#by the fandom as their child. and it happens to a lot of different combinations of genders

[veetowervaporwave]

The funny thing about Vox and Val being Velvette's dads is that it also (partially) comes from the old Instagram accounts (Vel would sometimes say things like "My parents are fighting again :(" when the other two were going through another breakup), except even there it was glaringly obvious that Velvette was an adult and just acted childish and cutesy on purpose to fuck with people. And it made Vox sooo mad he was like "Stop saying shit like that you're a grown ass woman" and Val would play along (but it didn't stop him from talking shit about her)

#.ramblings #vox #valentino #hazbin hotel #velvette #hazbin hotel velvette #hazbin hotel vox #hazbin hotel valentino #the vees #also ik the fandom likes to infantilize female characters and vel being short doesn't help #but here it's more the problem of trying to slot found family into nuclear family roles #I've seen a bunch of examples of when there's a trio of friends and the two of them start dating the third one starts getting treated #by the fandom as their child. and it happens to a lot of different combinations of genders #mentioned staticmoth

[flamingpudding]

Fictober23 Prompt: 21 - "Just in case this doesn't work."

Fandom: DPxDC

Rating: T

Warnings: -

A/N: Inspired by this Post about Danny bullshiting his way by saying he is Tims future kid. Also once again posting this early, cause I need to destress tomorrow and not worry about writing or work or anything.

Edit: Thanks to @kisatamao in the comments I found the post again that inspired this and linked it!

"Chronus"

"Nowadays I go by Clockwork."

"Fine, Clockwork then."

"John Constantine."

The Ancient of Time and Justice League Dark members stared at each other blankly. Until the ruler of time smiled and Constantine sighed. "How is the time baby doing?"

"Very well. Your timeline is safe. There was an incident that could have possibly splittend the timeline again and in a way it did but the destruction timeline was once more prevented, by the child himself like I hoped for. Three times now."

Constantine grunted, lighting a cigarette and taking a long drag. "You know if Bats or any of his kids ever learn about this I will be the one to take the burn right?"

Clockwork only smiled a knowing smile and Constantine paled. "When?"

"Where is the fun if you knew. The little Drake has been quite unpredictable and entertaining." The Ancient mused floating around the room and Constantine's eyes narrowed.

"There won't be a paradox?"

Clockworks tilted his head with a mischievous smile on his face. "Well the timeline in which he was born no longer exists and his father of this time line has ceased his efforts in cloning. He never even got to the point of trying to combine his own DNA with the one he so desperately wanted to clone."

"I feel like I am hearing secrets I definitely do not want to know. Just tell me if this timeline is safe or not now."

"It is safe. Your timeline has now a true Ancient of Balance in the making and just in case this doesn't work, I have anchored Daniel's existence in this timeline with several means one of which was his own time clone created from a split of destruction line."

Constantine's eyes twitched. "For all of our sakes I hope Bats never finds out about this. If he ever learns that I replaced a still born with a grandson of his from a different destruction timeline… You know what, I am not nearly drunk enough for any of this mate!"

Clockwork chuckled, his eyes glinting with unhidden amusement. "Well John Constantine, would you like a word of advice?"

The JLD member took another long drag of his cigarette before flicking the butt of it somewhere to the side. "No riddle."

"When 17 turns to 4 it is not the grandfathers, you should fear."

"I said no riddles!" Constantine huffed as clockwork disappeared from his side. He brushed his hair with one hand, glaring at the spot where the Ancient of Time had been. He should have never agreed to help that damned being 15 years ago, having been somewhat of a beginner then John did not realize what kind of deal he had agreed on.

Now he wasn't sure if he should be relieved or fearful of the consequences. Especially now that he had worked with the Bat Family a couple of times already.

Exactly one year later Constantine decided he was fucking fearful!

Unknown to the Brite a lot of things can happen in three years. Like Parents turning on their child after accidentally learning about a truth. A teenager that was already hurt trying to salvage whatever peace he could.

—--

"Mom! Dad! I swear it's still me, Danny!"

"Give me back my baby boy you monster!"

—--

A governmental organisation committing mass genocide on an interdimensional species.

—--

"Ember, get out of here! Now!"

"Baby Pop! What about the others?!"

"Dan already released them! Get out of here! I will hold them off and keep them busy!"

—----

The interdimensional species try to convince said teenager fighting for them to forgo humanity.

—--

"Welp, this can't go on. No hunt is worth this much."

"Give it up already. The humans made their decision."

"They broke too many rules, it is time they suffer the consequences."

—--

A heavy conflicted ending with the teenager receding into its core and getting picked up by one of his papa from a different timeline.

—--

"What kind of crystal is that? It radiates a pretty strange but familiar energy."

"I wanna see! I wanna see!"

"If it's not dangerous, why not keep it?"

"It looks like there are snowflakes in it."

—--

The kid then reformed out of his core in his ghost age instead of human age with a green note appearing on his forehead. Said note confusing the kids papa making him contact the kids dad.

—--

"Tim you won't believe this…"

"Kon you sound weird, what is going on?"

"Remember that shiny crystal I picked up at the end of our last case?"

"The one with the snowflakes in it, yes."

"I think I just became a dad."

"WHAT?!"

—--

Which then led to the dad overanalyzing the note while the kid insisted that a certain ghost was involved. The child's grandparents then getting tipped off through the grandchild of the Ancient Constantine still curses in his mind.

—--

"So Pandora mentioned something to me."

"Hn."

"Have you tried asking Constantine about it? He is apparently in contact with a being that likes to write cryptic messages on green notes, or that's what Pandora told me at least."

"..."

"And your new grandchild came with such a note right?"

—--

And now John Constantine was fearing for his life, because Batman had tried to contact him several times now. Several times Constantine had found reasons to ignore. Only for the Bat to come knocking on his door -well more like rudely kicking it down- with fucking Super too! He was cursing up a storm internally and thinking of how best he could get out of whatever had crawled up the two hero's asses when right behind the two hero's stood another set of hero's he did not want to face especially when he noticed one of them holding a four years old toddler in his arms.

"Chronus you fucking asshole!" The Brite muttered to himself as the four hero's plus time baby stood before him demanding answers.

That was when the toddler piped up, eyes glowing a bright green. "So Clockwork does have something to do with this! I knew it!"

"Danny, sweetheart not now. You can tell us you were right after we figured out what timeline you are from and if we need to send you back or can keep you." Red Robin calmed the now pouting toddler Super Boy was holding and petting with a small chuckle. While Batman and Superman turned on Constantine.

#fictober23 #danny fenton #danny phantom #dp x dc #dpxdc #crossover #dcxdp #tim drake #conner kent #clone Danny #Tim is Danny's dad #Kon is his papa #Clockwork took danny from his original timeline #and placed him in his favorite to save it #Danny was born in a doomed timeline #one were Tim went a little to far over the edge #Constantine helped Clockwork bringing Danny into his timeline #He fears Batman and Superman because of that #He should probably fear Tim more #Tim and Conner are protective parents #they want to keep Danny #But they had to make sure he can stay safely in their timeline #they would have found a way to keep him anyway #even if clockwork didn't ensure it in the first place

[insufferableprotagonistpoll]

Propaganda why Dean Winchester is insufferable:

Really mean to Cas (called him a child, zero respect for him, calls him family and casts him out when the angels are looking for him), and an absolute dick to Jack (threatening to kill him CONSTANTLY)

>Was a misogynist (loved to call women skanks, bitches, hoes)

>Used gay as an insult multiple time during the show's run (idc if he's gay an homophobic, that's still insulting)

>Beat up his brother for being possessed

>Beat up his brother for losing his soul (not his brother's fault)

>Used dubious consent to get his brother possessed in a different unrelated possession incident after possession was being used (badly...this is supernatural after all) as a metaphor for SA

>Threatened to murder his brother when he was hallucinating (yay we aren't ableist)

>Locked a child up in a box

>Threatened to kill the child he locked up in a box

>Made a creepy, sexual comment about a barely-legal high school girl

>Got the woman and kid he was living with memory-wiped

misogynistic scumbag. theres also a few different times that dean finds teenagers sexy with the most recent and prominent example that i can recall being the scooby doo crossover episode in season 13 where hes super into daphne who in the version they chose for the episode is 15-16 and is interacting with her as if shes a real person cause they got magicked into the episode. he treats everyone around him like shit and the only time the narrative agrees that thats a bad thing is when he has the mark of cain put on him and hes acting no differently than he does usually its just now acknowledged that hes treating others like shit. ive been rewatching the show for shits and giggles with a friend and wow he really does not treat anyone well but i wanna focus on how he treats sam for a second cause dude's hobby seems to be ignoring what his brother wants and lying to sam about doing stuff that directly concerns him the demon blood and souless things are reasonable cause those were both Bad for sam but theyre still part of a wider pattern and the most prominent example of this being when dean tricks sam into letting gadreel possess him and actually gaslights sam about it with the whole ordeal ending when its revealed gadreel lied about who he was and while possessing sam murders a friend of theirs. his voice is just also stupid as fuck im sorry this is just petty but he just sounds like hes trying so hard to be gruff n intimidating but he just sounds like a kid pretending to be batman

Dean’s list of sins is crazy long because of how long the show ran, but the key thing for me is that post-locking Sam in the bunker (season 4 I think?), I just can’t enjoy their relationship anymore. I normally love their sibling dynamic, but Dean’s ultimate worst past-the-point-of-no-return moment for me was demonizing (pun intended) his little brother for being “addicted” to demon blood, which only happened because of a series of events that were either Dean’s or someone else’s fault, not Sam’s. I also really dislike how the fandom treats Dean like this angel (pun intended) who has done no wrong and even tries to justify the MULTIPLE times he’s beaten up and otherwise abused his little brother. Canon Dean is like the polar opposite of fanon Dean: he’s homophobic and racist (jokes about a Black man being sexually assaulted in prison), misogynistic (take a shot every time he calls a woman a slur and you’ll die of alcohol poisoning), and abusive.

Propaganda why the Tenth Doctor is insufferable:

They’re so *edgy*

That one time he committed a genocide by drowning the last children of a near-extinct species (Racnoss) because their mother was evil. The closest anyone ever got to calling him out on it was when Donna noted that his take on a *different* set of weird alien babies (the Adipose) was a lot nicer than last time.

A combination of hypocrisy, sanctimony, and an equally insufferable fanbase. And the dissonance between what he actually does and how the narrative presents it.

#dean winchester #supernatural #the tenth doctor #doctor who #insufferable protagonist poll #insufferable protagonist tournament #tournament poll

[nualaofthefaerie]

Hi! This might be a bit of a broad question but here it goes: What is it about Nuala that you love so much in particular? Is it a general appreciation of fairies or something that narratively you are drawn to re Nuala in Sandman?

Just asking because I’m always so in awe in how much love and care you have for the character and it’s overall such a nice vibe you bring to the fandom 🖤

What a truly wonderful question! Thank you so much!

I will do my best to answer, please bear with me.

First off, I have indeed always had fascinations with fairies. Ever since I was a child, my favourite characters were Tinkerbell and her gang, which at the time looked a tad different, but Tinkerbell was the very first character I fell in love with.

