Squad #14 presents: CloneShipping Big Bang Sneak Peek!

Hghg my pals @cloneshippingbigbang​ has been a Journey on my part! But with my awesome team we are getting there, and now right before the posting will start me and my most bestest artist @reaalikaasu​ have joined forces to give you a teaser!

on being interchangeable

Author: @haltiamieli​ Artist: @reaalikaasu​ Rated: M Word count: 30k+ Major warnings: Major Character Death, Grief, Mental Health Issues, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Substance Misuse, Sex Under Influence, Invasion Of Privacy Main relationships: Thorn/Fox, Thorn&Thire, Thorn&Stone, Thorn/Fox/Cody, Thire&Stone, Thire/OC Summary: Welcome to a Thorn lives AU, except this time it is Thire who dies in his stead. Due to Complications, it was Thire in Thorn's armour on Scipio. Now everyone still alive has to deal with the fact that to cover this up Thorn has to keep pretending for a lot longer than anyone was prepared for.

Fibre comes over with the cup and a brush that doesn’t look like the kind they use to paint armor. Thorn stays in place obediently as Fibre starts to spread the stuff on his head. It feels cold and weird, especially where the hair is shortest and the brush meets no resistance. “You’ll need to come to me again in a few weeks to do the roots again. Or I can teach you how to do it yourself, so you don’t need to get me every time you do this”, Fibre tells him, and something about his words turns Thorn’s world inside out.

To do it again in a few weeks. To come back to paint Thire over his face, or to learn to do this himself so he won’t have to keep coming back.

The room spins around him. Why the fuck can’t he breathe. Why the fuck can’t he keep it together.

He has lost men before. Even if Thire is - was - special, he is just one more name on the list of brothers who have died. “I might need Fox”, Thorn gasps.

“Sir”, Fibre says but it is like he was speaking over a malfunctioning comm.

Thorn feels like he is on the verge of some sort of a revelation, but not a good one. And if he falls, there won’t be going back. Fibre said he would help Thorn do the dye job again. Because the hair will grow back blond, but he can’t keep it like that anymore. Because the hair will keep growing back for the rest of his life but he…

Something crashes on the floor, he thinks. It must be on the floor. If you drop things, they fall down. Some things are inevitable that way.

Thire is dead, and he won’t be coming back, but Thorn.

Thorn is stuck in some sort of an in-between state, still breathing but dead on paper. Dead for everyone off planet. Dead for all his batchmates and for most of his command track, dead for the cute vod he had been thinking about maybe calling again when 104th was back on Coruscant.

He is dead to everyone he hasn’t yet met too, because from now on he has to put on a foreign armor and a foreign face every day for the rest of his life. His whole identity is dead.

Except in all the ways that he is still alive.

hold me together.

kenny ortega, descendants 2 / holly black, red glove / nicole homer, underbelly / ada limon, a new national anthem / k c cramm, christmas eve forever / kenny ortega, descendants 3 / the crane wives, curses / silas denver melvin, let dead dogs lie / natalie wee, least of all

dream sentai team, I have dubbed them

Super Sentaisuke

And please give me all your unpopular opinions on Sandman 🙏🏼

[maniacal laughter]

we know my feelings about hob gadling

dreamling is not THAT compelling

the tragic end of morpheus' arc in the comix fulfills a narrative function, which is the most in-character thing it could do

in this house we love and respect danny!dream

the only good thing to come out of the spinoffs was nick robles' danny art (and possibly jt4's nightmare country but we have yet to see how he concludes it)

if the neilman weren't a coward, he would have cast toshiro mifune as destruction for s2 ("horse," you might say, "mifune died almost 20 years ago, how would he get the role?" that's not my job to figure out. i would have also accepted manny jacinto, though)

bailey bass should be delirium

the comix, the series, and the fandom are too anglocentric (perils of an english speaking creator and audience)

i have Thoughts about how Despair in the comix is the only fat Endless and also the one who is most often drawn as inhuman. i also have Thoughts about how Despair is the significant fat representation in the series.

