he stopped again. You couldn’t talk. You tried to thank him and apologise again, begging for his forgiveness, but you couldn’t. All that came out were choked sobs.
“Sh, sh, sh,” the Collector shushed you softly, leaning down to place a kiss to the back of your head before stroking it gently, continuing down to your back and placing his hand on your abused bottom, “I’m done now.”
Relief coursed through your body.
It was crushed by despair when Asa left the room, though. You knew he wasn’t going to return until much later. This was part of your punishment. And you just had to take it.
You were lucky he let you live.
#i just know he'd punish you but he'd be 'tame' with it (i considered a harsher punishment first but this seems fair-er)#dark fic#gender neutral reader#gender neutral y/n#asa emory#asa emory x reader#the collector#the collector x reader#the collection#slashers#slasher x reader#slasher x y/n#slasher x you#slasher fandom#slasher fanfiction#slasher fic#fanfiction#fanfic
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i need some angst... can you do headcanons for asa, jesse and erron where they genuinely care about their s/o bur in a fit of rage hurt or even kill her and the aftermath? thanks!
Haven’t written angst in a long time, so you will have to excuse me if I got a little rusty around the edges. Also didn’t know how to put this into headcanons and decided to write little scenarios. I think genuine care has a different meaning to these guys; more like an obsessive need to control their s/o if I can say so.
Warning: The following scenarios involve toxic relationships and sort of abuse. BEWARE.
‘Baby, I’m blind.’ - Anonymous
Slashers Angst Scenarios with their s/o
The Collector
Asa was known to be a quiet, reserved, and perhaps anti-social man, never letting himself be open to the eyes of society; just being a regular guy in the eyes of people was enough for him, but you knew him better. You knew he had emotions under that thick hard skin, emotions that he showed to you from time to time, but alas he showed them, which was enough to know you were special to him.
With the bad full of emotions also came the negative ones, ones that resembled his other persona, the Collector and you knew better than to interfere yourself when he was his other-self. You never questioned his other life behind the dirty and thick walls of the hotel. You just accepted him as a whole; good and bad.
It was no surprise that he had a habit to come home late at night, sometimes disappearing for days, it came with the blessing of having double lives, but the shock was when you saw him enter the house one night while you were getting ready to go to bed.
He was drenched from head to toe from the heavy rain outside, his mask in one gloved hand, showing his tired face, smeared a little from the black paint around his eyes.
"Asa?" you asked in a quiet whisper, a little worried by the look he gave you.
He was angry. By what? That you didn't know, but by the wounds on his shoulder and abdomen, you guessed he had a rough night with a collected.
Before you could say anything, he took long steps towards you, his nitrile covered hand grasping you by the neck, your eyes widening as you choked on your words. You knew how dangerous he was, but you always told yourself that he would never let his inner monster out on you.
"W-What are you doing?" you gasped out, your eyes locked on his black shiny ones, reading pure sadism in them.
"Have you told anyone?" he asked in a calm yet deadly voice.
You furrowed your brows in confusion, debating what he was implying. That you would snitch on him?
"I-I...I would never betray you." you replied in a shaky voice, trying to get as much air into your lungs as possible.
Asa gave you a look of suspicion, scowling at you, then like that, his hand left your body who slumped down on the floor by his feet, eyes looking up in submission, not daring to say anything else.
Just like that, he left to go upstairs, leaving you alone, then you heard the shower running.
It was the first time you saw him. Not Asa, but the Collector.
Chromeskull
You knew that Jesse was territorial and you accepted this fact from the moment you started your life as his, knowing he didn't do things by halves. Sometimes your habit of seeing the good in everyone could put you into some troubles and that came tonight as your back was flush against the wall of Jesse's study.
Your eyes, usually filled with joy and mischief were now filled with fear, fear of your fiance and future husband, who destroyed his study, throwing furniture across the walls opposite of you, breaking everything. His broad back turned towards you, heaving up and down as he contained his rage, ready to combust yet again as he turned to look over his shoulder at you, brown eye, blown wide as he took in your shaky form.
Slowly, he stalked towards you, and at that moment you knew what the piggies felt when Chromeskull was on the prowl. His hand slammed beside your head, making you jolt, feeling like tears would burst any moment from your eyes. His hand moved down the wall and back in front of you to sign.
'Are you cheating on me?'
The question made you gape at him, feeling betrayed that he would think of you that way.
"N-No. How could you think that?" you asked, wondering what made Jesse ask you something like that.
'I don't know. You were giving that man at the dinner party some sweet eyes.' he signed, lips pulled int a silent snarl.
"I-I was trying to be polite. I-I didn't want to embarrass you by acting rude." you tried to explain, gulping down.
'Still trying to act all innocent when we all know that you're just like the rest of the piggies. SLUT.'
"Don't fucking call me that!" your rebellious self dared to speak and in response, your cheek stung from the harsh slap of Jesse's hand, your gaze moving down, trying to blink the tears away, but his hand grasped your jaw in a tight grip, making you look up at him. His lips brushed against yours as he typed on the phone.
'You are nothing without me. I OWN you. Better get that through your thick skull, HONEY.'
The tears followed down your cheeks.
'And don't even think about divorcing me.'
His grip tightened at the last words his phone spoke, then like that he stormed out, leaving you alone in the darkness.
The Hacker
Normally, you weren't the jealous type, never had motives to be and you always hated these types of girlfriends that were jealous for childish reasons, but now? You started to understand why they always made a big deal.
You were leaning against the kitchen counter, drinking some wine, mostly to ease the tension you felt in your muscles and spine, your eyes on the door as it opened and your boyfriend entered, closing the door behind him and throwing the key cars of his Dodge Charger on the chest by the door, his masked face stopping on your form.
"Not sleeping?" he asked as he walked towards the fridge, pulling out a cold energy drink.
"How can I sleep when my boyfriend is not home and he comes at 3 in the morning?" you asked, and you heard how he sighed in exasperation behind the mask.
"How many times do I have to tell you? I was doing business." he said, tone getting to a harsher edge.
"Spending your time at brothels and nightclubs isn't work." you snarked back, only for him to pull down his mask and hoodie, running his hand through his spikey hair.
"Will you stop?" he asked, grey eyes looking at you, the bags under his eyes visible.
"Will you stop acting like an asshole?" you asked and in an instant, he was upon you, his hands trapping you against the kitchen counter.
"Watch your mouth. Just because you're my girlfriend doesn't mean I cannot fuck you up and trust me, doll. I will if you act like a stuck-up bitch with me." he growled, all your brave facade vanishing, reminding yourself who this man was and what he was capable of.
"Well?" he sarcastically asked, his hot breath hitting your face.
"I-I'm sorry...I-I was just worried." you said, lowering your gaze in submission.
He chuckled at your reaction, knowing he could shot the obedience into you very easily.
"Aww...You're worried about little ol' me?" he asked, licking his lips as he looked down at you, then you felt his lips on your forehead.
"Don't stand in my way and just be loyal to me as I am to you, and you won't have to worry about one thing." he muttered, then he moved away, walking towards his desk and computer screens.
You were left speechless, knowing that the moment you entered this relationship there was no way out.
#Laid to rest 2009#Chromeskull: Laid to rest 2#chromeskull#chromeskull x reader#jesse cromeans#jesse cromeans x reader#the collector 2009#the collection 2012#the collector#the collector x reader#Asa Emory#Asa Emory x reader#the hacker#the hacker x reader#cyber killer#cyber killer x reader#erron#Erron x Reader#slasher x reader#angst#horror movies
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May 1, 2021: The Prestige (2006) (Recap: Part One)
What’s that old Arthur C. Clarke quote again?
Not that one, although that’s...that’s fantastic, and I need to know more context to that conversation. But no, no, not that. The other one.
Not that one, although that’s...horrifying. Let me explain something first, then. Clarke was the author of the classic science-fiction novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, which definitely didn’t go on to become one of the most widely regarded films of all time. Anyway, he was a big-shot in science fiction, and was even knighted for his prominence in pop culture in the UK and across the world.
Fellow famous sci-fi author Isaac Asimov is well known for three rules of robotics, but Clarke has three rules of his own. A futurist, his laws describe conjecture about scientific development in the future of out societies. Those laws are:
When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Magic, huh?
God, I love Weird Al. Anyway, as a child of the ‘90s, I am well-acquainted with the boom of stage magicians that appeared during that time, and during the early 2000s. David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear, David Blaine coughed up a live frog, Criss Angel freaked minds; lot of stuff back then.
And yet, despite other recent magicians like Penn and Teller or Dynamo, the greatest age of stage magic isn’t even CLOSE to the 90′s. No, no, to really see magic in its heyday, we need to go back to the late 1800s and early 1900s, to the days of the stage illusionist.
Obviously, the first person that comes to mind is Harry Houdini, a man whose feats have lasted the test of time, and may have led to his death. Not only did he get buried alive, not only did he escape from a straitjacket in chains underwater, NOT ONLY did he hold his breath inside a water-filled milk can inside of a wooden chest repeatedly for FOUR YEARS, but he was also the greatest enemy of spiritualists and mediums everywhere!
Yeah, despite being a stage magician, Houdini was OBSESSED with exposing those who claimed to be actually supernatural. After all, as a showman, he was interesting in exposing tricks that were meant to defraud the innocent public. Dude was awesome, is what I’m saying. He died from a burst appendix, which miiiiight have been caused by a student who punched him in the stomach after asking if he was actually resistant to abdominal damage. Yeah, not a great death. And he wasn’t the only illusionist to die of tragic circumstances, but that’s a discussion for another day. Because of this is sci-fi month...why am I talking about magic? Well...imagine a lighter.
Now image that you went back 5,000 years, to any civilization, and showed them a lighter. The ability to create fire with seemingly nothing but your bare hands? You’re basically a wizard! Fire from no visible fuel? TEACH ME YOUR WAYS, O SORCERER OF THE FLAME!!! And that’s just a goddamn lighter.
What about a light bulb? Light from energy you’ve harnessed from metals and from the air itself? Jujube! A camera? With the ability to capture a moment in time in the form of a tangible image? WITCHCRAFT!!! A smartphone? A FUCKING SMARTPHONE???
And so, in celebration of the blurring of magic and science...why not start this month with an unconventional form of science fiction, huh? Something that blurs magic and science in a way that’s indistinguishable. And so, I can FINALLY watch a movie that I’ve wanted to watch for YEARS!
I am so excited, and this is a hell of a way to kick off the month! Why this? Well, I’ll explain that later. But for now...LET’S DO THIS.
SPOILER ALERT!!!
Recap (1/2)
There are three acts of magic.
First is “the pledge”, where the magician shows something normal. Then, there’s “the turn”, which is when the ordinary becomes extraordinary. And finally, there’s the act of bringing the show full-circle; bringing back a disappeared object, in a new way and with a new technique. That final act, the showmanship, the establishment of the mystery, is called “the prestige”.
So is told to us by John Cutter (Michael Caine), keeper of canaries and stage engineer to magicians, via narration abut magic. Intercut with that narration, and with a disappearing canary trick, is the presentation of an act being performed by Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman). In it, he turns on a machine using electricity, with lightning bolts flying freely. He steps inside of it, and disappears.
Meanwhile, coming from the audience, a man pretends to be part of the act, and goes backstage and underneath the machine. There, he witnesses Angier fall through a trap door into a water tank, unable to get out, panicking and drowning. Which is just super fun to watch, lemme tell you! And that is where the story starts.
The man from the audience was Alfred Borden (Christian Bale), who is quickly put on trial for the murder of Angier. A rival of his during the 1890s and early 1900s, Borden is sent to jail, and sent to death by hanging. This is as his young daughter watches on. In court, Alfred testifies against Bruce Wayne on how he murdered Wolverine, because this is all I could think of the entire time. Anyway, the court asks for more details on the trick that killed Angier, called “the Transported Man”. He refuses to divulge it publicly, but agrees to tell it to one of the judges in secret.
In prison, Borden’s visited by a representative of a wealthy collector of items, Lord Caldlow. He asks if he will sell him his most prominent trick, the “Transported Man”. But Borden also refuses, as it’s HIS trick. Still, in response, the man gives Borden a journal of Angier’s’, and asks him to think about selling the secret. And from there: flashback!
Angier is on a train, heading to Colorado Springs, where he’s surprised to see that the whole town has electricity. His plan is to go up the mountain, which is closed for scientific experimentation. Which isn’t ominous at all! That completely banal revelation is followed by a walk up the mountain in the fog, past a fence that says no trespassing and LITERAL WARNING SIGNS.
There, he’s greeted by Alley (Andy Serkis), the assistant of the estate’s owner. Apparently, said owner made a machine for Borden, and Angier wants to learn the secrets. Another flashback, and we learn that Borden and Angier, rival magicians now, met a long time ago at the show of another magician, both volunteering to tie up the female assistant, Julia (Piper Perabo). Which would be creepy out of context, and then is creepy IN context when Angier kisses her thigh. Ew.
Anyway, they drop her into a tank, with a pretty stereotypical trick. After the show, we also learn that these two men are actually working for the magician, Milton (Ricky Jay), which makes that thigh kiss less creepy. Talking to Cutter and Julia, Borden mocks Milton’s trick, noting that the old magician won’t even try something like a bullet catch. Cutter mocks this idea, and asks if Borden has any better ideas. It’s around this time that Cutter suggests seeing Chung Ling Soo. Huh. I won’t say anything about that until later.
Or right now! And, uh...oh shit, this is extraordinarily awkward. Here’s the thing: this is NOT Chung Ling Soo. I know this for two reasons. One, Soo didn’t really pretend to be crippled, as Borden and Angier suggest. Wasn’t really his bag. But something that IS interesting about the guy is how he died! BULLET CATCH TRICK!! Yup! He tried the bullet catch trick, and he died when the bullet actually fired at him! Yeah, awkward.
And you know what else is awkward, and really different from this story? Chung Ling Soo was...not Chinese. Even a little bit. His real name was William Ellsworth Robinson, he married his assistant, cheated on her with another assistant, never divorced and still married his new assistant illegally, etc. He was an interesting guy. Ignoring, y’know, the whole disgustingly shitty yellow-face thing. Different times, unfortunately.
Borden’s frustration with an act he considers boring and obsolete erupts during one of Milton’s shows, where we see him KILL A BIRD, FUCK ME MAN. Yeah, I get it, Borden, this is terrible! This coincides with meeting a young woman and her nephew, who is also upset to see a bird die in front of him. The woman is Sarah (Rebecca Hall), and the two start a romance. Meanwhile, the romance between Angier and Julia is a straight-up marriage, making that thigh kiss fare more understandable. And, the two are about to have a baby, to both of their delight! Nothing bad will happen now!
