#but DL’s was always just that special kind of magic | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

fragileizywriting · 1 year

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Me, squishing Kitty and DL!Adrien together: Don't mind me just making them make out...don't look for the Chat doll, I've done dispicable things with him and Kitty already-

<- previous post

he can't fuck her— he really, really can't, but that doesn't mean she's sad about it.

it starts because she's mumbling about how she doesn't feel as special as the other marinettes. it's hard being a lady noire; to be an 'expected' ladybug and yet have to turn the other way from it because of a mistake that ended up shaping her entire life. destiny slipping out between her fingers like sand and she's learned better than to try to scoop it back up.

leaning her head on his shoulder, talking about how she can't even pick the flowers that marinette wants and needs makes her feel useless. she wants to help, it sings in her bones and vibrates in her gums, about how useful she can be. how useful she should be to everyone.

"you're the most combat-ready marinette here, you know."

"me being able to handle a knife isn't exactly useful."

that raise of his brow is all at once condicending and unimpressed. "now you're just saying shit. who's the one who brought home a tuna the size of luka, all by herself? i heard you pulled that beast out of the lake with your bare hands, screaming about becoming more powerful than god."

she had to prove herself, and she has a chronic habit of spitting out word salad when in extreme stress. had she injured her back? maybe. sitting is kind of hard. and she'd eaten shit many times, falling into the lake while chat and the naga-luka yelled out to ask her to stop before she drowned, but she perservered.

that tuna had tasted amazing.

"but i can't make magic poof out of my hands!" she groans. "look at me! there's no magic! me doing the spidey hand doesn't make silk pop out with a thwap, but i promise you, your marinette could make something happen." she makes the move just to prove it, curling her middle and ring finger in and aiming for a tree. the only thing that happens is a pinecone falls, pinging off an exposed root, rolling away. "she'd make something cool happen. i'm depressingly human."

and she's the only marinette that is, too.

"'depressingly human', huh? alright. come here, already," adrien laughs, even though she's sitting back down right next to him with a huff, nearly ontop of him already. he's not mean to her, and he's definitely not cruel, but there's a flash of something in his eyes very few times when they talk, like he can't help himself with the way he responds whenever she does something. maybe they're just pre-programmed to talk to each othr in a specific way, even if they aren't actually the marinette or luka or adrien they ended up instinctually replying to. "you're getting antsy."

if she had her cat ears, she'd flatten them. "w...what?"

"whenever my marinette feels antsy, she's gotta sit here." he pats his knee.

"why?" she asks, blinking at him with wide eyes.

"because it makes her feel better. and it'll make you feel better, too."

and it does.

it does because it's adrien, and even though he's not her adrien, she still fits under his chin. even with all her skirts and all her petticoats ballooning out like she's the topping of a cupcake, strong arms still wrap around her while she keeps talking; babbling about how she doesn't feel like she's providing a lot as a member of the 'marinette' club, to where she doesn't even feel like a marinette. it always seems like marinettes know what they're doing. always have a plan and an idea. she's just comedic relief— and boy, does she do it well— but she's not... marinette.

"i think you're plenty marinette."

"doesn't it sound weird calling me that, though?"

"a little. you're more 'kitty' to me than anything else, but i'd be stupid not to recognize your soul as any other person."

"is that a thing?" she asks him. he smells nice. he doesn't squirm when her nose presses into that dip of his neck, nor does he swallow dry when she impulsively licks. his dark skin is beautiful, and flush, and this scent of fresh linen and sandalwood is making her head spin.

"oh, yeah." that huff feels full of irony. "demons have soul-perception in my world, and the three of you look exactly the same inside. little butterfly wings fluttering in there. which is how i know you, a gremlin, are just as much as a marinette as them."

she finds herself giggling. "that's not nice."

"i know my hellcat," he says, simply, almost oblivious to how she quiets and burrows closer. she's pinking as he continues talking, smiling to herself in a way that makes her feel a full decade younger. one of his hands reaches down to pet at her thighs, the other supporting her back— neither of them say anything when her knee jerks at the contact. "and you're the only one, it's true, but you're marinette first and foremost."

she grabs for that hand in her lap. he has rings just like her, though they're different shapes. she still has the one that marinette gave her the last time, on her pinky.

but him? his are so different. one for his family— a family jewel, of course— and one on his middle finger that is so simple and so plain, she never would've guessed it was his favorite. the last one is his— his— but it's hers, too. he's always had it, and never realized that it wasn't just a random accessory, until she'd mentioned it the last time (first time) they'd met.

she tries not to purr, seeing it adorning his hand. "we chat noirs have to stick together."

"i guess i am one, now, huh?"

"whatever you did, it was really brave. i know how scary it is to become one and realize just how much you are. i guess it helped you become a king?"

"it did. it was a mess. almost comedic. lord, you just won't believe how i fucked up the place where i spent my entire childhood and realized i'd transformed."

"i bet it was beautiful."

"sort of. in a way."

"i don't have any doubt that it was," she whispers. "there's something cathartic about breaking everything you can, isn't there?"

"there is," he says. smiling. because he understands— not in a way that her adrien would, or luka either. there's a home in the fire that burns what they touch. he takes her hand in his; peels off the family jewel off his thumb and gives it to her. "these two, on my hands," he murmurs into her ear, soft and gentle and rolling, "are what kept me going after i realized what i did. and what i could do."

her heart flutters. the chat noir ring. her ring. their ring. "good."

his hand fists her petticoats. "want me to show you how?"

it's almost amazing how she doesn't pop her head off on accident with the way she bobbles. "yes!" and, because she knows that her sunshine likes it when she's honest and open and willing, she punches out a: "please, adrien, can you show me?"

he kisses her temple. he kisses more than just that, actually, leaning her head back and away so he can line her cheek with chaste presses of his mouth against her skin that has her shivering. though she's wearing what seems to be a whole wedding dress full of fabric swishing around her legs, he finds a way for it to bunch up enough to trail up her leg. when his lips touch hers, she remembers just how much she enjoyed taking caramel candies from the pantry past bedtime without her parents knowing. the thrill of the kiss is shocking, enough to get her brain to buzz and float.

his fingers find their way under her panties so quickly. there's no preamble— her adrien would tease her softly with his fingertips; he would trace the seam of her folds and press a nail into her clit until she strangled out how she was ready to be fingered bcause she was wet enough. but this adrien, not her adrien, but an adrien that knows her in a way that her adrien doesn't, touches her leaking hole.

she sucks in a breath when he breeches and starts to slide in.

"i can't fuck you," he tells her. he's not fingering, not yet, but letting her adjust against his fingers. she can feel her heartbeat down there, almost syncopated with how it thrums in her teeth. "i physically can't. i'm not human; i don't have..."

her head is spinning, wiggling in his lap. there's poprocks in her brain. "oh, you don't have a—"

"—i do," he laughs. "hey. easy. you can feel me underneath your ass, don't you?"

yes. sizeable. no wonder she's so antsy to get his fingers inside. "y-yeah."

"yeah," he breathes. a shift of his hand, angling his wrist upwards so he can press up into her bladder has her whining. "but it'll hurt a lot. too much. you're too small. i can't fuck you because i don't have the space."

"i punched gabriel in the face and all i did was scream in excitement," she slurs out. "i can handle excitement."

"i believe you, hellcat. but if your heart beats any harder than this, i might give you a heart attack, and i know your adrien is sweet and kind, but i've seen him get sadistic to the point it's humiliatingly good." and with that, he quiets, pressing up and curling his fingers, his rings getting slippery and shiny from her arousal.

she does her best not to cry out too loud in the middle of this forest when she finally orgasms.

#speakizys #demon lovin #sharks and sugar #fire lily petals #izycrossover

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adiabolikpastel · 7 months

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Is it okay if I ask you for more information about the elite school you created for your AU?

I'm curious to know how the students live together, or if there are any special events or academic competitions. Can you imagine a tournament where the best representatives of each demon race face off?

The Wolves and Eagles would demonstrate their brute strength and agility and the Vampires and Víboras would demonstrate their intelligence and skill with magic.

Sorry if this is weird, I just love your ideas and always want to know more of the AU you've created for DL. :')

ahh~ stop Anon, you are too sweet. I am so glad that you find the world interesting! I work hard on it, and with ask like this one, it gives me the chance to add more to it - so thank you so much!

Let's see...

●・○・●・○・● | ●・○・●・○・● | ●・○・●・○・●

How the Students live together

There are a couple of different ways a student can board, again think of this much like Ouran Academy (Ouran High School Host Club). As a parent you have the option to allow your child to stay on campus, buy a housing unit for them, or have the commute each day.

Students who live on campus have dorms which are divided by age and class - so say you are a Primary Student in class 1-A, you would only be able to room with any other student in classes 1-A through 1-E. Similar if you were in class 2-A, you could only have a dorm mate that was in another similar class 2-A through 2-E.

Dorms are located closer to the school's main campuses, corresponding with the age group within them. Each dorm building is slightly different when it comes to being co-ed, while no room can have different sexes in the same room, the building itself may or may not. The size of rooms also vary, but each one is still luxurious. Singles are more like studio apartments, and there can be as many as four occupants in the larger rooms.

Students who decide to have their own housing have just that, their own housing it is just located on the schools campus. As we talked about before, similar to Mahora Academy (Negima! Magister Negi Magi), the school's campus is large enough to be considered a city. While staff members and those who work in the local businesses live around, there are designated housing units that are for student use. These are on a rent basis, and are restricted to the college level students.

Then of course anyone is able to return home each day if they so wish, and come back in the morning. Students who live in the dorms are encouraged to go home on the days they have off of school, so that deep cleaning can be done to the dorms each week. Housing students are free to come and go as they wish, and have cleaning services on call if they need.

●・○・●・○・●

Any Special Events or Academic Competitions

So this school does have a ranking system for their students, like a lot of other anime material out there. Think of any Isekai or second life anime where there is a ranking system based off your power, and you are given a crest or special something based on that - that kind of thing exist here.

If you think about Fumizuki Academy (Baka and Test) where your class letter reflects your rank, that happens in this Academy too - however, no one is given terrible classrooms like in Fumizuki. So, if you are powerful you are in the A classes, while the weaker ones are in E. Those ranking can change throughout the year depending on your performance - where there are quarterly exams.

I have also mentioned in a previous ask that the school does not have a strict advancement policy - meaning you could be a 'high school' student and have dropped out of math back in primary school. I searched my blog for the post that explained it - but sadly cannot find it to link, I apologize. If you want me to go into details on this I can.

As far as events go - like sports and cultural days - I'd like to say yes. I don't want it to be so bland that it's like any other anime that has those kinds of things, since this is the Makai not human world Japan. Off the top of my though I would say they would be similar.

If you went to school in America you might know something like 'Around the World Day' where each classroom would talk about a different country and you could go around the school and learn about them - this being in Elementary. I like to think that that younger kids have this kind of event, but instead of by class the school have a specific staff member that is that race's advisor or representative for the students. They help organize the students and create displays or activities for others to learn about one another. After all as the Demon World's elite future, they must know about one another.

There is also the quarterly exams in each grade level, to determine your class rankings. They are done on the power level only - not academic, since that is handled separate. Academics are done bi-yearly, but they are not done on a large public scale. While there is no school mandated or authorized competition of races - it is common among the students to create such stakes.

Venturing into spoiler-ish areas for the Tormented Reverie Another Daydream story - since the Vampires are the current Demon King race (as Shu sits as the demon king), they are seen as the top in terms of power. More is expected of the Bat clan, and those that come from it. That being said however, the big four kingdoms still reign over any other demons - those being Bat, Wolf, Snake (Vibora) & Eagle (Adler).

#ask mun #ask answered #Tormented Reverie Another Daydream #world building #i have to name this school at some point

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wardencommanderrodimiss · 4 years

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Witches, Chapter 23: a long overdue reunion, and reckoning.

[Seelie of Kurain Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

[Witches Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

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Phoenix wakes with his phone buzzing beneath his pillow like someone is calling and letting it ring to eternity, but when he brings it, still vibrating, into sight, there is only a location printed on the small screen. He punches the keyboard to text back K and rolls out of bed. How does texting the fae work anyway, he wonders. He’s wondered it for years and never asked. Does the text float up in her mind visually, or does she hear his voice in her head? And what voice would she hear if it was someone else texting from his phone? His or theirs?

As he blinks to ease the heaviness of sleep from his eyes, the red lights of his bedside clock tell him it’s not even 5:30.

Damn it all, Maya.

She’s left him with no indication of what this is about, how long it will be - if he’ll have time to make it back here before work to change into his suit. After a few seconds more thought he puts on jeans and a t-shirt, in case she shoves him in a lake, and if he’s late to the office then he’s late. He leaves a note for Trucy on the table so she’s not surprised when she gets up for school, and he slips out of the apartment into the dark Los Angeles morning, with no idea what awaits him.

It could be a conversation about Thalassa. After he saw her he called Pearl and told her everything that had happened that he thought could help, and she promised that she would tell Maya everything. And then he told Pearl plenty more that he knew wasn’t related to magic much at all. He has no one else to talk to about Thalassa, no human he can ask for advice. Maybe the reverse is creating a serious problem, too - that Thalassa has no one at all, besides Phoenix, and she doesn’t want to divulge too much in case it leads him to do something reckless. Is “therapist specialized in magic people” too niche of an occupation to make a living out of? Even if it’s not, the only person he has to float that idea by is Athena, and - like hell he would. That’s a can of worms he isn’t unpacking.

It’s been a week since then. Maya could’ve called him if she had thoughts on Thalassa - or more than likely, relayed a message to Pearl to get back to Phoenix. He’s spoken more with them in these past eleven months than they had for the last five years, but it’s always Phoenix reaching out with a new quandary that goes through one of the others. For Maya to reach back, stretch her hand out across the gulf - he’d expect it to take more than this.

Unless she’s figured something out. And even then she could have called.

Or she’s figured something out and wants to push him in a lake. No one ever said she’s not capable of holding two thoughts in her head at the same time.

The years have not been kind to Gourd Lake. It was a nice park in the springs and summers, when the trees flowered and the grass covered the ground in full, and even when the winters turned the lakeside sparse and gray, there were enough people who passed through to give it some sort of life. But it collected its share of incidents, all after Larry broke the seal and released an actual lake monster in the course of trying to set up a hot dog stand, and some time after the (phony!) president of Zheng Fa was nearly assassinated there, the cold, unlucky heart of the lake pooled outward, and whether people consciously decided it had too much of a reputation or made the decision without really knowing why, they started to find other places for summer picnics.

It was always a gross lake that no one would go swimming in, anyway. Far too much mud and weeds.

Around the lake it gets chilly sooner in the year than other parts of the city, and the still morning air turns crisp as Phoenix walks up the main path, through the trees whose leaves yellow and flutter down onto the patchy grass below. Nature overtook the old boathouse years ago, and no one ever tried to repossess the boats for other things; Gourd Lake is now a BYOB (bring your own boat) lake, and algae and rot and nesting wild geese laid claim to Yanni Yogi’s fleet. Trucy says the rumor at school is that said boathouse is a certifiably haunted structure and that her classmates dare each other all the time to break in and never do, as afraid of the geese as they are of ghosts.

If those investigation days with Maya, both of them stressed to hell and Edgeworth’s life on the line, hadn’t carved the full map of Gourd Lake in his mind, he wouldn’t know where to push through the bushes to find the old boathouse. The woods had almost a life of their own the way they swallowed it up so thoroughly, almost like the park itself wanted to erase it. He bats aside branches and knocks leaves from them, and after wading into the thicket finds a bit of a thin path where the foliage hasn’t been trampled down but has moved aside, as though of its own accord. Like the branches are all tied back with invisible strings.

With the boathouse in view, he starts to notice frost on the ground, as patchy as the withering grass. All of the colors of the woods seem desaturated and muted, overlaid by a brown filter - everything except a few scattered flowers caught up in the bushes like someone carelessly plucked them from a bouquet and tossed them to land wherever. He recognizes these flowers; couldn’t for the life of him name them, but their thin red petals and spindly spidery red thin - whatever they are that pop up from the center of the flower, are pretty distinct. His grandparents told him that they were flowers that back in Japan meant death. They had them at their funerals, and even if they weren’t all that, they’re, well - Maya’s flower. The ones that show up in a ring when she shows up, unbidden by everyone but herself.

(He’s not sure what to think about the “death” connotation, especially when the fae of the Winter Court came to LA by way of Japan, too.)

And there she is, sitting cross-legged on the dock that is collapsed half into the lake. Paying no mind to the edge of her long ivory-colored skirt trailing into the lake, or the ends of her sash slipping through the gaps in the dock, she holds her hands stretched out in front of her, palms flat over the water about a foot above the surface. Her hair is a billowing, insubstantial cloud of smoke around her head; six orbs like pearls float around her face, the arc of the two sets of three meeting in the center at her magatama that pulses with a soft rainbow of light. The water freezes in a thin sheet of ice that cracks apart and melts and refreezes beneath her hands and the sharp white claws at her fingertips. Her mouth, moving silently, has the shape of any human’s mouth, a normal one, until she lets out an audible scream of frustration. All of her red eyes snapp open bright against her pastel purple skin, and her mouth splits across her face in a wide slash of teeth. The ice breaks apart for the last time and the water goes still; Maya’s hair coalesces into a sheet of inky black, tumbling back down around her shoulders, solid and subject again to gravity.

“What were you trying to do?” Phoenix asks, standing at the water’s edge where the dock meets the shore, unsure if the old wood will also take his weight.

