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neoyi · 10 months

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Okay, cool. I can finally talk about the absolute catharsis I felt after fifteen years hoping - dreaming - of this moment because holy SHIT, they did it. They goddamn DID IT.

VLAD GOT HIS REDEMPTION ARC.

Let's talk about it...

By the end of the third season, Vlad Masters had ostracized the entire planet by exposing his true self (why), demanding money and total command of Earth, and completely wailing on Jack Fenton, driving away the only member of that family who unequivocally adored the man where every other Fenton knew him for who he truly was: utterly despicable and incapable of seeing the bigger picture.

Because, after all, he is a villain and that's just what villains do. Villains want power. Villains want to rule the world. There need not be more than that, and in another show, there wouldn't have to be. As far as Hartman was concerned, there is only a binary Good vs. Evil.

You would be hard-pressed to view the Vlad in "Phantom Planet" as the same man who anguished in desperate madness when his perfect clone son died in his arms. That was a Vlad who, by that point, had taken his biggest gamble and lost. I guess one could see his reasoning in season three as a "fuck it all, what even is the point" mode. But while "Eye For an Eye" (tellingly, the last major script helm by former main story writer Steve Marmel... just saying) promised a personal conflict, by the end of the show, he's made it much more external, far greater than what he and Danny's interwoven plot originally started off as.

Vlad is pathetic. Vlad is narcissistic. He is egotistical, entitled; a bitter, arrogant man who lives in his dream castle with all the money and privilege in the world that would leave him content a hundred times over, and it's still not enough.

Money is not Maddie Fenton, the woman he loves. Money is not Jazz, a child that should have been his. Money is not Jack's friendship whom he denies severely, the only part of his life who willingly embraces him. And money is not Danny, who is a half-ghost like him, and by all rights, should have been his son.

No one else could ever understand to the fullest extent of their uniqueness than Vlad and Danny would to each other, and the latter, for the longest time, hated that. Hated the way Vlad talked down to him and manipulated him, hated the whispers into his ears with promises of grand power if he just joined the billionaire's side and become his ward, hated when he caved in just once in front of Vlad's eyes who responded with a smug "See, I know you" reaction. Danny was fortunate to have good moral compasses from his family and friends, but the thing is, though, it's not about the healthy support structure he had, because Vlad had the chance to get some, too. Jack and Maddie loved Danny no matter what he was, and dollars to donuts, they would have for Vlad if the latter had approached them with his problems.

But he chose instead to be bitter and miserable, taking it out on everyone and expecting them to fall into his train of thought. The show knew what he did was wrong, but until season three, never stopped repeating his truest desire: to find love and squash his crushing loneliness.

Hartman couldn't provide a damn on what exactly was Vlad's "destiny" in "Infinite Realm"; it was vague gesturing to excuse his villainy. He was more than happy to abandon the life he's made for himself and the woman he loved in spite of two decades of planning, all on a whim for whatever time period the Infi-map was willing to take him, hoping maybe this one will give him the unconditional worship that he thinks he's deserved (by force, of course.)

Because he's the villain.

And for the longest time, the show ended with the idea that Vlad deserved to be stranded, away from people, because he simply could not help himself. To be fair, there is a lesson in that - some people genuinely DO go so far that there really is nothing more we can do other than stop the problem before they cause any further harm. I'm not denouncing that.

What I AM denouncing is the the narrative plant that's dug its way into the greater plot where an older Vlad in "The Ultimate Enemy", realized what a fool he had been. What he wouldn't give to start all over and be a better person. You don't just give someone a sympathetic goal like "looking for love", constantly provide the necessary stepping stones, and not have it set up for something far more substantial than what we got.

And even then, even if it still ended with Vlad being too far gone, I wonder, should the supposedly original plot arc for season three had been made, would Vlad's fate there been far more appropriate than whatever cartoonish supervillainy he ended up as by the time "Phantom Planet" ended?

I cannot speak for Gabriela Epstein. I cannot say how much Nickelodeon allowed her to tinker with the DP world. All of this is presumptuous speculation on my part, but this entire comic feels like they looked at season three, particularly "Phantom Planet", realized what a travesty that was, had their work cut out for it, and went about to make a post-series finale story that still paid tribute to its ending while wiping it off the map.

Vlad's redemption is the crux.

Within just a few panels, Gabriela Epstein provided an explanation on the why of Vlad's actions circa-season three. The Infi-Map was aimless because Vlad's purpose was aimless. And Vlad's purpose was aimless because his need to be in control was a manifestation of his greatest fear: being alone.

"A Glitch in Time" recontexualizes why Vlad traveled across time in "Infinite Realm." It wasn't a generic bad-guy-wants-to-rule-the-world-through-latest-plot-claptrap, but an act of utter desperation from a man who had since lost the biggest connection to his very being: Danny.

It started with Maddie (someone whom Vlad only interacts once in the comic, but is an acknowledgement of his villainous origin, nonetheless), and it may still end with Danny.

Never, in a million, billion years, have I even thought about another redemption arc... for Dark Danny.

And I am kicking myself for not even considering such an option. I had pegged him so far gone, so far past the breaking point to think otherwise. Dark Danny was suppose to be the outcome of a Danny at his literal worst: a too-late, too-little scenario. Back then, it was a symbol of Danny's rejection of what Vlad expected and desired of him.

But the comic made me sit down and think about the implication of Dark Danny's very existence, that of a man who lost his family and friends ten years ago as a child. Like Vlad, he, too was alone, and had carried a tremendous amount of pain and anguish that his human half just could not bear.

Yeah, they died because of a time loop HE created, but that doesn't erase that he was born from a horrible trauma that he could not properly cope with. And Vlad, try as he might, did not fix it. All he ended up doing was separate a ghost - infamous for their obsessions, and now, as the comic established, a carrier of human emotions - to exist. And Dark Danny carried so much raw emotion that he retaliated very, very violently.

Everyone's respond at that time was to fight him and stuff him in a Fenton Thermos for eternity. I am not saying Danny wasn't justified in fighting his darker self because the dude legitimately caused massive damage and likely murdered a hell of a lot of people, I am just saying Dark Danny is the byproduct of a scared, lonely, traumatized child.

And what does he do? He tries to take what he thinks is his by any means necessary. Vlad got his wish, he got the son he wanted.

And he's facing him now.

And he gets it.

He finally fucking GETS IT.

Which shouldn't have been a surprise because his "The Ultimate Enemy" counterpart got it. He looked at the devil that he created and lingered as a hermit in regret. And now Vlad - Vlad Prime - reacted the same.

Only this time, he can fix it.

I did not anticipate that Vlad's redemption would happen at the same time as Dark Danny's. I didn't expect the two of them to link other than the latter being another number in Vlad's bullshit entitlement count.

I love that it isn't Danny who heals him, but Vlad. It had to be Vlad. In order to own up to his actions, Vlad had to look at the eyes of the boy he was entrusted and corrupted beforehand and apologize for what he put him through. And I don't mean just "The Ultimate Enemy", Vlad is apologizing for everything he's done up to this point.

He (temporarily) sacrifices his body to stabilize Dark Danny who has fucked up the time stream so much that he wouldn't be able to exist otherwise. And only then do the two of them get what they've longed for.

Vlad gets a son.

Dark Danny gets a family.

Holy forking shirt balls.

I have a lot of problems with alternate counterparts sticking around longer than they should in the "main" setting of a show. Usually I'm fine when it's an alternate counterpart demonstrated as someone the hero is trying so hard not to be, because it's compelling to see what could have been under different circumstances. It's another thing when you have another version of the main character running around doing their own thing. Multiverse characters are inherently messy just by existing, but it gets worse when they take away from the uniqueness of the central protagonist.

There's something awkward about two Danny Phantoms living in the same world, and in any other scenario, I would have hated it. But Dark Danny is of a vastly different background brought forth from a long, nuanced, engaging history between him and Vlad.

Danny's central journey - the cusp of the show - has always been the Spider-Man mantra, "great powers = great responsibilities." You are in charge of how you carry the burden of your powers. Vlad has been the one constant always challenging and belittling his selflessness. "A Glitch in Time" had Danny asking himself, what is his purpose? Who is he now that everything has been neatly wrapped up?

Writing anything about who Danny is means Vlad is presented in some way, shape, or form. They are so thoroughly linked to each other, and it's that link that simultaneously serve to push their own individual character arc, and their relationship with each other.

So, Vlad gets a son. Dark Danny gets a family. They get a second chance, and it is up to them to work it out. I have no idea if Vlad got his wealth back. Everything is restored as is, except Danny's secret identity is secured again (which I am 100% fine with except for one notable exception, but that's another topic for another day) and implication that Vlad was just a crummy mayor with no indication the greater public is also aware of his Plasimus mode (which I am also fine with.)

There's a part of me who thinks he should have lost the money and power he's accumulated because he gained them through his vice, but if he's back in his Wisconsin cheese castle, then he can damn well use the money he has to not only benefit the world (charities, improving human lives, funding Fenton Works ;D...), but to raise his son.

Dark Danny is going to have to adjust to the idea that his father is Vlad, something he was already expected to do so when he orphaned himself and moved in with him. But it's Vlad who has to work the most out of the two: as a parental figure - as an adult - he's always had a power over Danny regardless of what timeline they're in. Most of the time, he's abused it heavily.

The second chance Vlad has been given here means he has the ability to provide a safe, healthy environment. It's more than he deserves. He failed with Danny and he absolutely failed with Dani (another can of worms in itself; she's not mentioned in the comic, and I imagine it's because her story would need a comic of her own), he cannot fail with this Danny.

Vlad shouldn't have been given a child at all until there was a guarantee that he could work through his bullshit, but Dark Danny is a special case. He is a kid who needs a home and someone to love him unconditionally, and Vlad needs to learn boundaries while giving selfless love in order to be loved himself.

Clockwork gave Vlad a test, so get studying, dude.

This does not erase how Danny Prime feels about him. He may never want to forgive Vlad, and that's his right. He can acknowledge however, that, in order to help those in need of healing, a door can be opened, even if slightly ajar.

For Vlad, that may just take a bit longer and that's completely understandable.

Vlad can't have the kind of relationship he wants with this Danny, but maybe one day, they can be equals - friends.

Like christ, I think this is the first time Vlad has actually, genuinely asked if Danny was alright.

The comic was already good prior to this, but just knowing - understanding that Vlad was more than "a villain" - meant after fifteen looooong years, we finally see the promises of a brighter future for a man with shitty priorities, but a sympathetic goal.

"It's over, isn't it? It's over, isn't it? It's over, isn't it..."

#danny phantom #vlad masters #neoyi talks #comics #a glitch in time #a glitch in time spoilers #yeah this one im tagging #this essay is over a 1000 words it's pathetic

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rorygilmoreclown · 1 year

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A start

Healer!reader x Nikolai Lanstov

Summary: The reader, who is a healer, was caught by drüskelle and then escaped their ship in a storm and then was rescued by Nikolai as Sturmhond and than slowly fall for each other and one day Nikolai sees reader hit on by someone else and gets jealous and sort of confesses. (I'm sorry I suck at summaries, also i changed the plot a bit so im sorry about that sorry sorry )

A/n: I took my sweet time, didn't I. Anyways, here it is, apologies for all the changes and this crappy writing. Might make a pt2, that's why the ending.

Warnings: None, except for this smirky smirky sunshine babygorl.

As you rouse from your slumber, a jarring realisation dawns upon you: you are no longer on your mission’s base. The scent of salt and brine pervades your nostrils, and the rhythmic groans and creaks of timber assault your ears. It takes only a moment to recall why you are in this predicament, and an acrid churning stirs within your gut.

You are a prisoner aboard the drüskelle vessel, trussed and bound, being ferried to their fortress to face their uncompromising brand of justice. The harsh squawks of the drüskelle assault your ears, censuring you for your supposed offences, their eyes brimming with nothing but antipathy and scorn for your Grisha talents. You strive to maintain your composure, reminding yourself of your mettle, but their venomous invective feels like barbs upon your flesh.

As the tempest rages on, you sense the ship pitching and yawing, at the mercy of the storm's capricious whims. Then, a deafening crack reverberates throughout the vessel, and you are flung forward, your head colliding with the bars of your cell. You hear the splintering of wood and the screams of the drüskelle, but all you can focus on is the pulsating throb in your head.

But then, a fortuitous miracle transpires. The cell confining you snaps free from its moorings and is hurled into the tumultuous waters. You acted quickly to save yourself, your appendages flailing as you struggled to stay afloat amidst the mayhem. Somehow, you manage to make it to the shore, gasping for air and quivering from the chill.

As you survey your surroundings, a colossal ship looms in the distance, and optimism swells within you, and so does dread. You remember that you are still clad in your kefta, and it may be your sole chance at survival, or another reason for a capture. As the ship draws closer, you discern a figure emerging from it, and your heart braces itself for either a negotiation or a fight. His eyes widen in astonishment as he espies you, a solitary survivor on the shore. He strides towards you, his voice ringing out like a sunbeam amidst the tempest.

Greetings madam, I am Sturmhond, the legendary privateer and captain of the vessel.

Are you injured, we have a medik on our ship? He paused, as if he said something humorous as well as imprecatory. Apologies for asking that question, is it offensive to ask a healer if they require medical assistance?

That was the first time you saw that stupid smirk followed by a loud yet comforting laughter. It sounded true, as if you weren’t on some abandoned island, about to ask for an abode from a stranger, and you feel a lump form in your throat as tears threaten to spill over. And that’s how you boarded the The Volkvolny.

You stare at Sturmhond in disbelief as he proposes his deal. Safety in exchange of your healing help. The words are hard to process, and your heart feels like it's in your throat. The thought of being safe from the Ravkans and drüskelle fills you with relief, but the idea of being on a ship with a stranger is daunting.