Both the old Pixie Hollow and later the new Pixie Hollow fairies were my chosen Disney poison.

(If anyone ever asks me, I will go into heavy detail).

Another big inspiration to my character love roster (please, bear with me, this is all relevant, I promise), was the original run of the WINX club.

And specifically from both, my favourites were Tinkerbell and Flora, respectively. Now, I am not saying, there is a pattern, but it is quite...on the nose.

The influence is undeniable, side by side.

Another favourite visual inspiration of mine is the Kpop girl group, Red Velvet. Nuala encapsulates a lot of their aesthetic, so that certainly was there as well. Especially, Wendy, is a very seemless Nuala stand-in to me. Because Nuala sings and there is no voice in the entire industry such as Wendy's. So yes.

However, it is certainly not enough. There a lot of beautiful women in the Sandman - Calliope, Titania, they are close to that concept, however why Nuala?

To me the answer is simple - Nuala is one of the very few modern female characters that encapsulates girlhood. She is not a girlboss, neither does she have it all figured out. Cluracan and by extension, Titania in combination with Morpheus, throw her in for a ride where she is forced to explore all that she is, reevaluate it and come on top of what makes her, her. I think this is such a human thing, where our environmental circumstances put us in situations where we are at a loss, so then we have to actually either adapt or lay down and die.

And that very thing, is what makes her the most unique Sandman character to me, alongside Morpheus. Nuala is diametrically opposed to Morpheus. Being put in imprisonment (Nuala was very much imprisoned in the Dreaming, I could write a whole post about that) Morpheus and Nuala react to their world differently. Of course, Morpheus was far more limited and yet, he could always reach out to those who would've helped him. He didn't. However, Nuala in complete opposition makes the best of her circumstances - she makes connections within the Dreaming, creates a "life" that wouldn't fill her with absolute dread, despite the crippling wish to be free. Morpheus believes he shouldn't bother anyone and hence always carries the world on his shoulders, while Nuala infamously says:

And I think THIS one, THIS panel right here, it made me fall in love with her helplessly. She opposes Morpheus by simply breathing, by simply believing no one has to be alone in this world. She is hope. She is kindness. She remains kind throughout everything that happens to her. And even though she cries for Morpheus, she also realises this os her right and it is her journey. And I think if people took her a bit more seriously, they will see what I see. That kindness is not weakness and kindness can be beauty.

But all and all:

"People need people."

Author Note:

I hope this answer made a smudge of sense.

My inbox is always open!

Love,

Li 🪷

#the sandman #nuala #nuala of the faerie #morpheus #sandflower #dream of the endless #nuala the sandman #the sandman netflix #fluff #the sandman comics #Li answers

[absolutely-esme]

My ghost biology head canon

I've found that sharing my head canons is a lot of fun, so I thought I would share more of my thoughts on ghosts.

First off, I imagine the particulars of how ghosts work being something that varies widely. There are some things that are relevant for everyone, but a lot of things that you would expect to be species-wide constants vary based on the individual.

Each person's experience as a ghost is shaped by their particular mind and what works for them, with some minor influence from their ideas about ghosts. While their assumptions/beliefs about ghosts can influence how they function as a ghost, it will never override their own nature and cause them to develop into something antithetical to their own self.

Do ghosts need to eat? Some do. Some don't.

Do ghosts need to sleep? Some do. Some don't.

Are ghosts bound to a place or object? Some are. Some aren't.

I imagine that some ghosts have cores that function like a brain/heart/whatever, are their one vulnerability, and injuries to them are serious business, like the fandom likes to imagine. I don't personally think this would be true across the board. Some would have cores that operate differently and others would have a system that doesn't have anything similar to cores at all.

Some ghosts might have something that could be called a core, but rather than a delicate vital organ, it's more like a combination of a lifeboat and the black box from an airplane. It's small and not especially powerful but virtually indestructible. If their body gets messed up too badly they can jettison themselves as a core and hide away somewhere safe until they manage to rebuild their body.

I imagine Skulker working like this. The "real Skulker" is not a tiny blob sitting in a cockpit, piloting a giant robot. When he's all suited up, he's experiencing things as the man-sized being he appears to be. That said, if he gets roughed up to the point where it makes more sense to just cut his losses, he can go tiny-blob-mode and bail before rebuilding himself.

Some ghosts exist split among multiple bodies because some parts of themselves work better separately. I imagine Johnny 13 and his Shadow are actually one ghost, but there were parts of himself he didn't understand and wasn't managing well that he was better equipped to understand and accommodate as a separate being. Johnny probably fought a lot with shadow when he was newly formed before stepping back and finally managing to view him with a sort of empathy that is often easier to offer to others than to oneself.

The particulars of Danny's ghost half were largely shaped by the dance of give and take between his human and ghost half adapting together. A lot of it either follows the lines of his human half or fills in the gaps, but it also follows Danny's nature in ways that always would have been part of his ghostly self even if he hadn't been a halfa. Being the child of ghost hunters actually left Danny with less of an idea of what ghosts were than the average person because he actively avoided thinking about it as much as he could, so a lot of his ideas about ghosts stem from his own personal experiences. His ghostly nature is fluid and highly adaptable, as well as eager to learn and explore.

Sometimes he develops abilities similar to things he's seen other ghosts do because "that's something ghosts can do." Sometimes he develops abilities as a response to whatever stress he's under (Danny will never admit he developed accelerated language acquisition because he was so stressed out about his grades that his ghost half interpreted the need to better understand purple-backed gorillas as a life or death emergency). Some just happen just because he grew that way.

Ghosts in general are not static. They learn and grow and change over time. The particulars of how they change over time are a bit less predictable than for humans, but it happens. They can have children (like Box Lunch) but the development of those children may not follow the same patterns as a human child's development.

I don't tend to imagine ghosts having "obsessions," exactly. The term "obsession" implies that it is unhealthy, overpowering, and impeding one's ability to function. Instead, I imagine them having something I'm calling "focal points" until I come up with a better name.

Focal points are things that are important, grounding, and central to a ghost's experience of the world. They may be activities or subjects of interest, but ghosts need to engage with at least some of their focal points with relative frequency for their health. Ghosts generally have more than one focal point and engage with different ones at different times.

Being denied access to one focal point in the short run will be disappointing but not dangerous, so long as they can still engage with others. Long-term, lack of access to one of their focal points can cause restlessness, anxiety, irritiability, and depression.

In some cases, a long-term inability to engage with a specific focal point may result in a focal shift, in which the focal point changed to something more reachable. This happens most frequently with a focal point centered on a person who is not willing to cooperate. While the focal shift is ongoing, the ghost will be atypically sensitive and prone to mood swings and experience an amount of discomfort proportional to how major of a focal point they are shifting. After the focal shift is over, the ghost should be able to function normally with no lingering ill-effects.

Not every focal point can be shifted and ghosts are highly recommended to seek council from a professional in ghost-medicine on any focal point related difficulties before making any decisions on how to proceed.

If not managed in a healthy way, it is possible for a ghost's relationship with one or more of their focal points to start bridging into obsessive territory, but this is the result of a problem, not normal functioning.

#danny phantom #headcanon #ghost biology #Skulker #johnny 13

[jokeringcutio]

Fic authors self-rec! ✨ When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you’ve written, then pass on to at least five other writers.

<3 Wow, since I've been writing fanfics for years, I have so many to choose from. But let me stick to my reader-insert-focused darker fics that I post on this account.

1:

The Man Who Claimed To Be Yours – Fandom: Joker 2019, Pairing: Arthur Fleck/Joker x (Female) Reader. Explicit with lots of warnings. By far my proudest (and smuttiest?) work.

By far a number one position. Not only do you people seem to love it, I have received so many messages of readers going back to the story for the umpteenth time to reread it all. (And you have no diea how those little messages strengthened me when my health abandoned me). You devour it. And even I have been rereading my own tale several times and enjoyed it. So yes, I definitely want to write an ending to it. I also have plans to have the full story out before Joker 2 comes out.

Fun fact: The entire fic was inspired by the gif I added above)

2:

Pine Cone Child – Fandom: Enola Holmes, Pairing: Enola Holmes/Linthorn (one-sided & Noncon), Enola Holmes & Sherlock Holmes. Explicit with lots of warnings.

I got a big thrill sending these chapters out into the world and found myself on a roll with this fic. The idea came with one scene, of a boy meeting his biological father, and realizing that he had a far more gritty past than he always had assumed. But to get to that chapter, I had to write many more. In the end, that chapter was never posted online. And the chapters I had finished about Enola and her mother visiting Linthorn’s grave and the chapter that was to follow after got lost when my laptop crashed. I was also too ill and too tired to write, so it never reached its end. I am not sure if I will ever finish this one. I think, it is pretty okay as it is. Even if I never got to the ending the whole idea sprouted from in the first placed. For now, it is on hold.

3. Removed Fics/Or old account fics:

The first multi-chapter fic became a success, many years ago. I will not name the title, the quality is shite compared to what I write now (still shite, but different shite). One of the first fandoms I wrote fanfiction in was Inu Yasha. The much-explored ‘Inu Yasha scampers off with Kikyo and Kagome finds comfort in Sesshoumaru’s arms’ was still new, there were about 20 fics or so about this pairing in English. The encouragement I received made me want to keep posting my work. I still receive reviews for these fics.  

4. A deleted Sweeney Todd Smut fic, featuring Sweeney Todd x Lovett’s daughter. I might reupload this one day, perhaps as a reader insert.

But because I want to tag a tale: Have you tried reading my dark romance (aka, Reader let yourself be kidnapped by a slasher guy)  The Chance to Make A Change. Fandom: The Black Phone. Pairing: Albert Shaw ( The Grabber ) x (f) Reader. Explicit. Loads of warnings.

Shared 5:

His – Fandom: Moon Knight, Pairing: Dr. Arthur Harrow x (f) Reader. Mature with warnings.

I am surprised by how much feedback and likes I received on this, even if the numbers of hits and kudos on AO3 are low. But for the short tale it is, I like it. Because it shows a budding relationship over time, cut into short chapters, and has a little evil twist at the end of it. Also, I could totally live with this happening to me, if I were the reader.

Shared 5:

No Family Man – Fandom: Joker 2019, Pairing: Arthur Fleck/Joker x (afab) Reader. Mature with warnings.

Another one of my fics I love to return to, and that was generally received well. It started as two imagines which I then combined. It has lots of personal experience elements in it that to me, make it all the more special. What they are, I will leave for you to guess.

I would love to finish the Princess and the Clown - Joker 2019 fanfic of Arthur Fleck/Joker x Reader I once started. Perhaps rewrite it a little. Same for my Benvolio x Mercutio Hanahaki Story (you Shakespearean lovers might know me of my many Tybalt x Mercutio and Mercutio x basically anyone fics).

I have a few Star Wars Reader Inserts that were never finished but tickle my fancy. Mostly Reader x Kylo Ren or Reader x Hux (or both lol).