“Maybe it’s the water,” Maya mumbles, reaching into one of her sleeves and producing a small scroll which she unravels and passes her hand over the scribblings on it. The mixture of English and Japanese and some other symbols that Phoenix can’t ascribe to any known language changes beneath her fingers into new sloppy marks. Even her magical writing can’t fix her atrocious handwriting. “Because the way it translates could either be a specific kind of water that isn’t named because it was assumed everyone would know it, or water, general, any…” She drums her claws on the scroll and more words and characters appear in the margins around what was already written.

“Maya?” he asks, again, now considering that she’s ignoring him on purpose.

“There’s this new spell I’m trying - new old spell, it’s absolutely ancient and that’s why I’m having issues with what the components are.” She shuffles the scroll back into a roll and slides it back up her sleeve. “The language it’s written in is imprecise so at this point I have to experiment and hope that it doesn’t go catastrophically wrong.”

“Is this spell what you called me out here to talk about?” Phoenix asks. “Or just something you’re working on while you waited for me, which is why we’re—” He gestures around at the lake, at the boathouse, at the boats half sunken into the murky brown water. He’s not sure this location is haunted-haunted the way people generally refer to such - there’s no ghost, a floating white translucent figure, in the boathouse, but there are ghosts, memories with cold teeth, all around them.

He doesn’t really want to be out here. He can hear it in the breeze: don’t forget DL-6.

She pops up onto her feet in one quick motion, swinging her skirt out of the water; the cloth has no muddy stain like it should. The purple drains from her skin, her mouth shrinking, and her extra eyes close up and the two that remain gain whites and dark centers. “Hi, Nick, long time no see!” she says, and the cheery chirp of her voice doesn’t sound right. Sarcasm sours every word. “I’m doing all right! How are you? See, isn’t it nice to take the time to catch up with someone you haven’t talked to ages, rather than just trying to get right down to the point as though we’re merely business associates and not friends? That’s pretty rude, don’t you think?”

“Hi, Maya,” he says, and if he does ask her how she is now, she’s just going to go in for another round of mocking. The only good choice would have been, as she says, starting with the friendly greeting. But she also woke him up hours early and dragged him all the way out here, and being terse is somewhat justified. Isn’t it?

“I realized something, the other day, when Pearly caught me up on what’s going on with your siren.” Maya clasps her hands behind her back, turning away from Phoenix to look out over the water. “Memories are, in no small part, connected to the mitamah, which is why our changed child in question has the trouble that she does. Time, distance, whatever, that part isn’t super important right now. I mean, this isn’t actually about her, what I’m working on right now. I’ll get back to her. But this is important - Nick this is a revelation!” She spins around, robes and hair all swirling wide, red excitement beaming through her dark eyes. “I finally understand! I was looking in the wrong places - I kept trying to understand ghosts, like Sis, or if there was - necromancy, such a thing, or a way to channel and commune with the dead - but it wasn’t ever really about that! It’s not - it’s not an active conversation like I thought it must have been. It’s about memory!”

“What is?” Phoenix asks. He has honestly never quite understood how it works, when they talk about studying and learning new magic. He pictures like a vast library full of very ancient archival texts, but that has always seemed too accessible, for a society as hierarchal and stratified as the fae. Knowledge is power, and anyone else gaining power is greater odds of a knife in the back. And for all Maya is willing to go on and on like this about what she’s learned, she never ends up saying how.

“What my mother did! During the DL-6 investigation!”

The breeze skims across the surface of the water, sending ripples to the shore where they break against the old wooden boats.

Phoenix steps out onto the dock. Ice clings to the edges of it, over the algae. The question has puzzled them for years: the official police reports, the ones Redd White leaked, said that the fae that helped them “spoke” with the victim to gain insight that Yanni Yogi was the killer. But Phoenix and Maya can’t even speak with Mia - well, she can’t speak with them - and contacting the human dead is far beyond any magic any of them have ever known. It had seemed one last part of the case would never be solved.

“I haven’t been able to duplicate it.” Maya covers her mouth with her hand. Her fingers still have claws. “But there’s a spell, a very old bit of magic, that can call up the last memories of a dead person, human or fae. That must be what my mother did! She must have known this, and known what the key was - water is the important physical component, but—”

“You don’t know what kind,” Phoenix says, recalling her earlier mutterings.

“Right. I’ve tried ocean water, water from the falls in the mountains, water from the cave under Mount Mitama which is technically ocean water - none of it worked. I came out here to see if water with some sort of connection to the victim was the answer - it was Gourd Lake, or fill a bowl up with tap water and go sit in the courthouse elevator.”

“I’m sure the courthouse has seen weirder,” Phoenix says, “but it’s probably better that you didn’t.”

Maya joins him on the part of the dock that still stands above the lake and she sits leaning up against the boathouse, patting the spot next to her. He still doubts its stability, but if he keeps standing, he’s that much more liable to be pushed into the lake, and after weighing those odds, he sits down next to her. For a moment they’re both sitting cross-legged on the office floor, leaning up against the couch that’s piled high with case notes and takeout containers, formulating a trial plan as the television spouts some news neither of them pay attention to.

“This is magic ancient enough that it would have come with us from the Summer Court when we left,” Maya explains. “Which could be another reason I’m having trouble with it. The water might be from their waterfalls, or something special - it raises the question of how my mother knew, it’ll be something else to look into once we find the Summer Court.”

“There’s no records about where they’re located?” Phoenix asks.

“It’s active erasure - they didn’t allow us to know. There’s - from the seat of the Winter Court, I can sense the Vernal and Autumn Courts, if we” - she gestures between Phoenix and herself - “didn’t already know by family history where they’re at, but there’s just a bit fat block shutting us away from the Summer Court. And if I were to start pushing up against that wall, they’ll respond in kind - I’ll do it, of course, but I’m waiting for the solstice when we’re strongest and they’re weakest to try.”

“I guess, with the Winter Court being the Winter Court’s own worst enemies, I should have expected that you’d be on bad terms with the others.”

“Fae are fae’s worst enemies.” Maya brushes her hair back behind her shoulder. “And I kind of - um, intentionally obfuscate the history, when I say we left the Summer Court. It was a lot more like an exile. My branch of the family went to war for the throne and lost and there’s a legend that when we were thrown out we lost the ability to use certain kinds of magic but I’ve got no idea what those might be or if that part of the tale got twisted after all this time. I’m sure we could figure out all the nuances of what to do with mitamahs if we had more than me and my two cousins who are trying anything more than just grabbing it with brute force to be stronger.” She picks at a loose splinter on the dock. “Speaking of powers and exile, by the way, we must have seriously underestimated how powerful Magnifi was, all this time.”

“What do you mean?” Phoenix asks. “When did you find this out?”

Maya waves a hand dismissively. “A while ago, but you haven’t been in touch. It occurred to me, with the way the siren is still alive and walking around - having your soul taken doesn’t just make you immortal. Your heart stops working, you’re still stuck. When she was shot, someone had to heal her - Magnifi would have had to heal her, patch her up just enough. But healing magic is - Pearly barely knows a little, and she’s the best of us at it. It’s hard. And Magnifi should’ve lost most of his power on exile, but no, he could just…” She makes another dismissive hand gesture.

“He healed her and then just - sent her away?” Phoenix asks. Maya shrugs. Maybe once he realized her memory was unstable, he decided that her death as blackmail was more valuable than her life. “Could having hold of her soul have given him enough strength to do that sort of thing? The healing, the—”

“Could be. Then there’s the little pocket dimension he had set up for the Gramarye hideaway - that’s another real tricky thing. And then, your daughter, he bound a wisp to her for her to be able to control, gave her a blessing - a blessing to the siren, too, because I can’t imagine he would’ve thought Truth was useful before they entered the human world, sure it sometimes helps when someone’s hiding something but only sometimes - anyway. Good thing he’s been dead as long as we’ve known of him, else us underestimating him could’ve gone badly.”

And now he’s just another man causing problems for them long after his death.

“It was real brave of your daughter to reject her family’s legacy of so much hurt,” Maya adds, “but it’s unfortunate that it’s made this all so much more difficult.”

“What do you mean?” She’s never not jumped between different thoughts like this, but with so much to catch up on, it’s harder to follow than ever.

“Ownership of that mitamah should’ve gone to her. I mean, that was how it was supposed to work - Magnifi’s power gets passed down to chosen successors, that’s the plan. And if your little magician had accepted it - not to say she should have, just had she - then that soul would belong to her and she could do what she wanted with it, like give it back. Instead she rejected it, and Magnifi has no other heir by the legal standard he chose to set an heir by, so we’re left with - a mitamah is always supposed to have an owner.”

“But it’s just floating loose?”

“Exactly. And that’s why none of us know how to put it back. If someone owned it, they could set that term to give it back, but no one owns it and it isn’t naturally returning, either.”

He’s going to do his damndest to keep Trucy from learning this particular fact. She doesn’t need to feel worse about her family, doesn’t need to know that turning away from its legacy of pain still ends up continuing another kind of pain. “You’ve been busy, huh. Getting all this figured out.”

It’s treacherous ground he approaches, that yawning chasm of eight years between them. How much did she learn in that time, only to wait until now to catch him up on it? Even just what she must have discovered in the past year—

“I’ve wondered all this time why my mother helped the police with their investigation of DL-6,” Maya says, her eyes vacant and her claws tearing up new splinters from the dock. “Simply assuming that she was nearest to their summons never felt like an answer. I knew whatever she did was magic beyond my wildest imaginings, and she used it in the course of a human’s murder investigation. What could the police have offered her?” A small slice of wood snaps. She tosses it into the water where it floats in the midst of a tangle of reeds and matted fallen leaves. “She knew him, beforehand, Gregory Edgeworth. I found that out, asking around - the office that still uses his name, you know.”

“Mr Shields?” Phoenix asks, too confused about why Maya is going down this path to protest it. Ray’s never said, exactly, that he’s had close brushes with the fae before, but even if Phoenix didn’t have the Sight it would be obvious by the way he acts when the topic comes up.

“He mentioned - and I realized that was my mother. I know her only well enough to recognize her ghost.” Maya spits the last sentence like it’s a bitter taste, and when she pulls her hand away from the dock to rest it in her lap, the deep scratches of her claws in the old wood show her agitation. “And now when I’ve realized about what kind of magic she used, when I started trying it myself” - she gestures out at the water, and a faint trail of frost follows along the surface after the movement of her hand - “that left me another big question about that entire affair. What did she see, that the answer she gave to the police was, Yanni Yogi is the killer.”

Phoenix wishes he had even a clue where she’s taking this conversation.

Maya holds her hand up and starts ticking off the facts of the case on her fingers as she speaks. “Lawyer and bailiff were arguing and because of that, the son throws a gun. It makes impact with the ground and misfires. Gunshot, scream, he passes out. The other two must have moments later, else Yogi could have testified to who really committed the murder, or my mother viewing Gregory’s last moments would have seen von Karma. Is there really no difference between watching a man fall unconscious through his eyes, and watching him die, that she could have thought that first gunshot killed him? Wouldn’t she have known the scream was not his?”

Maya’s hands sink back into her lap. “She did not know any objective truth of the crime. She should not have been able to lay blame.”

“But she did,” Phoenix says.

“What were her words? Did she tell them it ‘most likely’ would have been Yogi? The police could have figured that for themselves - would they have accepted a vague answer from her? Or did she speak with certainty because she refused to entertain the idea that the son had killed his father?”

Maya’s mother left the Court long before DL-6 happened; her abandonment of her daughters was a refusal to play the Court’s game that time and again saw parent pit against child for a sliver more of power and status. She refused to consider the prospect of having to kill her daughters. (And Mia, down the line, forfeit the throne to her sister rather than worry that she might try to take it by force, rather than consider killing her now to prevent it and keep it for herself.)

There in the human realm, with a crime scene photograph and a dead man, did Maya’s mother again reject that concept, that possibility of patricide? Was it to save someone else’s son from that fate the way she tried to spare her daughters?

(Maya hadn’t thought much of her mother until she realized that, unlike most fae parents, her mother truly loved her, and then she like Mia wanted to find her, and then it was too late.)

“As she knew Gregory Edgeworth prior, she must have known how he loved his son,” Maya says. Phoenix’s throat tightens. He remembers - well, he remembers very little, is the tragedy. He better remembers von Karma’s steamroller objections, the furious wounded scream of a man finally beaten, the photograph of the inside of the elevator. “And I keep thinking, when I wonder what the police offered her, I am not sure that they did. Offer anything, I mean. I think she did this for - I think she must have respected him enough, or—”

She shakes her head, clears her throat, and it sounds rather like a growl. “She used magic that no one else in the Winter Court could have dreamed of. However she learned it, whenever she did, magic that powerful you don’t do on a whim. What’s equal payment for that? What could the cops have bargained with? Dignity doesn’t fetch a high price these days - they lost that on their own, my mother was involved in why, certainly, but not to blame - and the LAPD has never quite had a good name that they could sell.” She frowns, her eyes flashing. “And all they had was professional pride at stake, and people do nasty shit for that, but none of them are gonna be personally selling their souls or names for it, right?”

Manfred von Karma, Matt Engarde, Blaise Debeste, Kristoph Gavin - all monsters for their pride, to uphold their names and reputations, but none of them sold their souls for it. Maya’s right. Someone seeking out the fae for a matter they have little emotional investment in will draw a much firmer line than the frantic and desperate with personal problems they hope magic can solve, the kind of person who gets tangled in lopsided bargains and dangerous debts.

“So why would she do it?” Maya presses a contemplative finger to her mouth.

It seems only like supposition, that Maya is building a case on, a theory that there wasn’t an offer, or a good offer, made. That her mother wasn’t the kind to help for the sake of helping. (Mia saved Phoenix’s life but he could help her convict Dahlia in return. Mia was already a lawyer then. Before Elise became Elise, the artist, what was she? How did she care for humans?) But the fae know things and Maya, sometimes, knows things she doesn’t know how. This is her mother, the last queen, and maybe it’s more than supposition. Maybe she knows and doesn’t know she knows.

“But if it was me,” she continues, “when would I do that, for chump change? If it was you - you asking me, or you were the one that died - if I knew that magic, and it was you, then I would. So I think, why my mother ever got involved in DL-6, like I said, it was about Gregory Edgeworth. That she must have respected him enough, or loved him enough, that she would—” Maya sighs. She leans her chin on her hand. “I think damned doomed defense attorneys just have a draw for my family, whether to befriend them or become them.”

Or be the one who damns them, but besides Dahlia, Maya’s formula fits. And even if he presumes that she has given thought to this again because of the relevance of the memory matter, there’s still a reason she’s telling him this, and now. Of course he’d like to know, and she’d know that: they can never fully lay DL-6 truly to rest. It will always matter to them. But that can’t be all she’s thinking, because even with Maya it’s never just the surface level. There’s a moral to the story buried in its timing, or simply in that last sentence.

“Hey, Nick,” she says, her voice softer and less confident than before. “You remember when you were arrested for my sis’ murder, and that got me out of jail - and you told me you knew who did it, and you told me who. And I could’ve done anything that night you spend in jail. I knew what monster had killed my sister and tried to blame me and then blame you when you were the only person in the world on my side. I could have killed him. I really thought about it.” Maya pulls her knees in close to herself. “I really wanted to. But it wasn’t what Sis would’ve done. She could’ve killed him for everything she knew he did, but instead she spent years trying to bring him to justice through human courts. And if I killed him, then your name would never be cleared.”

Has that honestly ever occurred to him? He didn’t know Maya well enough to worry what she would do; and then once he did know her, he didn’t look back. Not to that. Not to ever notice it was weird that all she did, knowing the identity of the man putting them through hell, was go home to Mia’s office and put together the last pieces of the case, that list of names, on Phoenix’s behalf, because Mia wrote a note that asked her to.

“You told me you didn’t want me to,” Maya says, staring at her hands, fingers hooked together in front of her knees hugged up to her chest. “You said you wanted to know why he did it. I wouldn’t have killed Kristoph Gavin, not as long as you live and have a name that needed clearing. I’m fae, not a monster! All you had to do was trust me! That would’ve been easier than binding and banishing me to stay away!” She doesn’t stand up but she unfolds herself so that she is kneeling on the dock, her hands balled up in the fabric of her robes in her lap.

“I kept everyone out of it,” Phoenix says. It isn’t difficult to meet her eyes, even as smouldering red simmers up from their depths. This is a conversation he’s had before, justification he’s made to others and himself time and again. “It wasn’t just you. I didn’t want Kristoph to feel like he was being investigated like he would if all my friends started coming to him if I told them something was up. I didn’t want to tip my hand too soon.

More threatening than her glittering glare is her silence, because this is Maya, and Maya isn’t silent. He keeps talking even through his awareness that the longer he goes on justifying himself to her uncharacteristically stern face, the higher his chances of saying something regrettable. “And you especially - Kristoph hates the Court. You getting involved at all would just have been ugly.”

(When an orca tried to help her people, with those big teeth of hers, it looked like she was doing more harm. It saved no one, and made a more complicated mess of the truth in the end. But she wanted to help. She was an orca. What else could an orca do to help?)

“And you could think of nowhere else in your life that your friends are welcome - it’s help you investigate or nothing? No room for us otherwise? Not unless we’re usable by you?”

“That’s not at all what this was! And you know it, and you know you’re deliberately misinterpreting it.” This is what he’s been waiting for - the confrontation, the fight, about the years of distance between them. When she left him a message he expected that she was finally tired of him calling her and her family up for favors from a distance, that she was finally ready to indict him for it, and her restraint so far has been surprising. “I was afraid something would happen to you! Like I was afraid for Edgeworth! And I had to figure out how to raise a daughter! And you had a kingdom to rule! To reform its treatment of humans from the ground up, didn’t you tell me you were going to do that? When the hell were you planning time to watch kids’ shows at my office in the midst of all that!”