You take a deep breath and consider his offer, recalling the events that led you to this point. The Ravkan court, a place that was supposed to be safe and secure, turned into a nightmare when you were assaulted by one of its members. The thought of staying there was unbearable, and none of the other court members did anything to help you. You had to escape, and now you are at the mercy of a privateer captain.

But there is something about Sturmhond that feels different. His eyes are kind and understanding, and you get the sense that he genuinely cares about your well-being. You decide to take a chance, and nod your head in agreement.

He smiles at you, his eyes crinkling at the corners. Excellent. You won't regret it, I promise. And just to be clear, you will be safe from any Ravkans or drüskelle on my ship. You have my word.

As the ship sets sail, you find yourself growing more and more comfortable in your new surroundings. You observe the crew, their different backgrounds and stories, and feel a sense of belonging that you haven't felt in a long time. You start to let your guard down around Sturmhond, telling him about your past and your hopes for the future. He listens to you with empathy and understanding, and you feel like you can truly be yourself around him.

As a part-Shu, you find yourself forming a close bond with Tamar and Tolya aboard Sturmhond's ship. Tolya is a flirt, and he often directs his playful advances towards you. Sturmhond notices and becomes increasingly snippy, trying to interrupt your conversations with Tolya. But Tolya persists, sometimes just to get a rise out of Sturmhond.

One day, as you're assisting the ship's healer with her duties, Tolya comes up beside you and leans in close. Are you a healer? he whispers. Because you just cured my loneliness. You can't help but laugh at his audacity, but you know it's all in good fun.

In another scene, you're practising some Grisha skills with Tamar when Tolya approaches. Are you a Corporalki? he asks, grinning. Because you just made my heart skip a beat. Tamar rolls her eyes at Tolya's antics, and you can't help but chuckle at his attempt at humour.

A few days later, as you and Tolya are chatting on the deck, he looks at you intently. Are you a healer like me? he asks. Because I'm feeling a strong connection between us. You can't help but feel a small flutter in your chest at his words, but you know it's just Tolya being Tolya.

As the journey goes on, you appreciate Tolya's sense of humour and his easy going nature. You come to see him as a good friend and confidant, and you value the bond you share. One night, as the two of you are sitting alone on the deck, Tolya looks at you with a tender expression. Are you a Bonesmith? he asks softly. Because you just mended my broken heart. You smile at his words, but you know that you don't feel anything more than friendship for him. Unfortunately, Sturmhond takes these positive affirmations as an indicator of your interest in Tolya. As Tolya departs to attend to some task, you're left feeling grateful for the friendship you share and the camaraderie of your journey aboard Sturmhond's ship.

As time passes on, the tension between you and the captain grows, being very transparent for everyone but you two. The night was alive with laughter and music as Sturmhond's crew celebrated their latest successful mission. You were enjoying the festivities, chatting with Tamar and Tolya when a Ravkan nobleman approached you. He looked at you with a smirk on his lips, his eyes scanning your body. Well, well, well. What do we have here? A part-Shu healer? You must be quite the exotic beauty.

You felt uncomfortable under his gaze and tried to step back, but the nobleman grabbed your arm tightly. Tolya and Tamar shot him a sharp look, but he ignored them. Just as you were about to say something, Sturmhond appeared by your side, his arm wrapped around your waist possessively. There you are, my love. I've been searching for you everywhere.

The Ravkan nobleman's eyes widened in surprise at Sturmhond's sudden appearance. Oh, I didn't know you had a lover. Sturmhond gave a charming smile, his grip on your waist tightening ever so slightly. Yes, she's quite dear to me. Now, if you'll excuse us.

He guided you away from the nobleman, leading you to a quieter corner of the room. You could feel his eyes on you, watching your reaction to the incident. Are you all right? he asked, his tone laced with concern. You nodded, grateful for his intervention. Thank you, Sturmhond. I was getting a little uncomfortable there.

He gave you a small smile, his hand still resting on your waist. I won't let anyone make you feel uncomfortable. After a boyish smirk that broke on his face, indicating of his crooked humour slipping through this serious situation, you knew it was to make the mood lighter. Afterall, the deal was to protect you from the Ravkans.

As the night wore on, you found yourself drawn to Sturmhond's protectiveness, his easy charm making your heart race. And as the party came to an end, you couldn't help but wonder if maybe, just maybe, there was something more between the two of you. Although you were a little disappointed as he mentioned protecting you only due to the deal.

After Sturmhond rescued you from the trespasser at the party, he dragged you to the higher part of the ship. Your heart was pounding with anticipation, wondering what he wanted to tell you. As he looked at you with his piercing blue eyes, you couldn't help but feel a sense of comfort and safety in his presence. You couldn't help but notice how he kept looking at you with that intense gaze of his. Was he jealous of the other man who was flirting with you earlier? Did he really have feelings for you?

Suddenly, Sturmhond broke the silence with a joke, So, I'm guessing we're officially boyfriend and girlfriend now? You couldn't help but chuckle at his playful tone. He couldn't believe he had just made that joke. He had been wanting to confess his feelings to you for so long but was too afraid of rejection. Was he being too subtle? Did she even get the hint?

Feeling bold, you responded with a joke of your own, I don't know, Sturmhond. You'll have to take me on a proper date first. You couldn't resist teasing him a little. After all, he had been flirting with you all night. As you both laughed at your playful banter, Sturmhond reached out and gently took your hand in his. He held his breath as he waited for your response. Did he really just confess his love to you? Was he about to get his heart broken? You couldn't believe it. The person you had been crushing on for so long felt the same way. Was this really happening?

As Sturmhond leaned in for a kiss, you closed your eyes and let yourself be swept away in the moment. All of your doubts and worries faded away as you realised that you had found the person who made your heart feel whole. As he kissed you, he felt a sense of relief wash over him. He had finally told you how he felt, and you had reciprocated. This was the start of something new, and he couldn't wait to see where it would take them.

Word Count: 1.8k

#grishaverse #nikolai #six of crows #nikolai x reader #nikolai lanstov #shadow and bone #nikolai lanstov x reader #prince nikolai #rule of wolves #king nikolai #nikolai duology

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carnivorousmossbeast · 29 days

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Tears of time

Content Warning: major character injury, Simon “Ghost” Riley’s backstory (adapted to my cause), can be read as major character death, major character injury

I’m going to try to update this every week! And I want to try something new, so I’m going to add polls to let you decide where you want this to go! Sharing is highly encouraged!

It started out as a regular morning in April when Simon Riley’s world shattered, and even time herself was moved to the point of tears.

They were ugly things, wicked and jagged and salty enough to leave burnt earth in their caustic wake, worse even than the rotting dead soil from which he had dug himself, burning beneath the desert sun until his skin turned red and flaked off dry and useless. He shed himself of the fear, the dirt and the epithelium, to reduce himself down to his core — painful, swollen red flesh ripe with infection. Cells bursting and spilling toxic deluge into his system with every move he made, stumbling beneath the unforgiving sun. His path until here had been harrowing, a nightmare that she couldn’t have dreamed any better herself, a cautionary tale of cockiness and end results.

Perhaps time should have cried back then already, but she hadn’t. She watched, she waited, she plotted and drank his dread like expensive red wine, and washed it down with his sorrow and the grief, watched him crawl out of his grave, out of his skin, something other, something that shouldn’t have been. Something that should have died and rotted with the broken, mangled jaw of Major Vernon. Instead, time let herself pass on the opportunity to catch him and on a whim aligned his path with a young sergeant from a Mexican special unit. A kind soul, one she knew she would take from, time and time again she would strip him down the same way she stripped them all, skin from muscle and muscle from bone, until they were grief-stricken and pained shells of their former selves, until they were nothing but a raw nerve, humbled by experience and the things they took for granted until she liberated them from their mindless grasp.

Perhaps she hadn’t cried for Simon Riley then because he’d only been a man. A sad man, a dry husk of a person. He’d danced across her battle fields, knocking into things like bran, uselessly dry and brittle, flakes of a core that had once been lively — before time had sunk her claws into him and ravaged him.

But when Simon Riley lost John MacTavish, time cried. His pain was too much for her, too intense did his anguish cover her lips and her eyes, sealing the tumultuous emotions inside instead of letting them pass through her, and perhaps for the first time in her entire existence, time opened her mouth and breathed. And did the cold, dank air of the abandoned Russian military complex bite her delicate throat and burn her sensitive nostrils. Diesel exhaust and old chemical agents cut into unused skin, ripped away the layer of stardust and cosmic detritus that had settled on her throughout the aeons of laziness.

Time cried, ravaged by her own hands and the pain they caused, and decided with tears brimming on her waterlines, that Simon Riley wouldn’t have to endure her without the man that humanised him. She decided that even a creature as wretched as Simon Riley deserved something as uniquely mundane and confusingly, singularly spectacular as love.

Time watched the last of her tears fall, and then cracked her spine before she got to work.

#fanfiction #cod mw2 #simon ghost riley #john soap mactavish #ghoap #rodolfo parra #alejandro vargas #no beta I bite my own bullet

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chutkiandchotte · 5 months

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Is it too spicy if I say this is IPK themed 👀

No but for real this is a great flaw of so many Indian tv shows and unfortunately, IPK is no exception. A "perfect" female lead is NOT EQUAL TO a well written female lead and Khushi falls into this trope.

I get that it might seem like, if any thing, the show makers are biased towards Khushi. The narrative portrays Khushi as morally righteous even when she isn't (her lecturing about marriage and religion to Arnav and La; her bringing Shyam back against Arnav's wishes; her leaving Arnav for Aarav etc etc) and posits her as a totally innocent victim in many scenarios without giving any acknowledgement of her critical errors in judgement that led to specific situations - such as keeping Shyam's secret. But the truth is, these biases are only the result of the absolute lack of care they put towards writing and developing Khushi's character arc. And of course in general, she's better written than majority of Indian tv heroines because in general, IPKKND is a better written show. But within this same show, you have the example of a brilliantly written anti-hero with complex and satisfying character development; so it hurts to see how they have simply not bothered giving the same level of in-depth and CONSISTENT characterization for Khushi.

No matter how off the rails the show was, or whatever their constraints were with regards to commercial or channel expectations, they rarely compromised on Arnav's characterization which was always crystal clear and razor sharp. In the midst of the silly Swami track, the nonsense Sheetal track, heck in the laughably ridiculous Miss India track, Arnav was not made to do or act in un-Arnav like ways, for the most part. There are a few exceptions, but they're not very noteworthy and don't impact the plot much. They had a clear idea of who he is and what he would do and not do, and they stuck to it.

Not so with Khushi. In a weird parallel to in-universe dynamics, the meta narrative too picks Khushi as the most convenient sacrificial lamb whose characterization is sacrificed to meet channel demands, tv show format demands, and so on. Need to shoe-horn a comedy track where it makes no sense? Why not reduce her IQ several points and have her do totally illogical things with no rhyme or reason for some laughs? Need a low-effort way to justify Khushi spending time with Arnav? Why not make the "mature for her age" Khushi into a childish caricature who plays at being Gopi Bahu to annoy Arnav! Need a sick Arnav for Khushi to take care of? Why not have a selfless and responsible Khushi suddenly transform into someone so selfish and irresponsible, she plots to deliberately make her diabetic husband starve.

On the one hand, they erase all of her positive qualities to give her a host of flaws (stupidity, immaturity, irresponsibility) that are never explored as flaws, but just tools for comedy, picked up and abandoned at whim. On the other hand, her actual flaws and mistakes that could have used an in-depth arc are just...left alone. In fact what even are her flaws? As per the show, she has practically none - they are only lovable quirks.

Arnav's extreme reactions often eclipse Khushi's mistakes; we nor her get the time to sit with and reflect on her errors, instead the focus immediately shifts to him. Her mistakes are so disproportionally punished, it leaves no room for her character development. Character development is best prompted by moments of reflection, regret, and redemption. We get very, very few of these with Khushi - there's simply no space for it in the narrative of the show.

Its a very subtle distinction that is hard to pinpoint at times. For example, we see Khushi's pain showcased front and center time and again - its the classic suffering heroine trope! But is her trauma from Shyam, from Arnav, heck even from her own family, EVER explored in any real meaningful and satisfying way? No - because Khushi's interiority, just like her brain power, maturity, and sense of responsibility, disappears and reappears as per the convenience of the narrative.

You might say its unfair to compare her to Arnav, who is undoubtedly the protagonist of the show. Unusually for romcoms, Arnav is our main character and Khushi is the "love interest". So perhaps we can't expect her character to be explored with the same range and nuance his is. Okay. But consistency, surely, is something we can expect from Khushi? Why is Khushi EVEN MORE inconsistently written than the villain, Shyam, and supporting characters like Anjali?

There's a lot I do love about the way Khushi is written but I HAVE to sift through the material to find the good stuff which is often in contradiction to the bad stuff. Post the elopement, we see really very little consistent characterization with Khushi and the show's overall writing quality heavily suffers as a direct result of this.

And this IS a sexist trope. It falls into the madonna-whore dichotomy where you can only write 2 types of lead female characters: a perfect angel, who is always morally right and usually suffering without much else going on internally; or the vamp, who has her flaws and her complexities with which she entertains us until she is suitably humiliated and punished by the narrative.

A woman with flaws, allowed to learn and grow from them into a more mature and evolved human being??? Who ever heard of such a thing??? Certainly not ITV writers, circa 2011 (or now).