the neilman and the fandom should read saidiya hartman

Linked horizon are back to do a the final Aot opening+theme song-Kohta Yamoto has created 15 new songs…

to our storyboard director Hayashi, thank you. To the Mappa crew who fought against their schedules and let us see the end of our show, thank you.

a little pain now, to save a great deal more pain later

[flintlock fortress is a collaboration with @dxppercxdxver]

Gale, 1, 2, 3, 4 and 19

(Character Ask Meme)

Ooh. I feel like I don't talk about Gale much. :O

1. Why do you like or dislike this character?

I think Gale has an interestingly complex series of outcomes in the game (there's a fairly wide range of discrepancy between "college professor" and "god" although I've known some college professors that didn't think so XD ). His characterization is interesting, too, because it's a really tangled mix of hubris and insecurity, arrogance and self-deprecation. And his relationship with Mystra makes me want to put him somewhere safe out of her reach forever.

2. Favorite canon thing about this character?

Gale's diction is super fun to listen to and to write. (I've described writing Gale's character as - write what you want him to say, and then go back and add extra words everywhere unnecessarily. XD ) He clearly really enjoys language and his own use of it on a level completely separate from its usage in verbal spellcasting. (This could be also described as enjoying the sound of his own voice, which is also probably true. XD But he likes an elegant turn of phrase and I love that for him.)

3. Least favorite canon thing about this character?

Mystra. Mystraaaaaa. [shakes fist] Gale has been treated very badly and it really is kind of heart-wrenching to realize how thoroughly he's internalized his relationship with his goddess as a normal thing even when it clearly is not.

(I'm taking "least favorite" here to mean - thing I think was least good for him in-universe. I think his growth around how Mystra treated him and how he can learn (or fail to learn, or overcompensate in trying to learn) how to exist separate from her is a very good story in a Doylist sense.)

4. If you could put this character in any other media, be it a book, a movie, anything, what would you put them in?

Hm. Other wizard-related fiction. Let's put him in Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea trilogy. :D I would be interested to see Gale's take on the magic in that realm, its intrinsic ties with the true names of things. Kind of hooks in with his enjoyment of language as mentioned above.

19. How about a relationship they have in canon that you don't like?

Again, taking "don't like" here to mean - in-universe not good for him. I don't think Elminster is actually a good influence on him. (I'm not sure if this is a hot take or not; my mutuals who are more in the Gale sphere than me can weigh in.) Elminster and Gale clearly consider each other friends, but given Elminster's stature there's still a distinct power imbalance there. I think I read (not sure if this is fanon or canon) that Elminster was the one responsible for headhunting Gale into Mystra's service originally; it definitely is canon, too, that Elminster had his own relationship with Mystra and thinks Gale getting back in her good graces is the best thing for him, which I think we can all agree it is not.

(I don't think Elminster's a bad character though; I've mentioned before that I think it's interesting that he's being framed as a more fallible and less omniscient individual than he was in the previous games.)

one of my pet peeves is the fans acting like 'the duffers are so smart they put so much clues and hints everywhere through subtext and lighting and etc, and you guys (aka nonbylers apparently) are stupid and media illiterate for not recognizing it'

yeah, it is great and all and st is a successful show, no one's really arguing that hints or subtext don't exist either as some fans claim lmao. but the show can also use criticism for some time when it comes to writing because. it is not perfect. duh.

the duffers are not devoid of making flawed writing choices and mistakes whether or not they put 'subtext' or 'details'. like? s3 exists, and i am sorry but that season relied on heavily blockbuster action than actually telling a good story. s3 hopper exists. s4 stancy push exists. the characters being mouthpieces to push stancy exists. the carelessness toward robin and vickie (and vickie's character exist) whether or not they change it in s5. the sidelining of jonathan and the way the writers don't focus on him exists. sidelining joyce and making her a prop for hopper's story exists. sidelining will exists. prioritizing memeable moments exists, focusing on characters like steve to market the show to the audience exists bc he is well liked so lets push him to the front while ignoring actual outcast characters that represent the show itself (jonathan, joyce, will overall the byers). the way they treat lucas and erica exist (s4 scene where they tackled erica, lucas receiving racial abuse but it being never actually addressed, erica receiving racial abuse and the show shrugging it off, the whole issue with pitting lucas against popular characters like el and then eddie in s4). i could go on. you don't have to just brush it off all of this (frankly) crappy writing just because the show will potentially make byler canon and because it 'uses smart hints and subtext', when the actual clear narrative and the writing itself is full of flaws.