She bares her teeth at him but doesn’t make a verbal response more than a hiss.

“Besides,” he adds, furious but not at her, and rather furious that she’s tricked him into anger, “you can’t blame me for not trusting that you would leave Kristoph alone! You tried to talk me out of looking for the reason why he did what he did! You can’t blame me for thinking that the reason you wanted me to give up was so I would be fine with you killing him!”

“So what was his reason?” she demands. Her teeth have lengthened to points, her second small set of red eyes opening up at the outer corner of her main ones. “How about those locks, Nick, did you break them, did you find out why!”

He doesn’t even know why the locks were black. “I cleared my name,” he says. “I’m a lawyer again.”

“Yeah, would’ve loved to hear that from you.” Maya jabs a finger that lacks a claw into his chest, the spot where his lapel would be, where his badge would go.

“I…” He has no good answer to this one. It didn’t sink in, it didn’t sink in, and then he was busy on a case with no other thoughts to spare. He didn’t tell Larry. Edgeworth did. He didn’t tell Maya. Pearl did. And then they knew and there was no point to calling. Right?

She prods him several times more in the same spot, for emphasis, and then she yanks her hand away and furiously rubs at her eyes. Shit, is she crying? Before he can really tell, she is on her feet, staggering clumsily, her claws tearing rifts in the boathouse wall when she steadies her wobbling. Standing with her back to him, the movements of her arms tell him she is still wiping her eyes. Shit, she is crying. “You left me alone!” Her voice rings shrill out through the predawn silence. “You sent me away and left me alone! Like my mother left me! Like Sis did! You were supposed to be different! You could be different! Because you’re human!”

He’s a lawyer. He always tries to have a counterargument. He always tries to have anything to say, anything except the admission of wrongdoing, because that’s an admission that there is something that should be repaid. The fae don’t apologize. Humans don’t apologize to fae. Those become debts.

“Maya…”

“You were the one who wasn’t supposed to go away! You were the one - you’re my friend!” Maya’s hands drop to her sides. When she turns around, her skin is purple again, much harder to tell if her face was starting to redden and go blotchy. “I love Pearly with my whole heart but she’ll never be my friend, not really. She cares too much about our tradition and our hierarchy and thrones to ever look at me as an equal.”

“I know,” Phoenix says, not really to that, but to everything, to the fact that she’s more right than she is wrong and he’s the one who’s made a mess with almost everyone he’s loved in the past eight years. “But times change. We change.” The fae might hate change, strive to stop it from happening, but they still do. “We’ve both got all sorts of other responsibilities. Even if - it was never going to be the same way it was, when it was just the two of us and the office.”

“No,” she agrees, “but the problem wasn’t that we were different. It was that we” - she gestures back and forth between them - “were nothing at all.”

“Yeah. I…” He sighs. “I know I’ve not been a good friend.” He can’t even stick the lately qualifier on it. Eight years is not lately. “Not to you.” Or to Larry either, if he’s already thinking about this. He and Larry both know that they’re each closer to Edgeworth than they are each other. They knew that years ago. Maybe ever since Larry admitted that he was the one who had stolen Edgeworth’s lunch money, and all those years never told Phoenix that.

“You definitely have not.” Even if he said it, her echo of it hurts more than he expected. Maya sighs, equally heavy to his, and she sinks back to the dock next to him, leaning one shoulder against the side of the boathouse. “At least you figured out how to be a good father, Pearly says.”

Maya can’t say, really, because Maya hasn’t seen him, and him and Trucy, enough to know. Whether it’s that she’s thinking about, or something else, she goes quiet for a while, and they watch the sky slowly lighten from the faint but unerring approach of the sun up from beneath the horizon. Yellow autumn leaves fall with the breeze, landing in the water and casting ripples out from the impact. Maya reaches out and snags a leaf from the air, her claws puncturing its fragile surface.

“I’m sorry,” Phoenix says. It feels like a deeper debt he’s leaving open if he doesn’t say it; she couldn’t collect on silence, but his guilt would still be there and that’s a hell of a thing, guilt. For some things he’s said today, and some things he’s said eight years ago, and for some silence over eight years.

“I am too,” she says. “That you’re a jerk and that you didn’t trust me and that any of this happened and that we're both too petty to ever try and talk it out since. I kept wanting to hate you and I never could and I just got too tired to be angry.”

He had expected that anger, had wanted to wait for her to reach out, afraid that if he tried, she would be furious with him anew and tear him apart - this lack of yelling this morning was not the expectation. Maybe she’s matured - somehow, as queen in the pettiest, cruelest environment of them all, she’s grown up. Enough that she acknowledged her own failings there too, a little, even if she put the onus more on him. Deserve it as he might.

She catches another leaf and rips it apart and drops the pieces one by one in the lake. “I tried to do a lot of hating of you guys over the years. Sure I was mad at you, but it - it was more than that, considering when it was, you know? Just after - just not that long after…” She clears her throat. “I tried to hate them too, my mother and Sis, for leaving me to the throne, for making me be queen because if not me then it’s Pearly and I can’t make her do that. But I just kept thinking instead that I never knew either of them really. That you got more time with Sis than I did.”

And that time - and still, what would Phoenix do for more time with Mia? Real, actual time to learn from her, to speak to her and hear her voice in return, to share the office with someone more than a ghost. He had more time with her than Maya and now it still feels like nothing at all.

“There’s something I wanted to ask you, because I’ve said everything else, because I kept thinking about her,” Maya says, and the pace of her voice picks up, faster and faster, the frantic way of someone who expects to be rejected in what they are saying. “And you don’t need to answer me now, you can think about it and get back to me, and whatever questions you have we can figure out, but—” She inhales sharply. “But um, whenever you die - whenever that’s gonna be, in another hundred years or whatever—”

What’s a human lifespan, anyway, and why would she have bothered to figure it out in the decade she’s been friends with humans. Maya’s relationship with the passage of time is like Edgeworth’s with money: barely an inkling that they, and not the rest of the world, are the odd ones out. I said a month, and it’s been two days; what do you mean you thought it’s been more than a month already? - What do you mean, a private jet?

“—Whenever that happens, can I have your heart?”

Phoenix knew that whatever she was asking was going to be bad, messy, ugly, and a bit terrifying, when the question started with “whenever you die”, but somehow this exceeds his worst expectations. He pictures her holding it bloody in her claws, or maybe, less messy but no less morbid, the Mary Shelley route, with a calcified heart instead. (Iris read Frankenstein in one of her literature courses, and thought the story of Shelley keeping the supposed remains of her dead husband’s heart was as romantic as anything could be. Phoenix had not agreed, exactly, though he also hadn’t argued, exactly, either; his aversion to the gothic horror of carrying around a loved one’s heart had wilted in the face of his infatuation and the giddy glee that she might like him enough to want a memento of him if something happened. Ironically back when his heart was still soft enough that it would burn up on a pyre, not like he is now, a hard rock that could survive the flames.)

“What?” he asks. “My heart?”

“I mean,” she says, quickly, hurrying to get the words out but weirdly casual all the whole, “I’m not gonna ask you for your soul. Even if that’s where your memories are and memories are be the best way to know Sis - that’s your soul. I can’t just take that.”

Now there’s a statement that he would never expect one of the fae to make. Maya, always surprising him.

“You’d just be worried that I’d make a mess with it after your death and end up bringing you back because your soul’s still kicking around,” she adds. “But your heart - all the feelings in there, even separated from memories, those still - you don’t ever truly forget some things. Some people.” Thalassa might disagree. Then again - Thalassa, devoid of memory, separated from her children, taking Machi under her wing and making him an inseparable part of herself, mothering an orphan even if she didn’t remember she was a mother herself. Kay, no idea at all who she was, but concerned enough about Edgeworth’s well-being that she would gladly be arrested if it caused less trouble for him. Phoenix himself, defending Maggey, not knowing he was a lawyer but still knowing that if he didn’t help her than no one else would do it right.

So then maybe Maya’s correct enough. “And I could figure enough out from your heart,” she continues. “And it wouldn’t - if you’re gone, you not having it wouldn’t be an issue, and I can’t cause trouble with it. There’s a reason that we never make deals with people asking them to sell their hearts.”

“There’s no power in that?”

“Nah. I’ve never figured out what you would do with someone else’s heart, besides sentimentality. Y’know, like this thing I’m doing. Or will be, if you…” She looks down at her hands. “You don’t have to answer me now. Just think about it. And maybe help me workshop how to pitch this same idea, but about my mother, to Laurice without it sounding so weird.”

“I think it’s going to be very hard to make this sound less weird.” He forgets, sometimes, that he knew Mia just about as well as Maya did, but he’s never forgotten that Maya never knew her mother at all - she met her as a stranger, saw her die as a stranger, and learned the truth days later. He thinks about it when he thinks about Thalassa, and how Trucy has no memory of her, and god damn if he’s going to let her die a stranger to her daughter.

“Then we’ll just have to take some time to work at it,” Maya says. She glances sideways at him, from the corner of her eyes, a mischievous glint alight in them and a grin on her face. “Like, over breakfast?” She had begun to push herself up onto her feet, but she stops while waiting for an answer and stays squatting there, her hands on the ground in front of her to keep her balance, staring at him. She looks like she’s ready to pounce.

She’ll eat until his wallet is flat, she’ll eat until she drives him into credit card debt, and she’ll eat until it’s noon and he has an office to run. He’s got to get back to Apollo and Athena. He—

Maya waits, her smile starting to fall off at the edges. Phoenix can say anything but he knows the truth really is that he didn’t trust her, and could have; he did stop her from getting involved with the Kristoph situation and no matter how she pulled back out of frustration with what he did, he pushed her away too. She could have acted better, but so could he.

“We are going to have to negotiate a limit to the amount you are allowed to order,” Phoenix says. “I can’t afford for you to order the whole menu.” Her smile blossoms back into full, her glamour holding but not quite, her mouth just a little too wide and teeth too sharp, too excited to contain herself. “The office isn’t exactly brimming with clients lately, and I’ve got a daughter too—”

Maya springs up. “Nick, Nick, come on, you’ve never had that many clients, and you can’t keep using the daughter excuse forever!” She hops over his legs, putting herself between him and the place where the dock meets the shore. “She’s got to be old enough to be getting money herself too, right?”

“She’s sixteen,” Phoenix says, knowing as he does that it’s a meaningless number to her. “So, no, not really, not yet. She’s working on it, been trying to get herself up on stage as a bona fide stage magician, but she’s still trying to find an in.”

The Gramarye name carries some local power and status - they did stage tricks of their own, in between the real magic and shady deals, or it was more like the shady deals and real magic happened backstage after the stage performances were over. But it’s hard to chance on a sixteen-year-old, so Trucy’s been searching for someone to share the spotlight with her, make her less of a gamble. Someone who isn’t Valant. That ship sailed.

“She’s reached out to some stage magician who ran with the Gramaryes a long time ago, though he didn’t take the name” - she doesn’t actually remember him herself, but there’s a lot of information still lying around in the Gramarye basement - “so depending on how that goes I might be checking with Pearls or you to vet him additionally and make sure he’s not—”

“Not a monster?” Maya finishes. “Not sold his soul or gone off to be a bastard like the rest of that coven? Yeah, you meet the guy and don’t like what you see, then we’ll talk on that one.”

Apparently he’s been taking too long to stand up, because Maya grabs him by the forearms and yanks him back up onto his feet. He staggers, but she has a steely grip on him and keeps him upright. She doesn’t release him immediately, but stares at him, and he expects that she’s going to say something else about the Gramaryes and this guy whose stage name Phoenix can’t quite remember but he’d swear it’s literally just Mysterious because that’s just what performers do sometimes, shitty names - but she just stays silent another moment, and then another.

And she lets go of his arms to step forward and throw hers again around his shoulders, pulling him in against her and giving him a forceful snake’s squeeze. In his shock, it takes him a few stunned seconds to bring his arms up. “Missed you, Nick.”

“Yeah,” he says. “I missed you, too.”

#roddy fanfics #fic: the witches of los angeles #me writing fae lore: god i can't wait to watch everyone try and figure out whether this is just background universe flavoring #or something that might actually come back and be important sometime

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robot-unicorn-attack · 5 years

Text

alicia’s plotting ideas/notes??

SNOW (MARIVANA)

ideas & stuff!! feel free to message me either here or on urstyle or wherever else u have me, or comment directly on this post, to plot! ill put finalized notes w/ rest of snow’s info once we have it down :)

Sky - so since seraphina’s a newer racer, she and marivana don’t know each other super well? but they’re almost complete opposites, in terms of like racing specialties, and marivana doesn’t feel threatened by seraphina in any way. she probably keeps her distance whenever they aren’t doing things their agency has sent them on?

It would be kind of fun to say that maybe, as a publicity stunt, twilight’s official statement is that snow has been mentoring sky behind the scenes?

and they have to pretend that’s true, even though it’s not lol

LOL but it would be funny if one day marivana showed up at the track while seraphina was doing stuff and was just like, “so twilight wants me to teach you something that makes it look like i’ve actually been helping u. u free atm?”

but overall I don’t think marivana has too many strong opinions about seraphina, unless we want to create some kind of drama?

Ice - premade; tbd

Supernova - Marivana is…pretty indifferent? when it comes to Supernova. She knows who she is and what she’s done, of course-who doesn’t?-but if you think that she’d be starstruck and/or falling over herself when Supernova’s around her…well, you’d be wrong. Marivana’s had multiple trusted parties tell her that she’s just as good as Supernova was, at her peak, so she knows that she’s not a threat-for now, at least. Marivana’s a bit wary of the other racer, but also a bit curious to see as to where this comeback will lead.

So, depending on how much of the wedding and divorce was public....Marivana def would remember 1) the wedding, and 2) not giving a shit about it

The 2 of them have raced together, right at the very beginning of Marivana’s career? like 10+ years ago? and if As even remembers all that girly snow princess stuff, she could be like “lmao so twilight really pulled a 180 on her”

AHHHH so I know I never made this explicitly clear because I suck as a human being but - the deal with unicorns is that agencies/manufacturers/etc say that they’re just robots? agencies probably actually believe it, but in terms of the manufacturers they might be vaguely aware of otherwise but also don’t want to jeopardize any profits so they keep that shit on the DL

but obviously for ppl like Mari/As who have been riding for p much their entire life, they can tell when horses are distressed, happy/content, etc?

and robot unicorns are basically horses in terms of how sentient they are?

so i have no fucking idea when this would happen, but the 2 of them mutually acknowledging that RUR is pretty fucked up for the unicorns?

also like....IT WOULD BE SO CUTE if the two of them sort of rolled their eyes at the same time about some kind of story regarding another rando racer who quit maybe a lil after As did (so the newer racers aren’t familiar with her)? and then they realize that they both rolled their eyes at the same time LOL

honestly just being Tired Grandmas together

anyway. @interluxetumbra LMK what u think!!!

Sunbeam - tbd

Flower - Marivana knows exactly what 𝑅 𝐼 𝒮 𝐸 is pulling with Flower (her own agency did the same thing to her, after all), and she is not fooled at all. She’s not stupid; in the robot unicorn racing industry, nobody is completely, utterly unknown when they debut unless they had no prior experience with robot horses/unicorns in the past. Marivana knows that Flower probably had to work her butt off to stay with 𝑅 𝐼 𝒮 𝐸, and she would bet her right hand that the image that Flower puts out to the public is just that - an image.

*chanting* AURIVANA AURIVANA AURIVANA

is the lil club plot we have how they meet/1st time they actually talk 2 ea other????

speaking of which - how do we want to write that? collab in a gdoc???

& then they just keep coincidentally running into ea other randomly????

aura saying something super Flower-esque and marivana just rolling her eyes and being like, “ok great now tell me what you really think about __” ??? lol

aura somehow discovering that marivana is into BOTANY, of all things????

maybe this is when she makes some sort of dry remark about the bio for Flower on the RISE website? “[Flower] grew up in a lush green meadow, hidden away from prying eyes by miles and miles of ice. How Flower managed to get the ice to melt for long enough to plant flowers and trees will always be a mystery.” and marivana’s like “lol magic my ass there’s literally no fucking way”

she explains it with a good amount of scientific jargon thrown in and aura’s just like watttttttttttttt :0000

literally hit me up ANYTIME i already adore them

also - their aesthetics as racers? put together? a+++++++++

OMG THIS IS LIKE WAY IN THE FUTURE BUT LIKE, we should say that their secret relationship somehow ends up going public for the ~drama~??? and instead of being super freaking pissed off, both of their agencies are just like “lmao okay ice queen x fairy princess? best ship” and use it for publicity?????

Flame - Marivana knows about 1) the image that she projects, and 2) that this image is pretty true to who Flame really is, for the most part. Her verdict? Flame could prove to be annoying, if she gets relevant while Marivana is still in the industry as a racer. Marivana doesn’t know what life not racing would be like, but she’s well-aware that she’s the oldest racer out there (well, besides Supernova, who doesn’t count. She’s making a comeback, after all), and that retirement is probably not too far out in her future. So, if Flame is still around within the next 5-10 years, then Marivana might start worrying about her. For now, she’s just the irritating racer with ʟᴀᴢᴇʀ who won’t ever stop causing a scene.