#ipkknd #idk what just a rant and a ramble #Khushi has my heart but I want to save her from her own bad writing at so many points #and it does make me angry that she's so poorly written compared to other characters on the show #Akash and Payal too but at least the excuse can be they are supporting characters so they got neglected. Khushi is the FEMALE LEAD #why did they drop the ball so much with her. why didn't they put in quarter of the effort as they did for Arnav with her #im grateful for what he got but i wanted more.

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clowningaroundmars · 1 month

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morales twins vigilantes: getting found out pt 1

hey yall im in my fic writing era. but i am BAD at writing LMFAO i'm really not sure i'll ever write a proper fic with a plot or anything

either way, i hope yall like this lil drabble my brain came up with on a whim of the morales twins!

it's how i imagine the way their secret would be revealed after doing the whole vigilante thing together for a lil bit. it's kind of based on the hcs i had of the twins which is here, kind of a continuation of the last bullet point there actually

miles1610 is miles and miles42 is milo bc i read a couple fics with that name given to him and now it is stuck in my heart u_u

>2nd part here<

well. uh. hope u enjoy! :)

It was a fight that went slightly awry that really did them in.

No blood, no fireworks, no loud banging or explosions or anything. No one was even so badly hurt that they almost died, either.

It was simply just… a broken mask and their father unexpectedly being on patrol that fateful night that finally brought their secret out to light.

The Morales twins had been doing their vigilante thing together for only a few months now. Miles had been Spider-man for well over a year, of course, but it was after a particularly bad fight with a rhinoceros guy (what a freak…) that went semi-viral on social media that his brother Milo finally put his foot down and pulled those Prowler gloves from under his bed. He worked hard to modify the technology to better suit him, and had all of the armor and rope he needed in order to keep up with his brother all set in as little as 2 weeks.

Miles hemmed and hawed about bringing his not-super-powered brother around for the nasty fights he usually tackled alone. But he would be lying if he said that Milo’s concern didn’t put a small smile on his face in the end. Plus, it really helped out a lot when Miles needed to be somewhere quickly but still had a criminal left to take on and web up. Milo being just one text away from springing into action took a real big load off of his shoulders in ways he couldn’t even imagine.

That was about 3 months ago.

It was relatively smooth sailing until one Jefferson Davis took a night patrol under his belt without even warning the boys.

Well, Miles thought to himself in retrospect, we weren’t really around the house to catch if he did tell anyone, so.

Miles ran along a side of a building to catch up with the villain of the week. He was desperately trying to keep this super-powered baddie off of his not-so-super-powered brother, and not quite succeeding. Miles told Milo time and again not to tease any bad guys during a fight. Keep the attention off of you, bro. You do not have superpowers. I do! Is that not what Miles said? God, it’s like in one ear and out the other with this guy. Ugh.

Currently, Milo is parrying and deflecting attacks from this shocker-looking guy, a real piece of work. He still had his hi-vis vest on-- and Miles swore he even saw a name tag on it somewhere which was just hilarious, really-- but aside from his normal-looking work outfit, everything else about this dude was definitely not normal. Like the bright electricity fizzing all over his skull that just barely concealed this man’s real face, and the giant lightning bolts shooting out from his hands as he tried to fry Milo. It was a good thing Milo had enough sense to install energy-absorbing tech into those giant claws of his, or else Miles would be in real big trouble at the ER.

Miles ripped a chunk of some abandoned demolition project that never got done and swung it with all of his might in the direction of their fight, using his webs for maximum distance. It didn’t hit electro-dude but it almost hit his brother. Oops.

“Ayo, watch it!” Prowler growled, his mask distorting his voice the same way it distorted Uncle Aaron’s back when he held the mantle. He gracefully flipped out of the way and shot a grappling hook somewhere off into some scaffolding, pulling himself away from the action to let his bro fly in and give the temporarily-distracted electric-man some work.

Miles would snap back with a retort if he weren’t so busy pummeling this villain with all that he’s got. Both boys’ curfews were about an hour ago and they just knew their mom would be fuming once she got back and found out. But this needed taking care of, and neither Morales boys were willing to leave some freak of nature to take over Brooklyn and shut down all the power lines over a bedtime. Hell no.

But this needed to end now, or else good ol’ Spidey won’t be seeing the light of day for another 2 months. And by the looks of it, neither will the Prowler. Before Miles could even think to land the finishing blow on old lightning-head here though, tragedy struck.

An all-too familiar voice hollers out those dreaded words both boys hate hearing, especially in the middle of a fight.

“PDNY! Freeze! Put your hands up where we can see ‘em!”

Everyone did freeze, Milo looking particularly shocked as his head swivels around to the sight of waving flashlights and 3 burly but familiar silhouettes making their way past the far gates and advancing quickly into the fray.

Jefferson Davis’ gun appears to almost materialize out of the shadows, his face lit up in the harsh lights of his flashlight beam, sporting an intimidating, professional look. Cop mode, is what Miles and Milo called it jokingly one day as they lounged in their room, passing a bag of chips between them and having a laugh at their dad’s expense. That was before Milo took on the mantle of the Prowler. That was before this.

Miles panics slightly as he feels the man jump up underneath him, thrusting an arm into the police’s direction, ready to fire off a bolt--

Right after Milo lunges in front of the officers, ready to take the blast.

It happens in a fraction of a second. Miles didn’t even think he had enough time to open his mouth, let alone warn Jeff of the incoming danger. He figures that’s what Milo must’ve thought, too, otherwise there really was no other explanation for this stupid decision he just made.

Sparks flew, and then the thud of a body hitting the floor seemed to echo throughout the demolition site.

Shit shit shit shit shitshitshitshitshit, was Miles’ inner monologue as he finally landed the blow to the side of the baddie’s head, knocking him out successfully. He quickly webbed the man up to the floor, restraining him fully. The way I shoulda done in the first place, damnit, Miles lamented, freezing in place after the deed was done. His brain was working into overdrive to try and think of ways he could extract his now-nearly unconscious brother from this place without raising their dad’s suspicions.

Ever since Prowler joined in on Spider-man’s “adventures”, the media became even more fascinated with capturing every single moment it could of Spidey now that he had a sidekick in tow.

Headlines splashed on magazines, articles and news feeds read: “Batman and Robin! Spider-man and… the Prowler?” and “Webbed Menace Recruits Purple Sidekick, Even More of a Menace”. They haunted Miles’ every step. Milo, for his part, was mostly amused. But every now and then he would complain about being known as his brother’s sidekick, as if that was the most egregious part of having his every move recorded and uploaded for millions to see online.

Their mother became even more suspicious of her twin sons after she watched a video of the two vigilantes stopping a runaway bus in downtown Brooklyn. They looked eerily similar in size to her own teenage boys, and even seemed to banter the same way after all of the civilians were saved and back on solid ground. The way Spider-man clapped Prowler on the shoulder… hmmm.

To say that she shared her suspicions with her husband would be an understatement. Milo and Miles somehow always managed to catch a familiar cop car slowly rolling around corners and down streets, keeping pace just behind them, watching them. Miles would always roll his eyes, knowing it was their father. Milo would be annoyed but managed to shrug and keep minding his own business, since it was very obviously their father. When confronted, Jeff would try-- and fail-- to casually brush it off as simply doing Concerned Dad things.

“Listen, you two.” Jeff started one evening after dinner. He managed to get both boys down in their room one weekend, just for “a quick talk”. His excuse was that Brooklyn was getting too dangerous lately, especially at night, and that he was “gonna keep an eye on them” as a precaution.

But neither boy missed that slight nervous shift in his stance as he delivered the news, and once their dad bade them a good night and left, they gave each other a silent look that conveyed the exact same thought they were both thinking.

They’re onto us.

Well, their parents’ fears and suspicions were definitely going to be confirmed whether the twins liked it or not.

Milo groaned on the ground, the Prowler gauntlets having taken the majority of the blast sent his way, but the mask was halfway blown off, revealing a good portion of the boy’s face underneath. He rocked in place for a moment, blinking stars and dancing lights out of his eyes for just that one moment.

“Prowler!!” Miles shouted. In his panic, he forgot to lower his voice and conceal his identity, but his feet just wouldn’t move! What the hell, Morales… get it together! His brother was just badly injured and here he was, frozen in place like a deer.

Jeff, for his part, was barking orders to his coworkers and directing them to make a sweep of the place in case any other suspects tried to make a run for it.

They both left. He finally jolted his bright beam of light onto Spider-man, simply standing there a little ways away and staring back with those unnervingly gigantic bug-eyes of his. If Jeff wasn’t in work-mode right now, he’d explode on this guy and ask about what the hell was going on here, but Officer Davis was nothing if not a consummate professional.

Plus, there were more pressing matters to attend to.

There was what seemed like a teenage boy on the ground, wearing those goddamned gauntlets that Jeff could’ve sworn he shipped off to the junkyard after Aaron’s funeral. Damnit, if this punk was running around wearing his brother’s mantle and tagging along with Spider-man just to double-cross him in the end, there was gonna be hell to pay.

Jeff didn’t know why, but he felt slightly protective of the bug-themed hero, damnit. Sue him. And those claws brought nothing but terrible memories of screaming women, dead brothers and heightened stress. He did not need this right now, fuck.

Once the boy on the ground stirred, Jeff quickly pointed his gun and flashlight beam directly onto him. “Those orders were for you, too, punk. Do not try me tonight. Freeze. Put your hands out where I can see ‘em!”

Milo froze on the ground, and then tried to twist his face away from his looming father who was only a foot or two away with the world’s brightest flashlight in his face, fuuuuck. He just knew he was gonna be feeling this headache for the next 3 days…

Tentatively, he also raised his claws in front of his face as slowly as he could, trying to cover his face even more. He propped himself up on his elbows and tried to regulate his breathing.

Having a cop for a dad was not always peachy, but it helped a lot to know exactly how an officer would react if any sudden movements were made while having a gun out, and Milo was not trying to get a bullet to the chest on top of the mother of all electric shocks as well. No thank you.

It was in this moment that Miles’ brain started working again, and he unstuck himself from the pavement to reach out to his dad.

“Offi-- ahem, ahem. Officer Davis,” he remembered to lower his tone and conceal his voice a bit as well, and continued, “what a surprise to see you here. On this, uh. This very beautiful night!”

Groan. Oh my god. Even Milo rolled his eyes a bit, trying to shuffle back.

“I said FREEZE!” Jeff roared, attention still trained on Milo.

Without glancing up, he added, “And you Spider-man. Oh, buddy you are gonna get it after I’m done with this little asshole, runnin’ around with my brother’s-- man, y’know what-- nevermind! Just stay back, okay? I got this handled.”

“But wait! Th-that’s uh. He’s not an asshole, officer, he’s my-- my sidekick! He’s the good guy!! He helped me take this guy down! And he even saved you just now!” Miles waved his hands around frantically, agitating Jeff.

Stop doing that, stupid! Milo thought to himself in a daze, still recovering from the electric blast.

“Stay back, Spider-man. I’m warning you.” Jeff growled.

Miles picked up the hint and halted his movements, giant white eyes flicking back up and down from his dad to his brother and back. He had to think of something, or else Milo would be dragged back to a holding cell and both of their identities would be out. He just couldn’t let that happen.

Biting his lip, Miles gathered some resolve and stepped forward again. “Officer Davis—”

“Not another word outta you!” Jeff swung the flashlight right back onto Miles threateningly, and then trained it back onto Milo again. “I am serious right now, Spidey. One more word outta you and I’m slappin’ the cuffs on you too, I swear to god! I got more than enough room in the back of the squad car for two freaks!”

Miles recoiled. “Freaks. Geez, is that what you think of us?”

But Jeff didn’t answer, because he was all of a sudden deathly silent.

Both of the other officers just finished their sweep of the area, and were making their way back to Jeff when he all of a sudden kneeled down, still training that gun on Prowler’s face. But his movements were slow and hesitant, as if he were performing them in a daze.

Miles’ spider senses should’ve been tingling by now, at the very least a little. Still, he stayed glued to his spot as he watched Officer Davis-- as if in slow motion-- shifting his flashlight and gun into one hand, lowering both slightly and away from Prowler’s shattered mask.

As his other hand reached out, Milo flinched, but he didn’t need to. Jeff simply carded his calloused fingers over his hair, his braid on the one side of his head, in reverence. Milo couldn’t breathe. He was too scared to speak.

And then everyone’s blood ran cold at the same time.

Jeff saw the beads of Milo’s favorite basketball team colors, ones that he was excited to get again at the barber shop last weekend, simply hanging there tied to the ends of the Prowler’s braid, sitting limply in his hand. Milo’s blood ran cold once he realized exactly what it was that his own father was looking at. He didn’t need to reveal his face whatsoever when his now-exposed hair told the whole story anyways.

Miles’ spider senses finally kicked up once Jeff looked up slowly, an absolutely ruined expression rippling across his worn-out features as he really gave Spider-man a good, hard look, eyes playing over what little he could see of the vigilante in the darkness of night.

For a split second, no one said anything.

Even electro-head seemed to be silent as he came to and tried to sneakily rip the webs off of him. No dice. He finally turned his attention to the trio not too far away and opened his mouth.

“Hey, what the hell is this, some family reunion or something? Let me outta here, man! Goddamn, what a fuckin’ punch, man… shit…”

Everyone startled at the same time, turning their attention to the villain. Damn, almost forgot about him.

The other officers finally arrived to surround the other angles behind Spider-man, one of them even kneeling down beside electric-- whatever, the villain of the week-- and started cutting him out of the sticky ropes to put him in cuffs.

“Don’t even think about it,” one of them grunted once they got to his hands and saw a tingle of electricity surging through fingertips. “We got dampeners in my squad car if you try anything cute, got it?”