By far most of my proudest fanfics have been personal gifts to friends. It is how I started writing when in High School, and I still gift fics for people's birthdays. I especially like the Sherlock Holmes range I did for several friends, in which my friends always ended up being the evil masterminds who outsmarted Sherlock and Watson. But also, because I had illustrations to go along with these fics. <3

But first, I need to finish a whole list of unfinished works: starting with a Crimson Peak inspired modern reader au that has been pending for over 2 years, as well as the Joker fic mentioned on number one. Then there's a summery romantic Arthur Harrow x Reader tale I want to gift to someone on here, and a Harrow Patient x Reader fic that wants to be written in between.

ARGH!

Not to mention the many Arthur Fleck x Reader prompts I have pending. I LOVE YOU, KEEP SENDING ME STUFF <3

#personal note #Arthur Fleck #Arthur Harrow #Albert Shaw #Enola Holmes #Sweeney Todd #Inu Yasha #Sesshoumaru x Kagome #Reader inserts #Fanfiction rec

[jamietarttsnorthernattitude]

You have accomplished so much and written so many words and put out such a variety of fics for the fandom this year that YOU should do an end of year wrap up!

How many stories did you post?

Which ones were your favorites?

Which one was the most satisfying to write?

The most difficult?

Rec something that you're proud of.

Wow us with whatever big thing you might want to work on next!

Show us that word count stat!

You should be very, very proud of you. I certainly am <3

Ahhhhh FRIEND you are so nice to me! Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyy. Any excuse to talk about my fics :)))))))))))))

1. How many stories did you post? I posted 38 stories!

2. Which ones were your favorites? That's like picking a favorite child! But if I haddddddd to: no thing's so sure that i can't learn to doubt it (aka Jamie is hurt during the Zava period and hides it. It does not go well), in the morning i'm bulletproof (Rupert has Jamie taken out BEFORE the final match of the season) and The Inevitability of James Tartt (Man City introspective).

3. Which one was the most satisfying to write? I don't know if it's one specific story. It was extremely satisfying to write some of the conversations between Jamie and the coaching staff in no thing's so sure that i can't learn to doubt it. And I have a few different post Mom City convos between Jamie and Ted that were satisfying. Mostly I love writing anything where people tell Jamie he's a good lad (after I put him through the ringer).

4. The most difficult? when i told you i was fine you were lied to. Someone requested some Roy whump, so I tried to give him an appendicitis. I had a longer version, but then I was driving home from another state on Friday the 13th, and my brain latched onto the idea of writing something spooky, so I kind of combined that and the comfort at the end got changed. The final product is kind of all over the place. I'm not happy with the ultimate story, but I got caught up with posting each day with whumptober, and it being Friday the 13th. I just ran out of time. I also blame the fact that I was on day 2 of one of my top 5 worst hangovers, stressed about finishing whumptober and knew I had plans or work literally every day the rest of the month. Maybe someday I’ll rewrite it when I can give it my full attention.

5. Rec something that you're proud of. I'm proud of all the fics I managed for whumptober (24!). Even though I'm still working on the final two days, I'll have done at least a chapter for each prompt once I’m finished.

6. Wow us with whatever big thing you might want to work on next! I do have a bad things happen bingo board that I want to work on, plus all the WIPs I have filling my Google Docs folder.

7. Show us that word count stat! My word count is 275,415 (I delayed answering these until I posted two new chapters of not to me, not if it's you haha)! BUT, my third fic is an extended, canon-compliant version of my first fic. The first one was 22K words, so a lot of those were adjusted slightly for the third fic, so really, it's more like 253K.

AND because this was so fun! I think it should be a tag game. So I'm tagging you @jamiesfootball to answer the same questions, as well as @sighonaraa and @fanficfanattic and anyone else that wants to play but as usual zero pressure <3

#ask box is always open #2023 #2023 ao3 asks #writing things #writing stuff #thank you thank you thank you my friend #this really made my day #seriously #thank you love you <3 #ted lasso fanfic

[squid-ink-symphony]

hey i saw a post where you were talking about ships.. Uh.

callie x agent 3.

discuss.

please..

we need all the exposure we can get there are 5 of us.

we are very lonely.

NO BUT LIKE I LOVE THIS SHIP

ALONG WITH 4 X MARIE

LIKE IVE SEEN CALLIE AND AGENT 3 ART BEFORE AND ITS LITERALLY SO GOOD

i didnt wanna mention idol x agent ships in my post cuz sometimes ppl get all defensive about it like "erm well actually the agent is canonically a child and-" shut up. shut. up. they are whatever age you want them to be. they are literally a self insert for the player. plenty of ppl have agent ocs who are adults. it just varies from person to person and their headcanons.

but then i got an ask (that i already deleted) accusing me of being a proshipper bcuz apparently 3 x neo 3 is problematic bcuz its "power imbalance?" and like.. ig yeah that could be an issue irl w ur boss taking advantage of u. but like..... thats.... clearly not what im talking about???

so may as well discuss idol x agent ships as well lol

3 x callie is like. top tier. its so good. like you just know 3 and callie would goof around together. especially the splat 1 version of 3??? like their dynamic would be top tier. and i just know 3 would whisper stuff to callie and they would giggle about it and refuse to tell anyone else what they are laughing about. and i am always a rarepair enjoyer. like. its so good. (i ship callie x marina x pearl so you know im masochistic when it comes to my ships)

AND 4 X MARIE??? i know this one is a bit more well known but i love it. i dont know if i would ship my main agent 4 with my main interpretation of marie, but like another version of them? yes. it works so well. marie is literally in love w 4.

BUT OK ANOTHER RAREPAIR: 4 x callie. i know everyone loves 3 x 8 cuz blah blah 8 beat up mind controlled 3. but ??? 4 beat up mind controlled callie and we got NOTHING from the fandom. im mostly a 4 x 8 shipper at heart but this is another one i rlly like. i just know 4 would try to show off by picking smth heavy up or doing some cool trick only to fail miserably. and callie would be able to do it first try.

and i have even more opinions on different idol ships and combos but uhh thats for another day when someone wants to listen to my ramblings lol

anyway in conclusion i love rarepairs and pretty much every splat ship so yeah feel free to talk to me about them any time. i love figuring out character dynamics and all that. also everyone has such good designs everyone looks good together. also just like. non romantic pairs as well. like ppl who have sibling dynamics. ppl who are clearly in a qpr. ppl who are besties. apprentice and mentor dynamics. i just think every splat character is so interesting on their own that pretty much every combination is top tier. and like. things dont have to mutually exclusive when it comes to relationships. im a multipshipper.

and i think the same goes for other dynamics. like in my mind one version of neo 3 and 3, 3 sees neo like a younger sibling and spoils them and doent want what happened to 3 to happen to neo. in another version 3 sees neo like a younger version of them and tries to toughen them up and neo sees it as unfair and there is angst while 3 has to confront everything they went thru and if it was even fair for them to have gone thru it. cuz in their mind ofc its ok to do this to neo, its what 3 did to become the way they are. in another version they are just besties. in another version they are dating. in another version they have a competitive love/hate relationship and argue a lot about whos better.

LIKE THINGS DONT HAVE TO JUST BE ONE WAY!! i like exploring different stuff and seeing everyones takes on them!!!!!

so yeah come talk to me about splat characters im very normal i swear :)))

#splatoon #splatoon 3 #agent 4 #callie #marie #agent 3 #i literally have no clue what the ship names are for any of these so uhno tags for that ig lol

[lemonhemlock]

Bestie expand your thoughts more on this!

https://at.tumblr.com/lemonhemlock/do-you-think-greyjoy-will-succeed-in-taking/nrryawkbqc7q

I'll start by saying that I haven't read The Forsaken. Not because of spoilers, because I already heard some things that happen in the chapter, but I wanted my first experience reading it to be within TWOW (look how that's going so far).

So what I'm about to say is mostly vibes and guesswork. But Euron is a genuinely terrifying character and one of the properly, old-school evil ones in ASOIAF. Like, there is no moral ambiguity here. The man wants to turn himself into a god and will stop at nothing for it. Euron says a lot of crazy ass things like how he visited both Asshai and Valyria and, though it's tempting to label it as bullshit, he does seem to have collected very rare artifacts like his Valyrian steel armour (??) So I would be inclined to believe him.

In any case, Euron has figured out something, some recipe to a transformative ritual. He has imprisoned priests from different religions onboard his ship and he intentionally impregnated Falia Flowers so as to use their unborn child in this upcoming blood ceremony (king's blood is known to be powerful, as Melisandre tells us, and Euron has been elected king by the kingsmoot).

Euron has had weird dreams/visions since he was a child and there are theories saying those images were sent to him by Bloodraven, who might have wanted him to be a Bran-like figure, but dropped his arse because he was way too deranged. There are also parallels between him and the Bloodstone Emperor, who is known to have caused the Long Night. One worrisome thing is that the Horn of Winter is also in Oldtown, having been brought by Sam, so it's very important that Euron NOT get his hands on it. But then again - why did George bring the Horn all the way down to Oldtown if not for this very purpose?

It's interesting that both the Hightowers and the Greyjoys are associated with Lovecraftian imagery. For the Greyjoys it is more obvious with the krakens, the tentacles and the Drowned God, but Oldtown is in a part of Westeros surrounded by places with selkie and merling legends, like the Shield Islands (north-wise), the Mermaid's Palace (Island of the Arbor). Both the base of the Hight Tower and the Seastone Chair AND the buildings in Asshai seem to be made from similar material (??) - fused black stone.

I have no idea what's about to happen - a believable theory would have been that Euron would raise the Deep Ones out of the sea, but I think George shot that one down (dunno whether he was lying or not). Another would be that Euron is going to blow the Horn of Winter and bring down the Wall. I've seen people link him to becoming the next Night's King, but I'm not really sure he is connected to the Others in a meaningful way like that. His symbolism seems to be more kraken/sea related.

The problem with Euron is that, while he is not the Final Boss in any way, he is a very dangerous distraction and could pose a fuckton of problems. Oldtown falling would be catastrophic for the fate of Westeros. This is why this fandom needs to cut it with the bullshit and start stanning Lord Leyton and Malora ASAP, since they're the last defense against the coming of the storm. Sam is also in Oldtown and I doubt George is going to kill him, so that gives me a little bit of hope that maybe Euron will be defeated.

There is also the fact that Leyton & Malora have been preparing for this for 10 years now. They must have something up their sleeve. Oldtown should be, by rights, a source of great magical power, with the High Tower, the Citadel and the Starry Sept there - so magic + science + religion combined for one last face-off against the dark. It's pretty romantic. It's pretty valiant.

Perhaps there was a reason why George placed the dragons Tessarion and Morning in Oldtown, after all. Maybe their remains or eggs will come in handy in the fight against Euron.

#ask #anon #euron greyjoy #house hightower #oldtown

[shipcestuous]

Sorry if it's a silly question or one you've answered before, but what's that "grade on a curve" ask referring to? I tried looking for more context in your discussion and anti tags, but I couldn't find anything, idk if that's due to Tumblr's search system.