So they haven’t really interacted much yet, do we wanna say?

they’re wary of each other because both their unicorns specialize in high power/strength so they’re like, more directly in competition?

are they going to engage in the RUA equivalent of a twitter fight??? in a publicity stunt that both of their agencies are putting on?

maybe snow has once insulted kehlani in an interview??? though it was fake/staged/scripted by her agency so she doesn’t actaully feel that way but ya know. doin it for the vine

and kehlani responds in kind, maybe at the behest of lazer, maybe not?. and it just keeps going???

but ya, marivana prob finds her personality kinda annoying so would generally avoid her unless kehlani approached first

Nyx - so like, snow probably thinks sol is way too flashy and all over the place, & does not engage her ever? she knows of the rumors of foul play, ofc, b/c who doesn’t, but she assumes that the rumors are super blown out of proportion (as rumors tend to be)?? and snow knows that if sol ever tries to target her/other ice world racers specifically, twilight will literally strong-arm lazer into dropping her. so she’s not that worried about that stuff????

definitely thinks her razor-sharp precision with U-800 is something to be admired, though, even if it’s not the flashiest skill like dressage or speed

OMG LOL spoiler alert but the 2nd event is a race on lava world, so they’re all on the main LW training/practice facilities in the days leading up to the race???? and we TOTALLY need to have them do that weirdly super aggressive staredown/pre-game smack talk sesh that they do in super extra sports anime LOL

Widowmaker - snow’s heard of her, knows of her, has competed against her, but since they both tend to keep to themselves they haven’t really talked? it could be potentially cool if eleni guessed about/found out about what actually happened with marivana’s 1st unicorn?? OMG DRAMA but what if she actually knew of the armed thief? who was on ice world for whatever reason lmfao we can hand-wave it. bonus points if she’s pissed that 1st unicorn killed the person?????????? lol

and it could be POTENTIALLY FUN to write a scene with them where eleni basically calls her out on the fact that, yeah marivana fucking hates twilight for deactivating the first unicorn so why tf does she still race for them/earn them so much money???

also marivana has literally no retirement plans atm so.....i have NO FREAKING IDEA if this would ever be possible or not, but if she somehow?? gets involved? with the people who wanna fuck up TEF govt for not giving a single shit about black hole ??? ? ??? ?? thru eleni????????//

idk dude feel free to just be like “lmao alicia that would never happen” if it feels too OOC!!! it’s also like 4 am & i’m only half coherent so ;D

but i literally have no idea in what context the calling out would be in!!! maybe if marivana saw some top sekrit info that eleni might have access to and was like “i won’t tell anyone at TWILIGHT if you tell me why you have this”? and eleni is like *eyeroll* “not like u have any reason to like ur agency”

Taglist: @ayzrules @bebemoon @jay-swagsby @filthysoulls @shiftyprincess @kzombi3 @now-on-elissastillstands

#plotting #snow #marivana #this is....so incoherent #and i am sorry #racers #writing #i guess??? lol

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singingwordwright · 6 years

Link

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Shadowhunters (TV) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood Characters: Magnus Bane, Alec Lightwood Additional Tags: Canon Compliant, Marriage Proposal, Fluff and Angst

Summary:

It’s a game, you see.

Not that it was intended to be. The evolution of Alec’s contact in Magnus’s phone started out innocently enough. Almost by accident, even.

But now it’s taken on a life of its own.

This is based on a ficlet I wrote to explain the evolution of Alec's contact in Magnus's phone, which you can find here

Part I: “Pretty Boy”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Alec mutters, stone-faced, and stalks away. Magnus watches him pensively until he disappears around the corner, then withdraws his phone, in its glittering case, from his back pocket.

“Isabelle, my beauty, if I could trouble you to lay off fussing over Jace for a moment?” When she rises and joins him near the doorway, Magnus slips the phone, with its empty contact screen, into her hands. “One never knows when one may need some assistance from a very special Shadowhunter,” he explains, winking.

Isabelle grins, her thumbs already in motion.

When they’re done escorting a rather rumpled Jace from Magnus’s lair, he pulls the phone out and gazes at the contact.

Alec

Short for Alexander, no doubt. “Defender of men.” And a fitting name it is, what with the way Alec dispatched Valentine’s lackey at the rave, and then came to Magnus’s aid against the Circle members who attacked his lair.

Shadowhunters who actually protect Downworlders. Will wonders never cease?

And then there’s that bashful smile Alec gave him when Magnus introduced himself. And the way he stammered like he didn’t know what to make of a man openly admiring him. And the fear that drove him to overreact when he thought his secret might be exposed.

Magnus doesn’t make a habit of pursuing Shadowhunters. He’s had the smallest spark of interest in one or two throughout his centuries, but nothing more than that.

He also doesn’t make a habit of pursuing closeted young men, at least not in recent decades now that young men have the option of being un-closeted. While not nearly as messy as a Shadowhunter/Downworlder affair has the potential to be, chasing after men hiding in the closet requires more effort and dedication than Magnus is willing to exert for the sake of a dirty weekend or two.

So why is he having a hard time convincing himself to wait at least twelve hours before calling?

Magnus stares down at his phone. The name staring back at him from the screen just doesn’t sit right with him.

“Alec” is too pedestrian, but for some reason Magnus can’t even make sense of in his own head, “Alexander” feels far too intimate. Magnus smiles to himself and renames the contact.

Pretty Boy

It’ll do for now.

Not twenty-four hours later, Magnus’s lair is once again invaded by Shadowhunters, and Magnus once again has Alec Lightwood to thank for saving him. This time from getting his throat torn out by an injured and enraged werewolf due to an untimely case of magical depletion.

“You okay?” Alec murmurs gently as Magnus slumps against him.

Oh, this is not good. This is not good at all.

There are at least four other people in the room but as far as Magnus is concerned, it’s just him and Alec.

Clary is fussing over Luke, and Jace and Simon are fussing over Clary and snarking at each other, and Magnus? Magnus can’t tear his eyes off Alec.

Being pressed so cozily against Alec is just dandy, of course, but it’s the fact that the rest of them might as well not exist that’s the problem. If he had a mirror, he’d probably discover he’s wearing a of dopey, smitten smile on his face and words just really can’t encompass just how truly not good this is.

It means that sometime around the moment when Alec selflessly volunteered to let Magnus borrow his energy, some traitorous corner of Magnus’s brain took the possibility of just a dirty weekend off the books. His idiotic heart is going to try to make this a thing, something real, something that has a lot less to do with sweaty bodies and good times had by all, and a lot more to do with very messy and probably very painful feelings.

When he finally manages to pull himself together enough to get Luke into the bedroom, he finds himself stalling for time. He hovers over Luke, adjusting blankets and pillows, until Luke quite pointedly thanks him.

He half expects Alec to be gone by the time he returns to the living room, but no. Of course not.

Alec is picking up Magnus’s books, stroking their spines like a parent tenderly inspecting a child for injuries.

Oh, this is really not good.

Rather than deal with it, Magnus makes drinks.

“How’d you get my number, anyway?” Alec asks after the third cocktail, his head lolling drowsily against the back of the sofa. He’d shuddered his way through the first drink Magnus had made him, but once the alcohol numbed his taste buds, he’d downed the rest quite readily.

Magnus smiles sleepily at him from the other sofa. He shouldn’t be this tipsy after so few drinks, but his tolerance is always a bit lower when he’s overextended himself magically. “What do you mean?”

“When you called me earlier to invite me out. You didn’t call the Institute, you called me.”

“Oh, that.” Magnus digs his phone out of his pocket and tosses it over. Even with his reflexes slowed by alcohol, Alec still manages to snag it out of the air without spilling his cocktail. “Your little sister is as kind as she is lovely.”

Alec opens Magnus’s contacts and then rolls his eyes, but Magnus’s inebriated mind has already moved on from the subject.

When he wakes the next morning, Alec is passed out on the other sofa, Magnus’s phone lying face-down on the coffee table next to him. As Magnus starts formulating plans to woo Alec with coffee and breakfast, he opens it to see what Alec was looking at, only to find the contact has been changed back.

Alec.

Really, Alexander is a far more fitting name, but if Magnus is to have any hope of keeping this infatuation under control, maybe he’ll be better off not reminding himself how Alec seems to be making a habit of coming to his rescue.

Smiling, Magnus pockets the phone and leaves the contact as it is.

Part II: “Mr. Branwell”

“Good-bye, Alexander.”

There are a lot of things Magnus is willing do for the right person.

Carrying on an affair with someone who’s engaged or married, however, is not one of them.

He’d been willing to date Alec on the DL. He wouldn’t have been thrilled with it—in fact, he’s fairly certain he would have actually hated it—but it wouldn’t have been the first time. Indeed, prior to the 1970s, most of his relationships with men outside the Shadow World had, by necessity, been conducted with a certain level of discretion. So if that was what had been required to give Alec the time and confidence to figure out how to be honest about himself and put an end to his parents’ attempts to find him a wife, Magnus would have sucked it up and gone with it.

He just hadn’t anticipated that Alec would be an active participant in the whole matrimony scheme.

So Magnus leaves. He goes home, dresses to kill, and heads to his club.

He then gets righteously drunk, which was absolutely his plan (shut up) and wakes up alone the next morning, which absolutely wasn’t (shut. up.) He has a phone-shaped imprint on his face where he fell asleep laying on the thing, but a quick look at his recent contacts reassures him that he at least didn’t drunk-dial Alec anyone.

He did, however, edit a certain contact name again.

Mr. Branwell.

Okay. So he’d apparently gotten both sloppy and bitchy.

A few days later, Alec is back in Magnus’s loft, this time entreating Magnus to be his sister’s defender in court. Which is laughable on several levels.

First of all, Isabelle is 100% guilty of the crime she’s accused of. She definitely orchestrated the effort to rescue Meliorn, and Magnus knows this because he helped her and Jace obtain Alec’s stele.

Second, Magnus and Isabelle have had precisely three conversations, all of which largely concerned Alec somehow. Why she thinks he’s even remotely qualified to argue on her behalf in a Shadowhunter court will be a mystery for the ages.

And finally, Isabelle banters with at least one Seelie lover on a regular basis and manages not to fall into any of the usual conversational traps, like inadvertently agreeing to a hundred years of indenture in the Seelie court. Ergo, she can probably argue circles around Magnus in her sleep.

Which means she knows the Clave has her dead-to-rights, and she’s sent Alec to Magnus for other reasons. Given her unfavorable view of Alec’s impending marriage, it’s not difficult to guess what those reasons are.

But why has Alec come? That’s a much tougher question.

“...there’s nothing to keep me from slipping through this gaping loophole. For the right price.”

“Name it,” Alec says without hesitation.

That lack of guile is going to drive Magnus mad, because it contradicts everything he’s has been telling himself since he found out that Alec was the one who proposed to Lydia. Alec isn’t being strong-armed into this engagement; he’s chosen it. Therefore, all Magnus’s early reads on Alec were wrong; he isn’t any different from any other Shadowhunter who puts their brainwashed obedience to the Clave ahead of everything else.

Magnus isn’t sure if it’s pettiness or a need to figure out exactly what Alec is made of that drives him to say, “You. In fact, I’ll do you pro bono.”

He plays it off as a joke, but somewhere underneath it all, he needs to know if Alec might actually go for it, might betray his fianceé and whatever sense of honor he possesses to get what he wants from Magnus and save his precious little sister. Or if he thinks he can have Magnus as his piece on the side while he marries Lydia.

If he does, Magnus will then know that Alec isn’t the man Magnus took him for. He’ll know to stay far, far away. He’ll send Alec, Isabelle, and their entire damn Institute packing before he’ll lift a damned finger to help any of them.

But Alec doesn’t so much as waver. He looks weary and reluctantly amused by the offer, but not seriously tempted. “Anything else?”

Asking for Alec’s bow? That’s definitely pettiness. Or maybe it’s another test, after all. Magnus isn’t sure what the hell he’s really doing anymore, and by the time the trial is over, he’s even less sure.

Because Lydia Branwell is...lovely. Misguided? Ambitious? Yes. Subconsciously racist? Absolutely. But she’s almost as earnest and well-intentioned as Alec himself, and as torn between obedience to the Clave and doing what she knows is right.

This isn’t good. This is, in fact, a disaster in the making.

Frankly, this whole arranged marriage debacle is starting to take on the overtones of a Greek tragedy, with Magnus cast in the role of Cassandra. Two genuinely good people, young people who are positioned to be the next generation of Shadowhunter leaders and who may very well finally move the Clave in the right direction, are condemning themselves to a lifetime of mutual misery. And there’s nothing Magnus can do to stop it.

When he gets home, he changes the contact name in his phone back to Alec. He just doesn’t have the heart to be bitchy anymore.

Part III: “Worth The Effort”

While Alec debriefs with his furious parents after the wedding-that-wasn’t, Magnus almost changes the contact to Kisses Like A God but then decides to play it a little lower-key.

Just a little.

He goes with Owes Me A Date instead.

Not that a date is in the cards. Valentine has stepped up his campaign. No longer is he lurking somewhere sending his lackeys out to do his dirty work. No, he’s flitting all over New York, kidnapping Jace, murdering vampires, kidnapping MMA fighters, kidnapping Clary, kidnapping werewolves...

He’s collecting victims like cereal box tops. Possibly he’s planning to turn them in for a secret decoder ring.

And then Alec goes and tries to kill himself finding Jace.

Magnus wants to be furious with him, but he can’t, because this isn’t his first rodeo. He’s known parabatai before, known how far they’ll go for each other. And if Alec didn’t do this thing for Jace, he wouldn’t be the man Magnus is growing increasingly attached to.

“Please come back,” he pleads. And Alec does. Not right away, but he does.

Alec passes out again soon after Aldertree drags Jace away. Clearly he doesn’t want to; he wants to chase after his brother and demand his release, but exhaustion claims him instead. Compared to his previous comatose state, this is at least a real sleep, a natural sleep. Magnus can stand down.

It’s the second time Alec sleeps at Magnus’s loft. At least the divan Magnus had conjured when he’d transferred Alec from the Institute is more suitable for sleeping than the sofa Alec had ended up sprawled over last time. Magnus, too wired on residual fear and the realization of how deep he’s already fallen into this undefined thing they have (true love’s kiss? really?) reads on the sofa nearby for the entire night, or he does until he nods off with the book on his chest.

He wakes before dawn to discover someone has draped a throw over him. Alec is sitting nearby, looking vastly improved and thumbing through Magnus’s phone.

“Hey.” He blushes and sets the phone down on the coffee table when he notices Magnus’s eyes are open. “I need to get back to the Institute, but I didn’t want to leave without—without saying anything to you.”

Magnus rubs his eyes and tries to pull his thoughts together. “Well, let me make a portal for you.”

“You don’t have to. I’m fine. I can take the subway. I know you expended a lot of magic on me yesterday.”

Magnus flaps a hand at him. “Nonsense. I’d at least call a taxi for you if I couldn’t manage a portal. But, as it is, I’m expected by Aldertree bright and early this morning to answer to charges of—what was it again? ‘Aiding and abetting’ and ‘unlawful imprisonment’ I think?”

“Unlawful imprisonment?” Alec’s voice gains volume with his outrage. “What, of me?”

“Actually, it probably has more to do with Raj.” Magnus grins at Alec’s confused look. “It’s nothing to worry about. Let me get ready, and we can grab coffee and pastries on our way.”

The meeting with Aldertree goes about the way Magnus predicted it would. The whole crazy week is made totally worthwhile, however, by the bashful way Alec apologizes for not making good on his promise of a date yet. They’re so close to finally being able to do it, and then of course Raj has to appear to summon Alec into a demon briefing.

Magnus sighs. “Rain check?”

“Yeah.” Alec winces. “Is that alright?”

What can Magnus possibly say to that, except to assure him that of course it is?

As he strolls out of the Institute, he pulls his phone from his pocket to text that they will have that date soon, and notices the contact name has been changed back to Alec.

It’s several more days before Magnus finally convinces Alec to cash that rain check. By then, he’s desperately worried about Alec’s mental health. His desperation to save Jace was one thing, but his guilt and despair at being the unwilling instrument of the demon who killed Jocelyn Fairchild is something else entirely, leading him somewhere that could get very dark if Alec can’t find his way out of it.

Alec’s hesitation to accede to the date he’d been so eager for just a few days ago speaks volumes about the severe blow his emotional state has taken. But he lets Magnus cajole him out to the Hunter’s Moon until he finally has a drink and a pool cue in hand.

After Magnus wipes the felt with him the first time, he pulls his phone out of his pocket while Alec is racking to break for their second game. He leaves it lying very ostentatiously on the edge of the table, but Alec doesn’t rise to the bait and let it distract him. He runs the table until more than half the stripes have been sunk before Magnus gets a turn.

“Sore loser? Seriously?” he asks, arching an eyebrow over the phone as Magnus lines up his shot.

“Didn’t anyone tell you it’s bad manners to look at someone’s phone without their permission?” Magnus taunts, sinking two solids.

“You could always lock your phone, and yet you never do.” Alec leans on the jukebox and starts thumbing something into the phone. Magnus is so excited to see it that he scratches.

I Know What Youre Doing Bane

Magnus finds himself grinning so hard he doesn’t even mind when Alec finishes sinking his balls and drops the 8-ball precisely where he calls it without ever giving Magnus another turn. He thrusts the phone into Alec’s hands and goes to rack the balls for his break.

Its On Lightwood

A few hours later, their date has taken a decidedly morose turn. Alec tries to rally after the whole ex-lovers discussion and can’t quite manage it. Magnus is kicking himself for pulling a number as intimidating as 17,000 out of the air; the truth is, he has no idea what his “number” is. After the first hundred or so, most rational people lose count.

But Alec’s attitude when he asks Magnus how many people he’s been with is just judgmental enough that Magnus feels the need to challenge it. Nearly four centuries is long enough, and Magnus’s history colorful enough, that his bed-posts have long since been whittled down to toothpicks. He’s not going to pretend otherwise to satisfy a Shadowhunter’s puritanical sensibilities.

Not even Alec’s.

That indignant resolve lasts him until Alec is about to walk out the door. Magnus wants desperately to call him back, but he can’t.