Jeff slowly holstered his gun, keeping the flashlight trained on the Prowler, unable to tear his eyes from this boy lying on the ground at his feet.

“Davis…? You good?” This was the officer who wasn’t busy wrangling sticky webs off of the baddie. He had his flashlight and gun trained on said baddie of course, but his head was swiveled to look at his captain.

Jeff swallowed hard and nodded slowly, a weirdly mechanical kind of movement.

“…Okay. Hey, Spidey. Thanks for this, I guess,” said the officer, keeping his concerned gaze trained on Jeff, shrugging a shoulder. “Too bad about your friend though. Hope he’ll be fine.”

It took Miles a second to recognize that iconic mustache, and then it dawned on him that it was his dad’s faithful friend and his own sidekick, Officer Gutierrez. How ironic, Miles thought ruefully.

He turned back to his dad, who was now helping Prowler up from the ground and steadying him against his side.

“What’re we doing with these two?” Gutierrez asks, because someone has to.

Jeff startles, as if he was just asleep and happened to wake up. “Uhh, about...?”

Gutierrez gave him a look. “The mask guy under your arm. And, uh. This guy,” he points his chin towards VOTW (villain of the week) as he’s being hauled up forcibly by the other officer, now in giant sturdy cuffs binding his arms together.

“The… that guy. Electric man. Just… just put those dampeners on his hands and take him down to HQ. They’ll probably just ship him off to the Raft. Let me know when you guys get there, of course. I’ll uhm. I think I’m gonna be taking my break right now.”

“You taking the mask-man all by yourself, then, captain?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I will. It’s… something personal to me, to be seeing these claws on this boy. I’m sorry. I think I might explain later but right now, we gotta get that guy behind some kinda bars. Please, Gutierrez.”

Gutierrez gives him an unreadable expression, and Jeff shoots an apologetic look back.

Finally, his partner gives a small nod and turns back to the task at hand. Miles breathes out a sigh of relief.

But it was a breath too soon.

“Spider-man. Prowler. The both of you. My car. Now.”

#mine #spiderverse #miles morales #miles g morales #listen idk what's getting into me either tbh i'm just......#like this is it i guess LMFAO #i hope it's not TERRIBLE but yeah these are my brain blasts i have occasionally #i was makin dinner one night when this occurred to me #bc i was really thinking about miles and milo just teaming up and doing the whole vigilante thing.... thinkin abt how cute that would be!#but then my brain was like “ok and so when do the parents finally find out tho. cuz they're DEFINITELY gonna find out lmfao”#and an image of milo's broken mask and jeff doing his cop thing popped into my mind #btw i know that prowler miles has his braids out n everything in earth-42 #but in this particular instance he needs to keep them under wraps so their parents dont watch the news and put 2 n 2 together #so yeah #broken mask= hair fallin out. oops #oh yeah pt 2 is in the works so that should be up soon too #anyways thx 4 reading ♡ :)

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moreespressoformydepresso · 2 months

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So I've been thinking about my criticism of Mal and the way her character was handled, and what really sticks out to me is how easy it is to fix. Just a few simple changes and she'd have been okay. At the very least meh! So I'm gonna share some ideas I have on how her hacked up character could have been made not terrible.

I could start with Descendants 3, as that's the one I have the biggest gripes with, but honestly the issues start in the second movie. In an unnecessarily avoidable way. See, the whole conflict of the movie happens because Mal decides to go back to the isle in a complete overreaction. I could just say that Mal should have just... talked to her friends and boyfriend rather than leaving on a whim over being stressed, but that ignores the actual problem. Mal being so overwhelmed isn't written as a genuine conflict, it only exists because the writers needed her to go back to the isle so Uma can kidnap Ben once he follows after her. And the only reason she does this is because Ben didn't follow through on his declaration beyond the first four kids. It's a plot contrivance. So rather than erasing the whole second movie...

Have characters remark on Mal not being princessly enough. Like- at all. The only person who actually seems to think Mal isn't handling this well is Mal herself. And that's seemingly only because she's using magic. So have big important Auradonians behave the way Audrey and Chad did in the first movie. Have them be like queen Leah, assuming the worst just because of who her parents are. Even an implication would be better than what we have right now. Give her actual reasons to feel like she'll never belong in Auradon, because everyone feels like they don't belong at one point in their lives. That's no reason to abandon literally all of her loved ones forever.

Now that we're done fixing Mal's character in the second movie with one small change, let's get to the final boss of her character assassination: Descendants 3. A true speedrun, I know. There is... so much wrong with this movie. Just so much. I won't go into the nitty gritty and keep it to the bigger strokes of stupidity, starting with the easiest thing that would make Mal so much less insufferable in this stupid movie. Mal should not have suggested closing the barrier. In my post about her I think I did a good job at outlining just how many other solutions there were to this non-problem, but honestly it's not even an issue. Hades didn't even get out, and I would like to point out that they get on and off the isle with no problem within this very movie. They start the movie on the isle, and they got on no issue. In the first movie the villains get the message about the kids going to Auradon, and since there's no wifi it must've been delivered. Then the kids get taken off the isle. No trouble at all, and that's with only that chauffeur. No guards, no guns trained at people's faces, nothing. Things don't go perfectly once and Mal's first thought is close the whole thing down? Yeah, no, that's so fucking dumb I don't even wanna argue with this. Mal is being a massive bitch to solve a problem that doesn't even exist, and it's stupid. Just a contrived way to get Mal alone for the dRaMa. The way to fix it is to just erase this entire conflict because it's stupid.

If you insist on keeping it in... Mal should not lie to literally everyone in her life except Ben. And they should not forgive her that easily. Even after the big battle is done her friends should, at the very least, continue giving her the cold shoulder. One apology is not gonna fix the fact that she lied continuously for purely selfish reasons. There is no big noble goal that made her do this, she very explicitly wanted to keep her own happily ever after with no regard as to the many lives she was ruining in the process. And she only lied about it because she knew her friends would be mad about it. If she thought it was a defendable decision, she'd be defending it, but no. This implies that her reasoning is bullshit, but she's doing it anyways because it's the most effective way of ensuring her own happiness. Not the only way, just the one with the most certain outcome.

Lastly, Mal should not just bring down the entire barrier. As much as I bitch about her stupid solution to a non-issue, the isle is still filled with vengeful evil villains. The message of the movie is, supposedly, that anyone can be evil, but this utterly fails due to multiple reasons that I may detail in a separate post. The most the movie should've led to is Auradon bringing a few lesser villains back over, but the big bads? They're there for a reason, and they should not be given the opportunity to hurt even more people. People aren't born evil, but once you choose to be there's gotta be some consequences. Pendulum swinging because of exactly one instance is wrong and stupid and stupid and wrong, because you should base your decisions on the rule, not the exception.

So yeah those are some quick fixes to the most glaring issues with this series that would've made Mal less of a frustrating mess. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

#descendants #disney descendants #descendants mal #character analysis #kind of #fixing this stupid plot to be less stupid #descendants 2 #descendants 3 #descendants movies #descendants ben

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kaibutsushidousha · 1 year

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Why do you think the Proto Merlin we see is Fou in disguise? I haven't been following this theory very closely so I'm interested in the arguments people have in favor of this

It all started in Lilim Harlot when Sodom's called Merlin "Beast of the Planet". This term has only been used before twice, once in the old material books and once in Mash profiles, both times referring directly and unambiguously to Fou.

Her reaction to being called that is, quote: "Oops, don't say another word. I haven't told anyone about this yet.".

From that point beyond, it was a look back at all of Proto Merlin's previous content to see what changes with the new "she might be Fou lens". The interesting findings there were:

First Hassan's main criticism of her in Lilim Harlot comes from her discarding her crown out of a personal whim. This was initially taken as her refusing to take the Grand Caster crown, but under the Fou lens, we can assume it refers to Fou abandoning the Beast IV horns for Mash's sake.

Fou has a not-yet-explained ability to know what happens in other timelines, being aware of Tsukihime's Primate Murder. Meanwhile, Proto Merlin takes part in Arcade's plot because she knew this was a timeline where Cath Palug wasn't in Chaldea.

Proto Merlin's Arcade profile notes that she switches her personal pronoun to ボク in her more personal moments. That's a thing male Merlin also does, but ボク is an informal masculine pronoun, so it makes perfect sense for him to switch to it when dropping the formalities. Proto Merlin going masculine when she drops the mask was vaguely suspicious, and it's even more so under this perspective because her "mask dropped" way of talking is identical to Fou's.

Kawasumi debuted as Fou's voice before she debuted as Proto Merlin's voice. Not a real clue but a curious piece of trivia.

Weight: 20 kg is still very weird but significantly less weird than before.

Hero Creation and Dreamlike Charisma are ranked lower, which could be because they’re imitations.

Mordred in Arcade feels the need to triple-check if Proto Merlin really is Merlin, although this could be just due to Merlin suddenly being a woman.

The main difference between Merlins as emphasized in her Arcade profile is that Proto Merlin isn't locked in the tower like Merlin. Getting out of the tower is a main point of Fou's backstory.

In Arctic Summerworld, Fou is always keeping watch on Lady Avalon because he doesn't know what she came there for, but he's consistently less hostile to her than he is to male Merlin.

And she came to mobile as Lady Avalon, but her Class is Pretender, meaning she doesn't come with her True Name registered. This is an intentional choice on her part and a secret she successfully keeps hidden. Unlike Oberon, Faker, or Tenochtitlan, she never gets her True Name Reveal scene so Chaldea is officially unaware of who she actually is. The Merlin reveal could have happened in her debut event, but since it didn't, Merlin is now the anti-climatic answer. It isn't worth holding the secret months for that.

#type moon #fate grand order #lady avalon #fou

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travelling-on-the-octopath · 2 years

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To touch on your great analysis meta about the routes, why do you think so many Dimitri haters lament about AM being a character driven narrative? Do you think it's just salty haters who can't accept that CF wasn't the same character driven narrative for Edelgard? Or salty Claude fans who dislike that VW was more about Fodlan lore than about Claude himself? I've always been of the belief that character driven plots are the best types of stories because I prefer characterization to lore tbh.

I was thinking about this exact thing yesterday actually: Why have I seen so many complaints over the years that Dimitri's route is about . . . Dimitri?

I came to a conclusion that may be absolute horseshit, but oh well:

We come to stories for escapism, right? On the surface that comes across as just a different set of rules to a world, to the point where we can't recognize our current circumstances.

That's not entirely true. At least, it's not true on its own. We want stories that make us feel. We come to pieces of media to listen to, read, watch stories that could be about us, but in a different world. We want to witness people, who could be us, who might just be us, go through the trials and tribulations of life--if not something astoundingly worse--and walk out okay, because that means we'll be okay. Humans are fickle creatures, and we want just enough about a story to be foreign to entice us into looking at it, and then be relatable enough for us to sink our teeth in and love it for years. Strangeness draws us in, and relatability keeps us there.

You can only do that with really good characters. You can only get that resolution when you watch realistic characters go through problems that are likely (i.e., probable within the narrative) to affect them, if not ruin them, only for them to emerge victorious. (And I say probable, because if rabid doves were to start attacking Fódlan, it would turn into a comedy long before anything else.)

I've seen various complaints about AM. Some of them are warranted. Others not so much.

Why doesn't Dimitri tackle TWSITD? Well, he kills three of their major players on accident, and while he wants to learn the truth of the Tragedy, he comes to accept that if he focuses on what he doesn't know, he's going to find himself in an even earlier grave. Also, Dimitri's story is about him. Trying to shoehorn in Fodlan's past would a) contradict his themes of leaving behind the uncertain and moving forward with the certain and b) force him into a claude-like role where he's not important, the lore is. (Which isn't to say that it couldn't have been done, just that several things would have had to be reworked and changed to write a compelling Dimitri story alongside that of the church/agarthans/nabateans. Claude was more primed for a story that ties in his character with the lore, but, again--shafted.)

Why does Dimitri focus on the painful parts of his life? I hate to break it to people, but pain is pain. It goes away when it wants, if it wants. Post-skip, he's just spent five years up to his eyes in that pain, at the whims of his mental illness. The biggest point in favour of AM is that he becomes better at bearing it, as we all do with time and support.

Why do I have to hold his hand? Sorry, that's all Byleth (and a hefty sprinkling of writers' work.) At the end of the day, Byleth wants to help Dimitri. Their character isn't as fleshed out as others', courtesy of the curse of avatar-ness, but that they want to help people is a pretty consist characteristic across the game. Also, I understand that the more aggressive symptoms of mental illness are frustrating (I deal with it from my own family), but that does not, and will never, mean someone deserves to be abandoned. That someone inconveniences you or frustrates you does not warrant the total removal of their support. Now, I wanted to rattle him at moments, because godDAMMIT Dimitri, can you sit down for a second instead of trying to march off to your death, but if you equate being frustrated with someone's mental illness to thinking they deserve to fester in their own pain . . . You need to do some serious soul-searching.

Why does Dimitri make a complete 180 the minute Rodrigue dies? He doesn't. You have to actively stop him from riding off to Enbarr on a suicide mission. To boot (and I blame this first and foremost on the support structure), he admits that he's going to be seeing and hearing shit till the day he dies in his S support with Byleth. He doesn't make a 180; he just tries to get his shit together to save his kingdom.

Why does Dimitri make everything about him? I don't know how to explain the concept of empathy to people, really, but he's being empathetic. I've been comforted by people who share my pain, and I do the same thing, because pain is manageable, but pain you face alone is lethal. Dimitri continually says this, that without the support of those around him, he likely would have died a long time ago.