We flash forward to the future, where Cutter is showing the judge what’s what with the device. He claims that a wizard built it, and that the machine can actually do what magicians have only pretended to do for years. They also look at a tank, and Cutter reveals that the tank has a terrible history, especially for the two magicians.
Flashback again, to a night of yet another show. That night, Milton and the group go through with their trick, as per usual. However, Borden decides to make it a little tougher and more exciting by tying a different knot this time. And unfortunately...Julia can’t untie it. They try to get her out in time, but alas...it’s too late.
Julia dies, and Angier blames Borden, who isn’t even entirely sure if he tied the knot that killed Julia...allegedly. Not a big fan of Borden right now. The act is over, and Borden decides to split off and do his own act, calling himself “the Professor”. Now having a child of his own with Sarah, he decides to do a bullet trick, with the help of new stage engineer, Fallon. But this is a tricky trick to perform. And the understandable mental breakdown of Angier causes its own problems.
See, during one of Borden’s shows (which is going TERRIBLY), a disguised Angiers shows up and loads a REAL bullet into the gun for the trick, and BLOWS OFF TWO OF HIS FINGERS FUCK ME!!! Borden’s not exactly happy about this, but he recovers quickly. Shortly after, Cutter finds Angier at a bar, and offers him the opportunity to make a new show of his own. Reluctantly, he accepts, and takes up the moniker “the Great Danton”, a name that his late wife suggested.
With a new bird/cage trick, one that lets the bird LIVE (THANK YOU), they’re almost set. But they also add a new assistant, in the form of...Black Widow. I mean, sorry, Olivia Wenscombe (Scarlett Johansson). Yeah, um...Wolver, Alfred Pennyworth, and Black Widow are working together in competition against Batman. Also, Gollum is in the movie, too. God, what’s next, David Bowie?
Anyway, the show is on once again, and Angier asks for some volunteers in the audience. But, uh oh! One of them is Borden in disguise, and he sabotages the trick in front of EVERYBODY, breaking an audience member’s fingers, and killing the bird, completely fucking up Angier’s career, in revenge for his fingers. Oh, also, MOTHERFUCKER YOU KILLED HIS WIFE (maybe)!!! Doesn’t justify Angier shooting off your fingers, but you could’ve just let bygones be! No wonder you’re rivals in the future! Batman’s a dick (which, given Christian Bale, isn’t that surprising).
Well, since his trick, Angier’s fucked. They’re kicked out of the theater, and in need of a new act. Cutter suggests that Angier goes to the upcoming science exposition for ideas. And yes...that’s where the science fiction angle starts in. See, like Clarke said, any science that’s sophisticated enough LOOKS like magic to audiences who don’t understand it. And Borden has the same idea, as he also heads to the expo.
It’s there that a presentation of a massive electrical generator is being held, with the machine having been invented by...Nicola Tesla! YO!
I don’t think I need to tell anybody about Tesla at this point, but he was a brilliant physicist and inventor from the early 1900s. His legendary Current War with Thomas Alva Edison for the current to be used by the United States (Tesla’s DC vs. Edison’s AC) is the stuff of science legend...and is a conflict that the far less charismatic Tesla lost. Still, his mastery of electricity (such as the above Tesla coil) is remembered today. If you want to go sightseeing, check out New York! In Niagara Falls, he’s got a massive statue overlooking the falls; and in Bryant Park in NYC, you can sit on the bench where he fed his beloved pigeons. Yeah, he loved pigeons, which I respect.
Anyway, the expo’s shut down due to presumed danger of the exhibit, possibly spurred on by Thomas Edison and his PR team. Which is pretty accurate, not gonna lie. Still, the experiment interests both Angier and Borden. Still, Angier doesn’t do much with this information. Right now, anyway.
Flash forward to Angier in Colorado Springs, and a group of men from Edison’s employ are there for some reason. But undeterred, Angier heads back to Tesla’s lab, where Alley shows him a gorgeous sight: lightbulbs dotting a field, making a gorgeous grid of light. He reveals that the source of the electricity is 15 miles away, as a testament to Tesla’s scientific genius. Stellar.
A great place to pause. See you in Part Two of this Recap!
#the prestige#christopher nolan#christopher priest#hugh jackman#robert angier#angier#christian bale#alfred borden#michael caine#scarlett johannson#rebecca hall#andy serkis#piper perabo#david bowie#science fiction may#sci-fi may#user365#365 movie challenge#365 movies 365 days#365 Days 365 Movies#365 movies a year#userbrit#usercoppola#usermaria*#ridleydaisy#bbelcher#userkristen
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Does Virgil from Weightless ever find his skin? It’s one of my favourite fics from you and I’d love to read what happens after!
Oof, okay so in Weightless, Virgil does find his skin! I won’t write it, purely because I don’t have the time :/// but I can give you some run downs of what would happen!!
((This is still longer than I meant it to be oh my god))
First order of business is Patton uses some of his djinn magic to locate a magic shop which is run by a pixie who calls himself Deceit and whom absolutely abhors Patton. He’s sympathetic to Virgil’s cause but he runs a business so in exchange for an actual locating spell that works on people from memory he needs something just as powerful in return.
Logan steps up and offers a bit of his blood-- him being part gorgon gives him potent blood that is definitely is rare. Deceit eyes him warily but accepts it and he gives Virgil the spell.
((Deceit also reveals the secret that Patton’s been hiding while they’re there: as a Djinn he can’t disobey any order. Which is why he’s always being so helpful and when the others ask him to do basic things he drops whatever he’s doing to complete the task. It also includes things such as “Don’t listen to this conversation until I snap my fingers” while Deceit does just because he’s petty and can.))
While they were out though, their house got broken into and its no longer safe at home, so Roman cashes in a favor with his brother in order for them to have a place to crash. Logan and Patton go over the spell with Virgil which requires the user of it to fall to sleep before its activated. Remus and Roman have a heart to heart which turns into Roman coughing up blood and his own secret being revealed: the reason why Roman acts so scattered brained and often has a hard time thinking about the others is because he quite literally can’t stop thinking about having sex, and if he goes too long without engaging in it his body starts breaking down. He was cursed as a young adult by a vengeful witch who thought they were dating when he thought they were just friends....who sometimes slept together.
((He knows its not an excuse for him acting like that, which is why he never mentioned it to anyone, but also why he’s always seeking out partners and even though he’s an incubus, he thinks if he never had sex again he’d be okay. ))
Virgil sleeps and the spell works and when he wakes up Logan hands him a map and in a trance-like state marks with a pen where his attackers are.
Remus is really excited to see an opportunity to beat up people so he comes with them to confront the guys. The attackers turn out to be a from a low level gang so there are a lot of them and turns out there were people watching them when they left Deceit’s place, the gang over powered him and dragged him out to their warehouse where they were were in the process of ripping out his wings.
And Remus completely ignores any “don’t kill” suggestions and goes right to ripping out some throats the second he sees any magical creature being tortured like that. Roman isn’t far behind them and Patton uses his magic to help free Deceit and try to heal the places where his wings were damaged. Virgil breaks the water pipes and use his water manipulating ability to defend Patton and Deceit.
((Patton reveals here that the reason why Deceit hates him so much is because he knows Deceit’s true name, which gives him absolutely control over the pixie, but Patton uses it to make Deceit stay awake through the pain, as he lost a lot of blood and if he fell unconscious now he probably wouldn’t wake back up))
Logan curbs enough of Roman and Remus’s rage to save one of the gang in order to ask him what happened to the selkie skin they stole, (and the gang member looks around at all his dead friends and asks “a skin was worth all this?” and Logan asks him, “Did you not think you were ruining lives by taking things that weren’t yours? Did you truly think no one was hurt by your actions?”)
The gang member admits they don’t have the skin, but that they sold it to these collectors: the Ackroyds, who paid them really well for it, you see? They had all sort of freaky things in their collection and he’d take a skin but he wouldn’t like kill the things and put them on display like those humans do.
And Logan freezes up at the name, noticeably, but the man is hysterical with trying to prove that he’s not really that bad, and before anyone can do anything, Logan takes off his glasses and turns the man to stone.
He puts them back on immediately but steps away from the group and refuses to look at them. He tells them that the skin is a lost cause and that they should give up.
To which Virgil is audibly horrified and angry because they got this far!! And Logan promised him--!! and Logan whips around and tells him that he never made any such promises and that if Virgil doesn’t let it go he’ll turn Virgil to stone as well, because he won’t like Virgil drag all his friends to their dooms.
At which, Deceit laughs brokenly, and asks if Logan go to attempt to make his own collection just like his parents--
And Logan’s secret comes to light: he wasn’t always part gorgon. He was actually human and his parents are mythical creature collectors but they collected creatures like butterflies: killing and pinning them in glass cases. But they often found that some creatures were immune to dying in ways that didn’t desecrate their bodies. Their solution? Find a way to make them ever lasting statues, using their son and a very expensive, unrepeatable experiment.
Logan admits that he remembers the faces of every person that his parents forced him to kill, of everyone who meets his eyes. Its his curse, and he’s always been afraid of it, because one day...he always knew that he’d join their collection too. He ran away as soon as he could, but his parents had people track him down and he was dragged back to them and they began to lock him in his room, and he was not allow out of the house at all anymore. Logan managed to escape by chance just before his sixteenth birthday.
By the time he’s finished talking he’s shaking and his knees give out but Remus is there to catch him and no one knows what to say about anything.
“I can’t...” Logan whispers, “I can’t let you go there. I can’t... please... anyone who goes there doesn’t.....get out...”
And surprisingly its Roman who speaks up, strangely blithely about it all, “Well, they were always alone, weren’t they? Hey, Specs, don’t you know you aren’t alone, anymore?”
And it turns into a rallying thing where the six of them agree that they have each other, and that they can work together to take down Logan’s parents and keep any more mythical creatures from dying at their hands. I don’t have the actual final battle thing planned out so the rest of this is really but scratched out notes and concepts that if i were actually writing this, would be subject to change according to where the plot goes.
They infiltrate first by using Virgil’s selkie rareness to draw the attention of the Ackroyds.
Unfortunately the Ackroyds are expecting them so they kinda all stumble into a trap and Logan is taken back by his parents for-- and what great timing this is! They have a new rare species!! An archangel who would look magnificent next to the Avians!
((The archangel is like eight. His name is Thomas and he’s sobbing because he doesn’t know how to use his powers yet.))
But first, its a good thing to take care of the meddling monsters that Logan had first become friends with. Starting with that selkie! And because they want him to look picture perfect even as stone they get his skin and tell him that if he cooperates they’ll let the djinn and the incubi go free (the pixie has to stay though. Its another rarity).
And well.
Virgil has been holding on to a secret too.
He’s actually the goddamn Prince of the entire fucking sea and his power is linked to his skin.
Which means that when they put the skin back on him, his abilities increase about 100fold. We stan OP Virgil in this house. Remind me how much of humans is water again? Yeah. Virgil drowns them in their own bodies and frees everyone else.
The Ackroyds have like a lot of people working for them though, so theres a battle that happens and in the middle of it Logan’s glasses get knocked off and broken and Thomas throws himself in front of Logan. Which, because Logan’s gorgon eyes are the same as staring into someone’s soul, leads to Logan staring into Thomas’s divine soul and it literally burns and blinds him.
((Thomas is really sorry, but Logan just starts sobbing thank yous to this eight year old, because now he’s never going to be forced to kill someone else.))
Our heroes win!! The Ackroyds are finished. Patton and Deceit put aside their differences in order to take joint custody of babey archangel Thomas and they, along with Roman and Logan end up living in a beach house together while researching how to remove the curse that’s on Roman. Remus comes and goes, bringing back exotic podcasts for Logan to listen too and bringing news from other locations about monster hunting.
Logan broke into his family vault and took all the money that his parents made off of selling and exploiting creatures and used it all to finance mythical creatures safehouses all across the globe. He trusts Remus and Roman to help watch over them.
Virgil returns to the ocean, just like Logan said he would at the very beginning of the story, although its because he has prince duties to adhere too. And he still sneaks up every once in a while to have dinner with all of them because I’m weak and soft for found family.
#sanders sides au#Selkie!Virgil#incubus!roman#gorgon!logan#Djinn!Patton#pixie!deceit#remus!#Good god these boys need therapy#Is this a good enough conclusion for you guys#I think its funny how much I as the author hate this story#but you guys adore it#insane#tw: child abuse#tw: murder#Roman doesn't even like sex#Patton is ella enchanted#Deceit's name is Janus but like its his true name#so no one calls him that#OP Virgil? in my fic? more likely than you think#thomas is babey#sorry i don't make the rules#weightless au#mythical creatures
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Thinking about the Bayonetta MGR crossover and it’s basically console wars and Mac vs PC with actual human bodies.
It’s the year 2085 and LumenOS by Lighthouse Biotechnology is the most popular engine for coding brain-machine interfaces. It’s biggest competitor, UmbraOS by Left Hand Cybernetics, became free and open source after the Lighthouse and Left Hand CEOs married each other, causing a stock market panic and both of them getting voted off their board of directors for conflict of interest and insider trading reasons. This loss of good leadership eventually led to both companies going bankrupt. To stay open, Lighthouse was purchased by Ithavoll Group. Meanwhile, Left Hand chose to go out of business and posted its source code on the internet as a final goodbye.
Both engines are coded on the intricate but infuriating fuzzy-logic focused programming language Enochian and are very similar in function if not in construction. Most of their differences come from distribution policies.
LumenOS is suited for bringing injured and incapacitated people to working condition as quickly as possible. To avoid trauma, most commercially available Lumen software is built with emotion inhibition and memory suppression. It can be argued that Lumen uses the human brain as hardware to run its own processes instead of preserving the original person, but it can also be argued that people don’t want to remember getting hit by a truck, or being trapped in a burning house, or years of failed cancer treatments.
Regardless of moral implications, because full body cyborgs running on Lumen can walk and talk within days or surgery, while other BMI engines take years of physical therapy to regain normal function, many medical providers and individuals choose Lumen.
Lumen is mostly used by Ithavoll and its subsidiaries, since licensing fees for outsiders has been raised to 80 million dollars a year. This insane entry price ensures Lumen-running products are consistently high quality, but are also becoming increasingly inaccessible.
UmbraOS was originally suited for accurately simulating and enhancing all human senses, but after 30 years of being open source, it’s now used for whatever fuck shit you can get away with. Countless Umbra scripts can be found for free, but there’s no guarantee any of them will be useable. For every treasure like the flight skills and reaction time of a dragonfly or the ability to toggle the taste of hot nachos on and off, there are a thousand scripts that give you diabetes and force you to email your credit card information to make it stop. Lord help you if your UmbraOS implant is connected to WiFi.
Because the engine is open source, many BMI programmers get their start on Umbra, which has indirect benefits for other Enochian-based engines. Even for skilled programmers, it’s considered best practice to carefully curate your own custom pile of scripts other people made to run your body with, because no single person can do it all alone. It’s also considered dishonorable to charge money for Umbra scripts if you aren’t custom-making it for a single person.