Anyway, I personally think trying to prove anything to antis is a wasted effort in most cases. Most of them seem to be looking for reasons to get angry, possibly because they don't feel important or in control irl so they want to play the part of the hero battling the bad guys For The Greater Good online and get clout and admiration for it, so they're not generally the best people to try and have reasonable arguments with. Plus, with how many of them can be hilariously hypocritical about their interests ("you writing a physically abusive relationship in your fic proves you're unstable and dangerous, but me drawing a lot of violence and gore is perfectly okay," "we're essentially shipping the same problematic ship but I see myself as someone with good critical analysis skills and you as someone who's either stupid or evil, so it's fine for me to put it in my fanworks but not for you," etc.) I have my doubts about them reading "incest shipping isn't really a free-for-all, people have different tastes and opinions" and NOT somehow getting "people who like incest ship in THIS way are okay, but people who like incest ships in THAT way deserve all the hate they get" out of it...

On the other hand, I absolutely DO think it's important for incest shippers, proship/anti anti types, and people who just care about other people's comfort in fandom space in a healthy, non-self-centered way to be aware that we all have different preferences, boundaries, and even triggers, and that's okay! Just to make an example, if I like sharing fluffy headcanons about a wholesome brosis ships with you (general you), that doesn't necessarily mean I'll be okay with you reccing me hardcore BDSM darkfics about a codependent twincest ship out of the blue just because I'm into incest. Or, if I like twisted, manipulative parent/child and I've gushed about it you, even on multiple occasions, that doesn't necessarily mean I'll be okay with you suggesting me an extreme underage noncon scenario for the same ship, just because I like my incest dark and fucked-up.

We all have a place in fandom, no matter if our tastes run wholesome or twisted, vanilla or hardcore... and I think it's safe to say that many of us actually like both, even if at different times, for different ships, in different context or different combinations! But to coexist together peacefully, we have to be clear about what we want or don't want from our fandom experience, and respect other people's boundaries. Even when we don't get them, or we think they're too specific, or they're the squshy "X is yes or a soft no for me depending on the day, unless Y happens, then it's a HARD no" or "X is a hard no for me unless Y happens when Z, then it's just a soft no or, in a W context, even a yes" kind. (And, as someone who does have some squishy boundaries, let me tell you: they're actually WAY more frustrating when you try to formulate them in an understandbable manner so you don't accidentally cause any misunderstanding than when you have to hear them out, lol.)

Fortunately, I don't think I've actually seen cases like these happen a lot among incest shippers. But I think it always good to keep all this in mind!

Hi Anon,

I apologize for making things difficult for you. The grading-on-a-curve analogy first came up in this post. It was primarily a discussion of Cathy and Chris, so I didn't link back to it.

I agree with you. Many antis cannot be reasoned with, will always assume the worst, and need to pass judgment to validate themselves, or some other psychological reason. If we start regulating our behavior to appease them, they win. As always, the best way to deal with the issue is to ignore them, create content, and enjoy ourselves. But even though they are prone to assumptions, we also don't want to give them any fuel for assuming the wrong thing about us as shippers.

And then within our community its important not to make assumptions, but I think we have a pretty good understanding among ourselves that tastes vary. But it's good to remember to always give details when recommending things so that people can make informed decisions.

Thanks for sharing these thoughts, Anon!

#asks #anonymous #discussion #t: antis #tw: incest #noiv #nr

[mdhwrites]

what are your thoughts on the hunter/golden guard disparity? i have always hated his character, bc when he was introduced he was arrogant, selfish, and cruel, but the minute he was discarded by belos, all his actions are suddenly forgiven and he doesnt do anything else bad for the whole show. u probably heard this so many times but he feels like, and for all intents and purposes IS, an entirely different character

people compare him to zuko all the time, but the two are only alike on a surface level; hunter hasn't actually like, done anything to redeem himself? not that he necessarily has to in order to be an interesting character! but the show, and the fandom, treats him as 100% redeemed for no apparent reason, and that grates on me

So in terms of what it does to his character, what it means and the like and how the transition is, I actually did touch on it somewhat in one blog called "Does Hunter Have a Character Arc?"

Also, the disparity between his first major appearance and his second major appearance, alongside Amity's own version of this, is what made me coin the phrase "Your character arc appears a lot more drastic when you start out of character." It was something I'd said first meaning it as a joke but... *gestures at The Collector who is pulling the same shit* The show is really bad as far as handling the characters it wants to redeem because Amity is the closest of the three not to come off as entirely different in her first appearance and even then, she is about 100x more unhinged in her first appearance than she literally ever gets, despite Covention's stakes being so much higher and the failure more catastrophic.

And before I get to the twist on all of this I want to talk about, (I'll actually bold text where that is if you want to skip the anecdote) I want to point out the most bizarre thing that has happened between me and the fandom in regards to Hunter. Warning for Boscha fans because this will sound all too normal to all of you.

I have a story called The Blight's Ruff Secret (which was then converted into the original story Their Ruff Secrets). In it, Hunter shows up for like... One chapter and is named dropped in one or two more. He's not important but Belos running the biggest church in town is for Luz's arc in that story. After all, her being gender non-conforming and bi in a small, religious town doesn't exactly mean she's popular, let alone with the teenagers at church, not that she'll tell a Camila who is devout any of that.

Hunter in that story is a bigot and a bully and friends with Boscha. This combination led to a long comment of someone saying that they liked my story but that Hunter would NEVER be a bigot, bully and god forbid the very concept of him being friends with SOMEONE LIKE BOSCHA.

And this wasn't even post S3. This was between S2A and B. So... To say the fandom is a bit fucked up when it comes to understanding the fundamental elements of Hunter's backstory and who he started as character-wise is a bit of an understatement.

Admittedly, it's also the show's fault because it fails to incorporate elements of the world or the character's history into who they are or what they do. And this is kind of what I want to touch on more with The Golden Guard versus Hunter disparity: What is the Golden Guard? And how does it transform over the course of the show?

So let's start with the absolute first thing we're told and shown. After losing Lilith, the coven decides that it's best face to put out publicly is The Golden Guard. Realistically, you do this for one of two reasons. One is that they are the face that the most amount of people know or two: You believe he can be that because he is the best amongst your ranks. Lilith even pushes at least the second idea by saying that he's a child prodigy. These posters are also put EVERYWHERE in the episode we see them and enchanted in a way to stay in your face if you're annoyed with them, literally.

In that same episode, we're introduced to The Golden Guard, who at least has enough influence to get a LOT of gold and an expedition together, complete with boat, just for the sake of accomplishing the mission of killing the Selkidamus. I actually suspect that if Eda hadn't stolen the gold, Hunter wouldn't have had any reason to threaten Eda, Luz and King because, well... That wasn't his job or plan.

As such, the point of The Golden Guard is to be able to handle messier missions that might risk multiple guards otherwise but he can handle on his own. He is their special agent and appears to be given access to a lot of resources for this goal. Hunting Palisman even pushes this concept further by him being the one sent out alone to get the Palisman, complete with an airship.

As far as a compelling antagonist who at least can do as much as Lilith did in S1, it's not a bad setup actually. It's a bit too close to just making a new EC head but the twist of them having no reason to NOT kill Lilith and Luz is one that allows them to be much more dangerous and brutal in what they do. It's effectively swapping out Rita for Zed in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.

Buuuuut that's much more complicated for the sake of redeeming Hunter, isn't it? So even in Hunting Palisman, we get our first retcon about the Golden Guard: No one knows him. Literally fucking no one knows what the fuck he looks like, acts like or sounds like. Yes, he's without his cloak and mask but I imagine what he's wearing is still standard issue underneath that since it looks like body armor so maybe give him a little more credit than accusing him of being just some dumb teenager?

This also begs the question of why he was put on the posters? If he is so anonymous to the troops, they can't vouch for him if someone comes to them for more info on who is on the poster. Shouldn't the guards have literally any idea of who's leading them? Or representing them? Because... If Hunter isn't, who is? There's no EC coven head anymore. And never will be from the show's standpoint, even months later.

Eclipse Lake doubles down on this. Now, not only is The Golden Guard unknown without their mask but a disgraced Kikimora can command guards more than Hunter. If this isn't true, Eclipse Lake makes no sense. Admittedly, Hunter doesn't bring his mask or staff, neither of which makes any sense unless he needs to get them directly from Belos before any mission which... MAYBE the staff but absolutely not on the mask. That's just a part of his uniform.

So within three episodes, he has gone from the biggest deal and the most important member of the EC... To nothing. To an outcast amongst his peers without any power or respect. In THREE EPISODES. Without him himself doing anything and only failing one mission because as far as Belos knows, the Selkidamas IS dead.

And the fact that this does mirror Hunter's own character arc highlights how badly it's handled, if it even exists, let alone it being rational in any conceivable way. And this is all S2A which... Almost certainly wasn't affected by the shortening and sure as shit wasn't written with the shortening in mind if it was. After all, while the decision happened by the time the S1 finale came out... Animation takes a lot of time. They would have been knee deep in production for S2. Dana herself has proven that as before S2 came out, they started WRITING AND BOARDING SEASON THREE.

So... This is just what Hunter's arc was decided to be. What the Golden Guard meant. And it's just bad. And that's without getting into the ways it goes about assassinating what we knew about the Emperor's Coven in Sport in a Storm or the like.

So why did the fandom forgive him? Why is he so popular? I... Wish I knew. When push comes to shove, like in the blog I linked at the top, I can come up with more charitable readings on his character. Give him a real character instead of a puppet constantly being yanked around and changed by the Hand of the Author, but casually? Why the hell should I care about a character who I never can get a grasp on? Who's fundamental elements constantly contradict themselves.

And Hunter isn't the only person like this. But hey, the Collector sure is going to be a fun, final boss fight, isn't he? *eye twitch*

#Hunter #The Owl House

[myristicisms]

A Semi-In depth analysis of Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night and Miriam

I haven't seen a lot of posts that have a timeline for the events listed and seeing as I write Miriam and am replaying the game, I've taken to compiling information I find important regarding the timeline as well as detailing thoughts I have regarding her characterization and personality, this is definitely something that ended up being a lot longer than I'd intended but regardless I'm very proud of it and wanted to share my findings in case anyone in the fandom was also wondering and wanted information or for anyone I write with that's not fully familiar with Miriam but wants to know her better for plotting/interacting purposes. With that said, there are four main sections to go through with the last two being full of spoilers for the game.

Part I; The Timeline Pre Game

Bloodstained Ritual of the Night begins with detailing the summoning of the hell castle by the alchemist guild in a last ditch effort to restore spirituality in England to maintain funding for their research, as per an unnamed alchemist's notes littered throughout the castle it's found that the prototype of a shard was unintentionally created as a byproduct of an attempt at creating a homunculus in the year 1764, in 1765 there was a demon that appeared and was dispatched by the guild which resulted in the discovery of other shards and their existences alongside the binding effect of the original prototype shard found a year prior, this discovery would eventually lead to tinkering with the idea of combining the shards with the human body to test what might happen and in 1766 it's implied that the first Shardbinders had been created; We see in the alchemist's notes once again that of the Shardbinders, the one that showed the most promise was Gebel however his shard lagged behind in developing further capabilities compared to the other children that had gone through the same procedure.