yes i totally meant to talk about them also pitting lucas against eddie in season 4 but i didn't want to look for the post and i didn't know how to word it effectively. what the post i'm plagiarizing said is that even before jason starts going after eddie, they totally indirectly pit lucas against him (or rather pit eddie against lucas) by having him say that all jocks are evil? having the audience feel betrayed by proxy by lucas joining the basketball team and staying with them for a while wasn't enough, they just had to have this season's beloved new character tell us that anyone who plays sports is an awful person lol. it's so similar to the el thing in season 1 where lucas isn't in the wrong per se but they have this beloved character that people gravitate towards either be hurt by or harshly criticize whatever he's doing at the moment

and yes i totally agree with everything else you said! they're regular human beings which means not every single thing they write is gonna be intentional (it's not like they're setting lucas up on purpose but it is what ends up happening) or be received by audiences as they intended, which really shows with lucas

Saw an earnest yet completely inaccurate or misinformed take and it's like okay fine fine just ignore that even tho they're out to lunch on what happened in that scene no need to comment keep it to yourself. Or at least your own post's tags

points at these ^ things. akira n akechi

Lmao I was sitting in on a demo that a client was getting from a third-party integration bc I’d never heard of them so I wanted to see if they’re legit. As soon as I introduced myself and said I’m from (company) the guy running the demo went “oh I’m glad you’re here maybe you can help” lol their connection to our product was not even functional. BABYYY this is a canon event, I can’t interfere (and I don’t know what that error message means lol)

what have you been thinking about the lightning season so far? i'm trying not to get stressed

hmmm... now this is kind of a difficult one. looking at it on its face, this lightning group is very similar to ones of old, and of course nikita kucherov is lighting the league on fire, but they're just out of a playoff spot. i think the reasons for this are twofold:

one, jonas johansson SUCKS. the bolts pretty much do not have a functional backup, which is fine most of the time because their starter is Literally Andrei Vasilevskiy. but his injury earlier made them rely on jojo (bad) and that reallly made them struggle to get off the ground. i mean it's no understatement that going from one of the best goalies in the league to one of the worst as your starter can hurt the team, but now it's like the oilers (but on a smaller scale): they've failed to bank points earlier, so they have to work at a pace above their typical one to catch up.

two, and this is a lot less fixable, i unfortunately think the lightning are... kind of exiting their competitive era? not dramatically, of course, and if they keep stamkos for ex i think they'll be able to make playoffs (and because they're The Lightning they'll probably win a round or two) for another couple of years at least, but it's... it's time. they've won the president's trophy; two cups; made the finals three years straight. a lot of their stars are aging, and that much extra hockey really takes a toll on you even if you're not brushing toes with 35.

i actually think they might have a bounce-back -- maybe a year or two of missing the playoffs, then right back in it with point/sergachev/cirelli/kucherov/vasilevskiy (once hedman and stamkos either leave or take a smaller role as they age) and have a second competitive era once the strain of so many playoff games starts to fade, but right now what they need is goaltending and rest. they have a team mentality unrivalled in the league (unless they face the leafs, i suppose) and are a thoroughly entertaining group, and i hope it's not over for them!

stupid stupid stupid stupid I am so fucking stupid

(LONG rant in the tags. originally a little longer still but apparently there were too many tags so tumblr deleted the rest lol)

sending you a headpat and an ice cream

ayyyy so real thanks anon. i think i will go eat ice cream

So this new job has been great except for some reason today is “be kind of a bitch to me” day I guess

when are you gonna see the new spiderverse?

it's not set in stone or anything, but we're aiming for sometime within the first week of its release if we can afford it!!

(on the note of spoilers: i Strongly Prefer to not be spoiled, but they won't like. Ruin My Life or really even my Day, i just would prefer to not be spoiled cause it's. like. a dick move, y'know? thanks. love yall)