Although Umbra is sketchy and often dangerous, many people unable to afford more legit procedures rely on secondhand implants running Umbra to survive.
Following a period of extended global peace and stability, many cyborg paramilitary organisations, and the various other companies supporting that industry, have gone out of business.
Cardinal Ventures LLC, once famous for actually affording a legal Lumen license and building bespoke bodies for its enforcers, was barely able to limp along using clout gained from eradicating other mercenaries during the United States Civil War II, but tensions in upper management reached a breaking point when one cofounder, Lucifer, fought the other cofounder, Jubileus, sent her into a coma, and went into hiding.
Now the de facto leader, Fortitudo tried to keep Cardinal together. He isn’t exactly stupid, but his expertise lies more with melting enemy cyborgs into slag and less in running a business. To avoid falling into inescapable debt, and also tempted by promises to revive Jubileus, and also because vintage cyborgs are vulnerable to parts trafficking gangs, Fortitudo sold Cardinal to Ithavoll Group.
Initially, the deal was very good since it was made in Vigrid, whose European laws of cyborg personhood were a lot more generous than American laws, which were written in response to repeated ninja and metal gear crises, and also that one time a US senator’s medical nanomachines went haywire and tragically caused him to go insane.
The deal worsened when it was revealed that the deal was technically made in Isla del Sol, an autonomous region in Vigrid that’s basically a corporate dictatorship. The laws changed and now all Lumen-running cyborgs involved with the deal are legally not human and belong to Ithavoll. With constant Lumen software updates, Fortitudo is literally incapable of feeling too bad about it, but his panic and betrayal come out in more indirect ways. To be fair to Ithavoll, Fortitudo is now in charge of the largest private cyborg army in the world, composed of other companies Ithavoll purchased and dissolved, including Laguna Homefront Solutions, Paradiso Augmetics, and the aforementioned Lighthouse Biotechnology.
At the center of Isla del Sol, the Ithavoll Building is at constant risk of terrorist attack. An individual of unclear origins was converted into a cyborg based off one of Cardinal’s prototypes and tasked to patrol the upper levels. Temperantia’s primary purpose is to do post-disaster search and rescue, aid building evacuation by making his own exits, but can also fight off attackers if needed. Since he has to be in the upper levels anyway, Temperantia argued that might as well get a regular job there. Ithavoll’s CEO Balder gave him an office job as a joke, but Temperantia did well and eventually worked his way up to Ithavoll Building Assistant HR Manager.
Built after the acquisition, Temperantia has no memories of Cardinal while it was independent, and doesn’t really get the rest of Cardinal’s devotion to Jubileus, but goes along with it to make his coworkers happy. Fortitudo initially saw him as a bastardisation of the Temperantia he once worked with, who ruins Cardinal’s military legacy by being a clueless civilian. They become work friends after Temperantia rips a gatling gun off a UG helicopter and shoots the entire convoy down with it from the Ithavoll Building roof.
Despite his horrifying strength and enormous uncanny mechanical body, Temperantia would prefer to be known as the guy who loves enamel pins and stringently enforces office dress code.
What could drive trained and made killers to sell their rights to a corporation for protection? Inferno is a black market criminal organisation that hunts cyborgs for parts. Catering both to filthy rich collectors and those too poor to afford legit implants, Inferno traps people in insidious contracts by converting the desperately injured into cyborgs whether they truly want it or not, then foisting debts so huge upon them that it can only be paid by acting as spies and informants to find rare and expensive cyborgs. If the debt grows too large or goes unpaid for too long, Inferno recoups their costs.
Typically, once a contractor finds a rare cyborg, they call a local Inferno agent to do the dirty work. Even worse, the contractor has to pay for all the expenses Inferno sustained to kill their target, meaning if the target escapes before the agent gets there, raises law enforcement attention, or is extremely dangerous, the debt may end up even greater.
Experienced contractors eventually learn to corner and incapacitate their targets themselves before calling Inferno. Some of them are so skilled at balancing on the knife’s edge of debt and respect that they leverage their contract into having their own private cyborg hit squad for life.
After many cyborg PMCs went bankrupt, Inferno gorged on newly weakened victims and flooded the black market with cyborg parts. However, to sustain the same profits now that the easy prey is gone, Inferno contractors now have to go after even rarer and more protected cyborgs to avoid debt murder.
Bayonetta was dredged from the bottom of a lake and restored by Inferno, incurring huge debts. Combined with Inferno debts she apparently sustained before she drowned and lost her memory, Bayonetta is forced to infiltrate Vigrid to go after the most expensive targets, Cardinals, or else Inferno will tear her apart.
#bayonetta#metal gear rising revengeance#graphic injuries#cyberpunk#politics#this is basically fanfiction
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Wingless Fae
A/N: this is a fic that i wrote at the beginning of this month but you all know what happened so uuhhh yeah, i just got around to editing this sorry!
Soulmate September! by @tsshipmonth2020
100 (G/T) prompts!!!
summary: Virgil is finally free after so long, he is free from that collector. And now he wants to see his soulmate.
WC: 1,716
ships: Romantic Moxiety
warnings: Mentions of torture, mentions of violence, self-doubt
Tag List: @punsterterry @stormcrawler75 @frostedlover @mycatshuman @mutechild @panicattheeverywhere15 @overlord-winter @analogical-mess @saddestlittlebabe
~
Have to get away. Have to get away, now. He's finally free after so long, and he can't waste this opportunity. He has to run now before that human catches him again.
The tiny wingless fae ran as fast as his tiny tiny few inches short legs could carry him. He kept trying to jump into the air and fly, but alas...that monster of a human took his wings for his 'collection' and chose to torture him now that he's mostly defenseless. Which was right. Without a faes wings...they are practically defenseless. Most of their magic is in their wings and it transfers to their spine and then their body. But since he doesn't have his wings anymore… he can't do magic. And he can't fly.
Virgil wasn't even sure how he got out, it was such a blur that he can barely remember anything. He thinks he...was able to dose the human with the sleeping injection somehow… He didn't think it would be enough to do much to a human but he guessed he was wrong. That must've been some powerful stuff for sure then… it might've been enough to kill his tiny body.
That human is a monster, he kept him trapped in a glass cage for...years. The only time he was ever let out was for experimenting and that was...it. He took his wings when he first captured him, and he was forced to stare at his wings and other fae wings up on the wall behind a glass sheet. And he didn't want to know what happened to the other faes, considering that there wasn't anyone else in that entire house…
Virgil was terrified, he knows at any time that human can wake up and follow his muddy footsteps. Course it'll be hard for him to follow, but if there's anything he knows is that humans are very determined to get what they want. And what they want is his body.
So, he continued running and running. He wasn't stopping for a single second as he crashed through the branches and bushes. Come on… come on…
That's when he heard something, an all too familiar ribbit noise. He stopped dead in his tracks and he panted as he looked around the swamp. His eyes landed on a ghosty white form of a frog that's bigger then himself coming towards him. There was a faint mix of purple and pale blue inside of this ghostly white form. He was almost transparent but not... completely. And his froggy eyes stared down at Virgil as if asking for a ride. Well, of course, Virgil isn't going to say no to that.
"Take me to my soulmate. Please?"
He petted the frog's chest, and suddenly he had a frogs long tongue around his skinny and frail body. Virgil yelped but held on to his tongue before he was placed on the frogs back and the ghostly frog started hopping away into the swamp.
Since he was a young fae he's known his soulmates animal is a frog. It appeared to him one rough night when he just stayed up crying until he fell asleep. The frog hopped through his open window and landed on his bed. He was about to scream in shock, but he stared at the frog. And he found a sense of...calmness almost immediately. A sense of...peacefulness, happiness. And ever since then whenever he's had a really rough day the frog would hop over and he would get that same exact feeling over and over again. And it was his lifesaver once he got captured by that human. It was the only thing keeping him going. So he knew that his soulmate was a very calming but joyful person. Which made his heart soar, but also worry him. Would he bring down his mate cause of his constant worries?! He didn't know and he guessed he was about to find out.
Another thing, however, was that this frog can't interact with anything physically other than himself or his mate. So the glass cell that the human kept him in? He could only faze through it, but he couldn't faze Virgil through it. For some...strange reason? He figured it was probably some special glass to hold on faes and to make sure their soulmate animal couldn't get through. Which would make a lot of sense?
But… now he was about to meet his joyful and happy soulmate. And he's terrified. All he's wearing right now is rags. He's a wingless, defenseless, fae. And he's so skinny and frail that he probably looks like a speck of dirt right now. What a great first impression this will be.
The frog continued hopping along until he reached a small village, well...at least this doesn't look that bad… oh, nope… there are humans… of fucking course there are humans here. He had tears in his eyes while he was gripping onto the frog tightly and ducking down. Dammit… don't tell him his mate is a human?! Who hates him in the fucking world?! Seriously… who hates him, there has to be someone!
It could be any other creature, a vampire… A werewolf maybe! Even a cat person he'll take! But a human?! This is going to be bad, he knows he's going to be horrible…
The frog led him between houses and across roads, luckily it was much later in the day so most of everyone was already inside having dinner. And yep, he could smell food drifting from these houses windows. And it made his stomach growl hungrily. He doesn't... remember the last time he's eaten something solid… and that wasn't drugged. It smelt so fantastic… but he shook his head and continued to focus on the task at hand.
The frog continued hopping his way down the village, and he wondered where exactly he was taking him. Until...the frog came upon this rather large house, it was almost the size of a mansion. And he could tell it was one of the fanciest houses he's seen other than the king's palace of course. Before Virgil could make a noise the frog hopped up to the window. It made a loud croak to signal it's arrival and someone with a blue cape turned.
This man...okay, he was really super cute. He had pale tan really curly hair that laid on his shoulders. And he thinks he could see a little man bun on the back of his thick hair. His face is chubby and he had round cheeks. And on those cheeks were freckles sprayed throughout his face. And he had the most gorgeous bluest eyes in the entire world. It reminded him of a clear sky during the middle of the day… and that nose… it was so round and adorable. He was short, and a chubby in his stomach and arms. But, stars up above… this man was so frickin cute that it made Virgil's heart beat rapidly.
There was a child on the bed, a human child, and she reached up to tug on this man's arm. "Mister… you were saying something?"
"Ah, yes, try not to eat anything solid for a few days so your stomach can heal. Only drink liquids and make sure you stay with your mama in case you faint again, okay? Try to stay out of the direct sunlight and stay indoors the best you can." Now Virgil understood why he got that sense of calmness and happiness. This man's voice just radiated that as he spoke to the child.
"Okay! Thank you, Mr. Baker!" She giggled and hopped down, then she ran off past some curtain into another room, probably where her mother is.
"Are you...a healer?" That's your most important question, huh Virgil?
"Well...I'm a magician… but I specialize in healing magic. So I guess you could say I'm the village healer. Are you… you're a fae… and your riding… on my soulmate frog… does that mean you're my soulmate?"
"I…. I guess so?"
This Mr. Baker drew in a shaky sob and he looked ready to start crying. He shakily stepped forward to the window sill and had a wobbly smile on his cute face. "I finally...get to meet you face to face… after all these years… and oh… your hurt! And filthy! And… wait a moment… why are you in rags? And… doesn't have wings?"
Oh...here comes that major questions, Virgil wondered how long it was going to take before he mentioned it. "I… The reason why our frog couldn't get me was that… I was trapped...by a collector… He took my wings and kept me trapped for...years… I'm… I'm sorry, I'm probably not the best soulmate you could've asked for. I'm nothing… I don't got a home, or family… I don't even have magic anymore. And I can't fly. I can't… I'm the most useless awful fae ever...a disgrace… and I won't blame you if you say you don't want me as your mate…"
"Are…. Are you kidding me?!" This man gasped out and he immediately shook his head. "True… I wasn't expecting my mate to be a fae but… I don't care that you can't fly or have nothing. I don't care about that. I only care about you and your safety. Oh…. Your so filthy and….dirty and… oh, is those cut-up rags your wearing?!" He gasped with a shaky sob and he disappeared down the long hallway. He came back with a small dark purple jacket and some black pants. "I have this...once you take a bath?"
"It's... perfect… By the way… I didn't quite catch your name? I'm Virgil…"
"oh! Where are my manners! I'm Patton! It's such a pleasure to meet you, my soulmate. And don't you worry, I'm going to protect you from now on. No more collectors or pain, okay? You will be safe here, I can promise you that. It's so great to finally meet you… I'm so sorry I didn't come to save you… if I had known…"
Virgil shook his head, "It's okay… I'm okay now, that's all that matters. And I'm finally here...with you. Now… uh...where's that shower? I could really use one right now. You have a nice name, Patton."
"Right this way! Thank you! And Virgil is a gorgeous name too!!"
#tsshipmonth2020#patton sanders#patton#virgil sanders#virgil#fae virgil#sanders sides#sanders sides soulmate au#sanders sides fic#sanders sides fanfic#my fics#romantic moxiety#moxiety#yeah this is one of the fics that i wrote before he died and just havent had the energy to edit it#so yeah.....
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*whispering* solavellan sex on the Normandy
ANON. I don’t even know if you’re still out there, I’m pretty sure you sent this like a year ago, but I want you to know that I have been working on this prompt ever since you sent it!!!
Fun fact #1: I have never played any of the original Mass Effect games.
Fun fact #2: I had so much reading about them and watching videos and concocting headcanons that I accidentally put more energy into that than into smut?
(I’m sorryyyy I hope it was worth the wait if you are still out there)
@dadrunkwriting
My Ko-Fi || My Commissions (Slots currently open as of 10/4/19)
Pairing: Solavellan
Rating: Mature/Explicit (it’s right on that line - sexual content but not a lot and not the most explicit I have ever done)
********************
Solas was fairly certain that the new soldier Commander Shepard had brought on board the Normandy SR-2 was doomed to be just like all the others - more brawn than brain, all muscle and no substance. He tried not to let it matter to him too much. He was here to take advantage of Cerberus’s technology and resources to further his own research into biotics. Everything else was window dressing.
In the case of the new soldier, the window dressing simply happened to be rather striking.
She had skin like mahogany, and red, tightly curled hair worn in a flat top hair cut, and eyes like steel. Her name was Ellana Lavellan, and she was the first person to pull him out of the tight cocoon of his lab - really, out of the tight cocoon he’d woven around himself - in years.
“You know, I was under the impression that our doctor was a salarian,” she said when she first wandered in one day.
“I am neither a doctor nor a salarian, as you can see,” he said, gesturing at the insignia that designated him as a scientist. “You are thinking of Mordin Solus. His quarters are next door. My name is Solas, if there are to be introductions.”