It's at this point in time that it's important to make mention that, due to other notes that will later be delved into, Miriam was born in the year 1765, one year before the beginnings of the Shardbinder experimentations and procedures became a thing which could imply one of three things; Either the alchemist guild acquired her as an infant and grafted the shard in her when she was a year or two ( unlikely though that's out of my own optimism which might be ill placed in this regard ), the alchemists acquired her as a toddler but waited until she grew a bit older before implanting the shard ( more likely given it's been said the shards attract demonic entities and that would endanger a young child that's defenseless ), or ( the most likely ) Miriam wasn't orphaned until later in her childhood and once she was sent to the orphanage, the guild likely took her in much as they did other children ( As Gebel is just slightly older than Miriam ) and grafted the shard into her during early teenhood.

It's also important to note additional information given by the unnamed alchemist's notes as well as Miriam herself that once the shard effectively bound itself to their flesh, the Shardbinders themselves were put into training against the different demons that would come to the guild and absorb the shards as a means of further expanding upon the guild's research and this effectively lasted until 1783, which is how I was able to find out Miriam's birth year because shes said to be 28 during the current events of Bloodstained, meaning Ritual of the Night itself takes place in 1793-1794, as we know Alfred put Miriam into an alchemical coma right before the ritual to summon Bael, which is stated to be a decade prior to when we start in the Galleon Minerva, with that being said, that's how I was able to calculate the year Miriam was born as well as when the game takes place.

Part II; Humanity, Family, and Grief

With previous timeline stuff out of the way, now I can move onto Miriam lore, I just wanted to get basic timeline information put out there, let's start off with Miriam's early life or with what we know about her early life ( likely around her early to mid teens but not too terribly close to 18 ), we know based on two separate conversations she has with Gebel and Johannes that before the ritual, likely at least a year or so, she resigned herself to feeling as though she was no better than the demons she'd have to absorb the shards of after killing them which eventually led into an argument with Gebel. We aren't given a timeline for any of Miriam's earlier years however with what we are given, it's safe to assume that a lot of her childhood/teenage years were far from normal circumstances and even traumatizing to a degree as per Miriam herself stating that the pain of all of the experiments and the shard itself had left her feeling hopeless as is stated in conversation with Gebel aboard the Galleon Minerva, quote “ I was the one that came to you broken, convinced I was a monster. And you told me— Our power doesn't make us good or bad. Our choices do. I'd given up on my humanity, but you restored my hope. Don't you remember?! ”

We also see her expand more upon this conversation/argument in a conversation with Johannes when he asks her about a promise she had made to Gebel, “ Well, back then, the experiments left me feeling stripped of my humanity. The pain from the crystal was a constant reminder. At one point, I lost my will to live entirely. Gebel and I got into a fight over some stupid thing, and I shouted,"How long are you going to pretend you're human? We're monsters now." ”; “ It cheered me right up. I felt like a person again." ” Followed by, “ And that was when we promised to stop each other if we ever lost the ability to choose. ”, As those are just her lines and not the dialogue from Gebel, I'll paraphrase the in-between; Essentially she had repeated to Johannes what she had said to Gebel aboard the Galleon Minerva, quoted in the previous paragraph.

Additionally Miriam also points out in dialogue aboard the Galleon how painful absorbing shards truly is, “ I'd... forgotten the way it felt... Like uninvited claws scraping across my bones... ” which lends to another interesting point; Miriam's willingness to sacrifice herself to some degree. Throughout the game, Miriam has to traverse the hell castle and absorb different shards in order to gain abilities and make progress, Gebel had knowingly put her into a situation where she would need to absorb shards in order to reach him and ( albeit with little success ) try to convince him to give up summoning Bael/quit being the lord of the hell castle. Something else worth noting is that with each shard that merges with her crystal, the more risk she has of the crystal corrupting and taking over her body which would effectively lead to her death; She's aware of this and even tells Johannes “ I know my body's limits better than anyone. And I'm going to need all the power I can get. ” After he expressed his concerns on the matter, of course this conversation happened prior to her conversation with Gebel and yet even with that knowledge she still put herself at risk in hopes of saving her best friend.

Moving on though, we also find out that Miriam wasn't completely parentless to some degree; Among the alchemists in the guild, she'd taken well to one named Alfred and saw him as a father figure of sorts, unfortunately though it's unlikely that that had been reciprocated as we see in the Den of Behemoths, Alfred's motivations for putting Miriam into the coma and attempting to keep her away from the castle weren't out of a sort of fatherly concern but because she's “ the most attuned ” in reference to her ability to wield demonic power through her shard, essentially making Miriam one of the main keys necessary for the summoning of Bael and effectively making her coma the main reason for the prior ritual's failure, though that isn't to imply he held no care for her either given the fact that he just as well could have killed her a decade prior which still likely would have halted the ritual much the same.

I'll be delving into spoilers now therefore this is the only warning I'll be giving regarding spoiling events in the game;

Part III; Storyline and Character Development

After initiating combat with Zangetsu for the second time ( initiate is a strong word, he decides they need to speak his language; Combat ) and proving herself worthy of wielding the Zangetsuto ( Zangetsu meaning moon slayer/to slice the moon, just neat trivia ), after which Miriam heads to fight Gebel and, depending on the player, will either receive the bad ending or unlock the final portion of the game. Should the player kill Gebel in combat ( this can be done prior to getting the Zangetsuto, similar to that of Castlevania SOTN with Richter and the holy glasses ) then a cutscene will play out depicting Miriam and Johannes standing outside the castle talking about what to do next, the castle has yet to fall and they decide to leave it to Dominique and the church despite both feeling as though something was off, this is the bad or wrong ending of the game. The true ending is unlocked via damaging Gebel just enough for the moon within his room to turn red, after which you need to slice the moon in half with the Zangetsuto which forces Gremory out and leads into another cutscene, this time between Miriam and Gebel.

In this cutscene, Gebel starts off with recognizing Miriam and telling her he's missed her and even thanks her for keeping her promise ( showing Miriam to be someone who keeps her word regardless of how painful it might be for her to do ), while the dialogue plays out, we can see Gebel slowly crystalizing and get to watch Miriam panic over how rapidly the process is taking over his body ( resulting in his death ) and insists she'll handle the castle while trying to convince both him and herself that Gebel will live, he does not. It's right before he fully succumbs to the crystal that Gebel delivers his final line, “ I'm glad I got to see you smile... one last... ” Only to die off which leads into Miriam weeping and Johannes finally making his appearance, it's here where Miriam expresses that she “ has a new promise to keep ” and then eventually finds her way into the Den of Behemoths after slicing the moon in half once more and opening a portal to the location.

It's here where she bumps into a severely wounded ( and dying ) Alfred and Zangetsu, who both reveal to her that they'd all been manipulated by Gremory and Dominique, at this point this leads into another point regarding Miriam's personality where it's mentioned multiple times throughout the game that she's incredibly stubborn as per Johannes and even Zangetsu mentioning the trait in their own backwards ways. Additionally, she's also shown to be incredibly independent as per her mentioning that she should be the one to handle the castle's problems since she's trained properly in combat compared to Johannes who is merely just an alchemist. Johannes also tends to put a focus on dietary needs for Miriam in some of his "extra" dialogue when interacted with after most of his story driven dialogue has been listened to, while not particularly impactful or important to note it can definitely be implied that Miriam could have an issue with not eating enough or simply he's concerned for her metabolism and a lack of proper sustenance due to her alchemical coma, regardless she's displayed delight in both cooking her own meals and eating new foods since she has a special animation whenever she does cook and often makes a happy remark whenever she eats something save for eating the dark matter, which results in a pathetic " that's foul... " And resulting in Miriam being poisoned, this shows she's not quite a picky eater which likely stems from a combination of her being an orphan in 18th century England and the likelihood that the alchemists may not have been too concerned about what was fed to the kids.

Moving on in the timeline as well as further characterization, upon reaching the glacial tomb, Miriam first faces Gremory, it's in this leading cutscene where she witnesses Zangetsu being ( presumably ) dragged down to hell and likely killed, during this scene just before he vanishes with Gremory's arms he says “ Good luck... Miriam. ” which then leads into Gremory taunting Miriam about the fact that while she has the Zangetsuto sword, she doesn't believe Miriam will succeed in killing her only for Miriam to respond with “ Wrong, demon. Zangetsu's wrath and mine are now one. ” Which while a bit of a cheesy cliche ( power of friendship or whatever ) also adds onto how important companionship and friends are to Miriam despite how she continuously loses those closest to her. ( RE; Gebel, Alfred, and even Zangetsu to an extent. ) After killing Gremory and acquiring the shard " Dimension Shift ", Miriam makes her way to the final room of the Glacial Tomb and encounters Dominique.

This encounter is dramatic with how intensely Miriam feels, her sense of justice shining through while listening to Dominique talk about her sought after power and reasoning for her ambitions. Dominique reveals her plan had been to slowly acclimate Miriam's shard to demonic corruption and upon being exhausted from her fight with Gebel, Gremory was meant to possess Miriam much the same as she had Gebel. Dominique further irritates Miriam by accusing Zangetsu of betraying her to which Miriam responds with “ Doing the right thing isn't a betrayal. ”, once again showing Miriam's strong sense of justice. Later in the dialogue it's mentioned that Dominique managed to find a way to receive her own crystal and with the shards sold to her ( or I guess pretend sold to her if the player refuses to do so? ) begins the ritual with the Liber Logaeth to summon Bael, Miriam makes a remark that it's a slow process to which Dominique says “ Do you really think you can stop me before then? ” resulting in Miriam retorting back with “ Oh yes I do. You don't understand what power is for. You wield it stupidly, arrogantly. And now you will pay the price. ” That line among other spoken dialogue throughout this particular conversation demonstrates a strong distaste for those that pursue ambition and power for the sake of doing so, it's after this conversation that Miriam must fight Dominique and unfortunately is just barely too late, resulting in yet another portal (?) being opened and starts the fight with the demon lord Bael.

It's after the defeat of Bael that Johannes uses the Liber Logaeth to destroy the hell castle and the ending dialogue begins with Miriam and Johannes standing outside Arvantville, their conversation essentially is just discussing the losses it took for their victory, Miriam grieving each one while Johannes remarks that they all made their own choices and their lives deserved to be celebrated, not mourned. The scene ends with Johannes mentioning that before Alfred's passing, he'd given advice on permanently halting the spread of Miriam's crystal and while he could not promise it would work, he would do his best. Miriam seems pleased enough and the duo leave to return to wherever they call home.

Part IV; Additional/Miscellaneous information

Miriam is able to play the piano, demonstrating prior training, this can be found in the Secret Garden and if you have the Carabosse summon equipped, will lead into a song, otherwise Miriam just plays a nice instrumental version of said song. Miriam's name has multiple meanings, the main ones being Bitterness, Sea of Stars, drop of the sea, and Beloved depending on which etymology you're looking at, all of which are very fitting of her character. Just before Alfred's death, his final interaction with Miriam is asking for forgiveness for all he'd put her through. While we see that Zangetsu was dragged to hell, players who play in a wider resolution will see his model walk in from the right side of the screen which could either just be a fun little easter egg or is meant to imply that he'd somehow escaped it, I don't really know the answer but I wanted to make mention of that small clip too just to get that out of the way.