Dimitri is a character that is completely and utterly relatable in his pain. No, a vast majority of us haven't watched our families get slaughtered in front of our eyes in a blaze of terror, but it's his pain we feel. I've forgotten the voices of my dead loved ones; I have a hard time remembering to take care of myself; I have to remind myself that I am not my mistakes, and I am not the hurt I've dealt to people. Sure, he's a king in magical, distant not-Europe, but first and foremost he is a person whose journey we witnessed, from a prince who sees himself first and foremost as a weapon for the grief of his dead family to a king who wants nothing more than to see his home safe and sound. He isn't his pain, and neither am I. That's what brings tears to my eyes; that's how I can play White Clouds over and over in the name of getting to AM, because his journey is woven into it so neatly.

That's the thing people want when they come to a story; they want a tale of people overcoming the obstacles they themselves face, often in window dressings that don't match their own world's. Ultimately, the window dressing doesn't matter, but rather the victory of the character. Stories are for people, and so they have to be about people. That's why characters carry plot, and not the other way around.

Anyway. That's just my two cents.

#s responds #anonymous metropolis #fe #fe3h

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ettawritesnstudies · 1 year

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kind of want to mess around with writing romance but that poses several problems

its finals week and I have no time

i only have 2 relationships in my entire catalouge of WIPs which means EITHER

going back to work on an abandoned newsies fic from 2020

working more on out of context snippets of Sethlyn for Laoche which will inevitably snowball into reoutlining the whole series again because I have no chill

demiaroace whims mean I lose interest in this sort of thing easily

don't wanna write all the will-they-wont-they nonsense that leads up to/makes up a romance book, I just wanna write dorks in love

no characters fit themselves to this trope

don't know what kind of setting or plot I want other than the fact that the protagonists are a couple and comedic hijinks ensue that aren't related to their relationship status/cheating/misunderstandings but rather because they're just a funny and healthy couple that are good for each other and profoundly ridiculous for everyone else.

gotta start a new WIP

see point 1

#etta rambles #romance wip #don't have a tag for this yet so that's what we're going with for now

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mymarifae · 2 years

Note

do you have information anywhere about your stories they sound cool

ABDNFJFNG YOU THINK SO? FROM THOSE BAD SUMMARIES? well i am flattered ^^ i don't have info already listed anywhere or anything but i can give you a more coherent idea of what they all are about >:0

1. By the Sins of Our Youth

It's been one year since Michael died.

Drew tried; they really did. But the world is bent on reminding them just how much it resents their existence. They know when to throw in the towel. It's time to follow in Michael's footsteps.

In Heaven or Hell, we'll see each other again—your last words to me, your last promise. I'll be holding you to it, my friend.

It should have been easy and instant, but things get complicated when the white wolf appears. He calls himself Amos, and the gift he bestows upon Drew may as well have been plucked directly from their worst nightmares.

Immortality.

Amos has no intentions of letting Drew die. At least, not yet. He offers them a deal: they do a small favor for him, and he removes the immortality curse and they'll be free to end their life—if they so choose after all is said and done, he says, as if they'll change their mind. And of course his definition of a "small favor" is "the restoration of magic in humanity." Infuriatingly, Drew has no choice but to go with the wolf's whims.

So with a bitter heart, they set out to gather the items and people on Amos' magic-restoring list. They traverse the borders of limbo, and they wander through the places long forgotten, long lost, long abandoned.

They discover an underground world that humanity turned a blind eye to when the last bit of magic snuffed itself out from our bloodstreams, something that runs deeper than Drew could have ever imagined. And it's so strange; it's almost like this new world doesn't hate them quite as much. It's almost like...

the random 20 year old and sparkledog in question. btw.

2. The Witch's Apprentice

There's nothing remarkable about Sophia Tiller.

She's simply boring. Her only interest is her backyard garden, and her only friends are the bugs and the birds that occasionally stop by for a visit. She never quite learned how to talk to others. Her teachers can never remember her name. Even her own mother is ambivalent towards her presence.

On her sixteenth birthday, she dreams about a man with pointed ears and stardust in his eyes.

On her seventeenth birthday, that same man falls through her chimney.

"Miss Sophia," he says once he's recollected himself and brushed the ash from his wild dark hair, flashing her a shark-toothed grin, "are you ready to become my apprentice?"

On her seventeenth birthday, Sophia's life begins for the first time.

sophia :) aka, the Wrong Kid. also spoiler: thistle's nature as a multi-eyed amorphous blob has nothing to do with the plot and i plan on never elaborating why she is the way she is. smiles

3. a boy and his cat

The old woman laughs and laughs, and laughs. "You've gone and gotten yourself attached."

With an indignant flick of its tail, the cat hisses, "I have not."

Bracken is afraid to blink.

He doesn't talk about it. Because no one would believe him.

But when he blinks, reality will sometimes—shift. He blinks, and his best friend's blue t-shirt is bright red.

He blinks, and the coffee he poured forty seconds ago has turned into hot chocolate piled high with whipped cream.

He blinks, and he has a little sister. Her name is Avery, and she's seven years old. He's never seen her before in his life.

Through all the disorienting shifts in reality, Bracken has one constant, one comfort: a little tortoiseshell cat. The cat is always there. No matter how drastically Bracken's life changes, he finds it lounging outside his bedroom window night after night, waiting patiently to be let in for its daily dose of pets and treats.

He's taken to calling it Velvet.

One day, he's on his way to school when he sees Velvet sitting by the door of an odd-looking store that definitely did not exist yesterday.

Miss Berry's Curios and Trinkets

Sourced 100% Ethically From All Around The Known And Unknown Universe!

Something compels him to skip school and follow the little tortoiseshell into Miss Berry's shop. Who knows? Maybe he'll find a cool birthday present for Avery. Unless he blinks her out of existence, of course.

bracken and his. "cat." i lied apparently btw i guess he's 17. not 16. i forgor 💀

#hehehehehehe. i cannot wait until i finish writing these stories in full and can share them with you all >:)#mailbox #scribbles #i think this belongs there. surw

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unf1t · 11 months

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hey all! excited to be here and finally have a reason to re-read do androids dream of electric sheep? after like four years of it sitting on my bookshelf. i’ve provided information about kitae’s character under the read more. i’ve also provided some ideas about potential connections and plots underneath everything, too. if you'd like, you can add me on dis of cord (lahrimosa). have fun everyone ♥

tw for death, abandonment, drug use, violence

starting with the culprits: his parents, who scrambled up some money to get to ansan from countryside in a hope for a better life that never came to them. between trying to survive and dreams of the ticket for astra, kitae comes as an accident they find out about a bit too late.

you see, his parents had very little money and very a lot of desire to enter astra by any means possible. so they decided to leave him at the doorstep of a local, over-crowded orphanage in the dead of the night, and use that little money they had to be smuggled to astra. the assumption that they never arrived there is more than correct, and they will never get another chance to try again.

the only thing kitae has that reminds him of the parents he’s never met is his necklace with his name on the homemade pendant. he’s always on the verge of throwing it away in anger but it’s the only thing that he’s had since he’s known of himself so he has that odd type of attachment to it

he’s learned how to con people out of money and kindness by batting his eyelashes sadly before he could even learn how to form a full sentence. scrapped knees, bruised knuckles and problems with authority have him kicked out of the orphanage several times, but he’s always returning and welcomed back with open arms whenever floods come around. the big brother type of a boy there... at seventeen (drop it like hot hot hot), he takes the few things he has to his name and runs off into the night. kind of ironic, mirroring his parents.

initially makes living as a scrapper on the scrapyard, eselling whatever he can under the table, but isn’t shy away from taking just about any job around ansan, no matter how dirty it is; as long as it pays, he’s going to do it, which persists to present day, too. knows how to steal, too, breaking into abandoned homes and hotels, and getting into floodstreets and rainways when water pulls back.

tried to pass the initiation race to enter nightrunners but failed. you actually need to know how to drive well to be accepted? woah. who would have thought? in his shotaro kaneda era so he does have a bike he rides around. it's modified and seen better days but it gets him from point a to point b and he can escape enforcers on it so!

lives in a shabby rundown apartment at black stone. absolutely hates it. fights the mold every single day probably

frequents the underground; for the fun, for the underhanded substances, to pass time, to get drunk, to not think about the fuckup that is his life. naturally he’s known of the of the fighting ring there for a while. decided to sign up on for it on a whim. it’s a “whatever happens, happens” type of a thought.

unlike the driving, he’s been fighting all of his life to survive, both figuratively and literally, so he wins. and then he signs up again, and wins again, and it becomes a loop; it’s something he does with his fists, something that gives him a purpose, something that adds a thrilling note to his life in an otherwise monotone, depressing existence. so he gets hooked on the adrenaline, too.

his fighting style having him nicknamed mouse. he’s slippery, fast on his feet, throws a mean left-hook punch and plays dirty. on a winning streak, so feel free to bet on him whenever.

unresolved temper issues. will snap, will yell, will scream. dissociates. arguments over smallest of things. on other hand, loyal to the extreme. if you’ve helped him even once he won’t ever forget about it. the type who will extend his hand to even an enemy if they're really in the shitter.

completely clean when it comes to cybernetics, or so he says! the only upgrade in him is amplified hearing, but if you ignore that, all personal skill babey. it does leave him praying every time he’s going into the ring that he’s not fighting someone who does have advanced stuff in them, though.

has an inner child that screams “heal me”. when he’s not fighting, lowkey robbing abandoned homes, losing himself at the underground or healing broken bones, he can be found at mise-en-scéne, watching projections with wide eyes and excitement. he really enjoys the cartoons, but if you say you saw him there he might have to beat you up. #noharshfeelings he has a reputation to uphold! also lurks around the observatory

ultimately, does not believe in the story of astra in the slightest. he thinks it's just an elaborate story told by higher ups of ansan, to keep people working their lives away for corporations and their pockets :+)

some ideas for connections and or plots that i have are listed below, but if you have any other idea or have a plot you'd like filled let me know ♥

someone who he’s grown up with. from the same orphanage, same area, same rusty playgrounds. they could have grown up close, even inseparable, with a dust of betrayal or sadness when he disappears. / they could have been on unfriendly terms, since he was sort of a problem child

like i said, he’s not shy from running errands and doing whatever for money and maybe your character is someone who has him running around ansan. it can vary from someone just wanting simple company to doing the heavy lifting. dirty and bloody business, too

he gets in trouble with the law. so, enforcers, hi. maybe someone is holding a tight watch on him and his movements. on the opposite, maybe they have a sweet spot for kitae and are always there to… bring him in and coincidentally let him off the hook, too

the person who runs the betting on him with him and with whom he shares the half of his wins (and none of his losses?). purely transactional or a genuine friendship? he's also kinda awkward with the few fans he may have gained in the ring soo there's that too

someone who’s always at mise-en-scéne at the same time as him… avoiding each other into acknowledging into bloom of a sweet friendship ♥

what happens in the ring stays in the ring, so he’s not the type to hold grudges if you’ve broken his nose or gave him a concussion. friends outside of the ring, enemies inside.

someone he parties with at the underground… surface level or genuine friendship? also, whoever’s providing him with the sus tablets < 3

neighbours from hell and heaven who have built a little community at black stone apartments

#rmnt:intro #/ ignore the prev tag.. it was the numbers. learned a new thing. tumblr is anti binary coding and against women in stem

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compressednerve · 5 months

Note

25 and 27 for the fic meme please 🙏

Thanks for the ask!!! :D Big rambling ahead <3

"25. What did you use to write? (e.g. writing programs, paper & pen, etc.)"

Most of my writing skill is fleeting based off how functional my brain is working that day, so I tend to go back and forth between hastily typed notes in Discord and attempts to flesh things out in google docs-- both of which I don't really love, but they're online and I can link the files easily to @parasitefun who's my creative partner and helps with my processes. I loathe the spellcheck/grammar function on docs! I used to write exclusively in notepad or OpenOffice back on my old computer but I find OpenOffice in general... lacking.

I wasn't taught to read or write in the uh... traditional way, so I usually have an exorbitantly difficult time with actually formulating sentences. So I guess using Clip Studio Paint is another program I use for writing, because I need to storyboard, assemble timelines of events, sketches of emotions... what have you. It helps me in "assembling" the information required for a plot, but usually I just end up scrapping the fic entirely and condensing it down to a comic or a few paragraphs attached to an illustration... for example, here's some sketches from a few weeks ago while I chip away at my millionth attempt at a chaptered longfic, this time now featuring Yung Northmoor!

Whether I complete this as an actualized comic or intermittent illustrations, or keep them as sketches for referencing certain vibes of the scene, is mostly up to luck if I even can keep the momentum up to carry the work to the finish line 😔 I am also extremely shy and precious about my WIPs most of the time, I feel like my sketches are very vulnerable... which is unfortunate because I finish maybe 15% of the pieces I start!!! This is due to CTE though, and thus for the most part cannot be helped at the moment. I think for 2024 a resolution I have is to try to hold myself to finishing at least one Large Project a month, cuz then at least I'll have 12! :D

Recently I ..........acquired.......... Scrivener which I hope will help with a lot of the messy notes and outlines become more organized. It's an old version of the program though, and I can't figure out how to make the text of the UI any larger which makes navigating the program itself a pain. It's also very informational dense. Which is. Difficult and maze-like for me to comprehend sometimes. Multiple times in the past few years I've bought corkboards, pushpins, notecards, and other utensils to try to help make physical note taking easier, but my arthritis makes my handwriting dogshit to a point where I can hardly read it myself... and we don't have the physical space for my pepe silva act XD Maybe some day, though!

"27. Did you do anything special to celebrate finishing a fic?"