She laughed, and it was a surprisingly musical laugh. He wasn’t sure why he expected all soldiers to be gunmetal and grim looks. She was off duty, and in a tank top that bared her toned arms. He took in her pointed ears. He’d known from her name, of course, that they shared at least a race in common. It had been many centuries since their people were considered a separate but lesser species on the planet called Thedas, but there was still a twinge of happy recognition at the sight of her. Every other member of this crew whose ancestors hailed from Thedas was human. There might be some commonality between them, at least, if they were both elves.
Then again, as she sauntered around the lab, her head cocked in curiosity, he saw the tattoo marking the upper part of her back. Three long, arched branches that likely continued all the way down to her hips. She was likely of Dalish descent then. Or, worse, one of the people who got such tattoos and had no idea what they meant.
Solas ducked his head, returning to the readout on his omnitool.
“Well, you have to admit it is confusing. Solus, Solas. What are you doing?”
She was leaning on his workstation. She smelled like gun oil. Usually people backed away by this point, put off by his arch manner. Why hadn’t she?
“Testing this new implant for Commander Shepard,” he said.
“Interesting. You’ll have to explain how it works to me, sometime. When are you off duty?”
That was how she did it in the end, how she drew him out - she was relentless. Like a hunter on a trail with everything to lose. Except she, like him, had nothing to lose. Her parents were long dead - victims of the same slaver raid on Mindoir that had taken Shepard’s own parents, apparently that was how they knew each other - and she had struggled to find a place for herself since then. She’d been in the Alliance military (another connection with their esteemed commander, who Solas had to admit was growing on him too) but left that life behind, hoping for a new start, only to be drawn back into danger once more. The Illusive Man had given Solas no reason to believe that the Normandy SR-2 would be an easy mission, but he was still surprised by the level of violence they encountered - by the bruises and blood he saw on Ellana whenever she passed his lab on her way to Mordin’s, needing healing.
“I thought you were a sniper,” he chided her after one particularly bad episode. He was holding her left wrist, examining a burn that radiated up the inside of her left arm.
“I am,” she said. “And I thought you were a scientist, and not a doctor.”
He had not asked to take her hand, to examine her. He dropped it. But she just reached out and touched his hand - a touch that burned, that brought back memories, that made him remember just how long it had been since he had been touched. He shivered and he knew Ellana saw it. Solas had been living under masks for years now. He knew she saw through them all.
“I’ll be okay,” she said. “I promise.”
*
He only had the privilege of watching Ellana fight once. Shepard was a formidable biotic herself, and rarely brought other biotics on her missions. But when they went in pursuit of someone called Archangel, she said she wanted the backup.
“I’d also like a measure of stealth,” Shepard went on. “And Jack is, well -”
“Not subtle?” Solas said, dryly.
“Very diplomatic. We’ll bring Lavellan, too.”
Solas tried to ignore the little thrill that ran through him at the thought. He wasn’t successful.
She was a wonder with her rifle. Swift, silent, precise, powerful. She made shots he would have thought impossible, covered him and Shepard with an instinctive ease and tactical awareness. He watched her when he could. He may have even been staring.
“See something you like, Solas?” She asked.
Precise as one of her bullets, blunt as a mallet, and her smile was so sly, and Shepard was distracted by the turian that turned out to be Archangel. Garrus Vakarian, no doubt, if Solas’s research was to be believed.
“Watching you was - impressive. You move differently than any other soldier I have seen. Almost as if it is a dance.”
Ellana slung her rifle over her back and leaned against a wall, her grey eyes alight.
“Are you implying that I am graceful?”
“I am declaring it.” The words slipped out before he could consider them, and that was the danger, wasn’t it, of stepping outside his cocoon, his lab, his routine?
“I was equally impressed by you,” Ellana said. “Your biotics - it’s like it’s totally natural for you.”
He shrugged, pretended he was not complimented, that her words did not light him up from the inside out. “Elves generally take to it better than other Thedosians. Have you read any of the theories that our people were once like asari, with similarly long lives and control over our nervous systems that produced effects so startling they were once called magic?”
Ellana looked away, rubbing the back of her neck. “I was too busy being a dumb grunt to read stuff like that. But I’ve heard of it a little. Maybe you could explain more sometime?”
“Of course.”
*
It was soft and easy after that, except for when it wasn’t, when they talked about her Dalish heritage, her fierce belief that there was something important about sticking to traditions, even if there was little basis in fact for them.
“Of course my tattoos aren’t what made me an adult,” she retorted one day. “But getting them made me feel connected to something bigger than myself. Is that really so bad?”
“But the implications that they were once -”
“Oh, fuck the implications, Solas. I’m tired of the implications. I live here, and now, and I was just trying to share something about myself with someone who I thought cared about me without it turning into a big fucking deal.”
Her voice rang against the metal walls of his lab. She appeared almost immediately ashamed of her anger. He’d noticed that about her too. That was his job. To notice things, gather intel, play the Illusive Man’s game long enough to figure out if it was true, if biotics were inherent to his race, if they could perhaps be made inherent once again, raising the status of all Thedosians in the Council’s eyes…
But so much of what he had been noticing lately was her.
“I am sorry,” he said. He reached out and touched her hand. He’d been getting used to that. Little touches.
Ellana Lavellan kissed him then, full on the lips, without even the slightest warning, and he was sitting on a stool and though she was a slight woman this made her a little taller than him, and he tilted his head back, let himself fall into the kiss, wrapped his arms around her and felt her warmth and life and just how much he wanted this. Wanted a life that was not just secrets and watching and never partaking.
Ellana pulled back, looked down at him.
“I hope that was okay,” she said. “You’re not going to report me to the commander for sexual harassment, are you?”
Solas kissed her again, hungrier this time, fingers digging into her muscles, the solid reality of her. The realest thing he’d felt in years.
“So you are tired of the implications, then?” he asked when they parted.
“Like I said,” Ellana grinned, sliding into his lap, straddling him. “Fuck the implications.”
*
Solas could not help himself, of course. He had to tell her that there were considerations. Well, fuck the considerations too, she’d said jokingly, but she respected his boundaries nonetheless. Because there were considerations. He knew more than even Shepard did. He knew that the supposedly disabled Collector ship they were headed to was a trap. He tried to tell Ellana not to go on that mission. To convince Shepard to bring Garrus instead.
“Don’t go soft on me. Besides - I have to beat Vakarian’s high score,” she said, and kissed him.
He knew that to the Illusive Man, all the people on this ship were merely pawns at play in a larger game. He had guessed at what that larger game might be. He had willingly chosen to be a bigger pawn in that game, to do the things the Illusive Man asked of him as long as he could continue his research. And he knew Ellana now - knew that she would not take any of this lightly, that she had a soldier’s sense of loyalty and honor, old-fashioned as the tattoos on her back.
And he knew that he wanted her in all the ways one person could want another. He knew with increasing clarity as time went on that he wanted her more than he wanted anything else.
But to turn his back now -
The formless shadow of what lay beyond the Omega-4 Relay loomed larger and larger, and in its shadow things grew clearer and clearer. Clear as Ellana’s grey eyes, clear as her perception of the world. They might not come back from this mission. And the Illusive Man would not care, not even if he lost one of his foremost biotics researchers, one of his best spies. And Solas’s work would not care if he was not there to finish it. He looked out at the vastness of space outside the Normandy and that thought grew clearer and clearer.
No one would care except for her.
So he went to her the night before they would make their last stand. Her room was small and cramped and her bed was even more small but she was alive in it, alive in her body, already stripped down to her simple training bra and standard issued underwear when he arrived and yet beautiful as any ancient nebula he’d ever seen.
“Are you sure?” she asked him, finding the buttons on his lab coat, undressing him, her eyes bright in the dark.
“I have never been more sure of anything than I am of you,” he said.
So he stripped off all the things that made her a warrior - the training bra, the briefs, the dog tags - and he stripped off all the things that made him a scientist, a spy - the lab coat and the gloves and every single mask - and he loved her. She was warm and firm beneath him and he slid between her thighs - lingered there a long time, just rocking back and forth, just kissing her, just feeling her, the silky drag of skin on skin - and there, in the darkness of space, he loved her, and she loved him. She rolled him over and took her turn on top, not pushing him inside her yet, not even asking him to touch her, to ease her own wet ache. She just felt, explored, touched.
And then when she did take him in her hand raise herself up, and sink back down on him, taking him within her - when she did lace both of her hands with his and pin them over his head as she rode him, as she kissed him - then she was so impossibly real, so impossibly alive, that Solas forgot of the possibility of death. There was only her, them, the light of distant stars, of his own biotics flaring.
“I love you,” she said, and from another woman’s lips it would have felt false to hear those words said when they were still joined, still making love. But this was Ellana, and Solas had watched her, and he knew she was nothing if not sincere.
“I love you,” he said, surrendering, bucking his hips up into her. “I love you, I love you -”
There were people walking down the hall outside - Taylor, Lawson, Tali, Thane, all on their way to some distraction or another, all of them waiting out the end like they were. They tried to fall silent, to move to a different position, each time they passed, and they wound up on the cold metal floor, cocooned in blankets, Solas on top of her this time, looking down at her, mesmerized, angling himself to make it good for her, so he would rub against her in all the right places, so he could watch her when she came, and she squirmed a hand between them to make it happen because she was nothing if not self-sufficient, but he did get to watch her, to feel her from the inside out as she came. Then he was gone too, wave after sweet wave, and it was all too much and too good.
“Hey,” she said in the aftermath, touching his cheek, drawing him back. “It’s okay, you know. It’s gonna be okay.”
He kissed her hand, pretended she was right, that the Omega-4 Relay was not on their horizon now. It was easier than it ever had been. The pretending. She made it easy, lying there in his arms in the nest they’d made on the floor. It was going to be okay. They would make it through the relay and what came after. They’d walk away from Cerberus, the Illusive Man, Shepard, together. They’d see what the world was like without all of those things, without masks. Together.
Solas slept, and waited for tomorrow.
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Theory on light/dark dynamic in the new movie
First: SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK. Okay, this gonna be a long one so bear with me. DISCLAIMER: I have seen the movies and the series and read some of the legends. If my logic and some of my information is flawed, I am sorry, I am a fan but not that hardcore and humans do mistakes. Feel free to correct me and share your theories but do not come at me.
Let’s talk about the mortis gods. For those who don’t know the mortis gods are beings of force, the Father is the force, the Daughter is the light side of the force and the Son is the dark side of the force. The Father keeps the force balanced. Well, long story short Ashoka, Obi and Anakin came to the mortis gods’ planet, Daughter and Son fought, all of the mortis gods end up dead. The Father tells Anakin that he must bring balance to the force.
Anakin was the chosen one but my theory is that he was a representative of the Father. He was supposed to walk the middle path and keep both jedi and sith in balance with each other. But he was nicked by the Jedi and shoved into a light side role, maybe if Qui-Gon have guided him he would have been more neutral. There is more evidence that supports Anakin’s neutrality,like the fact that he spent half of life with the light and half with the dark side, just look at his age. I think the Jedi might have been too powerful and that caused an imbalance in the force. If you look at light/dark dynamics in eastern religion (which star wars is inspired from) and in eastern media(Kingdom Hearts for example), you’ll see that light and dark need each other to exist, a bright light casts a long shadow, there is light in darkness and darkness in light, they need each other to be kept in check, I could go on but you get the idea. It makes sense why the jedi fell, they grew too powerful and nicked the chosen one and tried to eliminate the sith permanently. Of course they would also see the whole ‘bring balance to the force’ as light winning and taking it all, we know that the Daughter and the Son wanted to be on top of each other. But the dark side used this imbalance and tipped the scales in their favor, switching from a light controlled galaxy to a dark controlled galaxy.
I think Luke is the Daughter’s chosen one as the force needed to be brought back to the light. If you look at it it makes sense. The sith knew about Anakin and not Luke, why? Because Anakin was connected to the both side, Luke only to the light. Yoda was contacted by Qui-Gon and light side creatures to teach him how to become a force ghost and tell them that there is another chosen one. Crazily enough, I think Luke’s destiny wasn’t supposed to be with the light. Anakin was supposed to be the Father, Leia the Daughter and Luke the Son. I mean, in legends Leia is not once corrupted by the dark side compared to her brother, probably because her strong connection to the light side. But, I think the Force changed plans cause Anakin fucked up, and they switched Luke to the light side since his destiny with the dark side might have turned him into a very powerful sith and that is not what the force wanted while Anakin was still running around with Palpatine. Leia was never presented by the force as a chosen one probably because they didn’t want her to be used as a tool of the light side. I mean having 2 powerful light side jedi might have caused imbalance again. But her connection to the light side still made her powerful. I mean she was a prodigy, a general, a jedi, an incredible diplomat and so on.
Okay, now finally let’s talk about the last movie. I think the force decided to rectify their mistakes and instead of choosing a person to balance both sides they picked one for each side and let them balance each other. I think they picked them in the second movie. As Luke was closing to death they chose Rey to carry the light mantel and they chose Ben Solo to be the dark side chosen one. This is why they were so connected. They were supposed to balance each other out, one light one darkness, trapped in an eternal dance. If you look at the Daughter and the Son, while they were trying to best each other they loved each other dearly, not in a romantic way obviously. Since Rey and Ben weren’t related their love was able to be romantic. I think Ben didn’t necessarily switched to the light, I think he just knew his destiny and what he had to do. Also, if he truly switched than Rey would have eventually switched to dark to keep the balance. I think the reason they were both called to the other side was that if one made a switch the other can be pulled by the force into the other side as well, keeping balance. This is why the vision of Rey joining the dark side kept coming because Ben was in the risk of coming back to the light. You could also blame the call on bloodlines and that the roles were supposed to be reversed.
I think Ben’s death was okay, it was sad but made sense. Yes, you can booo me for this. Firstly, he wanted to follow in Darth Vader’s footsteps, well he nailed it, honestly. Secondly, you all dream of Rey and Kylo happy on a planet as the galaxy is balanced again, well that will most definitely not happen if Ben was alive. The resistance will arrest and persecute everyone affiliated with the First Order and send bounty hunters after those they can’t capture. Do you think Ben will be forgiven? After all his crimes and with his body count? Of course not! Either he and Rey will be on the run forever or she will have to bring him back and see him persecuted. I am also very happy that my ship is cannon.
Coming back to my light/dark theory and how they are the light and the side of things always in balance. I think there is a chance that Ben realized that if he turns to the light side, Rey would have been pulled to the dark side. So he either never turned to the light side and just decided to help Rey and his parents cause he wanted to, I mean being a sith doesn’t mean you can’t love or care, or he turned light side and killed himself so Rey won’t have to switch. Ben being secretly alive on the light side or dead on the dark might pose a tad of a problem. If he is dead then Rey is not balanced, which is bad, if he is secretly alive but on the light side, Rey will have to switch.