#muse;; miriam #bloodstained ritual of the night #a small analysis #small is a lie #spoilers for ritual of the night

[tayfabe75]

what do you think of wcs x ivy mashup that taylor did? seems like a strange combination

Oh, anon! Much like the rest of the fandom, I'm struggling a bit to understand this particular mash-up, lol (I really would have bet on 'Would've Could've Should've' getting mashed up with 'Mad Woman' due to what sounds like melodic similarities compared here and here, alas…)

Right off the bat, I'm going to have to admit that I'm personally on a different page than most people when it comes to WCS. I was genuinely shocked by just how many sources state, very confidently, that WCS is about John Mayer - not that it could be about him, but that it is. Of course, this stems from its similarity to the song 'Dear John'. Looks like we're going to have to discuss that song first so that we're on the same page! So, what did John, himself, have to say about 'Dear John'?:

"It made me feel terrible because I didn't deserve it. I'm pretty good at taking accountability now, and I never did anything to deserve that. It was a really lousy thing for her to do."

And when Glamour revealed John's comments to Taylor, here's what she had to say:

"How presumptuous! I never disclose who my songs are about."

That then got me thinking about this quote:

"If you didn't see a picture of it, it couldn't have happened right?"

And then this quote...

"People think they know the exact narrative of the way my life has gone."

Yes, Taylor was nineteen when she met John Mayer. But is that the only thing that happened to her at that age? I get that the title 'Dear John' seems super transparent, yet the term "Dear John" predates their collaboration or relationship by decades, so I don't think Taylor was necessarily "naming names". A "Dear John letter" is basically shorthand for dumping someone via written correspondence, usually someone who is physically far away (typically deployed) and seems to involve infidelity on the part of the dumper. To potentially support this theory, the lyric video for 'Dear John' looks like a handwritten letter:

Yet, the lyrics kind of sound like Taylor was the dumpee? Anyway, all of that is to say that I do think that WSC is connected to 'Dear John', just that the muse probably isn't who everyone thinks.

Anyway, WCS shares lyrical parallels with 'The Great War' - both referencing banners and tombs/crypts, implying that something that should be dead isn't. Would you believe that the first time I heard WCS, I thought it sounded like pure religious trauma? Obviously, after reading all the matter-of-fact reviews and blog posts about how it's definitely about grooming, I heard it. But I'm still not sure that's the only explanation.

Honest question: Is nineteen a "child"? I'm a few years older than Taylor, and while I would probably answer "yes", it would also feel infantilizing to call a nineteen-year-old a child. So, when I hear the line "years of tearing down our banners", I wonder if it implies a passage of time or aging, or that these banners were torn down for years after "dancing with the devil", an expression meaning to engage in "risky, reckless, or potentially immoral behavior". All of the religious imagery seems to imply some kind of loss of innocence. The line "give me back my girlhood" reminds me a lot of ATW, actually - I forget Taylor's exact quote or where she said it, unfortunately, but something about how the girl in the video is the same person, but the pain changed her, that she no longer approaches the world with the same openness, that it made her more guarded.

Themes of war appear in both 'The Great War' and 'Ivy', which is exactly the part of the song Taylor chose to mash-up with WCS. 'Ivy' describes a meeting in a "faith forgotten land", which is an interesting parallel for WCS - which seems to be, at least metaphorically, about the pain of having lost one's faith. All of this talk of death and tombs and crypts… meanwhile ivy is symbolically "eternal", likely because it can survive even through winters. Interestingly, it seems to symbolize loyalty - making it a rather curious metaphor in a song about infidelity! Though, perhaps the loyalty is not to the "husband" in this story?

Taylor ends the mash-up with "I regret you all the time", perhaps implying the aforementioned "war" had something to do with infidelity. If so, then who is it, in this love triangle, that she regrets?

I have even found myself wondering whether WCS is some kind of metaphor for fame, celebrity, the music industry… I don't have that thought fully fleshed out, though.

Interestingly, as I pondered a bit on your question, there has been a discovery that Taylor changed a few words of WCS for the mash-up, and maybe switched perspectives mid-song (credit to gaypoetsdept on Twitter):

"If I was a child, did it matter if I got to wash MY hands" (at about 1:19) "Would've, could've, should've, if YOU'D only played it safe" (at about 2:32)

I personally hope this was just a flub on Taylor's part because I can't even begin to understand the implication of these changes or what they mean! lol

Thanks for the ask! I don't know how helpful it was, but that's what I got! ♥

#answered #song speculation #song: would've could've should've #song: ivy #song: dear john

[sissytobitch10seconds]

Colliding Worlds

Fandom: The Umbrella Academy Summary: Viktor has just about had enough of people from other universes opening portals up into his home to provide him with more children to take care of. This time, thankfully, they're just visitors. Warnings: Mentions of canon-typical neglect and ableism Word Count: 11,320 Ship(s): Viktor Hargreeves/Five Hargreeves, Original Child Character/Original Character

Archive link!

A/N: Here's my half of the fic crossover that I did with my mutual @lovely-number-7 ! I had so much fun thinking about what it would be like for our characters to meet since they're already universe-jumping individuals. It was so much fun to think about what interactions they would have. I didn't include every difference between the universe because I didn't want this to drag on for too long. I hope that you enjoy it! Stay sissy and bitchy everyone <3

Colliding Worlds

An Umbrella Academy Fanfiction

A Portal to Home/Doing it Right Crossover Fanfiction

By Sissytobitch10seconds

There was a very distinctive ‘pop’ combined with a whirling sound whenever his son or husband used their abilities. Viktor didn’t have to activate his super hearing from his own power to hear it happening, even if it was all the way across the house. It was a noise that he always held his breath after hearing because it was usually immediately followed with a problem that he had to solve. A lot of the times that problem was because of a miscalculation in where they were going to land, which resulted in knocked over knick knacks and broken furniture. 

When he heard that very distinctive noise sound off in the direction of his living room, he instinctively called, “Keiren, no teleporting in the house unless it’s an emergency, please!”

The noises that followed immediately after the reprimanding were not what he had been expecting, though. He had been expecting something like a groan or even an acknowledgement from his son, but instead he was met with a lot of crashing and groaning from voices that sounded adjacently-familiar to his children.

A cool rush of adrenaline flushed through his system as he remembered all the times that had happened before. He had three portals open up in his home to dump children into it, and one to give him his husband, so it wasn’t like this was a situation he was unfamiliar with. He was just sure that since the one opening those portals now lived with him and could control that particular ability, it would have stopped. Now that there was another one open in his living room, he knew that something had to be wrong.

Unbeknownst to him, it wasn’t his son experimenting with his powers and his siblings. He waited for a moment longer to hear if there was any shouting of pain or injury, but when there was nothing he returned back to practicing the piece that his orchestra had decided they were going to play for their yearly winter concert. He was sitting in the decompression room with his violin tucked underneath his chin and his fingers perfectly wrapped around the bow. He was still dressed like he had been for work, so he was in a pair of nice black slacks and a blue-button up.

The other occupants of the house were unaware of the portal opening up because they didn’t have the parent mind that Viktor did which caused him to listen to every sound to make sure that he wasn’t needed.

A lanky teenager with long curly hair pulled back into a messy braid that was falling apart with every one of her jerky movements bolted through the long hallway of the home. She was wearing a black pleated skirt that fell down to her knees and a flowy white blouse, which weren’t ideal for the kind of activities that she was doing. She skidded to a stop above the stairs and then began to take them two at a time so she could get as far away from her brother as possible.

The aforementioned brother, dressed in a pair of jeans a comfortable t-shirt so much more suited for running, was chasing after her as quickly as he could with his chest heaving in anger. “Reyne! If you bring that lizard into my room one more time I’m going to make sure that you’re sleeping in the garden for the next month,” he shouted.

Reyne laughed, tossing her head back with the force of her chuckles. She knew that it was an empty threat because it was his favorite one. Harun had been threatening to use the Horror to put her outside so that she slept in the garden since they were eleven, for anything as small as taking the salt when he was reaching for it to hiding his favorite book as an act of malice when they were fourteen. He had never followed through on it, so she knew that he was just agitated and she was safe.

They both stopped short when they got to the entrance of the living room, eyes wide and confused at the scene that they were met with. Given that they were a family of nine and all of them had barely controlled superpowers, it wasn’t like their family was every exactly a chill place to exist, but this was another level of weird.

There were nine kids around the same age as their youngest sibling piled up on the floor of the carpet. The swirling mist above them had just gotten so small that no one would have been able to fit in it before it closed. Each of the teenagers that were now in their living room looked similar to them or their cousins, particularly what they remembered Stan looking like almost six years ago.

Reyne slowly shifted Smoothie so that the lizard was sitting on her shoulder, blinking his eyes at the world around him without a single thought going through his mind. The same couldn’t be said for the twins, though, who were staring open-mouthed at the collection of teenagers, especially the two that looked very similar to them.

Harun was still standing in a silent shock when Reyne finally snapped out of it and walked forward. “Are you guys okay? Where did you come from?” she asked.

Her eyes were first drawn to the wheelchair user that looked remarkably like her youngest sibling, other than the fact that her hair was dyed and she had a little bit of eyeliner one. Andrya hated makeup because they couldn’t touch their face at all when they had it on. “May I touch your mobility device to help you up?” Reyne asked when she saw that the other version of her sibling was tipped upright with the wheelchair caging her in.

The smaller teenager seemed a little surprised by that but then gave a shaky nod. Carefully, Reyne lifted up the mobility device and then sat it upright directly next to the user. She then offered a hand to the other teenager and helped her back into it. 

Everyone else was slowly bringing themselves into standing or sitting positions on the ground. Reyne stood up and back away from them so that she could examine them now that they were no longer a heap of limbs and bodies. The kid that looked like Einar was standing impossibly close to someone that Reyne had never seen before, which made him think that was a new person and not one of his cousins or siblings. Stan and who he assumed had to be Claire were near the back, though it was weird to see his eldest cousin (who was now twenty-one) and his youngest cousin (who was now nine) being the same age.

Slowly the thespian turned turned around so that she was facing her twin. “Can you go get Papa or Dad please?”

“This is not where we were supposed to end up,” the kid that looked exactly like Keiren muttered as he stared down at his hands. Reyne recognized that look from when Keiren was focusing, it was also something that her father did when he had overused his powers during a training session. While none of them were expected to go on missions, their parents still thought that it was very important for them to know how to defend themselves.

She waved her hands above her head to get attention. “So I’m guessing what happened is kind of like what happened when me and my siblings came to this universe. Did you miscalculate and step into another universe?” she specifically asked the kid that looked like Keiren.

“I guess I had to have done that, because this isn’t the restaurant that we were going to eat at,” the kid shook his head.

Reyne let out a little beath. This wasn’t what she had been expecting to deal with on her lazy Saturday between rehearsals. She was about to start the jam-packed schedules that always picked up right before the performances for the show started. She knew that this was out of her control, though, so she was going to try her best. “Well, that’s okay. My dad and one of my brothers has the same powers as you so he can help get you back in a little while.”