I wish! I never really thought of doing anything special for finishing fics- most of the time if it's not painstakingly planned out like above process described, the only time I get anything finished is if I do it all in one single sprint... hence so many abandoned WIPs... It's hard to take something to the end when so much of my ability to even start it is based off random whims! I think I get the genuine ability to write, coherently and cohesively, maybe every few months. I'm inspired and writing fic in my head pretty much all the time as a part of my psychotic processing as filtering my distorted reality through the lens of characters and scenarios has been one of my main perceptions of the world from a young age due to childhood schizophrenia, but capturing it in actual words and sentences that other people can actually read is a whole other basket!

...So, I guess nothing really, other than a large sigh of relief and a feeling of release in having finally achieved what I was hoping to achieve, or at least, an approximation that's close enough to it that I'm satisfied. Maybe this is my sign to try to incentivize finishing things by setting up a reward if I can manage! :D

#ask game #thanks for the ask -w- i feel so special <3

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sweetcloverheart · 2 years

Text

Clover Rants Miraculously: Gabriel and the Lesson (un)learned

You know, what pisses me off the most about Gabriel never having his identity as Hawkmoth exposed to Adrien or being brought to justice (which would be a little more tolerable if it was a Lex Luthor-esque situation where Gabriel just has too much power/sway in his civilian life that making him face justice for his crimes as Hawkmoth/Monarch is just near impossible for the heroes at the moment) isn’t just that the plot is basically giving him a literal “Get out of jail free” card - it’s that even with all this, nothing will change. Come season 6, the Miraculous-less Gabriel will simply go back to being neglectful of his son and keep him at arms length as he tries to manipulate his friends and girlfriend away from him for being “bad influences” and continues to try and have him isolated from the world at large - and the only difference between that and the past will be that he no longer has his Hawkmoth/Monarch activities as an excuse anymore. Oh sure, they’ll play up that his grief over Emilie is still weighing him down (though now without any miraculous to help save her, does he even have any excuse to still morn anymore?), but other than that? No excuse. He can’t purposely upset people now that he can’t akumatize them, he can’t force Adrien to leave the country for modeling jobs now that he’s let him quit and can no longer make large-scale schemes to endanger all of Paris to threaten Ladybug over, and he can’t excuse being absent/uninvolved in Adrien’s life because no longer being Hawkmoth means he has all the free time in the world to interact with his child. And yet he’ll continue on. Gabriel will no longer have the means to justify his emotional abuse towards Adrien except that the story simply demands it (unless they plan on sending him to Brazil too).

And when it finally comes time for Adrien to learn of the secret kept from him (Not that his father’s a supervillain, mind you - That would make Adrien imperfect, and the narrative can’t allow any sort of flaw to touch their protagonist’s perfect boyfriend. He can learn that both Marinette and Gabriel know who Hawkmoth is though...), it won’t be Gabriel who apologizes, for neglecting and emotionally abandoning his son to wallow in his own grief to the point that he dabbled in dangerous magics and indirectly assisted in Lilamoth’s ascent to supervillainy just to spite his nemesis (and for using his amok to pull him alongside his whims like a puppet). And it won’t be Nathalie who apologizes either, for numbly standing by while his father basically abandoned his child (who she’s come to see as her own) in a desperate attempt to rebuild his family, and then aided him out of her own misguided form of love until she finally realized things had gone too far. It won’t even be Felix or Plagg, the former who knew what a dangerous person his uncle was and the crimes he was committing but chose to tell his cousin nothing out of spite and “tough love”, while the latter likely chooses to keep Adrien in the dark out of love and loyalty (and because the laws of the Kwami prevent him from saying anything).

No - instead, it’ll be Marinette who apologizes, as the show forces her to self-flagellate and beg for forgiveness in Gabriel’s place over having to be made by the narrative and circumstances to keep mum about the identity of the man who spent the better part of their teenhood tormenting them through monsters and a manipulated public. Marinette will be the one to apologize, for the fact that Adrien’s father chose spite and villainy over his family and taking responsibility for himself, for the fact that a new Hawkmoth is terrorizing the city, for the fact that his mother has remained comatose, for everything terrible that has, can, and will happen after the last episode of season 5 because she has to learn her lesson no matter what, and because the story is adamant in preventing Adrien from having this one bit of agency and closure for himself in his storyline, and will now place the burden on his partner (who likely will be given no choice but to keep Gabriel’s identity a secret for him while the story treats it like a active act of betrayal) to bear - because god forbid we let the adult man who made the active and conscious decision to fight a pair of preteens over magical jewellery (to the point that he literally threw away the chance to save everyone the headache and suffering (and after having it basically handed to him on a silver platter)), then purposely threw away the magical brooch he was using to terrorize the city and its people just to spite them once he had been beat, face any consequences for his actions, let alone be forced to face the fact that maybe, his actions weren’t protecting his son like he thought

#Clover Rants Miraculously #Miraculous Ladybug #ML Salt #ML Spoilers

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sergiusreports · 9 months

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Spinning Wheels

Maybe Arym should've expected his body would eventually fight back after all the months of abuse he's put it through. Even after waking, he spends more time unconscious than he means to; even once he's disconnected from the system Florus had him rigged up to, he finds it hard to stay awake. He's tired, and there's no imminent crisis to keep him going. Turns out the Final Days weren't so final, Alvarium is picking up the pieces, N, Telos and Twelves are gone, Volare's on the ground.

Volare.

It's the first place Arym visits when he's well enough to walk out the door (not that he's been given a clean bill of health). He digs an old rebreather out of his gear, but even it's not enough to compensate for his shit lung functionality if he pushes himself, and he's wheezing into it by the time he reaches the fallen ship.

Arym leaves his locator ping on, so if Sergius doesn't see him leave the bunker, he'd certainly see him making his way through, and out, of Alvarium towards the proverbial whalefall that Volare had become. The town has already started peeling back materials from the hull to use in repairing everything that had been damaged in the "war", and Arym stands with one foot on one of the makeshift entry ramps that would lead up into the massive ship's exposed innards.

He shoves his good arm deep into the pockets of his coat, the other sleeve flapping in the chill breeze, wheezing into the mask over his mouth and nose. He stares into the darkness like it could swallow him, wondering what he's doing here. Shit, he thinks.

Sergius’ job was, essentially, done here. Heartwood’s people had left long before. He had remained behind only to ensure Florus did what was needed to bring Arym back. All the while, he had purposefully made his presence a silent, ever-present menace to remind the architectus of just how much he would love a reason to shove the man’s head through a wall, whether or not it meant he would have to deal with Kazushige.

It still seemed like a fucking mistake to leave him alive. Or, as alive as Sergius and any of the ANY creations could be considered to be. For better or worse, Telos had made Florus one of them now. There was a dark corner of Sergius that found a dark poetic justice in that. It still didn’t mean this version of Florus couldn’t or wouldn’t go on as before, creating life only to enslave it and abandon it at his whim and Sergius’ threat assessment continued to nag at him with constant alerts to neutralize the problem in the most efficient manner. A problem which, again, could be handled by handily putting the man’s head through a wall.

While backburning the constant alerts and making preparations to head out of a place in which he hoped to never set boots on the ground again, a new ping caught his attention. Arym had wandered outside the bounds of Alvarium. Because of course he did. He clearly had some sort of allergic reaction to staying put long enough to regain full function. And he hadn’t just left Alvarium’s bounds. He had strayed back to the Volare.

Why?

Sergius could only guess but he plotted out that maybe it had something to do with some sort of damned emotion regarding what had occurred on the downed airship. Which was, in Sergius’ estimation, useless after the point.

Where any Spoken would have sighed or rolled their eyes, Sergius merely stopped what he was doing and diverted to the bones of the grounded ship. He comes across the viera staring silently into the black vastness of the hold, sending his drone to zip ahead and alert Arym to his presence.

Sergius flagged Arym’s foot on the twisted ramp, like he was in the process of motion but had froze.

“I’d say you’re out too far for someone in your condition but we both know that’d be pointless.” Sergius observed as he drew up alongside Arym. “There’s not much left in there that hasn’t been picked over and salvaged.”

Arym feels Sergius's approach well before he sees him coming, well before his drone announces his arrival, even; he's not really certain if it was something to do with the internal damage, the time he'd spent on Volare, Telos puppeting him, or the fact Sergius had sat there with their feed open for so long (maybe a combination of everything), but he feels the shift in signal frequency becoming clearer as he closes the distance. He wouldn't know how to describe the increased sensitivity, so he doesn't bother trying.

"Not entirely pointless," Arym says, wry amusement quirking the corners of his lips, though it doesn't linger for long, "I might listen eventually." Doubtful, but it's not a complete dismissal, even as his gaze returns to the fallen ship.

"Yeah, I figured. Surprised to see how quick it's come apart, before I remembered I've been out for a while." He hasn't taken his foot off the ramp, leaning his weight into it like he's still thinking about going up.

Arym's jaw works absently for a moment.

"What happened?" He finally asks. "What..." He fumbles for more, struggling to grapple with the pieces he's missing. His hand comes out of his pocket and rakes through his hair, long and ragged.

< ...gonna take a look around. > Arym doesn't wait for a response as he starts climbing up the ramp, heading for the darkness. He figures Sergius will be with him whether he follows him in physically or not, so he just goes.

He pulls up the map Telos had uploaded into him when he'd first arrived and absently adds an overlay to detail the damage, what the salvage had stripped away. Nightvision kicks in, but his hand goes out to trail his fingertips over the wall as they go. He clearly has a destination in mind, one that involves climbing to the upper decks.

Sergius doesn’t say anything but he falls in half a step behind Arym as the viera moves into the gaping maw of the Volare. Anything that could move on the ship had been dealt with but there was a non-zero chance it still had a few surprises left aboard.

Like Arym, Sergius’ visual feeds shifted automatically to night vision as they left daylight behind them. Nothing was coming up on his scans but as a precaution he sent several of his drones down the corridor ahead of them.

In the silence that followed, he wasn’t sure Arym’s question wasn’t just rhetorical. Interpreting the emotional subtext in the speech and expressions of Spoken was completely different from interpreting it in lines written in the books he read. He could trust the books were trying to communicate with the reader. As far as Sergius could tell, real Spoken usually didn't know what the hell they were doing. Despite his hybrid status, Arym’s intentions were often no easier to interpret than any of the rest of them on a good day.

“What’s the last thing you remember?” Sergius queried as they moved along. Arym clearly had a destination in mind.

In the dark, Volare's passages are far more twisting, more labyrinthine than Arym remembers, though the internal maps he uses to lead them tell him nothing has changed. He's seized with an anger he knows is irrational, a spark that makes him kick a chunk of debris from their path more vehemently than he needed to.

Arym is used to Volare's halls being empty, silent. When Telos had brought him here, he'd been the only one given leave to wander the ship, and wander he had--except it hadn't been empty, or silent. The rush and roar of its engines in flight, power humming through every ilm, the buzz of drones and constant construction--always building, never finished. A veritable Sisyphus. Telos had left Alvarium and it's yoke only to build something else.

Volare had been filled with Telos's loneliness, too. Filled to bursting with it. Arym was never quite taken in with the lies he'd been fed, but through everything that is what kept him here.

Now, though, Volare was just a tomb. Silent and empty as a grave, though Arym knows it'd been rotting long before this. He'd chosen to look away.

"It's not what I remember," he says eventually, climbing a flight of stairs that leads to midships, "it's what I... what I missed. Threw me in stasis, when I came back from the lodge. Had some things to say to him he didn't like hearing."

Arym stops at the top of the stairs to catch his breath, a hand on his chest while his damaged lungs try to catch up, while his damaged heart grinds away with ever second beat. He leans back on a wall, picks Sergius's face out through the greenish gloom of his night vision.

"Something malfunctioned. Rema and I got free, but by that point, it had already started. I don't know what changed. Why Telos..." He gestures ambiguously with his good arm.

"Wasn't the plan," he scoffs quietly, "until it was, I guess." The spark of anger he'd felt earlier gives way to the real feeling eating away at him; grief. More grief. He's relieved that N had pulled Telos free of the mire he'd been stuck in (and there's something Arym recognizes in Telos, half-swallowed by that dark and still lashing out. Arym was never going to be the one to save him, but if no one else was there, he would've gone with him), but his feeling are never cut and dry.

After the lodge. Sergius didn’t need to check the timestamps on his logs to know that would have been about the time he and Arym had the swift exchange over the revelation of what Telos was doing to husks of people. Three guesses as to what Arym and Telos had argued over.

“He threw you in stasis because he didn’t like what you said.” Sergius echoed, the monotony of his voice giving little to no indication of the anger cascading through his systems all over again. “And your first thought when you were freed was to try and confront him again. To what? Save him?”

He had stopped, waiting as Arym pulled air into lungs that functioned at the bare minimum of the definition, his sensitive audio channels picking up the grind and churn of a heart that didn’t seem outfitted for the task. And he wanted to kill Telos for an entirely new reason than the one that brought him to the Volare the first time. But that ship had sailed. Or rather, nosedived into the ground. Telos was free and clear, off doing who-the-fuck-cared with his bff’s.

In the shrouded stillness, Sergius was feeling the need to vent off these emotions that had nowhere to go, that never had anywhere to go except for that one time he caved and Rhua took them from him.

He stares back at Arym, seeing the viera clearly despite the lack of light, the apertures of his synthetic eyes blown wide to compensate for the dark. He took two steps closer to the man struggling to breathe. “You’re not going to find answers here, Arym. Nothing satisfactory to explain all his shit away. So why are we here?” He ground out.

To what? Save him? Arym's expression twists, denial on his lips. Intentional or not, Sergius's words worm their way under his skin like barbs, prying up the fractured pieces of his emotional defenses (defenses he hasn't had nearly enough time to repair and replace). His hand tightens, clawing into his shirt for a lack of anything else to hold onto.