Now Palpatine. I am pretty sure that Palpatine’s son is his clone, you know the way Boba Fett was Jango Fett’s son. I think Palpatine might be asexual so yeah, don’t see how a child might happen. I think he might be an aberration of the Force, or just became one the same way Abeloth is. He was a dark side user but he wanted to go beyond that. At this point I don’t think he cares which side he uses as long as he is powerful. There is so much evidence that Palpatine stopped being a sith long ago and he is just using the sith and the dark side because they are all his puppets, the light side hates him, and hate, revenge and fear are easier to use to control people than love. Not that he didn’t try to use love to control people, in Rebels when he tries to corrupt Ezra he is not mean, he is not playing into Ezra’s fears, no, he loving, having the appearance of a grandpa ready to help Ezra. He knows the value of love but he is in too deep into darkness to efficiently use the light side for his gain. His own ideals also probably align with the dark side better and this is why he uses it. Compared to other sith he isn’t broken, or turned evil or something like that, no he is evil. He knew from young he wanted power and knowledge and did everything to gain it. If the light offered him the a better opportunity than the dark he would have gone with the light. He has better control on his emotions than most jedi, he is calm, composed and knows when to let go. He never fell to the dark side, he just used it for its power. Palpatine was a big collector of jedi and sith knowledge, he dived deep into their magic and ancient forgotten secrets. Further, have you notice how not once in the new movies anyone referred to him as Darth Sidious? Coincidence? I think not! He is not a sith lord anymore, he is just Palpatine. He was playing both Rey and Kylo. He has another 30 back up bodies probably waiting for him, I doubt he is dead. If he is something similar to Abeloth than the only way to defeat him is to lock him away. Another evidence is the Son wanting to destroy everything before it goes to shit. We know the Son and the Daughter could see in the future, what if he saw a person similar to his mother that would continuously seed chaos war and fear in the galaxy. Of course he would think the galaxy should be bombed before another Abeloth appears. So yeah, I think Palpatine is the new Abeloth, after all Abeloth was always defeated by the Son and the Daughter together, so it makes sense their chosen ones now fight the new Abeloth.
Thanks for reading. Hope you enjoyed my rant.
TLDR: Palpatine is Abeloth, Anakin is the Father, Rey is the Daughter, Kylo Ren is the Son and Leia and Luke were supposed to be the Son and the Daughter.
#star wars#rise of the skywalker#reylo#kylo ren#ben solo#leia skywalker#luke skywalker#star wars rebels#clone wars#star wars anakin
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The Debt Collector
A/N: I Staubrey one shot based on a ridiculous conversation on discord. I blame @kate-harper and power hour entirely.
thank you as always to @chloes-yellow-cup for always dropping everything to read every scrap i think is lame.
It had started out small time. Just like any other bet she’d made book on before. Aubrey hadn’t thought anything of it when Cynthia Rose had introduced the leggy brunette at an exclusive poker night for some of the more influential members of the criminal underworld community. Truth be told she had assumed that Stacie was part of the night’s entertainment like so many other beautiful men and women lounging around the opulent living room. Hadn’t even given her a second glance really until she settled in the seat next to Aubrey and started shuffling the deck like a woman used to the game.
It should have been a red flag. A giant warning of what was to come.
But Aubrey didn’t see it. She was too caught up in the curious and calculating gaze of the most beautiful woman she’d ever laid her eyes on. If asked she would have denied it but there was definitely something she found herself wanting in the gentle sway of long tresses casually thrown over a shoulder and the twitch of a smile that was equal parts playful and predatory. Oh she wanted this Stacie Conrad alright. Bad enough that if she had seen the flag she might have ignored it altogether. But Aubrey was used to the game too and she wasn’t easily distracted.
It had taken months to finally get that woman out of her mind. Nothing had happened, beyond Stacie cleaning out each and every player at the table. She took them all for everything they’d brought and somehow managed to leave with all of them laughing along with her and smiling adoringly. It was a feat Aubrey wasn’t quite sure how the woman had managed and it had become the focus of her slight obsession.
And then one day she was there in the smoky billiard bar that served as home for her office. The Dirty Bird wasn’t exactly a sweet café on Melrose, it was a place people went to drink and forget while they bet on the local basketball game. Stacie Conrad didn’t fit in at all with her short white sheath dress that hugged her body in all the right places and a pair of hideous Saint Laurent Yeti Feather boots that she made work despite the fact that they covered most of those amazing legs. When Stacie’s searching gaze landed on Aubrey she stalked forward with the confidence of a large jungle cat homing in on its prey.
Aubrey closed her ledger and slid it to the side before giving Lilly a short jerk of her head to let her know it was okay to let Stacie pass. The slight and more often than not silent woman resumed her casual slouch on a stool nearby, playing idly with the butterfly knife that she had earned a reputation for using. Usually at Aubrey’s behest.
“Stacie Conrad. To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?”
Stacie leaned forward on the table, palms flat and steady as she smiled in a way that unsettled Aubrey just a bit. “I’d like to make a bet.”
“Yeah? How about this…I’ll pay you to burn those boots. Better than a bet, it’s free money.”
Those full lips pulled into a grin that Aubrey had to restrain herself from kissing. “You planning on taking them off me?”
And so it had started.
Small time bets. A hundred here, three there. All on a semi regular basis, and thankfully Miss Conrad’s luck the night of the game hadn’t lasted as long as her current six month betting streak had. Aubrey had seen it before in other gamblers, they always started small and worked their way into a hole they could never buy their way out of. It happened because they always underestimated her, a woman in a largely male dominated business. Maybe it was the lipstick, or the breasts, but for some reason men seemed to think she was soft and wouldn’t collect. So they bet, and they bet…and they bet.
Until they had less than nothing to lose. Except fingers or toes and sometimes kneecaps.
It was a crummy line of work to be in sometimes but after a few debts had been collected on she’d earned quite a reputation herself. Aubrey didn’t believe in contracting out collectors, it was a waste of money and she didn’t trust someone else to broker a deal on her behalf. So when the chips were down and you were in over your head and late on your payment it was Aubrey herself that came to your door. Or your job. Or your mistress’ house. Or the STD trap you call a strip club where you find solace when you’re just too down in the dumps to be a decent human. It didn’t matter where, Aubrey would find you.
Now. Six months and 250 grand in, she found herself parked across the street from the large gated estate and sighed. She hadn’t wanted Stacie Conrad to be one of those marks. Every bet the woman placed had turned into a sparring match between them, the winner determined by however the bet played out. But now…
“Jesus.” Aubrey sighed and pulled her gun out of glove box. She checked the clip as she always did and pulled the slide back to chamber a round. She made a gesture with her hand and Lilly started the car and moved them to the street in front of the house just as a man pulled up on the inside of the gate in an Aston Martin. “Wait for me here. If he comes back before I’m back…put him out.”
Lilly nodded and her lips moved but Aubrey didn’t hear a single word.
“Okay you know I can’t even hear you right? Just. Don’t kill him. Yet.”
Her enforcer gave an annoyed huff and stared straight ahead. Aubrey stared at her for a second longer before getting out of the car and sliding the gun into the paddle holster at the small of her back. The man pulled out into the street oblivious to her as she slipped through the gate and made her way to the front door. Aubrey brought her fist up to knock but it opened before she could.
“I thought you might drop by.” Stacie had said it as if this were just some warm afternoon tea and not something more serious and dangerous. “You want to come in?”
There was something weighted to the words that left Aubrey wondering if they held a deeper meaning. She narrowed her eyes but pushed into the home, shutting the door firmly behind her and turning the bolt with a final sounding click before she faced Stacie. “You know why I’m here?”
“Of course.” Stacie moved from the foyer, down the hall and into a large first floor office. Aubrey couldn’t take her eyes off the sway of the brunette’s hips as she followed her. Stacie turned her head, looking over her shoulder to catch her at it with a smug smile. “You always seemed like a very hands on business woman. I like that about you Aubrey Posen.”
Aubrey narrowed her eyes again as Stacie slid a door open on a credenza along the wall. Reflex made her reach back and wrap her hand around the grip of her gun. Stacie seemed reasonable but she also had seemed like the type to pay her debts and Aubrey was there because it was clear she didn’t.
Street people she could read, the everyday Joe that drank too much and gambled a little too often, she could call them a mile away. But she had never dealt with anyone quite like Stacie before and wasn’t entirely sure this wouldn’t flip on her somehow. So it was caution that made her draw the gun and hold it lightly in her hand, the other clasped on top.
Stacie took in a deep breath and smiled wider. “A woman with a gun and deadly intent. Be still my fluttering heart.”
She quirked her lips in a smirk and shrugged. “What can I say? Chicks dig it.”
There was a quiet hum of agreement before Stacie turned to the safe tucked into the credenza. Aubrey waited patiently while it was opened and several stacks of bills were pulled out. She really wasn’t that interested in what else Stacie had in there besides the fact that there wasn’t a weapon that she could see, but the money. Jesus Christ. Stacie placed her due on the top of the table and turned to Aubrey with satisfied gesture.
“Your payment. In full of course.”
“Lady. Are you out of your fucking mind? You got at least a cool mil in there and you’ve been ducking me for three months? Do you know who I am?” Stacie had to know, she was friends with Cynthia Rose, and she made regular bets. She had to know who Aubrey was. What she was. It infuriated her and pushed into the other woman’s personal space, grabbing her roughly by the arm. This could have ended badly, so very very badly.
And Stacie laughed. God that laugh. It chased a shiver down her spine and Aubrey wanted to feel that laugh against her lips but she pressed the barrel of her gun to Stacie’s ribs and gave her a shake. “It’s not the money baby, it’s the thrill of winning.”
Aubrey blinked at her in confusion trying to puzzle out where Stacie had won. “You lost.” It wasn’t as sure a statement as it could have been and she felt the need to reinforce how grave a situation Stacie was in. “I came here to put holes in you.”
Those perfect pink lips curled up in a smile and she ran her hand down the buttons of Aubrey’s vest. “Hmm. Did you now…”
This time Aubrey knew there was something more in the words and she brought her free hand up wrap around Stacie’s neck, bringing her closer for a hungry kiss that was all tongue and teeth. Insistent hands pushed the tailored suit jacket over her shoulders to drop on the ground. Aubrey put her gun on the credenza and lifted Stacie on top it easily. Their kisses were frantic and hot, neither one interested in being the loser. But as Stacie’s teeth closed delicately over the pulse in her neck she couldn’t help but think they were both winning this time.
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Watch the 2024 American Climate Leadership Awards for High School Students now: https://youtu.be/5C-bb9PoRLc
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I have a bunch of thoughts about the War of the Spark novel but I JUST DISCOVERED THERE ARE JAPANESE ANIME VERSIONS OF ALL THE PLANESWALKERS IN THIS SET AND I NEED TO RATE THEM ALL LET’S GO
First off, all images are from here, and credit to their respective artists (listed on the card). In color order, we have:
Karn, the Great Creator: Looks pretty much the same. Like the warping effect of the scenery around him though, and he looks really mad. Minus points for forgetting he wears pants now, but the English artist forgot too so I can’t ding them too hard. 6/10.
Ugin, the Ineffable: All of Ugin’s cards kinda look like this, but there’s not much else you can do with him. Like the more aggressive action pose than his English art. 6/10 did not need the crotch shot though.
Gideon Blackblade: The English art is actually way more anime than this one. This Gideon just looks bored. 3/10.
Teyo, the Shieldmage: Now this is what I’m talking about. Clearly an anime take on the same model as the photorealistic English art, but jazzed up with a super-cool action pose as befits someone in the middle of a massive war. 10/10.
The Wanderer: The Wanderer already had a super-anime look and this art brings it home. Love the slash extending over the text box. Looks like the scene that comes right before the English art, like this is the freeze-frame ninja slash and the English one is the walking away while your enemy slowly falls down dead. 9/10.
Jace, Wielder of Mysteries: IT’S JOJO’S JACE. JOJACE. Jace never gets to have cool action poses and this one is long overdue. He is definitely about to wield a mystery into an Eternal’s face. 10/10 go get ‘em Jace.
Kasmina, Enigmatic Mentor: Hard to pin down the exact difference, but I like this art way less than the English version. I had to double-check to make sure it was the same character; it’s so generic and has none of the same vibe. Then again the English version was done by Villeneuve so maybe it’s not a fair competition. 2/10.
Narset, Parter of Veils: This is a beautiful portrait of Narset back when she was 12. Anime has a major problem drawing any woman between the age of 18 and 65 and Narset is just the first victim in this list. Everything else looks amazing; it’s especially a shame here because Narset has that flowing kung-fu silks look that’s right in the anime wheelhouse. 5/10 what could have been.
Davriel, Rogue Shadowmage: He MAD. Almost too mad. Davriel looks so much bigger and scarier in this art that I had to make sure it wasn’t Ob Nixilis. Super-cool final boss style but maybe too super-cool for someone who’s actually a skinny Innistrad shut-in. Kinda generic pose too. 6/10.
Liliana, Dreadhorde General: They brought in Yoshitaka Amano for the mythic, huh? I know I dinged Narset for looking 12 and this Lili looks even younger (if possible) but Amano does have this weird abstracted style and the rest of her looks real spooky. She looks more like a yokai than a person - like this is something you’d get killed by at the finale of a really spooky Japanese horror game. Normally that’d be a good look for Lili but this is the one set where she’s supposed to be at least a little human, so 8/10.
Ob Nixilis, the Hate-Twisted: Big mad demon lad. Not a lot you can do with Ob Nixilis, really. 5/10 did their best with generic material.
Chandra, Fire Artisan: Chandra in the English art always looks like she’s about to throw a fireball, but never does. Now she finally gets to. It’s a generic anime action pose but not one we’ve gotten with Chandra so I’m for it, and she doesn’t look toooooo twelve. Maybe 15. Good colors. 9/10 nice Kirby hand.
Jaya, Venerated Firemage: Was worried about this one because anime doesn’t handle older women well in art, but it’s not too bad. Clearly different from Chandra’s art, which is always gonna be a problem when they’re in the same set. Like her neat twirly staff trick. Something is weird about her face though. Like it was painted on after the rest of it. IDK. 6/10.
Sarkhan, the Masterless: This is the only time I’ve actually been intimidated by Sarkhan. 9/10 doesn’t have a dragon in the art.
Tibalt, Rakish Instigator: Similar to the above, this is the only time I’ve been interested in Tibalt as a character. A way better rendition of the epithet “Rakish Instigator.” Absolutely your friend’s Problematic Fave from an anime they describe as “Hellsing but with more magical girls.” 10/10 would make an excellent Bloodborne NPC.
Arlinn, Voice of the Pack: Same as Narset, this is great art of Arlinn like thirty years ago. Love the dynamic pose (though I can’t figure out what her hand is doing with that hammer), but real Arlinn is a battle-scarred Sigourney Weaver and there aren’t even any wolves. 4/10 needs more wolves.