“Oh, that’s not necessary,” the teenager that looked like Andrya shook her head. “My dad has a tracker on us in case something like this happens. It might take him a day or two but he should be able to find us.”

Just then, Harun returned with Five and Viktor. Reyne turned around and explained what had happened to their parents, pointing towards the haphazardly gathered group of teenagers, “They just fell into the living room, Papa. I think that something similar to what happened when we were kids and Keiren sent us to you happened to them.”

Viktor raised a hand up to his head and rubbed his forehead to try and get rid of the tension headache before it even formed. Five reached over and grabbed the hand, moving it so that he could press a kiss to the agitated skin there. “It will be aright, beloved. We can handle having a few more kids around the house for a couple days before we can figure out how to get them back where they belong.”

Reyne and Harun looked at each other and made fake disgusted faces before their parents finally separated and turned to the other kids. “I’m sorry that you guys got dumped here, but I promise that we’ll keep you warm, fed, and comfortable until we can figure out how to get you back. Let me call down the rest of the household and then we can do introductions since you’re going to be staying with us for a while.”

“Little royal, I would suggest putting Smoothie back into the cage where he belongs before he gets stressed out and refuses to eat,” Five told his eldest child. They gave him a quick nod and then skittered off to their room so that their pet could be safely hidden way from all the chaos.

Andrya, and Keiren were hanging out together in the latter’s room, so they were collected and brought downstairs fairly quickly. It was harder to get Imani to come down because she had been writing her newest Model United Nations proposal paper and didn’t want her flow to be interrupted, but she recognized the serious look on her father’s face and knew that it would be better to listen to him. Einar had heard the rest of his siblings being collected and so tromped downstairs with the majority of them. Mateo was the most difficult one to collect because he came with an extra teenager in the form of his boyfriend. Luckily, Ronan had seen enough of the weird Hargreeves shenanigans that he was good to stay in his partner’s room until Mateo was able to come back.

Soon both families were gathered in the living room space, having spread out enough so that the family that lived there was on the floor while the visitors were all perched on the couches and chairs. Viktor sighed as he got the attention of the teenagers who were squabbling quietly amongst each other. “Alright! I don’t know the differences between our worlds and universes just yet but a good place to start is with introductions. My name is Viktor Hargreeves, I use he/him pronouns and I’m the father of all these kids,” he gestured his hand towards the collection of teenagers that he had been raising for more than a decade.

“Five Hargreeves, also he/him and I’m their other father as well as Viktor’s husband,” they both signed as they spoke, using the facial expressions and everything. It was clear that this was something they did as a family and not just something that they were doing to try and be inclusive. While Keiren had started out hearing, at this point without his hearing aides, he was entirely deaf.

“It’s kind of nice to know that Nibbie and Dad are together in almost every other universe that we visit,” the kid that looked like Harun noted.

The adults hadn’t finished talking as Viktor snapped his fingers to bring attention back to him. “Kids should also say their ages because several of you look like you’re older or younger than some of ours. I’ve noticed that the two of you don’t look like you’re counterparts to any of my kids, though, so you can go first and then we’ll have each counterpart introduce themselves with the visitor first,” he explained. After raising seven kids by himself for five years and then with only a singular other partner for the rest of that time, he had gotten used to explicitly explaining what was going to happen so that there was no confusion among his trauma.

There was a murmur of agreement between all the kids before the introductions started. “My name is Stan, I’m fifteen. I use he/him pronouns, I think.” Stan looked exactly as he had at that age in their universe. He had short cropped hair that had recently been shaved down and he was wearing a gray t-shirt underneath a leather jacket and a pair of black jeans.

“We have a Stan but he’s an adult and just got engaged,” Imani commented when he finished introducing herself.

“My name is Claire. I use she/her pronouns and I’m fifteen,” the next person went. Even though they knew that their cousin had most likely been raised very differently than her counterpart in their universe had, it was still interesting for all the Hargreeves to see what Claire would look like when she got older. She had her hair up in braids like the ones that Allison was partial to, the bottoms of them green and blue. She was wearing a pretty sun dress that was patterned with pink flowers and gold accessories.

“Jayme, she/her, and fifteen as well. I turn sixteen in a week back in our time though,” the last person that didn’t have a counterpart went. Jayme had wavy black and brown hair that was hanging loose around her face. She was wearing a red tank top and black jeans with a pair of combat boots.

“Alright, great!” Viktor smiled comfortingly at the kids. He could tell that they were nervous and felt awkward about the entire experience that they were living through, and there was barely anything that the parent could so about that given what they were having to endure.

“I guess that means we’re starting with the counterparts. My name is Indie. My pronouns kind of fluctuate, but today they’re they/them,” the kid that looked like Andrya finished. They were wearing a black ripped t-shirt with blocky white text on the front of it. They also had a pair of black jeans on and combat boots that matched Jayme’s. Their hair was cut semi-short, reaching just barely to their shoulders and was dyed purple.

Talking isn’t going to happen right now, Andrya signed towards their father.

“That’s alright, baby,” Viktor soothed. “Just sign and I’ll interpret, okay?”

They nodded. My name is Andrya, that’s A-N-D-R-Y-A, they started with their name sign and then spelled it out. Everything that they signed went through Viktor, who said it out loud. I use they/them pronouns and I’m fifteen. Andrya was wearing a pair of leggings with a baggy t-shirt that they had stolen from Einar. Their hair was long but put away in a bun on the back of their head so that it was contained and away from their neck.

“I guess I’ll go next. My name is V-valentino, I’m fifteen and my pronouns are he-he-he/him,” the next visitor said. He was signing as he spoke, making sure that it was clear despite his stutter. It was clear to the newcomers that this family frequently spoke both out loud and with sign so they were trying to accommodate that fact with the three that could use sign language. He didn’t have a name sign and just signed his name with each of the individual letters. Valentino was wearing a pair of chucks that were red with purple piping. He had on red and black flannel underneath a leather jacket and a pair of black slacks. He also had some silver jewelry on.

“My name is Einar, I’m sixteen and my pronouns are he/they,” the blond introduced himself. He was fidgeting with the end of his brain to try and keep his hands busy since he had been pulled away from the LEGO set he had been building. Einar was wearing a pair of red and green pajama bottoms with a white t-shirt on, his chin length hair hanging down around his face.

“My name is Fionn. I use he/him pronouns and I’m fifteen,” Einar’s otherworldly counterpart introduced himself. The kids were all immediately noting that they had to delve into why Fionn had an Irish name while Einar and Luther had both been given Swedish names. Fionn was dressed in a white button down with a pair of blue jeans and chucks that were the standard black with white piping. His hair was cropped a lot shorter than Einar’s more reminiscent of how Luther’s hair was cut but just a little bit longer.

“My name is Reyne, I’m genderfluid and my pronouns change. Right now they’re they/them. I’m seventeen,” Reyne beamed, giving a little spin before she jumped back up onto the entertainment center where she had been sitting before, her back just barely grazing up against the screen of the television.

“My name is Emrys, I’m fifteen just like everyone else and my pronouns are she/they.” Reyne placed their hand underneath their jaw as they turned to look at the other universe’s version of themself. It was kind of interesting to see the type of person that they could have been if they had been raised differently. They seemed to share the same fashion sense as Emrys, as the other psychic was wearing a beautiful green and brown flower print dress. 

“My name is Harun, I’m the eldest-” the next of the universe’s natives began. 

Reyne reached over and smacked their twin on the arm before they had the chance to continue. “You so are not! We came through the portal at the same time and we’ve lived every moment at the same speed since then. If anything I’m the oldest because I’m going to graduate before you.”

“Shut up, Reyne,” Harun rolled his eyes, though there was nothing but affection for his twin in his tone. “Anyway. I use he/him pronouns.”

“Uh, Hiroshi, fifteen, he/him,” the shy man introduced himself. Hiroshi and Harun were the two that looked the most alike out of all of the kids, which was a little heartbreaking for them to see two individuals that looked so much like their late brother, the one that they would never be able to get back. Hiroshi was wearing a green tanktop with a pair of blue pants that were beginning to fray around the hem, clearly comfortable clothes.

“Imani. Sixteen, she/her,” Imani introduced herself quickly and efficiently. She had work that she wanted to be finishing and she knew that the quicker she got this over, the more likely she was to be able to get back to it. It wasn’t as though she hated having guests, because she was the most social out of all of her siblings, but she just wanted to be able to get her schoolwork finished before her next tournament. Imani was dressed in a calf length pink skirt with a white button up on top and she had pulled all of her hair back into a ponytail to keep it out of the way in favor of styling it.

“Kai, fifteen, she/her,” the counterpart said, raising her hand nervously. She then dropped it back down to her lap and began to squeeze at the appendage to soothe her anxieties. She was wearing a pretty purple and white dress that matched Claire’s. Her hair was shorter than Claire’s but styled in the same way with the same colors. 

Viktor, having anxiety himself and also having had to manage it with Andrya their entire life, was able to recognize the signs. “Kai, do you feel comfortable moving away from the rest of the group or would you prefer to stay with them?” he asked kindly.

“I-I can leave,” she replied with an awkward shrug.

“Come with me,” the parent said as he stood up and then walked towards the front of the house. The rest of the visitors seemed a little bit nervous about one of their own leaving when they weren’t sure that the place they were in was quite safe yet, but no one objected. Viktor brought Kai to the study, which was still serving as a destimulation room for the kids even after all these years. 

The room itself was painted a pleasant, soothing shade of blue. There was a couch on one wall with a comfortable, soft looking throw blanket over the back. Next to it was a bookshelf full of classics and favorites of the household in almost every language. In a bin on the lowest shelf was a bunch of cords that looked to be chargers and another that seemed to contain every single fidget toy available for the public to buy. Peaking out from between the two was a power strip with nothing plugged into it but the red light signifying that it was on. On the other side of the room, there were two beanbags underneath the huge windows that currently had the late-autumn sun shining down on them.

“This place looks really nice,” Kai said quietly.

“A lot of my kids can get really overwhelmed, so I have this place so that they can calm down. While you’re staying with us, if you need some space by yourself since you don’t have your own bedroom in the house, then you can come in here. You just slide this shut so that the sign on the outside says occupied and everyone knows not to disturb you,” Viktor said, showing the sliding panel on the back of the door that effected the front.

The fifteen-year-old gave a nod and then slowly walked over to the couch. Viktor stepped to the doorway, saying, “Feel free to use any of the items in this room as long as you put them back where you think they were when you picked them up. Come out when you feel ready, alright?”

Kai gave another nod before she slumped back against the couch. Viktor was sufficiently convinced that she was going to be okay and then closed the door. He smiled softly as he saw the sign in the middle of the door change over to the red half of the sign instead of the green one. As he walked back into the living room, Five caught his attention with a flick a snap of his fingers and then signed, Is she okay?

Just overwhelmed. I told her to come out of the destimulation room once she was feeling better, he immediately signed back.