He can’t, because with the exception of that kiss at his wedding, Magnus has been the one making all the overtures since they met. He can’t keep chasing after Alec; sooner or later Alec is going to need to come to Magnus, or any relationship between them will be so pathetically one-sided that it will never last.

And if Alec comes to Magnus, he needs to do so understanding that Magnus will not apologize for being who he is, for the history that has carried him through these hundreds of years. Either Alec can deal with that, or he can’t, and if he can’t it’s better that they know now.

So Magnus lets him go, turns away and waits for the closing of the door as Alec leaves.

Instead, he hears determined footfalls striding toward him. Sees the obstinance and nervousness mingling on Alec’s face as he pledges to accept Magnus, colorful history and all. Feels the trembling trembling in Alec’s body as he closes in for the second kiss he’s ever given Magnus.

There’s so much more weight to this kiss. The last one had only ever really tangentially been about Magnus. It had been a declaration about Alec, and perhaps an offer to see where the connection the two of them felt toward each other might lead, but it hadn’t been about them.

This one is entirely about them. The only statement Alec is making this time is that he’s not going anywhere, that he intends to stick around and make this work. And that’s just...huge.

Magnus relishes the rasp in Alec’s voice when he talks about relationships taking effort.

The moment is shattered by a newly homeless Jace, and the next hour or so spent settling in Magnus’s unexpected houseguest. Afterward, Alec departs with a very chaste kiss and Magnus goes to get ready for bed.

As he pulls his phone out of his pocket to set it on the bedside table, he opens it to Alec’s contact, which still reads, Youre Going Down Bane.

“Oh, Alexander, you couldn’t be more right,” he sighs, and thumb-types in a new name.

Worth The Effort

Part IV: “Mr. Lightwood”

They manage a couple days of peace before the world falls apart again, and they put that time to good use.

After their date in Tokyo, Magnus grins and edits Alec’s contact to “Thicc” Tuna.

“‘Thicc?’ What does that even mean?” Alec demands, laughing so hard he’s once again out of breath.

He’s naked in Magnus’s bed for the first time, his skin still glistening with a sheen of sweat after blowing Magnus’s mind (subsequent to a somewhat shaky start) and also getting an impromptu education in other activities involving the word “blow.”

It isn’t a lesson Magnus had imagined he’d be imparting quite so soon, but he absolutely has no complaints.

“Hmm, I have no idea,” Magnus murmurs, nipping one delightfully furred and muscled pec. “None whatsoever.”

Alec moans and lets the hand holding Magnus’s phone flop weakly down onto the bed beside him.

“No, but seriously,” he rasps a moment later, licking his lips. From the restless way his body is moving, Magnus suspects phones won’t be on his mind much longer. “This one definitely needs to go.”

“Would you prefer ‘Pleasingly Plump Tuna?’”

“Can we just declare any and all kinds of fish off-limits for the phone contact game?”

Magnus arches an eyebrow at him. “Game? You think this is a game?”

“Please tell me you didn’t name my contact in your phone after sushi because you were being serious.”

“Oh, well, if you don’t like it…” Magnus snatches the phone out of his hands and edits the contact.

Alec blushes when he sees it. Then he somehow manages, in a single motion, to deposit the phone on the nightstand and flip them so that he’s lying over Magnus. “That’s a lot to live up to for a beginner.”

“I have every faith in you, Alexander.”

The afterglow hasn’t even faded yet when Magnus finds himself agreeing to host a Shadowhunter party for Max Lightwood’s rune ceremony. These days, he’ll do just about anything for that infallibly earnest stare Alec has a habit of leveling on him.

He’s in his study, having finished calling the various Downworld caterers he knows to see who’s available on short notice, when Alec comes charging in, a look of panic on his face. He snatches the phone off his desk.

“Alexander?”

Alec’s thumbs fly as he keys in something and hands the phone back to Magnus. “Do me a favor and don’t change this until my mother leaves town?” he pleads.

The contact is now a very repressive A. Lightwood.

Magnus is sufficiently put off by the idea of Maryse Lightwood seeing her son referred to as Sex God on Magnus’s phone that he leaves it as-is—and wonders if he’ll ever be able to touch it again without that mental image coming to mind.

By the time Maryse departs, Alec has tried to kill himself, Magnus’s book of counterspells has been stolen, Isabelle has somehow become a yin fen addict and is set on dragging Raphael down with her, Valentine has gotten his hands on a weapon of mass destruction (one the Clave has been hiding from the Downworld for centuries) that he needs Clary to activate, and genocide is once again the order of the day.

No sooner have they recovered from the massacre in the Institute then Magnus finds himself trapped—and tortured—in Valentine’s body. It isn’t until after Kaelie Whitewillow’s murder spree is stopped that Magnus even has the heart to think of changing Alec’s contact in his phone.

He needs to get back to himself. He’s been reeling since his experience with the agony rune, and some very uncomfortable part of his mind keeps questioning whether he’ll truly be able to rely on Alec when the chips are down.

He doesn’t blame Alec for not believing “Valentine” when he claimed to be Magnus; refusing to believe anything Valentine says is a thoroughly reasonable and sane response in any circumstance. It had hurt, and Magnus had been terrified, but he can’t say he wouldn’t have done the same thing in Alec’s shoes.

The problem is, not all of Alec disbelieved Magnus when he said that Azazel had switched his and Valentine’s bodies. Magnus had watched Alec suppress his own instinct, his own better judgment, in favor of obedience—not even to the Clave, but merely the Inquisitor, who was about to carry out an illegal execution.

That’s the image lingering in the back of Magnus’s mind every time he thinks on the event. He doesn’t mistrust Alec’s intentions, but when faced with the dilemma, will there ever come a time when Alec doesn’t prioritize the loyalty to the Clave?

Nonetheless, Magnus makes himself smile—which seems to be the only way he can smile these days—and says all the right things about supporting Alec’s peace initiative with this Downworld cabinet he wants to host. Because Alec’s intentions are good, and maybe he just needs more time to feel confident in his own instincts and leadership before he’ll be able to stand up to the Clave. Magnus is willing to give him that.

Alec’s struggle to keep a straight face when they greet each other with such contrive formality makes it absolutely worthwhile. Then Alec turns away to welcome Luke, and once Magnus is alone, he pulls out his phone and edits the name for Alec’s contact for the first time in weeks.

Mr. Lightwood.

It feels good. It feels normal. It feels like they just might, maybe, possibly, come out on the other side of this thing.

Part V: “Alexander”

“I knew it!” Alec says, an absolutely charming hint of blush blossoming in his cheeks as he looks at Magnus’s phone after the Downworld cabinet meeting.

Magnus drops his stained eye-makeup wipe into the wastebasket beside his vanity. “Don’t you dare edit it, Alexander! It’s staying that way forever.”

“Oh, I’m definitely going to edit it.” Alec’s thumbs begin moving and Magnus charges him.

Alec unfairly uses his few inches of extra height to his advantage, holding the phone high over his head. Magnus unfairly uses his magic to grab Alec’s hand and pull it down.

The tussle eventually (accidentally, of course) sends them tumbling onto the bed and then the phone is forgotten. It’s the first time Magnus has really felt like making love since the body-swap debacle, and Alec…

Well, Alec is a young man with a stamina rune and years of repression he’s still making up for, and sex is still very new to him. He’s almost always immediately on board with whatever Magnus proposes. He opens to Magnus’s kiss, his body undulating, pressing closer. His huge hands are incongruously gentle—they always, always are—as they push Magnus’s silk dressing gown open and off his shoulders.

That night, while Alec is sleeping the sleep of the blissfully well-laid, Magnus slips from the bed. What moments of sublime forgetfulness he managed to find in Alec’s arms are past, and now he’s left haunted by his own history.

Alec is starting to notice Magnus’s conspicuous absences in the morning. It’s only been a few weeks since they began sleeping together, but they’d been well on their way to establishing a morning routine before it happened, and that routine involved a lot more pillow talk and sleepy lovemaking than has been Magnus’s recent habit.

Of course Alec is going to challenge him on it. Of course he is. Because he doesn’t understand. Doesn’t understand what Magnus is or how wide the gulf between who they are actually is.

Sooner or later, something is going to remind Alec that he’s a Shadowhunter and Magnus is a Downworlder. And when that happens, they may very well not be able to overcome it.

That’s why, of course, this relationship between them almost never got off the ground. It’s why Alec walked out the morning after healing Luke, when he passed out on the sofa after drinks. It’s why Alec almost walked away after their first date. It’s why Magnus panicked when he realized he wouldn’t be able to glamour his eyes while making love with Alec.

That’s what Magnus sidestepped bringing up the morning after they first made love, when Alec ask him what scared him. Alec asked him that question just moments after he thought Alec was going to choose rushing off to the Institute again over staying with him.

That reality is why Alec thought nothing of expecting Magnus to prove his innocence in Kaelie’s murder spree instead of demanding the Clave extend the presumption of innocence in the absence of any evidence. And even though Alec didn’t mean it that way, Magnus can’t help but wonder if that’s why Alec let the Inquisitor torture and almost kill him. Would he have fought harder to save Magnus, had Magnus been a Shadowhunter lover telling Alec the same story of body-switching?

Magnus doesn’t know, and the not knowing haunts him almost as much as the memories he can’t bury.

Will confessing to the murder of his stepfather be the thing that reminds Alec that he’s a Shadowhunter, and his job is to capture or destroy Downworlders who commit those sorts of crimes?

“I never wanted you to see this terrible, ugly side of me,” Magnus confesses when the confrontation finally happens. He too weary of fighting and questioning and trying to bury things that won’t stay buried to hide the truth any longer. If this is going to be the moment when Alec choses being Shadowhunter over him, so be it. At least then he’ll know.

Instead, Alec looks at him with that excruciatingly earnest tenderness only Alec seems capable of, and says, “There’s nothing ugly about you.” And holds him, encircles Magnus with his acceptance as much as with his arms.

For a while, Magnus lets himself believe that they truly do love each other enough to overcome what Maryse had stiltedly termed their disparate backgrounds.

“I suppose you’ll be needing a portal to send Valentine to Idris?” Magnus asks, sniffling when he finally pulls back.

“No. Forget it.” Alec shakes his head firmly. “I’ll call Catarina—”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Catarina’s in good standing with the Clave, yes, but her clearance for such sensitive jobs isn’t as high as mine. Besides, then she’d have to find a sitter for Madzie on short notice and small children don’t handle instability and last minute changes very well. Especially in the middle of the night.” He looks up and nods, a solid, determined jerk of his head. “I’ll do it. I need to see this through to the end.”

“Okay.” Alec meets his eyes steadily. “Hand me your phone.”

Magnus smiles, though it feels a little shaky, and does as Alec asks. Alec opens his own contact and passes it back to Magnus.

“Edit it. Make it something that will remind you that I’m always here for you, that I will always love you and protect you, no matter what. And then leave it that way. No more changes.”

Magnus doesn’t hesitate. He knows exactly what it needs to be. The name that one time felt too intimate to be a possibility.

Alexander.

“Defender of Men” indeed.

Epilogue: The Last Change

Magnus peers out of the steam-filled bathroom with a towel clasped around his waist. “Alec, have you seen my—?”

Alec straightens suddenly, almost furtively, from where he was hunched over something beside Magnus’s bedside table. He turns and clasps his hands behind his back. “Seen your what?”

“Alexander?” Magnus purrs, gliding forward. “Is that my phone behind your back?”

“What? Oh. Yeah.” He hands it over and presses his lips together in what Magnus assumes is meant to be a smile. “I just, um, needed a contact for that warlock you told me about a few weeks ago, who might be able to do some short-notice portal work when we need it. Now, what did you need?”

Magnus narrows his eyes and wraps his hand around the phone. It’s been years—some of them rather rocky—since he’s edited Alec’s contact, not since Alec asks him never to change it again. But if Alec was going to revive that old game, Magnus was more than willing to play. “My cobalt silk shirt. The one I wore to Jace and Clary’s engagement party.”

“I think you left it hanging in the laundry room after making some alterations to the trim on the cuffs,” Alec replies. “I’ll go check for you.”

The moment he’s gone, Magnus opens his phone to Alec’s contact and stares.

And stares.

Alexander Lightwood-Bane

The breath abandons Magnus’s lungs in a sudden rush.

“I found it, Magnus. Here—” Alec rounds the corner with Magnus’s shirt in his hands and promptly turns crimson.

“Well.” Magnus clasps his trembling hands around the phone and swallows thickly. His voice is far shakier than he would like, but he manages. “So. Alexander. Is there something you wish to ask me—?”

Please, if you’ve enjoyed my fic or meta or vids, consider buying some of my books, or buying me a cup of coffee!

#shadowhunters #malec #fanfic #my fics #contact

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howtohero · 6 years

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Time travel was invented in the year 4 ever when Crodunk the Clumsy accidentally set a mysterious meteor on fire. Time travel was invented in the year 5349 Post Reconstitution when it was the only thing left to invent. Time travel was invented in 1985 CE when a disgraced nuclear physicist drove a car too dang fast. Time travel was invented in 6495 Before Reconstitution when scientists built a time machine through very careful and meticulous trial and error and a strict following of the scientific method and then some punk named Connor James showed up, stole their machine, and spiked it like he’d just scored the final touchdown in a Super Bowl. Time travel was invented in 54 BCE when a wizard looked into a crystal ball and saw that in the future we’d have skateboards and he thought that was rad. Time travel was invented in 2018 CE when the psychic fish looked into the future to see how it’d be invented and directed modern day scientists to invent it first. Time travel was invented in Year Zero when Dr. Bill Timetravel DDS discovered the blueprints for a time machine mysteriously tattooed onto the roof of one of his patients’ mouth. Time travel was invented in 2497 CE when Mason Starr read about Stephen Hawking’s 2009 time-traveler party and thought it sounded like a good time. Time travel was invented in 2007 CE when the spirits of dead dinosaur mages bestowed a magical amulet onto Leon Von Iguanodon which gave him the power to summon time-displaced dinosaurs. Time travel was invented in 2017 CE when the Very Angry Very Confused Time-Displaced Pirate was examined by scientists and the time-stream residue he was covered in was reverse-engineered. Time travel was invented in 1600 CE when somebody used the first time machine to travel back in time and invent time travel earlier.

If any of this sounds confusing to you it’s because the nature of time travel is that it doesn’t make any goddam sense. Once time travel is extant at some point in time the rest of time pretty much just turns into jelly. All of a sudden this rigid, structured, sequence of events can be molded and altered any which way by any bozo with a flux capacitor. It’s really stressful actually. But, just for you guys, in celebration of both our birthday and our 100th post Howtohero presents:

#100 The Essential Guide to Time Travel!

Time Machine The first thing you need when you plan on zooming through the time stream is a time machine. Sure, there are plenty of ways to travel through time without a machine (running really fast, running really slow, magic, inborn metahuman abilities, freak lightning storms, certain types of birds {or certain types of Bat-Fish-Giant-Bird-Wing People}) but for the average person on the street, you’re going to need an actual time machine if you want to be able to practically ponder philosophical quandaries or cheat the lottery. Some of these time machines are nothing more than large portal generators and traveling through time is presented as no different from traveling through space. The only major difference is the color of the swirly vortex. Space vortexes are generally various shades of red or black while time portals are usually made up of an assortment purples or blues. Both kinds of portals though, make for very cool backdrops for Instagram photoshoots. Other time machines are more akin to vehicles (though usually they have more room inside) that the time traveler flies, drives or sails through the time stream in. When designing a time machine you’re going to want to make it look super mundane. I understand that your gut extinct will be to make it look super cool and flashy but that is dumb, you will get caught. Time machines should resemble things that would not look out of place in the era you plan on traveling to. Things like large shrubs or trees are pretty good templates, as they can commonly be seen in a variety of time periods and a variety of locales. Other common time machine templates include telephone booths, police boxes, and old cars, all of which are only practical for certain time periods. If you can get some kind of cloaking doohickey fitted onto your ship then you can pretty much make it look like whatever you want! Just make sure to remember where you’ve parked. Maybe write it down on your arm or something. If you forget where you’ve left your invisible time machine, you’ll be left stranded wherever you are unable to return home. Unless you’re stuck in the past in which case you can just wait until your home time comes around. You can also try etching a message into something you think your friends are likely to come across in the future/present. Then they can try to come get you. (Note: Most time travel navigation apps come with a “remember where I parked” feature so this may be a problem only for time travelers from time periods that still had to use time maps to get around, or time periods from after this whole apps fad faded away.) Other time machines come in the form of handheld devices or can be worn in some manner. Time machines that resemble watches are especially common. And there’s not really any reason for it beyond “haha watches are how you tell time!” Ok, I guess it could also be for easy carrying, access and disguise, but let’s be honest, it’s probably because “haha watches are how you tell time!”