Jiang Yanggu, Wildcrafter: This one is kinda cheating since Jiang was developed specifically for the Chinese market and is basically an anime character already, but still. Look how pumped he is. Look at Mowu. Look how good of a boy he is. If this were the English art people would be getting mad that he doesn’t look Chinese but that’s a whole stew of identity issues I’m not getting anywhere near. 8/10 adorable good boyes.
Nissa, Who Shakes The World: I’m not...No. I’m not going anywhere near this. Gross. 0/10 keep it on your deviantart page.
Vivien, Champion of the Wilds: What did I just say about Nissa? What did I just say. The action lines swooping out of the art across the frame & text box are cool and that’s the only reason it gets a point. 1/10.
Ajani, the Greathearted: He is a big pretty kitty but honestly this art is kind of a letdown. Given anime’s love of cat-people, this is the place where I’d expect the fanservice, but it’s just basically a model-sheet pose of Ajani. Looks like a bad alter of Brimaz, King of Oreskos. Honestly I’d have expected the English version of this card to be the Japanese one, and vice versa. 3/10 he still a big fluffy kitty.
Domri, Anarch of Bolas: This is RAD. If Domri had to bow out (spoilers) this is the kind of card art to do it on. Beautiful colors, furious pose, avoids the “young boy or butch lesbian” look that most of his other art falls into (that’s not a joke; I’ve fielded multiple questions about his gender from confused new players). Any feral teenager would be thrilled to look this badass. Gruul SMASH. 10/10.
Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God: Is this another artist like Amano who has a kinda stylized look? Because otherwise this is just...bad. Not at all befitting of a dragon-god. You’d think with all of Ravnica before him he’d be able to do better. 2/10.
Ral, Storm Conduit: Honestly can’t decide how I feel about this art. The detail is amazing and the lightning is killer but there’s just something weird about Ral. Maybe he’s not smirking enough. Maybe his legs are too big. I want to like this more than I do, but I don’t. 7/10.
Sorin, Vengeful Bloodlord: I’m so mad about this art because it makes Sorin look way cooler than he has any right to. The sword, the coat, the swirling ribbons of blood. But anime’s always had a way with vampires, so Sorin is the undeserving beneficiary of a skilled Jojo’s upgrade. 8/10 it was ME ALL ALONG yeah you know the joke.
Tamiyo, Collector of Tales: Tamtam’s another character whose East Asian origin makes her very well-suited to the anime look. In fact I’d say her white skin and complicated ears/headdress look turns out better in an anime style than a photorealistic one. Her skeptical look and halo of floating scrolls are just the icing on the cake. 9/10 dinged a point because the happy Ravnica skyline behind her is a weird choice and ill-suited to the mood.
Teferi, Time Raveler: Anime seems to do a lot better with middle-aged men than middle-aged women. A perfectly serviceable, if bland, Teferi. 5/10.
Angrath, Captain of Chaos: He EXTREMELY MAD. Angrath’s signature red-hot chains are perfect for a swirling anime post and the artist took good advantage of them. If anything he’s almost too bestial, though - Angrath is actually a loving family man and blacksmith who’s so furious because he was trapped on Ixalan for decades away from his home and loved ones. 7/10 somehow too mad.
Ashiok, Dream Render: Now that’s how you draw an inscrutable dream-creature who wields your deepest nighmares. 10/10 love the way they seem to be looking the player in the eye, as if they’re about to conjure your specific personal fears.
Dovin, Hand of Control: Perfectly serviceable Dovin art but I don’t like the thopters and that is unforgiveable. 0/10 because fuck this guy, seriously, and 0/10 on the English art for also having bad thopters while we’re at it.
Huatli, the Sun’s Heart: Huatli also suffering a little de-aging here but I’ll let it slide because she absolutely looks like the main character of a cult 90s anime and I would watch the hell out of it. Major Nausicaa vibe here, but with dinosaurs. Sign me up. 9/10 bad riding posture though.
Kaya, Bane of the Dead: Kaya with the straight-up Ghibli treatment here. There’s nothing technically wrong here but it’s totally the wrong mood and pose for her. I’d watch that Ghibli movie though. 4/10.
Kiora, Behemoth-Beckoner: A pretty literal interpretation of the epithet but who cares, it’s badass and way more tasteful than I feared we might get for the one planeswalker who could plausibly be drawn with tentacles. Love the attention paid to the water and the details of it splashing off her fins. 8/10 is that a walrus? but like with tusks on the bottom jaw? upside down walrus?
Nahiri, Storm of Stone: Repeat after me: NAHIRI IS LITERALLY THOUSANDS OF YEARS OLD. SHE DOES NOT LOOK LIKE SHE’S FOURTEEN. She looks in her twenties at the youngest. Reminds me of Mara Sov from Destiny, who is also thousands of years old, looks in her twenties, and gets drawn like she’s 12. Even apart from the de-aging this is just awkward art. The pose is bizarre, the background is weirdly photorealistic, and Nahiri has no expression. 3/10 at least it isn’t a boobs & butt pose.
Saheeli, Sublime Artificer: I...do not know what is going on here with Saheeli’s face. Or her body proportions, really. I guess it’s supposed to be foreshortened but her gormless expression and the weird Lisa Frank colors make me think of a Disney Channel cartoon about planeswalkers. The beautiful detail on the flowing metal is nice but the rest is just strange. 4/10 nice metal dragon though.
Samut. Tyrant-Smasher: I really like this art but it makes me think a lot of people are going to make jokes about Samut “looking like a man” or “barely being a woman,” especially since her name isn’t very clearly gendered, and that just makes me sad. The art itself is nice and totally on-model for her, though her shoulders are kind of weirdly broad and it’s a shame they didn’t take advantage of the anime style to do some cool speed lines like her haste-powers need. 8/10 good righteous avenger look.
Vraska, Swarm’s Eminence: Oh maaaaaan, I want to complain about the cartoonishly-young look and the weirdly-realistic background that makes her look composited in, but the artist really nailed that regal pose and took full advantage of her swirling snake-hair. This is definitely a Vraska both large and in charge. 7/10 you still get dinged for de-aging and also is she sitting or standing, it’s hard to tell.
#Magic: the Gathering#War of the Spark#planeswalker art#Japanese card art!#I judge people who have way more talent than me#Magic: the Where Did All My Money Go
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Void: A Brighter Future For Us All.
Myani vowed to protect his sister like any brother would but soon
the vow fades out of memory, but for now he'll hold her as she falls asleep in his arms.
She becomes a tidal wave at six when she masters three languages and goes on to a fourth. He knew this would happen, his little sister becoming more than a prodigy. He looks at his father enticed by his own creation as she speaks eloquently in tongue and spirit, the dreams of her conquering the world were now in reach. He looks over at his sister, hair slicked back like ravines eyes wide and attentive. Maybe if he looked hard enough he could see it too- his redemption- the person she would be in between her kind laughter.
She would grow up following a line drawn for her since birth, perfect, brilliant, practically cosmic. Myani knows this universe his father has created would eventually crumble. He takes his pills crushing each one after the other with his teeth, barely seething from the bitter taste as he downs it with water. This morning it's worse, he's thrown up for most of it, bones aching, skin breaking out in thick sheets of sweat and the skin, the skin would later on peel off in thin grainy layers. Hani sits next to him crushing weed, it will help but in the long run it will do nothing. Myani thinks of his sister instead it eases the crushing thump of his heart but he's still sweating, the thought of when he'll leave this world and how she would be next. Fighting her own body ,sitting on a couch with her best friend and secretly regretting saving the world.
Hani, his best friend is still talking about his fiance, she's pregnant now. Myani tries to smile he's known this for a couple months even if Hani talks around it like friends do when they know you're dying so you won't feel bad that you'll probably never have children of your own.
Friends like Hani are rare.Infuriating but rare and Myani has been in love with him for the past five years and has done little to nothing about it.
Hani will be a great father better than his own that's true, yet he wonders if his best friend will finally stop talking about the life he wants to have and just live it. But, he never says anything about it, he never does.
His long fingers take the joint, it sits between his plump lips and he inhales longer than he should so the clouds he blows into the air are thick and eggshell.
Myani wonders again, if this is it. If dying on the couch will be the greatest achievement he'll ever accomplish and even so, his father - the man who built him into becoming one of the most innovative people in the world, the martyr and sacrificial head of a biological enterprise that would start a new age for the years to come,yada yada fucking yada. The man who claims to be omnipotent- his father isn't here to witness.
So he's decided; Myani will make him. He'll turn the upcoming burden that will be throttled to his baby sister and take it with him in death. He'll destroy it all, he'll be a martyr one last time to save what's important to him. If he must he'll encase it Chinese finger trap and all, like a tongue stuck on ice or a kiss that leaves a stain. It will hurt but none of that will matter if he was saving Noa in the end.
"Hani." He says in thought.
"Hmm?"
"You should show me your dad's collection again."
"You know I hate that stuff, it's barbaric."
It's amusing how Hani is intimidating in looks but a pacifist at heart. Truthfully it was annoying. "I remember you saying he only keeps it so collectors and curators don't colonize any more of your peoples artifacts." Myani takes another heavy sigh, "just for a couple of minutes, I need air."
Hani rolls his eyes and plucks the joint from Myani's fingers who gives a tired smile.
"He has other things in there too.You do remember he was a military rat right?"
Myani licks his lips, "I know."
BREAKING NEWS: 14 Dead at Ally Genesis Corporation including John "Myani" Paul, son of CEO and chairman Jahseem Paul.
BREAKING NEWS: 1 Million people may be at high risk because of Allie Genesis Corporation deficiencies and leaks since mass shooting.
BREAKING NEWS: Could John Myani Paul be a lead to the suspect of the AGC Shooting?
BREAKING NEWS: 4,020 people fired at Allie Genesis and 9 institutions are ordered to shut down by government officials with JIC and MGU approval.
BREAKING NEWS: AGC President of Defense Salah Bahatt under fire for potential information on the mass shooting at AGC Institution and bio-plague outbreak that killed 4 in Oregon back in 2010
BREAKING NEWS: Ally Genesis, science saviors? Find out how after the tragedy how the corporation is taking bio-mechanics, neurology and many more into uncharted territory.
BREAKING NEWS: Ally Genesis declares cellular regeneration is now possible. Could we bring people back from the dead?
There's something that pushes Noa out of the water, as if someone had yanked her out of the tub. It feels like a thread pinned under the skin of her chest, so when she's heaving for air as if her throat was wrung out with closed tight fists. It hurts to breathe even if she's supposed to be grateful for it, how conveienet. She at twenty decided to take her own life and failed so time and time again she'd cry into her arms puckered in scars. She could hear Myani's laugh someplace far away in her emptiness and every time she tried to follow his voice she'd be here back into this world that she could never escape.
Later in the day when she pushed herself into comfort and laid in Myani's bed a thought she would read his letters again, go through his photography, miss him with abandon. Yet the thread in her chest caught taught on to something else. She woke up from his bed and walked down to his living room for no real reason and without thought sat on his couch and as her hand pressed into the cushions something brushed against her fingers. She pulled at it and noticed it was an envelope. It was different then the letter he left for her, this did not have her name on it but it was directed to her... it had t be. Her eyes widened as she read the words, the prickle in her eyes gained a heaviness that almost blurred her vision as she read the letter. She held her breath realizing even in death her brother still had a hold on her.
He still had secrets.
They framed someone else for what I did, didn't they? I would think so. If everything has gone exactly how I had envisioned. Noa, I'm sure they've started their trials on you. It may not look like they have, but father has his ways. I can't display my remorse in colorful words that elude to being remorseful or sorry, for once, I am not. I killed those people and planned on shortening my already short life not on a whim but it was something I had to do. I don't know how far back I've pushed their quota but it should be enough.
Leaking AGC's information will barely leave a scratch but it's a start to a very long journey. Whatever you choose to do in this life it will not outweigh your true purpose. Furthermore, in the next couple of years I know you'll find information about what I could do, and as I left you that day, the darkness in me will now rest in you. It will protect you now when I no longer can.
Noa,in a normal world all I would want for you is to be free, to smile to live and love as you please. But it isn't like that and I will need you to remember this life you live is yours but the part that you play is easily malleable. Father and his people will learn about you. You have always been his prized possession you have always been his favorite even if you don't think you are but all of this will be foreign to him if it means broadening the horizons of humanity and evolution. He is a man that will do what needs to be done. You should also take the same initiative. It was too late for me but I know you're strong enough. I know you're capable of much more than I. I wasn't capable of protecting you no matter how much you tried to follow me. I had to push you away at times because you needn't any more influence or my bad choices to pick up. I could of been a better brother to you, and I'm sorry.
So, when you wake up promise that you'll stop looking for me?
-Myani.
Noa opened her eyes realizing quickly what had just happened. It could be her mind drowned in grief and playing tricks on her but she swore she was sitting on the couch and not back in Myani's bed. She pushed the sheets aside and darted down the hall, when she reached the couch she sank her fingers between the cushions moving them from its frame, tossing them aside to find nothing. It was empty, it was all empty.
She stood alone in her silence for a long time. Noa reached for something, a remote that sat neatly on the end table. With a press of a button the television blinked alive.
BREAKING NEWS: New footage shows son of Ally Genesis chairman, John Myani Paul trying to calm the true shooter of the one AGC Shooting in 2012. The shooter is 38 year old Kowen Williams who killed 14 and wounded 2. AGC claim no prior knowledge or how this new footage has come about. Williams had been tracked to his home in Washington state but found dead from self inflicting wounds.
AGC's Chairman Jahseem Paul issued this statement:
"This could be justice, but it is also saddening and it is also salt on a wound that reminds the people who have been affected on that day. I'm glad officials have done their part in finding this murderer but it will not bring the lives lost back. It cannot bring my son back. Yet I will walk into each day hoping with vigor in my heart to carry on for my son and for my family and for Ally Genesis. My job is to push forward,endure and to broaden the horizon of humanity and evolution. For my son, and for the 14 lives lost that day I will continue to do so. I thank you all for the support and I thank the incredible people who made Ally Genesis with me and continue to better and brighten the future for all us ahead."
The news played on and Noa stood alone knowing all too well what her fathers words really meant. It had dawned on her just how orchestrated this all was, from Myani's trajectory till his suicide to the purpose of Ally Genesis, to her own. Every piece was set into place and finally it was time to make her move.
#m:noa paul#m:myani paul#drabbles.txt#i forgot the tag for this verse honestly#tw: mentions of mass shooting#tw: mentions of past suicide#im not formatting this really cuz im tired#long post//
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how do you think ramona's class/background influences her relationship with kaidan?