"No, I--" He looks up at Sergius. The greenish grey tint to everything makes his neutral expression somehow even more severe, like Arym can see the way he's seething beneath the veneer of stillness that his artificial body lends him. Arym gropes blindly for an explanation that would satisfy, but he doesn't have one. He doesn't even have one that satisfies himself. His breath hitches, anger of his own seething to the surface.

"You think I didn't want to just--leave? Me and Rema, we found his fucking--collection of blasphemies, in the hold. The kid, Alerio? One of Rema’s soldiers that turned on the mountain. We had to put him down when he broke containment, and then--" Arym takes a step back, turning slightly aside. He leans his armless shoulder up against the wall, peering down at the metallic flooring without really seeing what he's looking at. He's turned reluctantly inward, dredging up the things that are almost too raw for him to examine. It’s like raking himself over hot coals.

“...but we couldn’t. I couldn’t. I didn’t know N and Twelves were coming for him, I didn’t know everyone was…” He sighs, ragged and uneven, and turns to take a step up into the next stairwell.

“Everything he did to me, and I still couldn’t leave him.” Arym scoffs, but fuck it needles him in ways he doesn’t want to admit.

“He didn’t have any compunctions about fucking off, though. So I just--I’m here to make sure he’s actually gone.” He trudges up a few more steps, then glances back at Sergius, his lenses flickering wildly. His heart grinds faster in his chest, fear metallic at the back of his throat. He needs to know.

Sergius stands there like a pillar. Pointless without structure. Nothing Arym said touches the uncomfortable anger dragging down his systems like an unwanted virus. He hates it. All of it. Every single stupid, useless emotion he somehow became saddled with. Somewhere in the chaos he picks up on the sense he’s supposed to feel bad about the blasphemies Arym and August found. For this kid, Alerio. And he doesn't. Arym is giving him too much credit, expecting him to be able to….what? Empathize? Or is it sympathize? He can’t keep them straight. The point is, he doesn't. He was never designed to and asking him to subscribe such concepts to some faceless entity called ‘Alerio’ when his systems are already dealing with their own problems is asking too much.

Yeah, he’s aware of how that would sound if verbalized. Which is why he doesn't. And why the next thing out of his mouth is so laughably inadequate.

“Fine.” How absolutely, idiotically reductive. Nothing was fine. None of this shit was fine.

“You didn’t see them transform on account of the fucking hole Telos torn into you.” The ever present control on the unit’s vocal channels slipped, the words coming out louder, harsher. Angry.

It’s displaced and Sergius knows it. He seems to take a moment, reeling back control. It is a momentary lapse and in the next, he’s once again the stolid, reliable presence he always is.

“It would be strange for N not to pick up every sliver of Telos’ consciousness, leaving nothing behind. But fine. Let’s go see if the deranged bot left any breadcrumbs behind.”

Where Arym had turned his back on Sergius to take another step up the stairs, he hesitates. He looks back, first over his shoulder and then he turns more completely, scrutinizing the way Sergius's voice comes out nearly a frustrated growl (by his standards, anyway), then nothing. Restrained monotone. It sets Arym's teeth on edge, and for a moment he falters; he's not exactly a precision instrument where it comes to getting people to talk about their feelings. He's more like a hammer. it doesn't help that Sergius is a closed book 99% of the time, either. < ...what are you thinking? > Arym tries anyway.

It was another thing they had in common. More like two bludgeoning instruments blundering around something at once so chaotic and subtle as emotions. Which is why most of the time Sergius liked to take the route of pretending they weren’t there. Shunted off to the side like an annoying systems message that wouldn’t go away. But Arym’s question sits there in his feed and he’s compelled to answer. //The most immediate is that I have zero space to give to feeling…sympathy for his shit. You do. I don’t get it. But I’m not leaving you here alone either.//

Arym leans a shoulder against the wall again, perched unevenly between two stairs, hand tucked into his pocket where it fishes around for nothing; the pocket's empty. < Sympathy. Yeah. Not exactly what I'm feeling at this second, either. > He stalls, fidgets. < That why you're pissed? Rather he hadn't just gotten to fuck off after everything he did? >

Arym's mind skips over Florus like it's gliding over a frozen pond, the real depths too deep for him to dive into without drowning. It's like that with Telos, too. Big and complicated, squashed down into the tiniest pieces he can handle in chunks at a time; let Florus repair you despite everything else because you have to live; make sure there's nothing left of Telos so you can shunt aside the irrational feeling of him still slithering through your systems like a virus.

Arym Ord swallows, shying away from his own internal reminders to focus on Sergius, instead.

Sergius stops over Arym’s shoulder, tracking the way the viera weaves into the wall. He doesn’t intervene but hangs there, ready if he needs to. Pissed doesn’t come close to the powerless sense of failure and the resulting anger but it’s in the ballpark. Way out in left field. But there. //Should I be happy he got to fuck off?// Sergius replies in the form of a question. //Should I excuse all of it? This?// He waves his hand over Arym and the way he can barely make it up a flight of stairs. //Because what? He had a shit creator?// There’s a brief pause ladened with irony. //It is what it is. Failure. And yeah, let’s go with ‘pissed’.//

Failure. Arym's mind sticks on that out of everything Sergius says, starting to pick his way up the stairs again, trying to sort out how he feels about being at leas tone of the reasons Sergius is upset. Arym spends most of his time being outraged on behalf of others, or others being outraged over his choices; he's not used to someone feeling that way on his behalf.

Arym Ord | Fuck, navigating this place was easier when the elevators worked. < So what's your win-state look like, if this is failure? >

//It doesn’t matter.// Sergius states. Or rather, hedges, unwilling to discuss something that would never come to pass. //Shit could be worse, I suppose. People died. The people I was responsible for didn’t.// The cold calculation was both a reminder of what he was while also serving as the bare minimum of what a machine designed for what he was designed for could count as not a total scenario failure. It fell far below any acceptable passing measure.

Atreus Sergius | Arym’s steps are slow but Sergius adjusts his gate to them all while staring straight ahead. He’d suggest they stop and rest but even Sergius could calculate how well a statement like that would go over with Arym. //You can’t tell me you’re happy with this outcome. We wouldn’t be here otherwise.//

Arym huffs into his rebreather, leading them up from the bowels of the hold, past the mid-ships, into the upper levels. He's headed for Navigation, somewhere he'd never set foot in; Telos had locked him out of it, just like he'd locked him out of everything in R&D. < Kinda sounds like it matters, if you're still spinning your wheels in the mud about it. > Arym's not going to begrudge him his callous parametres though; Spoken are like that, too.

Save the people you care about, and everyone else can get fucked. Minimize losses where you can, defend the greater good or the majority, or whatever helps them sleep at night. Arym swings wildly from one direction to the other, trying to have the best of both worlds. It didn't work out great for him. < I'm-- > Arym falters, starts looking up and down the hallway for something he can use as a crowbar to pry open the doors ahead; there's less salvaging taken from up here, but more damage from N's overgrown heartblooms. < I don't know. Maybe I am happy he gets a second chance. And maybe I'm--fucking terrified of being his mammet again. >

As they leave parts of the ship Sergius has a map for, his drones streak ahead into the dark, mapping the twists and corridors ahead. Arym’s turn of phrase causes a dark sort of humor to thrum through the feed. //Maybe we haven’t met. Spinning my wheels inefficiently over having an emotion is what I do.// He watches the viera’s head turn from side to side. //What do you need?//

Happy and terrified. How a person could be both was beyond Sergius’ ability to process. //Happy and terrified. One sounds like an overlay to disguise the other. If we had neutralized Telos you wouldn’t need to feel he’d be able to enter your systems again. That’s why I hate the failure.// He pauses, making a connection he probably should have made long before now. But putting himself in another’s shoes is not at all a concept he came with out of the box. //That's what brought you here. Fear. You’re afraid there’s a fragment of him left?//

< Something to get this door open-- > There's no access panels on this side, at least, because Telos was practically part of the ship--he wouldn't have needed them. Arym's lips twitch upwards, though. < Welcome to the club. That's like, ninety percent of what Spoken do--spin their wheels over an emotion. I'd offer you a refund and a chance to get off the ride, but I think it's too late. > Arym's a good example of that, considering where they are and what they're doing. His ears twitch backwards as Sergius says it outright and he fidgets. < Yeah. No, I mean, sure, I wouldn't have to be afraid, and I probably wouldn't have had this hole gouged out of my chest, but I-- >

//Lucky me.// Sergius deadpans as he analyzes the door. //What’s beyond the door? Does it have to stay intact?// He waits as Arym falters and hesitates over his words. He’s been there enough times.

Arym suddenly swings a frustrated kick at the door. < Sure as hells doesn't need to stay intact. The door, anyway. Nav station should be behind it. > He avoids finishing his earlier sentence, until it overflows anyway. < I want him to live with what he did. >

//Then stand back.// Sergius gives Arym enough time to move away from the door before he levels a hand in its direction. A blast of ceruleum colored energy pulses out from the weapon in his arm followed by two others in quick succession. The noise is almost a cacophony in the deathly silence of the ship. With any luck, Sergius may have forced a way in where there was none before. //I wanted to be sure he couldn't hurt anyone again.//

Arym clears what he thinks is the blast radius and still ends up surprised by the flash of heat, narrowly avoiding jumping out of his skin thanks to the noise. He'd gotten too used to the silence--but in the wake of Sergius's blasts, the sliding doors stand split apart, misshapen and sizzling with molten heat--though it's swiftly cooling, given the chill of Garlemald even in here.

Arym Ord glances at the newly made ingress, then over at Sergius. < Yeah, that works. > The room is dark within, and Arym inhales. < ...and so did I. Wanted it to be his choice. Believed he'd make that choice right up until he-- > Arym raises a hand to gesture at his chest. < And now I don't know. >

There’s a high-pitch whine emitting from Sergius’ arm as he lowers it. The sound of tech that had ramped up one second and powered down the next. He steps over the remains of the door and enters ahead of Arym. Protocols die hard. //I get it. Now he’s out there like a loose thread. Lot of fucking loose threads around.//

Like the rest of the ship, the navigation deck is cold and silent as the grave, and while Arym lets Sergius go in first, he's close on his heels. < Yeah. Would've been nice to see everything wrapped up in a neat little bow, but it's been a clusterfuck from day one. > His gaze drops to Sergius's arm while it powers down--a little curious, a little concerned. < You good? Don't think I've seen you pull that out, before. >

The drones do their usual circuit, mapping out the pitch black room. //I don’t usually have to. There’s no point in exerting more force than needed and unless shit really hits the fan it’s not worth the questions it raises.// He navigates around the collection of terminals and stations, the various equipment left to degrade. //I did use it in the Tower on a lower setting. To break the locks on some cages. Victoria was the only one who noticed though she let it go.//

Sergius stops and turns his head to Arym’s silhouette. //For what it’s worth I’m not picking up Telos’ signature here. Not that the assessment is foolproof. As we know.// Telos had a way of shaking even Sergius’ sensors.

Massive blacked-out screens the size of windows that would've displayed the skies around the Volare for malms wrap around the front curve of the navigation centre, display hooks cropping out of the center control panels stretched across a massive desk and embedded computers stand in the centre of the room.

Arym's behind Sergius, tugging connectors out of the back of his neck with full intention of jacking himself into one of the terminals. < Makes sense. > That felt like an age ago, now. < ... > Arym turns a stray thought over in his mind, wondering what Sergius prefers--mingling here in Alvarium where at least a few knew his real nature, or passing as Spoken where he'd come from. Where, presumably, he'd be going back to.

< Yeah. I--I mean. I don't think there's anything left. > But thinking and knowing were two different things. He needed to know, so he could start dismissing the way his mind kept second-guessing the shadow of Telos's presence in everything he did.

Sergius turns to face Arym and is on him in an eye-blinking short amount of time. He makes a grab for the hand currently full of connectors. //You’re joking. I said I didn’t read his signal. That doesn’t mean it’s not here.// He fires sharply across the feed. As if he needed the reminder that Arym seemed to be packing a death wish.

It's easy to make a grab for Arym's wrist--it's not like he's operating at full capacity, but he's also not inclined to fight Sergius, either. It doesn't mean he doesn't fire back just as sharply, though. < I know, but--what do you expect me to do, Sergius, sit here while you put yourself at risk? >

//Better than you, isn’t it?// Sergius retorts. //I have multiple failsafes.// But beneath that, beneath the hard logic of the fact that Sergius isn’t an open door like Arym, is a refusal to stand by useless. Again. Should the worst happen and something else is to befall the viera.

Arym stares hard at Sergius, and despite him being a featureless wall on the outside, Arym can feel that undercurrent coming through their feed, try as Sergius might to conceal it beneath his solid argument. Arym's ears fall slightly, and it's not the first time he finds himself wondering why. Why help him, all those months ago. Why trust him, why put himself at risk out in the wastes of Garlemald tracking him--nearly getting himself turned into a blasphemy in the process--why drag him back to Florus.

Arym's hand lets go of the connectors and they slowly spool back into his neck, the plate sliding shut with a quiet hiss with nothing to keep it open. < ...Be careful. >

Sergius lets go of Arym’s hand, his arm falling back to his side. The unspoken truth hanging in the air is on the fringe of Sergius’ sensors. An intangible thing that he can almost, but not quite, examine. //Agreed.// He tells Arym. A drone flies it’s way over through the dark and Sergius reaches under the bot’s chassis, drawing out a connector and hardwiring it into the blank terminal. From this buffer, Sergius slides from the peripheral unit into the bot and down to the ravaged Volare’s system. In the dark there’s only the slightest shift in the Four’s stance as Sergius splinters and expands his neural network. //Most of what was here has been damaged by that plant. There are some data banks.// He goes quiet in the ruined remains. Conflicted once again by a roil of emotions. When was that not the case lately?