Proper Time Travel Decorum When you arrive in a new time period do not run over to some random passerby and ask them what year it is really loudly. First of all, they can hear just fine, there’s no need to shout. Second of all, you should know what year it is, you’re the time traveler. Presumably you had a destination in mind. It’s not like when you disembark from a plane you run over to someone and start shaking them by the shoulders while asking what country you’re in. Third of all there are plenty of discrete ways of ascertaining when and where you are without announcing to the world that you’re a time traveler. Just pick up a newspaper or something. And if there are no newspapers in your time period, try looking it up online, or hey, maybe check the timometer on your time machine. Again, you should know where you traveled to. Generally, you want to keep the fact that you’re a time traveler on the DL (that’s “down low” for all you abbreviation junkies). If that news gets out you know a bunch of people you never met are going to ask you for time traveler favors. Or they might try to burn you at the stake. Or they might use that information to blackmail you into breaking into Hell and stealing a soul for them. So make sure you’re dressed appropriately and are aware of the relative current events and slang people are using. You should also come up with a fun codename for yourself. This doesn’t really have anything to do with hiding the fact that you’re a time traveler, it’s just a fun thing you can do. Try going for something subtle like Mr. Tyme or Dr. Timetravel or Clocky Clockerson. Something that will get a smirk out of people who are in the know but that won’t immediately out you to random civilians. If you’re planning on taking up permanent residence in another time period -for example, some people go back in time in order to become powerful superheroes or supervillains using their futuristic technology in lieu of actual powers- then you also want to not broadcast that. If you’re going to be a superhero in an earlier time period, then you need to keep both the fact that you’re a time traveler and your true identity a secret. If your enemies uncover that information, then they can defeat you simply by going after one of your ancestors and killing them. And by “defeat” I mean completely erase you from the timeline, which brings me to my next point…

Paradoxes When traveling through time you need to avoid causing any paradoxes at all costs. Some general rules for avoiding paradoxes are as follows:

Don’t sleep with anybody: Time travel makes people super fertile so you’re pretty much guaranteed to end up siring a time travel baby. These babies are almost always going to cause some pretty major paradoxes no matter which time period you place them in. Also, an astounding number of time travelers end up having sex with one of their ancestors. Making them their own ancestor. Which is a paradox. And also probably not great for the genepool. So let’s try to keep time stream excursions business only.

Don’t kill anybody: If you kill someone in the past you could irreversibly alter the future to the point where a paradox is formed. Some time traveling bounty hunters are equipped with special scanners that can determine a person’s significance to the time stream. If you have one of those then I guess you can kill someone if they don’t matter to the rest of time. But don’t tell them that that’s why you’re allowed to kill them! That’s a super disheartening thing to hear.

Don’t interact with yourself: Interacting with yourself is the easiest and quickest way to cause a paradox. Our interactions with the people around us always affect who we are as people so of course an interaction with yourself from a different time is going to have profound effects on your past and future. Obviously you should never go back in time to try to change your own past. You’re almost definitely going to make things worst for yourself. Our old pal Half-Face McGee tried it once, to save the other half of his face, and when he came back to his home time period he discovered that he was now No-Face McGee. Which is worse. He had to go back in time like eighteen different times to fix that mess. This rule is also especially important to keep in mind if a past version of yourself travels to the future and wants to talk to you. You need to avoid them at all costs. You should never meet your past self. They might think you’re lame or a jerk and resolve never to become like you. Which in all honesty might be great for them (past you) they’ve probably learned an important lesson about friendship and love or something. They’ll go back to their time and change their ways and everyone will be happier for it. Everyone except for you! The grumpy future version of you! Who will now cease to exist. So just never meet yourself. It’s just a headache waiting to happen.

Paradoxes are the best way to get yourself wiped from existence, so it’s best to avoid that. Thankfully, the time travel vacation industry (which allows patrons to spend a relaxing couple of days in the time period of their choice, though honestly, their aim isn’t great and a lot of people accidentally end up on the Titanic or in inside Tyrannosaurus stomachs) has actually developed a clever workaround to the whole paradox issue. Paradox-locks, or Paralox™ as some goon in marketing came up with, allow a time traveler to travel back in time without the possibility of irreparably messing with the timeline. When a time traveler travels using paradox-locks they can do whatever they like and anything that results from it will have already been destined to happen. But be warned you might end up accidentally becoming responsible for something you hate. Like you’ll accidentally compose that annoying commercial jingle you’ve always hated. Or perhaps you’ll be the one who gave your fiancé that stupid hat that inspired him to become a hat-themed vigilante as a child. Or maybe the massive influx of accidental time travelers will cause the Titanic to sink... Only you haven’t really caused anything, these things had all already happened before you went back in time. It’s like a perfectly closed loop. All novice time travelers should travel with paradox locks their first few times. They’re like time travel training wheels. Remove them only when you know how to carefully manipulate time without erasing anybody from existence or shattering the whole shebang.

Breaking Time Every couple of days a time traveler irreparably damages time. That’s a fun little statistic we had our interns crunch the numbers for (we don’t have interns, please stop sending us job applications). “Breaking time” is the catch all term for any catastrophic damage a time traveler causes to time and it includes (but is not limited to): creating alternate universes as a result of branched timelines, creating aberrations or anachronisms across time and accidentally causing an apocalypse. Then there’s stuff like trapping yourself in a time loop or accidentally causing time to reverse itself, both of which are more accurately described as spraining time and can easily be reversed by a more experienced time traveler. Breaking time can be caused by even the simplest action on the part of an unwitting chrononaut so you always need to be super careful. The tiniest action can cause a crazy ripple effect all across time and space and completely alter your world. It’s something scientists I like to call the “Butterfly Effect” because the example I always give is that if you punch a butterfly in the face in the past when you eventually journey back to the future that very same butterfly will be there only now it will be called Evil Butterfly and it will take a preschool hostage [I don’t think that’s how it goes]. If you’ve found that you’ve accidentally broken time (great going by the way, I just love this barren hellscape that we all live in now) we’re going to help you fix it. If you’re smart you’ve taken a copy of this blog, or at the very least this post on time travel, with you when you traveled through time. So even if you’ve broken time so badly that I haven’t written it, it should remain unaffected. You and the things you have on your person or in your time machine will remain unaffected by the shattering of the time stream for a short period of time. See, like we said before, once time travel enters the picture time becomes kind of… gooey? It can be changed and sculpted and this mean it can take a bit before it solidifies into any given shape, even if that shape is a bunch of broken apocalyptic shards. So for a brief time you’ll be able to remember everything from your old timeline. You can also remember what you did to break time and when you did it. This is about the only time you’re allowed to go and interact with yourself during these excursions. You need to go back to before you decided to unleash a time demon or have a gun fight in the time stream and stop yourself from doing it. This will definitely cause a paradox but that’s ok, that’s just where we’re at now. You need to weaponize that paradox and use it to undo whatever you did and set the timeline back. This will probably cause you to be erased from the timeline but the past you will survive and not make the mistake that caused time to splinter or implode which will save quintillions of lives. So that’s something.

Oversight Due to the massive amounts of time travelers mucking about through the past, present and future at any given time there needs to be some kind of oversight (uch lame). Some type of council or parliament (an alarming number of time travelers are British; I don’t know why that is. Personally, I think most of them are faking it because they like the accent,) of scientists, historians and time masters should be formed to monitor time travelers and intervene if anything sketchy is going down. A group of watchmen so to speak. There should also be a special time-police division set up and run by this council. These agents of time can be sent to different time periods to collect future tech that was left behind or erase people’s memories of things they shouldn’t have seen. They can also track down and capture rogue time travelers intent on going back in time to become rules of the universe or to kill a superhero in their infancy. This organization should operate outside of the constraints of time by setting up shop within the time stream itself. Just beware that there are other creatures and characters who reside their too and whom you’ll need to make arrangements with for a peaceful coexistence. There are old-timey robots and temporal-phantoms and more British people??? My god did the British Empire set up a colony in the temporal zone??? What’s going on here?

[Disclaimer Potential side effects of time travel include but are not by any means limited to: disjointed and disorganized syntax, backwards walking, visions of alternate timelines, rapid aging, rapid deaging, speaking a different language, new memories, missing memories, being your own grandparent, exploding head syndrome, blinking out of existence every Groundhogs Day, having only six days in a week, being able to taste sounds, extreme sweating, emotional trauma, incontinence, déjà vu, Presque vu, jamais vu, déjà vu, sleep apnea, the bubonic plague, velociraptor flu, extreme nostalgia, the uncontrollable urge to burst into song and heart failure. Time travel is not for the faint of heart or the megalomaniacal. Pregnant people, amnesiacs and infants are advised against time travel. Please consult with a medical professional and ask them if time travel is right for you.]

So there you have it! Now you have everything you need to go out and start collecting temporally inconsequential knick knacks and ignoring everything here to try and drastically and unilaterally change time. Stay tuned for a master post of links for the past 100 posts as well as a few other big announcements that should be coming later today. Special thanks to my editor and girlfriend @empresschana (don’t bother checking out her tumblr, it’s empty, she made it only to be my first follower because she’s the best) for all your help and support and inspiration. Thanks to Ian Schafer for letting me use Connor James’ story in the intro, check him out on YouTube and subscribe to The Jimmy Network. I’ll be starring in one of his videos later this year. And last of all thank you to all my fans for all the likes and reblogs, if there’s something you’d like to see here or if you just wanna chat hit me up in my inbox. Here’s to another hundred posts of sagely advice, wacky adventures (But none more wacky than Jerry’s Homegrown Condiment Jars! Please think of Jerry Jarman for all your wacky adventuring and jarring needs! {Ok, what the hell!}) and general tomfoolery!

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obsconspiracycity · 7 years

Text

...Technically, EVERYONE is speaking... ABOUT US.

LOL City Goers, looks like the G-men do not like our little party we are throwing for ourselves! Seems we have been branded “Wanted Terrorists”! OOOOPS~

Hey hey, think this will make us more famous lol? Oh well. I always hated government anyway. Check out this sweet doc I snagged off one of their computers when they tried to take us down. Doooo not worry. I have the heart to put all this stupid stuff under a read more.

!DSEM NOTICE! “New terrorist activity has become apparent within Sunsong City. The Conspiracy City Bloggers are now to be considered Terrorists. If they are spotted in public they are to be killed on sight.

This list is comprehensive only of the skills that the Conspiracy City Terrorists have been seen or claimed using within in the last few years. It is entirely possible that the members of this terrorist organization are capable of more than has been stated in the following list.”

That is just the intro, though. They tried to guess all of our powers which is mega lame because they have it all kinds of hella wrroooooong! It is okay, though. We will give you guys the DL on what we can really do!

Admin Dr@cula “Admin Dracula is a vampire thought to be somewhere in his thousands. On the blog he is stated to have the appearance of a teenage boy, though this has not been confirmed. His ethnicity is unknown.”

Lololol I can not believe this stuff. They do not believe I am a teenaged boy? Wowzers who would have thought that they do not even believe what they read rofl! But they even start to talk more shit. Check this stuff out, City Goers. You will love it.

“Hacking: Dracula is capable of quickly and easily hacking even the most modern of computers. While it hasn’t been tested, Dracula has claimed he can hack any government system with ease and could quite possible start world wars. Any and all attempts by government officials to take down the Conspiracy City Blog have been complete failures. Each attempt has resulted in government computers being “hacked back” with an image of a mascot like lion laughing. This is thought to be Dracula’s doing.”

“Technomancy: Dracula has claimed in the past to be capable of controlling and manipulating technology through strangely magical means. This allows him to build machines, complex computers, and even robots with what seems to be some form of telekinesis. This has not been observed.”

“!! NOTICE: Techonology should not be used around Dracula in any situation.”

Lol this is all pretty accurate. Looks like they managed to find some archive stuff of ours. Tech around me is like a death sentence. They tried really hard tbh I almost feel bad. But they seem to like the little KeY$m@sh viruses I send them so really, I cannot complain. It is always nice to have people admiring your work!

“Blood Empowerment: Dracula has stated multiple times on the Conspiracy City Blog that he is an exceptionally old vampire. When feeding, Dracula claims to have an increased power level, often stated to reach “Over Nine Thousand”. Currently this is under investigation. This has never been observed.”

OMG I can NOT believe they actually quoted one of my stupid memes in here. I feel so fulfilled. DL on my “Blood Empowerment”, though. When I have just eaten my mind is all kinds of hella sharp, so I can use all of my abilities to the best extent. It would be lame if eating did not make me stronger though, you know??

“Enhanced Condition: As a vampire, it is assumed that Dracula has some form of enhanced condition including but not limited to: enhanced strength, speed, agility, durability, and balance. Dracula himself has claimed to be able to easily lift cars and has also claimed to have been unscathed hit by speeding ones. None of this is confirmed.”

#confirmed! I just say I am super strong and stuff, though. I can actually easily lift semi trucks and break buildings though, so this is pretty inaccurate. Lame stuff. Oh, and when I got hit by a speeding car it left a huge indent in the front and I was still standing k thx.

“Enhanced Senses: Dracula has claimed on the Conspiracy City blog to have multiple enhanced senses. This includes but is not limited to: enhanced sight, smell, and reflexes. He has claimed the ability to see perfectly in pitch black conditions, smell the differences in his fellow bloggers, and even dodge bullets. None of this has been confirmed.”

Please, G-men... This is just sad to read. I can dodge bullets AND grab them with my bare hands! You totally missed half of that post. So lame. All you politicians are out shaking in your boots so bad you forget how to read? Heheheh~

“Instinctive Combat: Dracula has stated to have the ability to fight completely on instinct. He says this is the reason he is able to easily fight more experienced fighters than himself without much effort, and, as such, is to be considered both a physical and technological threat.”

This is a little weirdly described, but okay. I will take it. lol though, they forgot mental threat. Rude. How old do they think I am?

“Mind Control: Dracula has claimed multiple times to be fully capable of mind controlling humans (and possibly some supernaturals) when he needs to feed. This is the only time he has mentioned using the ability, but it is to be considered a threat that he might be able to use in any given situation.”

TBH I can use it any time I want, I just do not. It seems rude, you know? I can usually con people into stuff without it anyway. But yeah, btws, I can use mind control any time. My limit is like ten people at once.

“Shapeshifting: Dracula has claimed the ability to shapeshift into a bat like vampires of old lore. This has never been confirmed.”

I can also shapeshift into a wolf, hyena, and Komodo dragon, thx.

“Healing Factor: It is assumed that, like other vampires, Dracula is equipped with some sort of healing factor. The strength of this is completely unknown, as Dracula has never mentioned it himself.”

Actually, my healing factor is pretty rad. I can heal basically anything in about two hours. You know, except like... sun burns, lol. But if I actually do get hurt, which is rare, it goes away in like a few hours. Pretty sweet deal for me. Oh, and if I drink blood? Yeah, it goes away instantly.

Anyway, that is all the lame stuff the listed for me, but they missed WAAAAY too much. So I thought, why not have a little sharing time with our fans, huh? So, here you go! A few more Dr@cula specials.

Fear Inducement: I have got a pretty cool ability to terrify anyone I want to. It mostly comes with eye contact, so if I look into a person’s eyes I can make them want to cry and run away. The fear is, specifically, directed at me, from what I can tell.

Fear Empowerment: So after I do that thing where I make people horrified of me, I can usually feel myself getting all hyped up on it. It feels really nice, actually. From what I can tell, anytime someone is scared of me I sort of start to get stronger because of it. So this whole situation where the G-men are quaking in their undies over me? Yeah, feels real nice.

Enhanced Intelligence: I have been alive for thousands of years, so not shockingly, I am as smart as they come. I will not go into detail here, but let us just say I would not try outsmarting me, kk DSEMmie?

That is about it though. I just thought I would share this all with you City Goers, because you might get a kick out of it! On top of that, we have been getting questions about ourselves, so I will try to convince the others to comment on what I dug up on them too. Thanks everybody! Stay safe out there, okay? Media has a tendency to play really nasty.

--- Dr@cula

#dracula speaking

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damienthepious · 7 years

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TELL US ABOUT ALL THE OCS!! ilandere, kalinda, callise, enna, lerato, raske, blacklight, clamor, bonny, vmni !!!

OKAY OMG THANK YOU I LOVE YOU BUT ALSO THIS IS GONNA BE THE LONGEST POST EVER SO IT’S GOOOOING UNDER A CUT

like . no capslock to show how srs i am this is the longest post ever fair warning

I AM THE LEAST CONCISE PERSON IN HISTORY dear mobile users I AM SORRY, also i spent so much time writing all these it’s a little ridiculous?? wow

Ilandere [my daughter my darling baby girl] [novel character - sci fi - sisterworlds!verse]

Full Name: Ilandere CirilaGender and Sexuality: she’s a gal and… errrr demisexual lesbian??? aro/ace with an exception???? she is in love with one woman and. that is kind of the end-all-be-all of her sexualityPronouns: she/herEthnicity/Species: Human, but non-earth human so it’s hard to say exact ethnicity? hold up i know i have a pic, and Set you (you wonderful person you) asked for a pic in another ask so…

ignore the self-deprecation, pls, she’s got brown skin and freckles and long wavy hair and bright… bright teal eyes…

Birthplace and Birthdate: Er. non-earth again so. 17 Eshana moon, year 305 of the imperial calendar, which means nothing to nobody, and she was born in out in the suburban sprawl near Asmara cityGuilty Pleasures: fairy tales. she’s kind of a…. scientific prodigy, and ‘frivolous’ pursuits are kind of frowned upon in her culture, so she keeps her interest in fairy tales and mythology on the dl for the most partPhobias: well. ilandere, you see, works primarily on the theoretical physics of portals, so she has a fairly… deep seated, and very well informed… fear of portal fragging. like. being partway through a portal when it closes? being…. cut in pieces by a portal ceasing to be. that…. terrifies her, at the deepest level.What They Would Be Famous For: Oh well she’s kind of a mathematical genius? and she kind of is famous for that? she’s ‘one of the most promising scientific minds of her generation’What They Would Get Arrested For: um. not returning library books on time. is literally the ONLY THING i can think of.OC You Ship Them With: Kalinda :3OC Most Likely To Murder Them: holy shit. nobody in the fucking multiverse are you kidding. she is. the sweetest and kindest person. in those ‘should you fight’ memes she’s the fucking one who gets ‘yeah you can beat her but WHY WOuLD YOU WANT TO YOU MONSTER’Favorite Movie/Book Genre: she doesn’t much watch movies or plays, she has a really hard time keeping focus on them and she tends to get distracted by ideas for her work halfway through. books tho! she is literally always reading! she loves to read math books straight up. lil nerd. she likes biographies too, and, seeeecretly, mythology & fairy tale booksLeast Favorite Movie/Book Cliche: Nerd Girl Gets Makeover And Suddenly Has Straight Hair And Doesn’t Need Her Glasses And Is Pretty Now Really And Suddenly Deserves The Boy!!!!! like ew she hates that shit as both a nerd and as someone who has less than zero interest in boys.Talents and/or Powers: Did I already say math genius? p sure yeah. Also. and this is something she doesn’t know anything about. Something that’s literally just meta knowledge that I know. She has a sort of…. aura of influence? She’s magnetic. She just attracts attention (positive or negative) naturally, wherever she goes, without meaning to or really trying.Why Someone Might Love Them: She is. Bubbly and enthusiastic, she is brilliant and bright and generous and chipper and she’s. my baby.Why Someone Might Hate Them: she…. can get really caught up in herself? she might forget about everything around her because of whatever she’s working on just then? She’s also not… particularly humble? she’s not a braggart but she also doesn’t know how to… downplay her skills for other people’s comfort? like, her attention grabbing aura will occasionally breed… jealousy and spite? but frankly it usually doesn’t last past actually getting to know her.How They Change: !!!!! I’ll tell you when i actually write the book!!!!!! no but really she is eventually supposed to learn how to live in the moment, to…. really see other people around her? to realize that the world around her isn’t some dream she’ll wake up from to start having a ‘real life’, if that makes sense? she has an all-encompassing goal for much of her story that she lets absolutely consume her, and she sort of… learns eventually… that that was something of a mistake, even though she does get what she wants in the end. She missed out on her friends and family while they were right there with her.Why You Love Them: real talk tho ilandere and kalinda together were some of my first Real, Serious OCs. they were…. between the two of them, they were me exploring my sexuality. they were me becoming okay with liking ladies. and they’ve both grown just. just sooooo much with me. ilandere - i played her and kalinda in this big fun larp my now-bf was running, and they really helped me build my storytelling, build my acting. Ilandere was a soft, brainy kid stuck with a bunch of fighters, and she could still keep up and prove her value with her mind and her talents and her generosity of spirit, and i love her so. so so very much. She’s grown with me too- she helped me come to terms with my autism, and i realized that i had always played her- with that part of me? her odd speech patterns, her social skills that she worked so hard on but didn’t come easily to her, her stimming! she is just- i can’t emphasize enough how much she means to me, as a character, as an extension of myself.