Oh, anon…you have NO idea the monster you have just unleashed, lmao. I’m so sorry in advance.
I have thought a lot about this! It’s one of my favorite things to think about! Because I think it influences a lot! My Shepard is Earthborn/Sole Survivor/Infiltrator.
Let me start with the one that I’m still puzzling out myself, which is Sole Survivor. On the one hand, I do like Sole Survivor. On the other hand, I think BW dropped the ball with them. And to a degree I understand why, because there’s only so many variances they can account for without getting the story sidetracked. But, like, here’s the thing: Akuze was orchestrated by Cerberus. That’s a thing you find out in ME1. So ME2 for SoSu Shep in particular has to be fairly…upsetting, to say the least. This is both a strength and a weakness. A strength because it makes ME2 that much more interesting, but a weakness because the game only acknowledges this, like, twice. First with Tela Vasir in LotSB, and then in ME3 during the Cronos mission. Every other time is swept under the rug, and Shepard’s made to defend Cerberus or, at best, softly condemn them. A lot of “They used to do good work, but…” or “I never saw this coming because they used to do good work, but…” and it’s just frankly sloppy because there’s no believable reason for me to think SoSu Shep would ever think that way. Cerberus is personal for her in a way it isn’t for War Hero or Ruthless.
So now add in Horizon and its aftermath. Horizon is by far one of my favorite parts of the trilogy. But…if Cerberus is personal for SoSu Shep in a way it isn’t for War Hero or Ruthless, so is Horizon. Shepard is alone in ME2 in a way she never is in the other games; she might have people by the end of the game, but it doesn’t start out that way. She’s trapped and she knows it. Yeah, she gets Garrus early on (the only one in the beginning that she can immediately trust to not be in Cerberus’ pocket since she has prior dealings with him), but Garrus has his own demons in ME2, and anyway, he’s only one person versus an entire ship full of Cerberus. Even the ship itself is Cerberus. So enter Kaidan on Horizon, and mix in a Shepard who’s feeling cornered and wants out of Cerberus’ grip but who’s been alienated from every other available avenue that could help her fight the Collectors, and you get…well, You Know.
My Shepard in particular is not very emotionally open or honest - like, for example, the first time she finally tells Kaidan she loves him is at the beam run, despite knowing she’s felt that way since Horizon. (This, and the fact she’s renegade leaning in general, have to do with her Earthborn background but I’ll get to that part later.) The idea of being vulnerable in that capacity with someone is terrifying to her, but on Horizon? I have her specifically ask Kaidan to join her. She’s desperate and she needs someone like him, and so she extends herself in a way she never would normally…and Kaidan rejects her in no uncertain terms, lol. He questions her alliance with Cerberus, pokes holes in all the defenses she tells herself to make herself feel better. (“I’m not working for them, they’re just giving me resources!”) He tells her that she’s changed (a sore spot, given her own insecurity over Lazarus)* and then…leaves. Like, ouch. I’m of the opinion that Horizon - including the confrontation with the VS - was orchestrated and intentional, and TIM’s desired outcome** so that Shepard would be pushed further into Cerberus and further alienated from the Alliance (because the VS would be their closest ties to it at this point in the series), and I think that’s something my Shepard recognizes, too. But that doesn’t mean it hurts any less, particularly when you consider that again: she’s alone, she’s desperate, and she made herself vulnerable in a way she never would normally.
But at the same time, if Kaidan had agreed to join her…she would have been extremely suspicious, lol. Like, that’s not the Kaidan she knows! A dude willing to abandon his post and work for a terrorist organization just because she’s supposedly leading this particular cell? Nah. If Shepard had been in Kaidan’s shoes, she’d have reacted the exact same way. She knows that too. But it’s still a complicated situation and I don’t think it’s sufficiently addressed in canon because the SoSu element makes everything so much messier. For comparison, while Horizon hurts my War Hero (Shiara) and Ruthless (femShepley) Shepards because they care about the VS (particularly my Ruthless one, obviously), it’s not the same. They have no prior trauma because of Cerberus; the extent of their interactions with them would just be the ME1 missions. In those cases, Cerberus is just another enemy to tackle. It’s not personal. Political, maybe. But not personal.
So yes, I absolutely think that Sole Survivor and Kaidan would have to handle Horizon and its aftermath in a different way than what’s presented in canon. Not, like, dramatically so or anything…I just think it’d take different words or more talks or something, but I just don’t know what yet and that’s the problem. It’s enough to where I’ve considered dumping the Sole Survivor background because it’s frustrating trying to think of solutions, but altering that would change a lot about my Shepard that I’m not willing to part with. Like, Sha'ira’s gift of words sum up how I view her perfectly:
“I see your skin, tough as the scales of any turian. Unyielding. A wall between you and everyone else. But it protects you, makes you strong. That strength is what kept you alive when everyone else around you was dying. You alone survived. You will continue to survive.”
But if I changed that to Ruthless (the BG I’ve considered switching her to), it would instead be:
“I see your skin, tough as the scales of any turian. Unyielding. A wall between you and everyone else. But it protects you, makes you strong. You never hid your strength, either. It serves you well. Terrifies your foes. Few will dare to stand against you.”
And…that’s just not her. And yeah, I could disregard this - it’s such a tiny part of the series that’s never touched upon again - but the EB/SoSu combo validated every image I had of my Shepard when I created her, so I’m very attached to it and determined to make it work, lol. Like I said, it’s the part about her and her relationship with Kaidan I’m still figuring out the most.
So what about the other parts of her background? Let me do the Earthborn portion next because I already know that’s going to be very long. I have put a lot of thought into Kaidan’s family, his parents, and his upbringing…not all of it is to relevant to your question though, so I’ll try to restrain myself lol.
So it’s never outright stated as much in canon, but I’m under the (very fair, imo) impression Kaidan’s family is fucking loaded. Here’s what we know about them:
They have an apartment in English Bay (ME3)
They own an orchard that makes wine in the B.C. Interior (ME1, ME3)
Kaidan owns a strip of land on the Sunshine Coast (ME3) (it’s unclear to me though whether this is either of the above, or something different)
Kaidan has a cousin who owns an agriculture business (ME1) (This one doesn’t necessarily point to Kaidan’s family being wealthy, although it does seem to imply they have ties to agriculture?)
Kaidan’s father is former military and he retired before the First Contact War (ME1, ME3) (Again, doesn’t necessarily point to wealth)
I’m not Canadian, let alone a Vancouverite, but I do have a friend from that area (and also, like, Google exists) and it’s my understanding that…English Bay is a very ritzy area. Like, I looked up real estate and a lot of the price results were in the millions. Considering that Mass Effect takes place in the future and Vancouver has only become even more of a metropolis (I believe it’s canon that it’s merged with Seattle to form a mega-city?)…I find it hard to believe that those prices haven’t risen even more than they already are now.
So if Kaidan’s family can afford an apartment in an area that expensive, uh, they can’t be hurting for money. Then factor in the other stuff I listed. Making wine? Owning an orchard to make said wine? To be honest, just the fact they’re able to afford at least two different properties*** is enough for me to think they’re fairly well off, especially when there’s this from the codex:
“While every human enjoys longer and better life than ever, the gap between rich and poor widens daily.”
Like, this isn’t some utopian age for humanity. Poverty still exists, and it’s clearly just as bad if not worse than it is currently. So that’s to say: it’s kinda two extremes with an exceedingly rare middle ground. Kaidan’s family very clearly does not fall on the less fortunate side if they have an apartment with an ocean view and make wine in their spare time.
Okay, I promise there was a point to all that. The point being that Earthborn Shepard comes from the exact opposite spectrum. She grew up in extreme poverty with…nothing, not even a family. She’s seen the worst humanity has to offer long before Cerberus shows up in her life. She’s seen - lived - the ugly parts about Earth the Alliance doesn’t like to broadcast. She’s had to do things that would frankly offend Kaidan’s “sometimes the way a thing goes down does matter” ideal, because things like integrity have no place in your life when you have nothing and no one and you’re fighting just to survive to the next day when no one but yourself cares about you seeing it. And that’s a way she had to live her life for eighteen years - it’s not something she can just shut off, particularly not when the skills she learned living that way are what helped her survive Akuze. (Remember Sha'ira’s words?)
These are things Kaidan can’t truly relate to, not even in his capacity as a biotic who’s apart of a society who doesn’t understand him at best and hates him at worst. Because there’s a difference between Kaidan’s situation, and being so much of a faceless nobody that it wouldn’t even be news if you went missing. Kaidan has a family, and one that presumably loves him. He has money. He’s never had to fight to survive in the way Earthborn Shepard has, not even if you HC that his time between BAaT and joining the Alliance took him away from his parents and their wealth (which I do). These are also things that shape a person so completely, to ignore them would be to ignore what made this person into who they are today.
(I do, however, think Kaidan can sympathize because of his unique position in society and because he regularly puts himself in another’s shoes, anyway.)
Earthborn Shepard isn’t still living in poverty by the time the trilogy comes around. She’s actually made a name for herself - which in and of itself has to be very confusing for her, because I envision Earthborn Shepard as someone who suffers constantly from imposter syndrome - and she has funding. A lot of it. Like, an exorbitant amount. Shepard has to spend so much money throughout the trilogy if she wants better equipment for herself and her crew (and even for her ship) which is kind of a necessity if you want to, you know, survive and be competent and stuff.
I think she reconciles all of this with the fact that yeah, this is necessary, she’s not being frivolous - but there’s always going to be a part of herself that feels guilty, because that’s just something that’s beaten into you when you grow up that way. Spending money feels bad.**** There might be moments she doesn’t care. There might be times where, in the moment, it feels good. But at some point, however fleeting, there’s always going to be that guilt. These aren’t feelings that are easy to get over, even if you objectively know they’re irrational.
Contrast this with Kaidan. I see Kaidan as someone who is considerate and not particularly wasteful. (That doesn’t stop me from making jokes, though.) I also see him as someone who is not interested in spending his parents’ money and would rather depend on himself alone, so if he’s spending money it’s out of his own paychecks that he gets as an Alliance marine. (This scene from Crazy Rich Asians is pretty much exactly how I envision Kaidan on this subject.) All of this is to say that I don’t see him dropping thousands of credits on every new toy he wants with no second thoughts (and I do think he’d pause at big price tags, particularly because I feel like living extravagantly is something the Alliance would discourage)…but the fact remains is that he does have that safety net and he always has. He’s never truly had to worry about being homeless, and if he’s had to worry about starving it’s because he’s a biotic, not because he doesn’t have the money to support himself.
There are also other behaviors that would be borne from growing up in poverty, like Earthborn Shepard being unwilling to part with old equipment until she absolutely has to (the Alliance makes being a hoarder rather difficult) because what if she needs it later? What if she can get some more use out of it somehow? Yeah it’s broken but it’s hers, she still needs it, go away. Kaidan would hang onto certain things (omni-tools, amps, weapon mods) longer than most people would too, but it’s because he’s a tinkerer and likes tech stuff.***** My Shepard is too, but it’s more than that and it’s that “more” that’s different.
When it comes to this difference in their socieo-economic class, I don’t think it’s something that’s particularly noticed or brought up during the trilogy. The only times I can think of where Shepard might get the realization Kaidan is different from her in this regard is in the Pinnacle Station DLC if Shepard win’s Ahern’s bet and gets his apartment on Intai'sei, or during the Citadel DLC. But even then, I feel it would a very brief realization she pushes to the side because it’s frankly not important right now and they have more important things to worry about. Like, you know, Reapers. So I think this is something that would only come to a head post-war, but it is definitely a source of tension on her end that they would need to tackle at some point.
Otherwise…remember how I said the reason my Shepard is renegade leaning and emotionally closed off is because she’s Earthborn? Let me bring back Sha'ira’s words:
“I see your skin, tough as the scales of any turian. Unyielding. A wall between you and everyone else. But it protects you, makes you strong.”
This is what she says specifically to Earthborn Shepards. Colonists and Spacers get something different. And really, this is how I see Earthborn Shepard. She’s someone who’s had to survive things - not a singular great tragedy, but a lifetime of hardship - and she’s someone who’s never had a support network. She’s the way she is because she’s never known any different. She’s not renegade leaning and emotionally closed off because she thinks it’s badass; she’s renegade leaning and emotionally closed off because being any different would have gotten her killed before now. I think this is a very, very important distinction Kaidan has to realize to make their relationship work, because otherwise I do think Kaidan would have a hard time being in a (successful and long-term, anyway) relationship with renegade leaning Shepards. Integrity and stuff like that is too important to him; if he feels like Shepard follows no moral code and is unabashedly selfish, why would he want to associate with them more than he has to? I can’t see him wanting to.
It is a very hard and long process for my Shepard to learn that it’s okay for her to be vulnerable sometimes. This is the greatest source of conflict within how I play Kaidan’s romance. Shepard is unyielding and only gives Kaidan’s scraps - remember how I said she doesn’t tell him she loves him until the beam run? Yeah, Kaidan doesn’t deserve that. No one deserves to be strung along in a relationship where they’re the only ones putting themselves out there, but that’s what Kaidan does for a lot of the trilogy. I don’t play it that way because I think it’s romantic or because I think Shepard is in the right; I play it that way because I like the idea of someone learning that it’s okay to be loved and to love in return, particularly when they don’t feel like they are lovable. But like I said, it’s a long process, and the only reason her and Kaidan’s relationship doesn’t burn out and die is because Kaidan consistently puts himself out there so that she doesn’t have to. This is why it’s important to me that Shepard’s the one to propose post-war, because I feel like it’s only fair she put herself out there that way for a change.
(For the record, I don’t think Kaidan takes all of this lying down. I know he has no way out when it comes to Shepard, and it’s for that reason I think he’s willing to put up with a lot more than he knows he should, but he still knows that…well, no, he doesn’t deserve this and that Shepard has to do better. He has to become really adept in Shepard-speak by the end of the game, and I think that helps a lot - he knows Shepard is trying and that she loves him even if she doesn’t say it, it’s just…messy. But it’s definitely something they talk about post-war, along with the socio-economic stuff.)
So now how do their game classes interact? Well, because so much of Shepard’s experiences are a mystery to Kaidan, I wanted Shepard to be on that end for once. Yeah, Shepard’s lived through things Kaidan has never had to - but likewise, Kaidan has lived through things Shepard has never had to. She’ll never understand what it’s like to be a biotic and just what, exactly, that means. I feel like Earthborn Shepards in particular would be exposed to a lot of anti-biotic sentiment growing up since they’re, well, Earthborn, and I think a lot of negative post-spaceflight sentiments (alien xenophobia, biotic discrimination, etc) would be concentrated on Earth because it’s the homeworld and they’re the least exposed to the rest of the galaxy.