A few more seconds pass as Sergius streams along the Volare’s pathways, most of which have been cut short or damaged beyond any passibility. //Old storage files. That’s it.//

Arym doesn't move away even as Sergius's consciousness spreads out from Four, to the drone, and into Volare. Arym shouldn't be able to follow that by sensation alone, but like the hiss of static that persists in a powered off screen, the hum of electricity in a streetlamp, or the way he'd felt Aislinn restore the pulse of life to Sergius on that table, Arym feels the way he expands--explicable or not. He turns to watch, glued to Four's side like a watchdog, tense and ready for anything.

His reports filter in and Arym feels the press of uncertainty at the back of his mind, but he cuts himself short of asking. If there's one thing he /is/ certain about, it's that Sergius wouldn't lie. < ...yeah, okay. That's. > It's probably good, but he can't bring himself to say it. Relief is already threatening to turn his knees into jelly. < ...let's get the fuck out of here. >

It takes Sergius only seconds to scan the data in the files left behind. Disgust filters along the feed like a plucked string. Whatever the data is, it has an effect on the Intelligence. //Do you want the files?// He asks

Arym tenses at the question. His knee-jerk answer is no, but he winches his eyes shut and wrinkles his nose. He's aware of some of the ugly truth of what Telos was getting up to, but not all of it. He needs to know. < ...Yeah. >

Sergius doesn’t question or judge. Not on this. He had always told Arym information was a weapon. He packs up the files and transfers them to the bot. From there he uploads them into the feed. Retreating back into Four his presence shrinks once more and he disconnects the drone from the terminal. //That shit’s done. You’re right. Let’s go.//

Arym takes the packet of information and shoves it deep into storage, to access when he thinks he can stomach it--which is not now, not yet. For now, he's quick to step through the misshapen portal, waiting for Sergius on the other side. From there, he leads them back out again--and only once they're under the open sky--heavy with dark clouds that herald even more snow--does Arym feel like he can let go of a breath he's been holding. One of them, anyway.

Arym Ord < ... > Gratitude feels inadequate, but it hums from his side of the feed regardless.

Sergius is a shadow at Arym’s heels as the viera moves as quickly as his hampered body will allow back through the ship’s corridors. Out from under the oppressive metal and circuitry, a scan tells Sergius that Arym appears to breathe easier. //He’s gone.// He replies in answer to the feel of gratitude coloring the feed. In the recesses of Sergius’ systems he ignores the fact that had he done his job right, there would be no question. This though, will have to suffice. Maybe one day it will. For now he waits for Arym’s breaths to even out before they make for Alvarium.

#ffxiv rp #balmung rp #atreus sergius #Arym Ord #The Tower #These two make my heart hurt

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jeannahas · 2 years

Text

Servant to a Trickster God

(Partially inspired by elydice)

The hill was dry and dusty, as I took another step forwards. sand, small stones, and long-dried and sun-baked bones crunched beneath my feet as I surveyed the section of the valley before me.

It was a familiar sight to me. How many times had I stood there, in my younger years? Back before the expansion, before the lunar colonies? Before that fated first contact that had led to so many desperate changes? I thought back to those simpler years before regenerative treatments, before sapient AI, before we met the brilliantly colored - if slightly smaller than us - Phylexians.

Time I had spent holding tiny cups of water and gatorade for the annual half-marathon in July. Standing there with my father and brothers, trying to keep up with the mass of runners, watching the sun rise as we waited for the leaders, looking for interesting bones among the wreckage, trash, and dust of that selfsame hill.

We had learned much, over the course of the past many decades, but still - there were things that remained less understood, less precise.

I stopped, bending down to look at a few skulls that dotted the hill. I never understood why so many things died on that hill. Bones of Coyotes and squirrels lay alongside the ruined carcases of small deer and elk, and more than one bird lay among the ruins. A graveyard of natural life, completely driven by it's own whims.

As I walked along the hill, following the old highway that had been the lifeblood of the county, I spotted a lonely skull, bleached by the sun, long abandoned. Canid, with pronounced teeth.

I recognized it. The coyotes had grown less and less frequent with each passing year - the wild animals had begun to form packs to survive the presence of the humans, and the humans had in turn hunted those packs.

I winced. 20$ an ear- my brother had tried multiple times to run one over to collect that bounty.

I squatted down in quiet mourning, setting a hand on the dried bone, closing my eyes as I fell down into the whispers, letting the echoes call back into my mind - fleeting moments, running, biting, cleaning itself under a juniper tree under the light of a moon. Pain in it's leg as it was severed by a trap.

I sighed, patting the bone lightly.

"What do do about you? He's not going to like if I leave you here."

The skull, naturally, said nothing. It sat there. Among all the other bones that decorated the bone hill, innert, patient as only the dead can be.

I tapped my chin. "Well... I don't know if he'll like this or hate this... We're kind of re-writing a lot of rules given that we've forgotten a lot of the old taboos."

I glanced at the empty leather bag I had gotten the feeling to bring along. It seemed to be about the right size...

I gently lifted the skull, and set it as safely as I could inside the sack, next to the holo-projector that my family would sometimes call on. I had shut it off, but it was still nice to have it close.

I stood then, checking my mental map. I keep walking till I began to enter among buildings, passing an abandoned KOA that was home to the only swimming pool I'd been able to access for most of my childhood, looking down at the bare concrete, remembering fondly moments with pool noodles, splashing and spraying water at my brothers, staring up at the sky during summer to make sure that thunderclouds didn't form and bear down upon us. It had been close a couple of times - but we'd always made a point to be out of the water long before the storm arrived. The place was largely a ghost town now. I was only still alive thanks to, well, the being I went to meet now - and a dash of arcane science derived from re-verse engineered aline tech - and the friends and people I had known who had lived here were...gone. In a few ways. Scattered to the winds. Living in new cities. Dead. In many cases. Wars, old age, disease... I passed the childhood homes of old friends, now run down and decrepit, and I plotted my way across remnants of asphalt streets that led to the massive red stone that stood a good three stories tall, jutting randomly from pale sandstone as if placed there. The Red Rock had been one of the constants of the valley, as well as Temple Rock, that stood just a short distance away. Relatively. A mile or so.

I had a specific destination in mind today - a place of borders, of transitions - a place where I had very nearly died, and stumbled upon something truly unexpected.

There were whispers, now, about the "old gods." Of people with strange gifts, of strange things happening, people disappearing, strange cults people hadn't seen for thousands of years popping up again at random. Most didn't believe them. Why would you when extraterrestrial beings taught you science from beyond the stars, and tried to find a place for you in their massive federation? I however, knew better. I had been forced to know better. He had given me no choice.

I followed the rock until the smooth exterior suddenly fell back into a thin slot - about the width of three people standing next to each other, that led up into a canyon. One of my first dates. My first death.

My mouth quirked up here. Ah, how fate can be a strange tutor.

I began to walk along the sandy bottom, long since dried up, but I knew the monsoon season wasn't far away, and it would be a simple thing for a drizzle to turn this entire canyon into a mess of mud and water, for the bright afternoon light to be replaced with the overbearing dim of a desert thunderstorm. Too shallow to be truly life-threatening, but hazardous to be sure. I climbed, searching for the meeting place, a sandy bar about half way up where I had the feeling I needed to go.

I head it again - a little louder, the laughing on the wind, a faint echo of a tinny howl. I suppose it could be called a howl - it was what we called it there, the sounds of the Coyotes. I was getting close now, and the needs for speed and caution clashed in my brain, as I tried to protect the leather bag that held the coyote's skull, keeping it from banging against rocks as I ascended a ledge that had been narrow in my youth many years distant.

The strange howling laughter grew louder as I climbed, and I now moved with purpose, almost launching myself up, Nearly stumbling off of the cliff, the skull spilling out of my bag and thudding onto the sand of the ledge, I righted myself, scrambling on hands and knees away from the edge, pausing for a moment to catch my breath, chest heaving as I leaned on my knees after that particular ledge.

I looked up and nearly toppled off the edge, as a mouth full of canid fangs waited immediately in front of me.

The ghostly laugh echoed in my mind again, and I watched as the shadow after-image of the animal danced around the space, seeming to be in one place, then another, shifting and changing, in size, nature, intensity, health, transparency, and every other metric. before "settling" more or less in one place, still flickering, as if my eyes were playing tricks on me. It's head was oddly translucent, seeming to be there. and not, and in those moments, I could see the skull at it's center, the skull of the long-dead coyote.

I bowed my head, cautious, but still elated to actually see him again - my patron, my tutor of sorts, more real than I had ever envisioned, despite our many conversations, the many gifts he had shown and given me.

Have you come to see another trick?

"You know that when we meet, this is my purpose, Coyote."

The strange, etherial coyote seemed to pick at a tooth with a claw, before dancing away again in an impossible contortion of muscle and imagery, before pacing around me.

You always watch for our tricks - listen to the stones - listen to the lessons.

"You always have more to share - what else am I to do but try to understand?"

Coyote laughed again, and I still didn't know if the sound unsettled or comforted me, even after all of these years.

You're people have built more sky-ships, they leave this world.

I nodded. "They have. "

Will you leave this world? Travel to new worlds?

"I don't know if I can." I said simply. "It doesn't seem to be my lot in life to leave and travel for the stars - besides, aren't your kind tied deeply to our perceptions? To the places we have tied you to, the locations of importance?"

I thought of the canyon. Not this one, the canyon of the cursed, the people this fun-loving creature had turned to stone in a violent fit of rage and pain. Our próximo y to that place was the main reason he could manifest like this to me, and actually manipulate the skull he now used as a head- and it was also the reason I had head about him as a child, had known his name, had known his domains.

Coyote laughed again, before snarling as if facing some beast.

formed by mind of man - given power - able to influence...yes....beleif....your beleif...... we depend on this. All gods do, from the small to the great.

I sat down, as was our custom when we spoke, doing my best to keep my footprints obscured, to prevent Coyote from doing something to me while we discussed. He had...set precedents, during previous visits. He taught me the importance of things people left behind, ways your could mess with someone who drew a line in the dirt, who left their name on a wall. It only took once of waking up four hours later under a moonlit sky with no bearing on my location to be more diligant about where and how I stepped - and how I obscured my footprints.

"What would it take for your to leave this place? You like to wander, would you not like to wander the stars as well?"

I would speak to the god of ravens, Coyote began And he would not tell me - to the great protector I spoke again, and he would not tell me. To the invader gods of your ancestors I spoke, and they did not know, that which lied beyond the stars. They knew their children - and those who called themselves their children, and that alone was their domain.

I blinked.

"Uh huh."

Coyote sat, and waited. I blinked, he was sitting next to me, his golden eyes locked on my own.

We go where our children - where our prophets, go.

I paused. Never once had this creature referred to me as anything other than it's student.

"Are the children of Coyote many?"

They are some. They are fewer than they were. I am now weaker than many - but stronger than those who have been largely forgotten. I am remembered still - I am revered still - I am feared still.

I swallowed. I knew why. I had spoken to the ghosts inside the stones of that canyon - had heard the agonized cries of hundreds of people who had offended the creature who now sat seemingly calmly beside me. I never could ask what their offense had been. They never told me. Their minds were too far gone for that, shattered and splintered as stones broke off with time and fell into the canyon, to be washed away with the monsoon rains, and swept down into the barely -living town below.

Why had Coyote told me this? What did he want?

"What do you mean you spoke to the god of Ravens? Do you mean Raven, your brother?"

Coyote laughed again, and flickered, walking sideways on the wall, then bounding across the sand, kicking it up where he passed.

He sees that which will be - he alters that which will be, He is not raven, he speaks truths which must be.

I waited. Coyote continued after licking his behind.

All the speaker of ravens would say, was that I am bound to my children - and my children are free.

I frowned, glancing down at my bag, at the holo-projector. I thought of the indigenous peoples of this continent, how they had been enslaved, but their spirits, the projection of their collective souls, had been weakened over generations, unable to help or defend them from their enemies in a way that mattered.

"You're going to ask me to do something I won't like, aren't you." I stated it, I could see it.

I saw the mirth in his eyes, and I groaned internally.

Five weeks later, with a different name and wearing a different face, I stepped aboard the Phylaxian starship 'T'klalo'. We were leaving - Coyote said he wanted to visit mars, said that "Red Stone was familiar". I brought a few things - a tuft of fur. That skull of a coyote I found on the bone-hill outside the old town I had called home. One of the ghost- rocks from that canyon, full of people he had cursed. A few scraps of a former life as I breathed oddly stale air, surrounded by wealthy people and strange, violet-skinned and vaguely humanoid aliens with pronounced spines we had learned were venomous.

There were several steps to this plan. Make it to the Red Planet. Find a suitable place the Terraforming had already finished with - build a shrine as best as I could. In part to Coyote, to become his first place of Power, his first tether. But also...to me. My family. I had paintings to leave on walls, memories to leave behind. Most had passed on - there were few of us lef.

That would anchor him to that world, be Coyote's first step, the first great projection of the subconscious of the human existence to wander out into the wider universe along side us, actively, alongside one of their representatives, able to access their power. He felt that the other shamans who still venerated and called upon him would be able to "Hold the fort and keep the link active" back on earth. He planned on bringing all kinds of gossip.

Coyote had mischief to wreak, and how he had three entire species to wreak it upon.

Through me.

I let myself grin -

Just a little.

I already knew from experience, that as hard as this was going to be,

It was also going to be immensely fun.

#old gods #forgotten gods #coyote #hfy #story #storytime #desert #hometown

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