Kalinda [novel character - fantasy- sisterworlds!verse]

Full Name: Kalinda Flint Beryl (look gemstone surnames are really common on her world it’s totally not weird)Gender and Sexuality: lesbian!Pronouns: she/herEthnicity/Species: non-earth human again, i’ve been revamping her look lately so i don’t actually have a faceclaim or anything yet, but i think like, in earth terms she’d be southeast asian? maybe?Birthplace and Birthdate: urgh uh midsummer in the year 1105 AK (she is two years older than Ilandere, as far as that relativity nonsense goes, since they’re from…… different fucking planets), and she was born out in the countryside, in her mum’s cottageGuilty Pleasures: pretty much… everything? she doesn’t actually…. spend any intentional time on pleasure? she kind of deprives herself of anything that could distract her from her goals, at all. So like. enjoying a fucking sunset for two seconds would make her feel guilty and pissed off.Phobias: claustrophobia, and also certain specific types of magic? like the kind of…. ancient, deep magic that lives in the bones of the earth, that lives in the void between stars, that lives in the undercurrents of death. that kind of magic.What They Would Be Famous For: She’s a fairly skilled swordsmith, a fairly skilled mage, and a fairly skilled fighter all around, but she’s none of those things enough to be really…. famous for them?What They Would Get Arrested For: hahahaha i didn’t think about this when i wrote Ilandere’s but. straight up for stealing books. that has. actually happened.OC You Ship Them With: Ilandere!!!!! :DOC Most Likely To Murder Them: Hrm. She has a parental figure, her smithing mentor? who is pretty dang peeved off at Kalinda for the. like. the way she chose to live her life? but prooooobably only enough to. y’know. smack her around a bit in frustrated affection? yeah.Favorite Movie/Book Genre: magic…. tomes…. she hasn’t read for fun since childhood, alasLeast Favorite Movie/Book Cliche: she seriously Does Not CareTalents and/or Powers: She’s a spellsword, and her magic specialization is like, some weird combination of nature/flora magic and… void magic.Why Someone Might Love Them: she has a central core of tempered steel. she is strong and unwavering. and despite her insistence on prioritizing her own goals above all else, she will still stop to help others if she sees them in trouble (tho she might pretend to grumble about it). Why Someone Might Hate Them: she’s also kind of unapproachable, and could possible be seen as… like…. heartless? she’s very very good at acting like she doesn’t care about other people, provided they aren’t in immediate danger. and she just doesn’t have the fucking time of day for small talk or petty problems, and she’s spent so much time on her own that her social skills completely suckHow They Change: she keeps that steely incorruptible core, but she slowly, painfully learns to soften her edges. to actually value the cliche and stop to smell the roses. it’s not easy to transition into finally having what you spent your whole life wanting, but eventually… she learns to take comfort as it comes.Why You Love Them: All the reasons in the same section of Ilandere’s set, because these two babes area package deal with me. Also, because i am a spiteful creator and i am sick to death of ‘tuff gurl is straight 2 break stereotypes!’ and Kalinda is my short haired, sword slinging, hard-scrabble, tough-as-nails, lesbian baby. Kalinda helped me learn to be… unapologetic.

Callise [rp character]

Full Name: she… doesn’t have one? her actual designation is ‘Calypso’, but she does not know that.Gender and Sexuality: she’s bi, and she might, eventually, come to understand herself as nonbinary? but she doesn’t do a lot of introspection so for all intents & purposes she’s a woman.Pronouns: she/herEthnicity/Species: human/living portal storm??????Birthplace and Birthdate: in… a lab…. at some undisclosed time…. that no one knows anymore because that dimension….. is gone… holy shit why am i like thisGuilty Pleasures: ohhhh she does not believe in this concept at all. Callise is sort of a live-for-the-moment um. hedonist? look she suffers a LOT throughout her nonsense life so she isn’t gonna care about eating some fuckign cake or having some sex, ya dig?Phobias: enclosed spaces, being restrained, deserts, starving to deathWhat They Would Be Famous For: ????? being….. fucked the fuck up???? and feral?????????What They Would Get Arrested For: literally not giving an entire shit about the laws of any fucking world she’s onOC You Ship Them With: a glass of warm milk & a fucking good night’s sleepOC Most Likely To Murder Them: anyone… who is easily scared by teeth gnashing and snarling i suppose?Favorite Movie/Book Genre: she doesn’t consume a LOT of media? and she typically can’t read the languages on the worlds she’s stuck on? but she fucking loves popcorn action movies and shitty comedies and just stuff that’s Fun she doesn’t have to think about at alllllll Least Favorite Movie/Book Cliche: …. evil scientists are a genuine trigger for herTalents and/or Powers: um. she’s. her physical form is irretrievably merged with a portal storm. like, a storm in spacetime that punches holes into various multiversal dimensions? she can sometimes control it? in little bits? but mostly it manifests as the storm completely… demolishing whatever world she’s in at that moment? usually it takes a few years after she comes to a place, but eventually the storm will ‘catch up’ to her, and the longer she’s been there the worse it will be, and then the storm will fuck up the world and…. kill her. and she will wake up on the next world. if she dies in another way, she’ll wake up in the next place anyway regardless. she really, really doesn’t understand it, not even to the point of knowing that she is the storm. she thinks the storm is chasing her.Why Someone Might Love Them: she’s…. uh… very honestly herself? she is 10000% in the moment and earnest about everything. she has no deception whatsoever within herself. Why Someone Might Hate Them: … she has no deception whatsoever within herself. she is indescribably blunt. she is… kind of animalistic and violent and doesn’t care about laws or social rules and she does things, sometimes, on the smallest fucking whim, including occasionally biting people??? and punching things and people for fun??? like she loves fighting people and sometimes it’s sort of foreplay too??? and breaking stuff just to break stuff? so… yeahHow They Change: oh Cal changes so much over the course of her long, long, looooooong life, and not always for the better? she kind of slips…. depending on how she’s treated on each world she portals to, she slips in and out of feral!Cal mode? if she’s chased and hunted, if she’s locked up, if she’s treated with violence, she’ll go wild. She, as a character, kind of reflects how she’s treated at any given time? Why You Love Them: she’s my monster child. i mean, she’s kind of a vent character? and because of her nature, i can slip her into any sort of narrative i feel like atm, which makes her a pretty fun rp character. if she dies, she dies! that particular narrative is donezo, oh well, but she gets to run off and have adventures somewhere else! it’s really fun

Enna [novel character - fantasy - elementals!verse]

Full Name: *rubs my horrible hands together* okay there is a reincarnation component to the is character so??? the first name she was given was Endellion Devlin, her title is Phoenix, and she’s had like eighteen other names including Aideen Lucero and Shea EdenGender and Sexuality: bisexual, and genderfluid between usually a woman and agender or male more occasionallyPronouns:depends what gender she’s feeling, so usually she/herEthnicity/Species: human/elemental, and bc of that reincarnation element her ethnicity changes from lifetime to lifetimeBirthplace and Birthdate: er. lots of different ones? again with the non-earth world. i’m quite predictable on that front. (i kind of hate/suck at writing plain old earth)Guilty Pleasures: hmm…. well…. she feels a bit… low-key guilty about… how much she enjoys fighting? like the physical act of fighting, she takes lot of joy in, and she feels weird about that because… obviously… fighting hurts peoplePhobias: confinement, death, drowningWhat They Would Be Famous For: leading a rebellion to overthrow a bigoted oppressive regime :3What They Would Get Arrested For: leading a rebellion to overthrow a bigoted oppressive regime :3OC You Ship Them With: Lerato, also, Sil TivanOC Most Likely To Murder Them: oh, pretty much anyone in the Creed (aforementioned bigotd oppressive regime), but mostly Raith. who kind of… has? actually? killed her. at least three times.Favorite Movie/Book Genre: sheeeee…. doesn’t actually read or consume media p much ever? she’s too action oriented. she doesn’t like stopping to watch/read things. but if she did…….. soppy romanceLeast Favorite Movie/Book Cliche: ditto above response minus the endingTalents and/or Powers: mmm she’s a fire elemental, can produce and manipulate fire/heat, and kindasorta fly with it? also, elemental powers in this world present at puberty (yes kind of like x men thanx), and enna can sense whether or not a child is going to develop into an elemental later in lifeWhy Someone Might Love Them: she is pure fucking passion sculpted into human form. she’s the kind of person to dance barefoot outside in a thunderstorm, splashing in literally every puddle. plus she is just really very compassionate, protective, honest, funWhy Someone Might Hate Them: hmmmmmm because she is unapologetic about everything she does. she’s a fighter and she will fight you if you threaten the people she cares about, and she will not pull her punches. not at all.How They Change: during the novel i’m planning/writing, she starts off in an odd place emotionally, because she’s been… conditioned, sort of, to repress herself, and control herself, which is really really contrary to her nature, and she has to spend the first third of the story unlearning that training and becoming herself again, tho she’s feeling very burnt out about her… purpose… at that point? Then, something happens that fucks with her… worldview, and her sense of self, and she runs away, which is also pretty damn against her nature, or at least against the way she’s always lived her life, and then she spends some time learning how to slow down and enjoy things again, and remembering why it is that she fights in the first place, and who she fights for, and then… that ends really poorly too. the last part of the novel is her companion slowly slowly earning her trust back, and Enna coming back into her own as a leader and a fighter and as a whole person, finally, instead of just a symbol.Why You Love Them: Enna was created not long after Ilandere & Kalinda, meaning that she came pretty early in my creative growth, and so a lot of her meta character changes are really relevant to my life? she another bi baby of mine. also… i really like to hope that i would be as brave as her if i was in her position. she’s an ideal for me, and i aspire to be like her.

Lerato [novel character - fantasy - elementals!verse]

Full Name: Lerato SorchaGender and Sexuality: bi womanPronouns: she/herEthnicity/Species: human/elementalBirthplace and Birthdate: i’m gonna leave this at a very very long fucking time ago in a place that burned to the groundGuilty Pleasures: look poor Lerato feels guilty about a lot of very legitimate things, but she doesn’t waste a lot of time berating herself for small pleasuresWhat They Would Be Famous For: Back In The Day, she’d be famous for the whole revolutionary leader thing that Enna takes over from her, but nowadays she really prefers to hang out in the background, on the sidelines, offering support and advice. she is TiredWhat They Would Get Arrested For: i mean. collusion with a known resistance leader, so.OC You Ship Them With: Ennaaaaaaaaaaaaa. she really really really loves Enna, just, so fucking much. for all the good it does either of them.OC Most Likely To Murder Them: Raith holy shit, because Raith is a jealous horrible. um. monster. and yet again. has actually killed Lerato before. but only once. and also Gideon would, because of that whole being a leader in the Creed thing.Favorite Movie/Book Genre: she likes poetry an awful lot.Least Favorite Movie/Book Cliche: love triangles.Talents and/or Powers: she’s also an elemental, but substantially older than Enna, and her powers present a bit differently. she can teleport in a kind of hazy burst, can recover from damage by ‘fading’ out, and she can sense elementals at a distance (this sense is particularly attuned to Enna, actually, and one or two others)Why Someone Might Love Them: she is very sensitive and attentive to other people’s emotional states, and she is loyal to a fucking fault. if she thinks you are deserving, she will 100% fucking die for you. she’s also like… fierce and gentle at the same time? she makes me think of turtledoves and rainclouds and campfire smoke and i find her utterly loveableWhy Someone Might Hate Them: she never fucking says what she fucking means, and she keeps pretending that she doesn’t feel anything when she’s fucking dying inside because she fucking thinks that being self-sacrificing will somehow! fucking! help! anything! also she has been known to… string people along, because she doesn’t want to hurt them, so she just… she’ll deliberately neglect to clarify her emotions because she’s afraid to make someone else feel bad about them. it’s not dishonesty… but it is p much cowardice.How They Change: Lerato learns that a) sacrificing yourself is not always the best fucking option, especially not when you haven’t consulted the person being protected, and b) you don’t get what you actually want if you don’t say what you actually want and c) … that she deserves to be treated well, that she deserves and always did deserve better, that she didn’t deserve abuse and coercion, that she can be and should be happy.Why You Love Them: Well, Lerato started as kind of a… if Enna was who i wanted to be, then Lerato kind of formed from this nebulous fictional idea of a person i would want to fall in love with / want to fall in love with me? and thus tbh Lerato changed from a super cliche, jane austen/jane eyre mysterious romantic leading man who would do anything for Enna, and developed slowly into a woman with quite complex motivations and emotions who i still wouldn’t mind doing a smooch with. i am a mature content creator. fuck. so anyway, i love Lerato because… well… i kind of made her to be loved?

Raske [rp character - x files]

Full Name: Harriet Delilah RaskeGender and Sexuality: queer womanPronouns: she/herEthnicity/Species: she? doesn’t know? she’s adopted & her ethnicity’s never really been important to her. also she’s a rare Actual Earth Human from my character rolodex, wow weird.Birthplace and Birthdate: you’d think, considering that whole Actual Earth Human thing i’d have an answer for this? i know her bday is April 7th, but i can’t remember if the rp she’s from took place period to the original x files show or if the gm updated it to modern, and that changes the year sooooGuilty Pleasures: frankly? she kind of secretly enjoys making people feel uncomfortable about her prosthetic leg. if people get weird about it on their own? she makes a point to dial it up and just. low key fuck with them.What They Would Be Famous For: deadpan humor and avoiding her feeliesWhat They Would Get Arrested For: maybe kind of possibly breaking the law in pursuit of Truth That Is Probably Out There?OC You Ship Them With: proper mental heath careOC Most Likely To Murder Them: ~~~Mysterious G Men~~~Favorite Movie/Book Genre: she doesn’t watch movies a lot. She used to really like medical drama tv shows, but now she spends her time listening to audiobooks, usually biographies or historical fictionLeast Favorite Movie/Book Cliche: she hates hates hates the ‘lone sniper’ myth in fictionTalents and/or Powers: she’s a tough cookie and an excellent shot with both a pistol and a rifleWhy Someone Might Love Them: you know how working hard for something makes it seem more worthwhile once you get there? it’s like that with Raske. if you pay enough attention you realize that she’s actually so fucking funny, it’s just that she always delivers her humor completely deadpan. she’s got a lot of subtlety to her in every emotion, so once you get to know her and you can see through her veneer, you realize she’s an awkward, funny, sensitive, endearing worrywart, who only pretends to be totally in control of herself. and also she could totally throw you over her shoulder and carry you off into the sunset so there’s that angle also ;3Why Someone Might Hate Them: well, if you don’t manage to get through her crunchy exterior, then all you’re gonna wind up seeing is a stone faced gal who never fucking laughs and won’t give anyone the time of day for small talk. also she stole the last cup of coffee and didn’t put a new pot onHow They Change: she gets… way more paranoid…. and also she bonds with her fellow agents in a totally dweeby found-family wayWhy You Love Them: she’s really different from the sorts of characters i usually play rp-wise? i almost always trend towards really emotional characters, and talkative ones, and Raske is kind of the opposite of that? so she really let me stretch out my character building muscles, and she helped me work on more subtle acting.