But anyway, to get back on topic. L2 biotics build up static electricity. That means that it’s likely that if you touch them, you’ll get an electric shock. Imagine having to be conscious of that fact, and having to be constantly aware of your surroundings so you can unload that built up static electricity into something inanimate so you don’t accidentally shock someone. Little things like that are something someone who’s nonbiotic would never think about. Then there would be Kaidan’s post-mission regimen. He literally has a port on the back of his scalp that’s connected to his brain, or at least near it. He has to keep that clean, and you fight some really gross things throughout the trilogy. Thorian creepers? All that gunk? He has to be careful that his port never gets contaminated in a way nonbiotic Shepard never has to, because like…your omni-tool getting gunked up is way different than a port that’s literally inside of your head getting gunked up. (I also imagine this area in general is a sensitive area for biotics, like, not the kind of place they like anyone casually touching.) These are all things that would be frankly alien to someone who’s not a biotic. As an N7, I think Shepard would’ve worked with more biotics than the average marine like pre-Normandy Ashley and pre-Fehl Prime James, but she’s still not a biotic herself and has a lot of learning to do.
(I have several moments I consider landmarks in their relationship, and I think one of them is in ME3 when Kaidan is completely fine - comfortable, even - with Shepard touching anywhere near his port, when he wasn’t in ME1. It’s a massive sign of trust for him that’s not lost on her.)
None of this is even getting into the social treatment of biotics, either. This is something Shepard has to figure out for herself, which I think she does in ME1 with the Rahna story and stuff. Kaidan’s the way he is because he’s a biotic; you can’t separate that fact from him. You take away Kaidan’s biotics and you take away a lot of who he is as a person and why he’s that way. (…She probably can relate to that sentiment, though.)
They do have to have some things in common though. I don’t like the idea of them only bothering to talk to each other because they think the other is attractive and then it forms into something deeper, lmao. So that’s (part of) why my Shepard is an infiltrator******. Both she and Kaidan are unabashed tech geeks. You know how in ME3 if you bring Kaidan along to Tali’s mission, they have that argument about omni-tools? Yeah, my Shep and Kaidan have talks like that all the time about, like, everything tech related. They’ve also had the omni-tool talk because her preferred one is Savant, which he thinks is pretentious because I love the idea of Savant tech being seen as The Snob Tech of the industry because it’s so expensive and its users frequently insufferable. But I HC it’s the only omni-tool that can handle an infiltrator’s needs without overheating, including running the tactical cloak.
So that’s the common thread that gets them started between all the differences and the bad first impressions (she is renegade leaning, after all). I don’t think the way I play Kaidan’s romance is particularly popular, but that’s fine with me. I like a little conflict. I like the idea of two people not being inherently or instantly compatible, and having to work to form an understanding of one another. I like the idea of their relationship being something that they have to work for and keep working for, because while they love each other, sometimes love isn’t enough. You need communication, too. And that’s what I like, so that’s how I play them. (And also because I like angst - to a degree - and mutual pining, of which I think there would be A LOT of when you play Kaidan’s romance this way.) Obviously after a certain point things do become easier simply because they’ve been around each other long enough to develop a banter (”I’ve been thinking…” / “Oh, no. Okay. Hit me with it.”) and a better understanding of how the other person thinks. But you still need communication and I’m not interested in things ever being “easy” just because they’re so in love and that magically cures everything.
This was very, very long, and I know I apologized in the beginning but I’d like to do so again. You just managed to ask the exact question that I have put a lot of thought into and it was very hard for me to resist going full word vomit, lmao. Thank you very much for the ask!
(Also addendum, it’s so weird hearing her referred to as “Ramona”…I know that’s what I have down on my character page but I actually haven’t settled on a name for her yet despite her existing for like, almost 3 years at this point. Naming Shepard is singularly one of the hardest parts of Shepard-building for me, I don’t know why?! So for reference, Ramona and my “ch: nadia shepard” tag are the same character. Who knows if I end up sticking with either, but they are what they are for now lol. Also, you had absolutely no way of knowing this, I know. I actually assume no one reads my character pages, ever, so this ask is a welcome surprise!)
*This is another big thing with my Shepard, but it’s only tangentially related to Kaidan so I didn’t bother bringing it up in the main post. But particularly since she has the renegade scars? Oh, yeah. “Maybe I’m just an advanced VI that thinks it’s Commander Shepard” is putting how she feels about herself post-Lazarus mildly.
**I have a giant meta post that’s been sitting in my drafts since April about exactly this. Like, about Horizon and its aftermath and how it was allowed to happen to start with, and how the VS is uniquely and repeatedly manipulated against Shepard as a means to hurt them. I should really finish that post, because damn, I love Horizon.
***Specifically on Earth; owning land on colony worlds probably isn’t as much of an indicator of wealth
****To be fair, I think in ME2 this is alleviated somewhat because it’s TIM’s dime and spending his money on useless shit is one of the only way she can rebel without showing all her cards
*****I read a HC once that said because Kaidan’s an L2, it’s probably a lot harder for him to find L2-compatible biotic amps, so I can see him being very protective and hoard-y when it comes to his amps
******Also, sniper rifles. It’s offensive to me as a lesbian that femShep has twig arms when those sniper rifles weigh A TON; there is no way her biceps wouldn’t be out of this world. It’s doubly offensive when you consider the fact Kaidan’s buffer than she is despite being a Sentinel. (I ignore this and pretend it doesn’t exist, much like a lot of Kaidan’s ME3 appearance.)
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Jasmine Nightflame’s Backstory
Jasmine Nightflame originally came from Avalon. Raised by the foxes Mariota and Caera, Jasmine grew up thinking that lesbian couples were the norm. She was in for a huge shock when she came to Wizard City and met her first heterosexual couple. But that comes later. Dubbed originally Aanor, Jasmine chose her first and last name at the age of 8. When she was 8, Jasmine was told that in two years time, she’d be sent to Wizard City. Instead of keeping her Avalonian name (the name her mothers gave her), Jasmine decided to dub herself after two things. Jasmine (the flowering bush that grew above the trellis in her backyard) and Nightflame, her room was lit at night by her very own flame. Of course, the Night part of her taken name would turn out to be disturbingly apt.
The reason Jasmine was sent away from a loving home at age 10? Easy. You see, Mariota was a more Balance inclined fox, worshipping her own goddess of Adrestia. She excelled at keeping the peace in her home, giving Jasmine a happy, if rowdy, childhood. Caera took after a more myth based magic style. Allowing minions to appear and help her child in whatever Jasmine so desired. But of course, as happy as she was (and as great parents as Mariota and Caera were), Jasmine was a pyromancer by nature. Even at the tender age of 5, she was accidentally starting fires on an almost monthly basis. After 3 years of dealing with fireproofing an entire cottage, the two agreed that it would be best for all of them if Jasmine took a tutelage in Wizard City to master her natural talents.
When she turned 10, Jasmine was sent away to a (thankfully fireproof) dorm. Since her mothers were (in comparison to Wizard City prices) very well off, Jasmine could dip down into the Shopping District. There she bonded with a fire breathing dragon named Max, (which made her roommates glad that the dorm was fireproof), and showed him off to her friends: Calamity Drakebringer (a lovely necromancer from Wysteria), Rowan Mythhunter (a Marlybonian conjurer), and Calamity Legendwhisper (a Krokotopian Theurgist).
When she began her formal (as formal as Wizard City provides) schooling under Dalia Falmea, Jasmine grew to have better control of her powers. The second she could, Jasmine learned her secondary school of Life under the teachings of Moolinda Wu (dead set on keeping her teammates alive from a fear of hurting others). Slowly, she began to climb the ranks, finishing up with Wizard City as a whole. Firecat Alley was difficult and frustrating for her, but she shouldered through it with the help of Calamity^2 and Rown. Helping out Rowan with Cyclops Lane, the four became fast friends and adventuring partners.
Krokotopia was the beginning of the beginning of the end for our lovely Pyromancer. On the more harmless side, Jasmine was a fanatic when it came to decorating her new castle with the loot she...pillaged from the pyramids. But the bad thing? With Krokotopia, came the Krokonomicon and all of its necromantic secrets. Now Jasmine’s a fire wizard (with a life secondary to keep her teammates alive), so she'd be the last expected person to get into necromancy (even with the fact that one of the Calamity’s is a necromancer). But during a solo dungeon (one her friends couldn't follow her in), she found a book. A book that allowed her to learn her first necromancy spell: Deer Knight. This was the first step onto a downward slope of learning necromancy (much to the chagrin of Drakebringer).
Grizzleheim came next, learning the runestones and their meanings. Defeating Grendels and Spiders and learning the Bigger Picture. It only fueled her fear of death, of what comes after, and whether or not someone is pulling her strings. She never liked Grandmother Raven, never enjoyed how she was made to obey a raven who wouldn’t move. Fighting bosses and almost dying over and over again. It brought her face to face with death over and over. Jasmine visited the Hall of the Ice Forge, looking up at the frozen giant, and she realized something: she would last forever no matter the cost. She made a small circle of runes behind her house, a circle for preparation.
Marylebone came after, and it was boring. All except for one part: electricity. Watching the inanimate golems walk around and even talk, not to mention Dr. Katzenstein's attempt to create life from dead body parts. But that was too storm-centered (not one of her strong suits, she’s too brash), and the only reason she enjoyed the world was meeting Rowan’s parents. A rather nice couple, if vaguely disapproving of the Necromantic Calamity and the darker leaning Jasmine.
Mooshu was unremarkable, for the most part. None of her friends came from this world, but it did gift her a perfect house for her pets to live. Of course, there were the spirits. Buried and then unburied and Jasmine realized how finicky death is. Such a simple thing to ruin and unearth. She made another promise to herself, for her body (if she ever did die) to be burned (what comes from fire must return to fire) and her ashes scattered. She wasn't going to risk losing herself to a necromancer who needed a body.
Dragonspyre solidified her ideals. The ghosts (tormented) tried to warn her away, but the crystals (trapping energies trapping memories) were her goal. So she gained them. Gained a sash of crystals (different sizes but multiplying and growing like a belt), and there was where she put animus. Trapping minor (level 5 and below) enemies into smaller crystals, and boss energies in main crystals, Jasmine’s new sash had all the lights of the Aurora Borealis. Animus became almost an obsession of hers.
Celestia brought mainly two new revelations: astral schools and Morganthe. But not all of the schools did Jasmine enjoy; moon spells bored her, star spells never lasted long enough for her plans (once quick tempered and rash, now terrifyingly strategic, she gets the job done fast, leaving her teammates staring at her in muted horror). But sun spells? She learned the damage ones, the accuracy ones, but never bothered with the healing ones. Healing comes second to dealing the most damage. With more damage, the battle ends sooner and the sooner she can get more animus.
But of course, I did mention two developments that were happened to her. The most damaging one was named Morganthe. Jasmine first realized something was wrong when Morganthe showed up and she found herself agreeing with the spider queen. This led to her shutting herself away in the bowels of her Balance house, and it was a chaotic house afterwards. You see, Jasmine (throughout her trails through the Spiral) was a collector of pets, and put them in separate rooms according to what school they belonged to. And let's just say all seven rooms of her underground Balance house (her mother was a Balance leaning woman, and she chose this house because the statue of Lady Justice reminded Jaz of Caera and home), were fucked up in response to Jasmine's emotions.
Ruled by her emotions, that's the best way to define Jasmine post learning Deer Knight. So when she realized she was slowly turning to the dark side, her house reacted in kind. The life room began to grow vines, coiling up and choking everything that wasn't the pets. The ice room was in a constant state of blizzard and frostbite. The death room stunk like a freshly robbed grave and made her sick to even enter. The storm was a monsoon and the myth room blinked in and out of existence. The fire room was an inferno. The only room left safe? Balance. There Jasmine stayed, whispering reverent prayers in the tongue of her mothers in front of Lady Judgement to save her. But of course, as she feared, no one answered.
From Celestia (and the freak out that was caused there), things went in a slow (almost unnoticeable until it was too late) downward spiral. Wysteria (though it was the home of Calamity) only served to fuel her competitiveness, anger at the stuck up Pigwick students and the cheating natures there. Tower of the Helephant made her vicious, prepared to do anything to defeat her enemies. There was very few undead enemies there, which was good. Jasmine didn’t think she could deal with the idea of her inevitable mortality so soon after realizing she was now working against her school.
Zafaria taught her the ways of political power, how to say just the right things to get people on your side. She had to play safe there though, after all Merle was watching her closer after rumors of what Morganthe had told her spread. Jasmine successfully got him off of her back, after all she did rescue an entire field trip worth of students, that was certainly heroic of her. But really, after seeing the skeletal body of an old king shake itself back to life, Jasmine thought again on what will happen when she dies. ...If she dies.
Avalon...hurt. Her mothers were alive, of course I'm a dyke I don't kill my lesbians, and they still loved her. But there was a darkness that her Balance mother and her Storm mom could see, and it worried them. But they welcomed their daughter back into their home with open arms, and just had to pray to their goddess that she would turn out alright. Avalon hurt in another way as well, in the backstory of Morganthe and what exactly she did to gain her power. The tangled crown of roses put upon King Artorius’s head made her decide on buying a life house.
In the basement of the lifehouse, Jasmine created her shrine. A tapestry of the Spider Queen flanked by swords, with an obsidian chest placed down in front of it. Grinding and fighting for hours upon hours upon days, Jasmine eventually siphoned enough animus from Lord Nightshade to trade his spirit inside of her house. Now he and his Field Guard minion guard her chest.
Azteca taught her consequences. Taught her how fragile a world could be and how it could end. Of course, there was also more Morganthe. More honey soaked lies that Jasmine was eager to believe. It was lucky she wasn't doing the dungeons alone, as her traveling companions pulled her back from the brink time and time again. (Jasmine feared the solo dungeon that would tip the scales). Or did she anticipate it eagerly? It’s been too long for her to remember or care to try to.
Aquila gave her pride, she defeated gods themselves and did it over and over again just for the fun of it. Her traveling companions worry about the gleam in her orange eyes as she struck down Hades himself. She struck down countless gods, uncaring about how ruthless she had become. As she donned the gear of the gods, her hands came ablaze with blue fire, and she burned her handprint into the throne of Hades himself. A marker for all those who follow in her footsteps to defeat the gods.
Khrysalis...changed her. She learned shadow magic. She learned how to take advantage of what drove Morganthe to the cliff's edge and she took the bull by the horns. Her eyes gleamed and her freckles turned stark white against her dark skin. Shadows (blacker than the natural tone of her skin) curled around her arms and legs and torso like the shadow of a light source that wasn't there. And there...she defeated Morganthe, and she became Morganthe. And she no longer cared.
#my oc#Jasmine Nightflame#wizzy fandom#wizzy101#w101#wizard101#Mariota nightflame#Caera nightflame#Calamity Drakebringer#Rowan Mythhunter#Calamity Legendwhisper
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