Blacklight [rp character - superhero!verse]

Full Name: Sabrina Aurore SeaverGender and Sexuality: aro bi gal (i’m realizing a trend, here)Pronouns: she/herEthnicity/Species: mixed race black/Korean metahumanBirthplace and Birthdate: Boston, April 8th, 1989Guilty Pleasures: ehhhh when she was younger she used to be into some recreational drug use (nowadays she mostly just drinks, & she smokes occasionally too)What They Would Be Famous For: her awesomesauce freerunning skillzWhat They Would Get Arrested For: well, y’see, vigilante-ism is technically… actually… very illegalOC You Ship Them With: she hooks up with a lot of people and has a lot of fun with them, but she… doesn’t have… romantic feelies?? p much ever? her and Sharkie (who i s2g i will figure out a real name for eventually) kind of develop a really sweet queerplatonic relationship eventuallyOC Most Likely To Murder Them: mmm Clamor but mostly in a if you get yourself killed i will murder you sort of wayFavorite Movie/Book Genre: bad/good 80′s moviesLeast Favorite Movie/Book Cliche: helpless damsel needs rescuing by Big Strong MahnTalents and/or Powers: copied from her rp blog bio bc i’m a laaazy nb: Her range of vision is substantially better, spanning from ultraviolet to infrared (meaning that she can also ‘see’ heat, to a point). During the day, her body absorbs ultraviolet light and emanates heat without any conscious effort on her part, and at night it does the opposite, causing her body to effectively become a black-light (hence the name). The odd way her skin interacts with light and heat is responsible for her relatively pale complexion, since it makes her incapable of tanning properly, and it also means that she cannot be damaged by heat by itself, though fire, a chemical reaction, can still burn her just fine. She can manipulate and produce infrared, visible spectrum, and ultraviolet light as well, creating bright blinding flashes or heating flammable material until it combusts (though she cannot produce or manipulate fire itself).Why Someone Might Love Them: legitimate love for you, my dude. she’ll risk her idiot skin to save your life and then take you out dancing, she’ll smile like a bonfire and laugh like you’ve said the funniest thing she’s ever heard and she’ll mean it, really and truly. she’s easy to fall in love with because she treats every interaction and every person with attention and care. she is genuinely interested in what you have to say. she will make you feel important, and funny and special, and lmao then she’ll break your fucking heart because yes, she loves you, of course she loves you, she would die for you and she’d help you move, but not like that dude i’m sorry. she doesn’t love you like That.Why Someone Might Hate Them: that last bit, also she’s irreverent and reckless and a bit careless with herself and sometimes other people, because the idea that she could hurt other people’s feelings by putting herself in danger just. doesn’t occur to her? ever? and if you’re nasty to her she will turn into THE BIGGEST SHIT, she goes FULL BRAT MODE and she is. p unlikable when she aims that at yaHow They Change: she learns a) it’s okay that she doesn’t have feelings for people. she’s not broken. she doesn’t need to change herself for someone else. she doesn’t need to pretend. it’s okay. b) being a reckless idiot while in a costume and mask will Get You Shot, dummy. c) you can’t compartmentalize your whole life. things will start to bleed over before you expect them to and it will Not end wellWhy You Love Them: oh, baby blacklight. I came up with her for a larp my bro was running, his superhero verse is Really cool. She started as sort of a tropebreaker? she’s a superhero because she has powers and because she thought it would be FUN. she has literally no angst about her superpowers, she has a pretty cool home life, she isn’t hard up for money, her parents are BOTH ALIVE and she has a halfway decent relationship with them? and i fell in love with that idea hard. also she’s just developed into this really fun, happy, positive person with a good impact on the world, and she lets me live vicariously thru her extroverted party girl self

Clamor [rp character - superhero!verse]

Full Name: Kai “Kitty” MahoeGender and Sexuality: lesbianPronouns: she/herEthnicity/Species: hawaiian, metahumanBirthplace and Birthdate: June 2nd, 1991, Los AngelesGuilty Pleasures: lmao nahWhat They Would Be Famous For: for being the worst low-level villain and stealing the most petty shit ever in history, you already have like eight amps and more fucking sound equipment than any human could ever want, also you can do that with your fucking body already i hate youWhat They Would Get Arrested For: “”OC You Ship Them With: she’s… kind of in love with Blacklight? and it’s a bit fucked up…. she mostly plays it off as No One Fucks With My Hero But Me, but she’s saved Sabrina’s life at least three times and occasionally tries to make out with her under the pretense of near-death adrenalineOC Most Likely To Murder Them: …. Sharkie (god i need a NAME for them)Favorite Movie/Book Genre: period romance Least Favorite Movie/Book Cliche: the fucking wilhelm screamTalents and/or Powers: she can manipulate sound with her mind/body. she can amplify or muffle noises around her, and she can use a sort of rhythm… frequency… amplification thing to turn sound into a weapon. she can create sonic blasts easily or make someone temporarily deaf. she could do this with just any old noises, but she is fucking Extra and always uses instruments, particularly percussion and particularly drumsticks, tho she can play a bunch of different things. Why Someone Might Love Them: she’s actually p funny and clever and fun to hang out with as a civilian…….Why Someone Might Hate Them: … but her alter-ego is a complete fucking shithead, she’s a selfish dick and she Will Steal Everything You LoveHow They Change: tbh she’s still to early in development for me to know this quite yetWhy You Love Them: i love bratty irreverent characters sometimes

Bonny [novel character - sci fi - Star Stray]

Full Name: Bonny Read CalumniGender and Sexuality: bisexual nonbinary womanPronouns: she/herEthnicity/Species: human Birthplace and Birthdate: she was born on a colony called Atlantis on the moon Europa, at some as-of-yet unspecified Future Year, November 14thGuilty Pleasures: she sneaks off to places she shouldn’t be on every single spaceship she’s been on. she loves finding secret places to hide, and she uses them like an earth kid would use a tree fort, to keep her little treasures and private stuff, and to hide from her momWhat They Would Be Famous For: well… acheiving First Contact with an alien species lmaoWhat They Would Get Arrested For: … nothing??? she is actually quite a sweet young woman, not exactly criminal material, unlike most of my oc children.OC You Ship Them With: her long distance friend/crush/ex, DalOC Most Likely To Murder Them: there are a few angry splinter factions that are veeery against the nasty alien creature that came from the sky, so probably them?Favorite Movie/Book Genre: she loves YA, specifically dystopian YALeast Favorite Movie/Book Cliche: she hates the super smart child prodigy clicheTalents and/or Powers: she’s really good at taking things apart and fixing them, and she’s really great at figuring out how mechanical things work.Why Someone Might Love Them: she will fix the AC in your room and bring you snacks and listen to you vent about your day and give you a comisserating, rueful smile. when the conversation lulls, she’ll come out with an unexpected joke just to surprise you into laughing. she will dance ot any music. she will go to a museum full of stuff she doesn’t actually care much about or understand just to make silly jokes about everything there with you. look she’s just. dweeby but charming about it anyway.Why Someone Might Hate Them: her anger issues make her difficult to get along with sometimes? she tends to bottle her feelings and then eventually, inevitably explodesHow They Change: mmmm she stops hiding her desires to make other people happy, and she um. learns not to be an asshole to aliens for no reason? and to be fcking respectful of Vmna and their cultureWhy You Love Them: she a good space girl. lov her. sorry i’m so damn tired

Vmna [novel character - sci fi - Star Stray]

Full Name: [i fucking wrote their name wrong in the tag bc i’m ridiculous, and also i can’t remember ipa and their language is super weird so this is going to be unpronounceable] k’ Vmna nksGender and Sexuality: Vmna’s people don’t actually have a concept of ‘gender’ that in any way parallels human gender, so they kind of don’t have sexuality either? like as a conceptPronouns: they/themEthnicity/Species: their species doesn’t really have a translatable name, but Bonny tends to call them ‘centaurs’Birthplace and Birthdate: [insert words that don’t fucking make sensewithout the context of the novel]Guilty Pleasures: What They Would Be Famous For: being the first of her species to actually speak with and make friends with an alien life formWhat They Would Get Arrested For: maybe for sneaking Fun contraband to the alien without permissionOC You Ship Them With: i believe that'll have to wait for the sequel novel! but she is totally gonna wind up falling for a human i betOC Most Likely To Murder Them: ditto Bonny’s answer, because they consider Vmna complicitFavorite Movie/Book Genre: there’s a specific genre on their world that’s p much just ‘comfort fiction’, like? just sound/image/smell/story combinations that are made to be pure comfort. they love those.Least Favorite Movie/Book Cliche: lmao in fiction on their world has a cliche of all aliens looking like mis-colored versions of their own species but, like, with weird feet usuallyTalents and/or Powers: Vmna is very good at linguistics Why Someone Might Love Them: they are attentive and clever, and they’re ridiculously empatheticWhy Someone Might Hate Them: no good reason goddamn. Vmna is lovelyHow They Change: Vmna learns to appreciate Earth Music and Earth Idioms and Earth Humor, and they also grow to be more confident in their skills as a linguist and a sociologistWhy You Love Them: Vmnaaaaaaaa is super cool and they’re also like, the Primo Example of me spitewriting? because their ENTIRE species exists because i’m hella bitter about shitty alien design in fiction? like i haaaaate miscolored Space Babe design? i hate boring anthropocentric alien design???? SO MUCH??? as someone once said (i think it was Dal?) (and i’m paraphrasing), CONVERGENT EVOLUTION WILL ONLY GET YOU SO FAR, there is NO REASON for alien design to be boring! Except for LACK OF IMAGINATION. SO! Vmna’s species are weird centaur/elephant folks who have big spike-claw feet and move vertically as easily as they move horizontally, and they have no gender and they communicate emotion partially thru scent/pheremones, and they see color different, and a bunch of other shit i’ve forgotten since i wrote the novel, and Vmna themself is just. The Epitome. of their species. in my head. and i love them

AND WITH THAT I THINK I’M DONE???? WOW THANK U SET THIS WAS FUN IF EXHAUSTING! and i hope this is even marginally interesting to someone besides meself

#setepenre-set #asks #if i missed a q somehow on here forgive me? this took F O R E V E R #i am so sorry i cannot. cannot be concise #i am POSITIVE that you regret asking me this now #hahaha #elle babbles #elle's writing stuff #oc chatter #ilandere&kalinda #elementals!verse #bl tag #star stray

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michaelfftv · 7 years

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When I’m out shooting, people will ask- what are you doing, who are you doing that for, or what’s your favorite thing to shoot, or what do you like about photography?

37th VA Para Games, Rugby Championship

These multiple questions, I find, are invariably all inquiring about the same thing, which is, why do I chose to spend my time practicing this arcane art?

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For the truth be told, pretty much all serious still photography- by which I mean photography not taken by a mobile phone, or with a selfie stick; or by someone who actually knows and cares about such terms as composition, tone and lighting- is by common consensus, in 2017, arcane.

The truth of this sweeping statement is in the bottom line- consider this excerpt from a recent article by Peta Pixel:

Nikon dropped a couple of very troubling bombshells today. The first was a “Recognition of Extraordinary Loss” due to company-wide restructuring; the second was the cancellation of the much-delayed series of Nikon DL compact cameras announced in February of 2016.

The news is basically all bad for Nikon fans today, but even if you ignore the business side, it’s never a good sign when a company gives up on a camera series they already announced—and then delayed… and delayed… and delayed again. The DL series was supposed to be Nikon’s answer to popular premium point-and-shoots like Sony’s RX100 and RX10 series, and now it is officially cancelled.

Such problems exist industry wide and are not limited to Nikon. Such news, of course, also begs any number or other potential arguments- which I’m just going to sidestep here.

Live kill seminar, Turner Farm, Indian Hil Ohio 5/18/2017

Rather, I will simply answer the question. If DSLR’s are passe because there are better solutions, why do I still carry two heavy cameras and a heavy set of lenses- long after newspapers have taken back their photographers professional DSLR’s, riffed them, and passed out cell phones to reporters ?

I still carry DSLR’s because they do make a difference and because that difference is still appreciated. How do I know this? Can I prove this point scientifically? Probably. if I cared enough to do so, which I don’t.

Live kill seminar, Turner Farm, Indian Hil Ohio 5/18/2017

cell phone cameras are not better- although they are, invariably easier to carry and use. I fully cede the point that we are becoming a cheaper and lazier country by the moment. Yet, as far as I am concerned, DSLR’s are better and worth the hassle for a couple of simple reasons.

First, I need the exercise. I will not for love or money get on a treadmill. I will carry heavy camera gear for long distances.

North Side Fourth Of July Parade

Secondly, if photography with real cameras, have been surpassed in ease and quality by point and shoot models and or cell phones; people would not continue to request or appreciate the images generated by SLR cameras, over point and shoot and cell phone images.

If I show up at local concert or even, for instance. there’s a reason, the owner of the venue , or the tour manager will let me into the event- and give me great seats or premium access- without paying the same twenty thirty or fifty dollar, or One Hundred dollar admission fee he’s charging everyone else. And even if you do get in, it’s really unlikely your going to get the kind of access needed to get shots like this.

Third, my most persuasive remaining arguments for practicing this dark art are, and have always been, selfish; and DSLR’s serve my own selfish ends.

Why do I shoot? What do I like to shoot, why bother hauling this stuff around?

North Side Fourth Of July Parade

My answer goes back to a drunken night in college. I was on the front porch of our collegiant home with my close friend Bruce. We were having a long existential conversation- which we were want to do when we were in our cups.

Cutting to the chase I asked Bruce point black, “What do you want out of life?”

“Man,” he said,” I just want to do everything once.”

This response seemed to me so worthy and wise, that I adopted his goal as mine. Not only did I adopt that goal, I have kept that goal.

The Magic Flute, Piano Dress Rehearsal, Cincinnati Opera.

It’s a goal I’ve gleefully pursued for nearly thirty years now. It is not, mind you, an easy, or entirely happy, voyage. Such a quest invariably involves, as the great troubadour Alejandro Escavedo has noted, more miles than money, and sometimes heartbreak.

Such a journey is also logistically difficult as there are- for instance- many places for which one either lacks a plausible reason for being in that place; or, sometimes, one is barred from exploring various places because the proprietors of those places simply, and reasonably in many cases, do not want strangers snooping around.

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However, if one is careful to learn a dark art, or two, many of those doors swing open. Two of those arts are photography and writing. The tools, the arts, of story telling.

People love stories; and, more importantly, people love being the center of a good story. At the end of the day, almost all people like to hear about themselves. Thus, if you are willing and capable of, telling stories, many of those doors will open.

Pike 27, Northside Yacht Club.

This is why invariably tell people that I write (another dying art) and shoot because all too often my magical camera will change from a camera into a key or invitation. Many times a good camera and a set of proven skills with grant you entree into a place even when money will not.

And do DSLR’s tell better stories? Yes, but the argument doesn’t really even matter. The important thing is that most people believe as such.

Grayson Highlands State Park, Virgina

Grayson Highlands State Park

North Carolina Mountains

Grayson Highlands State Park, Virgina

It’s a bitter sweet truth that life is too short to allow me to reach my goal- or even come close- but that doesn’t mean trying to reach that goal is mostly bittersweet or melancholy. Quite the contrary.

In the last 8 weeks, I have Photographed the 37th annual Veteran’s Annual Paraplegic Games, specifically the Wheelchair Rugby Championships and Closing Ceremonies. The large ballroom shots above are the Closing Ceremonies.

Pike 27, Northside Yacht Club.

There were thousands of vets from across the country who attended. To qualify for the games you have to have been rendered a quadriplegic while in service of your country. These folks have every reason in the world to feel sorry for themselves, but instead they strap themselves into modified wheelchairs and act as if they are part of a human demolition derby. I played twenty years of rugby and am qualified to say, these guys are studs.

So the next time you hear some fool, in Washington, crapping out his or her mouth about who is a hero, you might want to spend some time with these men and women. I was truly honored to be able to do this shoot.

North Carolina Mountains

Sometimes, the best shoots, like the Para Games, provide serious personal and real world perspective.

I also attended a seminar about humane killing practices of animals. You can read about that almost life changing experience here.

I also covered, for about the sixth time, the Northside 4th of July Parade– which had implications, for me, far beyond a simple communal expression of patriotism.

I was also fortunate to cover the opening of the Herzog Music Store, at 811 Race Street in Cincinnati. This store, will will serve to aid the reclamation of historic Herzog Studios – which is located on the floor above, as well as sponsoring other events key to the retelling of Cincinnati’s great musical history.

I attended three concerts, including seeing friends in Pike 27 and also seeing a pretty inspirational show by Steve Earle. Being able to cover a show like Earle’s in a beautiful theater is like taking a master’s class in performance and storytelling.

I also documented a recent road trip to the very heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains, as well as a trip to nearby Grayson Highland’s State Park in Virginia.

I also covered for Polly Magazine, the piano dress rehearsal of Mozart’s The Magic Flute. Catch my coverage of same, here, to learn why this production was sch a memorable, and groundbreaking event.

I love the Opera. The Cincinnati Opera is a very kid and professional organization, This is the third time they have allowed me to shoot the dress rehearsal, which means, in essence, that except for thirty to fifty other people- we are provided the run of the house and are free to shoot, at will, from anywhere in the house. It’s always a special experience and not one that can be bought at any price. If you haven’t seen it before, here is a collaborative piece I did with my brother in art, Matt Steffen, about the Opera’s performance last year of Tosca.

Unknown Hinson- Southgaate House Revival, Newport Ky

The photographs in this essay are from the last eight weeks and are colorful examples of how my camera has taken me into diverse and sundry worlds and experiences, I would have never seen, save for my practice of these dark arts.

Steve Earl and the Dukes, Taft Theater Cin.

Thus the dream still lives and the dream justifies all. Thanks Bruce.

Eight Weeks of Summer 2017 When I'm out shooting, people will ask- what are you doing, who are you doing that for, or what's your favorite thing to shoot, or what do you like about photography?

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