He sat back down next to his husband. The rest of the kids seemed a little bit nervous that their family member had just wandered off and hadn’t come back with the alternate version of someone that they knew, but they were obviously trying to roll with the punches after something so massive had happened. “Where were we?” Viktor asked so that he could start the introductions back up.

“I guess I can go next. My name is Keiren and I’m sixteen. I use he/him pronouns,” Keiren signed as he spoke, though he was shouting a little bit since he only had one of his hearing aides in. He had been rushed out of the house this morning so had most likely forgotten it and then just decided not to put the other one in after he came back. Keiren was wearing a pair of basketball shorts and a t-shirt. His fingers and legs were covered in ink, though the tips of his fingers were stained with it while his legs were covered in doodles from when he got bored while listening to videos about storms.

“My name is Psi. I’m fifteen and I use he/him pronouns,” the counterpart to him said. Psi was wearing a red button up with a pair of nice black slacks.

Five turned his head just in time to see the way that the other boy was fidgeting. It had to have something to do with the miscalculation that got him and the rest of the kids dumped into a universe where they didn’t belong. As soon as they finished with the introductions he was going to take both the alternative versions of himself and talk to them. He knew that Psi would be able to find some solace knowing what Keiren had done when he was younger and the mistake that had cost Five the majority of what left of his childhood.

“I think that’s it,” Viktor said as he glanced over the kids. “You guys are all guests in our home while we wait for your parents to come and pick you up. I’m going to go get some of the camping equipment form the garage so that we can set you up with beds downstairs in the rec room, but feel free to hang out with the others. Kids, I want you to give anyone that has a phone mine and Dad’s numbers so that should you chose to go anywhere I know where that is. Also, explain the house rules to them,” Viktor addressed the last half towards his own children.

It may have seemed strange to the outside observer, a parenting passing off their duties as the adult onto the children, but Viktor was very quickly becoming overwhelmed and clearly needed to go do something physical before his powers went awry and started breaking things again.

“Psi, Keiren, if you would come with me,” Five said as he stood up from the couch. He noticed that Keiren was staring off into space and not listening to him, so he tapped his son’s leg and then signed what he had just said. Keiren nodded and then got up to follow after his father once Psi had separated from the rest of the kids.

Silence took over the living room as they all tried to process what was going on. Mateo then blanched and sprang to his feet, “I left Ronan in my room!”

The rest of the universe-natives rolled their eyes at their brother but then didn’t say anything. “Who’s Ronan?” Valentino asked as he turned to watch the other version of himself bolt up the stairs.

“Ronan is Mateo’s boyfriend. They’ve got a show tonight and they always hang out before their shows so that they can avoid making out on stage,” Imani explained.

Harun grimaced. “They did that the one singular time I decided that I was going to go to support him. It was nasty.”

“They think it’s funny,” Reyne laughed. “I think that it’s funny that Mateo gets yelled at for kissing his boyfriend during the middle of a performance and it’s encouraged for me to do that with Orion.”

“That’s because you’re supposed to. It’s in the stage directions,” Imani deadpanned.

Indie turned towards Valentino and said, “Almost every single version of you that we’ve run across has been in a punk band. That has to say something about you.”

Valentino left out a huff, “I think that it has something to do with how dope punk bands are.”

“Before anyone else has the chance to run away, we have a couple of house rules,” Harun said. For as much as Reyne liked to joke around that they were the eldest in the family since they were going to graduate sooner, Harun had the maturity to back up his claim. “I’ll give you the numbers for both us and our parents but no one is allowed to leave the house without telling one of the adults, preferably both, where you’re going.”

“Your parents really trust you that little?” Jayme asked as she folded her arms over her chest.

The kids all shared a look with each other. “We came to our papa back when our grandfather was still alive. Pogo knew that at least Andrya existed and so Papa had to be worried that Reginald was going to find out and take us all so that we’d be abused like our parents would be. It’s something that he struggles with and so we’re being nice to our parents by telling them where we’re going so that they don’t have to worry,” Einar explained.

The other kids went quiet as they were told the reason for the rule. It took about two beats for the next person to talk. Reyne shifted forward, “The second house rule is kind of complicated. I don’t know what the status of the Umbrella Academy is like from the universe that you guys are from but for us it was disbanded about seventeen years ago. So don’t use your powers in public and don’t mention any of the old heroes. We’ve managed to avoid the paparazzi finding out that Dad is the long-lost member of the Umbrella Academy for almost ten years so we don’t want to fuck that up now.” 

Einar finished as the explanation of the big rules as he said, “Also, to the public we present Andrya and Keiren as being biologically Dad and Papa’s because they look similar enough that people would start getting suspicious of the coincidence.”

The other kids took a moment to process all of that before they nodded. When thirty seconds passed with absolute silence, Imani slapped her hands on her legs and stood up. “Well this has been great and not at all stressful. I have to go finish my speech before the competition next week.”

She departed from the living room while Reyne and Harun gave each other a little look. They were so close that it was easy for them to communicate without speaking or using sign language. Andrya ran a hand through their hair before they redid their ponytail. Imani had been right about the situation being stressful, even if none of the rest of the siblings were particularly happy with how she had phrased it. The youngest of the Hargreeves wasn’t going to be able to deal with sensory issues on top of the very stressful situation that they had just been placed in.

“I have a question,” Claire said as she looked over the group. “Are all of your siblings with each other?”

“Oh, yeah, I guess we should have told you that,” Einar laughed. “Um, when we were all three Keiren accidentally opened a portal-”

“We should preface this by saying that this is technically not our native universe. We came from another one, that like every version of the Umbrella Academy was adopted away from our birth mothers like Reginald,” Reyne said before they motioned for their brother to go on. Now that Keiren was gone none of them were signing, but they still had the habit of speaking very clearly and turning towards the person that they were addressing so that their lips could be read properly.

“Right, right,” Einar nodded. “But anyway, when we were three Keiren opened a portal and Andrya fell through. We obviously don’t remember it but Papa tells the story a lot. He was twenty-three when he found them and pretty heavily medicated because of his version of Reginald. He brought her back to the house and that’s how Pogo and Grace found out about Andrya. They tried to medicate them too, but Papa thought that was weird and didn’t want to let them do that anymore.”

“I, um, I was the one that showed him he had powers,” Andrya said, though it was obvious that it was taking a lot out of them to do so. Reyne reached over, pulling their younger sibling close so that the fifteen-year-old could slump against them into the comfort of their body.

Einar gave his sibling a worried glance but continued the story, “When we were all five, Keiren opened another one and that’s how Papa ended up with Reyne and Harun. Some weird time stuff happened that resulted them being a year older than us but the four of us only experiencing a couple of weeks between when they went through and when we did. The rest of us all came through all at once.”

“Einar was pretty against being with Papa even though it was obvious everyone was happier here,” Reyne chuckled. “As obvious as it can be when you’re six and four, I guess.”

“Are you all not siblings with each other?”

“No,” Jayme and Fionn shared a quick look at each other like even the idea of that was very startling.

“It’s kind of complicated for us too,” Stan shrugged. “My mom got me from her friends in the eighties and then brought me back to the modern day. So I’m technically adopted, just like Valentino is.”

“I’m an alternate version of Diego. That’s his name in your universe, right?” Valentino asked, getting a nod from the siblings.

“I think that’s his name in every universe,” Emrys laughed. “It just suits him when he’s in that form.”

“Anyway. Valentino and I aren’t biologically Lila and Diego’s, but we’re just as much their kids as their biological daughter,” Stan finished. He folded his arms and then placed them on the back of the couch that he had been hovering around so that he was leaning forward slightly.

The natives to the universe nodded. They all knew what it was like to be adopted, since they had been taken in by someone that hadn’t given birth to them. Just then, it clicked in Andrya’s head and they moved away from their sibling to say, “Wait, biological daughter?”

“Yeah, we have a little sister. Her name is Navya, she was born not long after I got to the other universe,” Valentino nodded.

The siblings all looked at each other with huge, shocked eyes. “You don’t think…” Harun trailed off.

“I mean, Aunt Lila was acting a little bit off the last time that we saw her,” Reyne grinned wickedly.

“Should we really be speculating about this? There’s a chance that the universes are different enough that its not actually going to happen,” Andrya protested.

“Sweet, precious, baby sib,” Reyne cupped either side of their face and pressed an obnoxiously wet kiss to their forehead. “You’re too innocent. Aunt Lila is totally pregnant and she and Uncle Diego are just waiting to tell us all.”

Harun groaned, letting his head drop back against the couch, “Shit, this means that we’re going to have to pretend to act surprised.” There was a ripple of laughter between all of the teenagers in the living room despite the tension and anxieties that they had beforehand. The siblings all laughed while the visitors looked a little sheepish that they had managed to unveil a secret that the others weren’t supposed to know about yet.

---

Meanwhile, Five had brought Keiren and Psi out to the shed that he used for work in the backyard. The walls were all painted with a special kind of paint that allowed him to use chalk on them like a chalkboard. He had several bookshelves on wheels that he could move around when he needed more room in a spot that had been previously blocked. He also had a magnetic whiteboard in the center that was covered in papers that had notes about the timeline scribbled on them.

“I work for a company that is supposed to stop alterations and paradoxes from happening in the timeline. That means that I spend a lot of time calculating the jumps in the space-time continuum,” Five began to explain as hes at both boys down in the chairs near the desk. He signed as he spoke, both for himself and his son. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life.”

“Did you dump almost your entire family into another universe where they don’t belong?” Psi asked, arms folded over his chest and a frown plastered on his face.

Five chuckled. “I’ve never sent a member of my family somewhere they shouldn’t be before because of what I did to myself. When I was thirteen I decided that I was going to try time-traveling for the first time despite all of the warnings that Reginald had given me. He told me that trying to travel through time was like entering a frozen lake and emerging from the other side as an acorn. It was dangerous, stupid, and reckless. I did it anyway because I was a young teenager and then I got stuck. I lived in the year 2019 for almost a month before someone from the place where I now work came and collected me. She’s the woman I consider to be my mother even if I don’t particularly care for her anymore.”

“So you had to have someone come and clean up your mess too?” Psi asked as he shifted on his chair so that he was sitting up instead of all slouched over.

“I was too young for it to be a calculated mistake. It was a decision that I made on impulse that resulted in unindented consequences. It was an accident,” Five explained.

Keiren piped up then, apparently cluing in to what his father was doing. “When I was three I brought Andrya to this universe, and ten I did it again with Reyne and Harun when I was five. The only time I made the link between the two universes on purpose was when I brought everyone else here. I also make mistakes all the time, I end up two inches to the left of where I wanted to be or on top of a table. It’s why we’re not allowed to use our powers in the house.”

“Our ability is very complicated. The math that we have to do every time we make a jump is something that most people can’t even fathom before they get into college,” Five explained. “It’s understandable that someone around your guys’ age is going to make mistakes when it comes to that. You didn’t do it maliciously, you made a mistake and that’s okay.”

“But I got everyone stuck here. Not that you guys aren’t nice, I just know I’m worrying my parents and it sucks for all my cousins and siblings to have to put up with the mistake that I made,” Psi explained.

Five knew that kind of resentment, he had felt it towards himself for a very long time. The Handler, as a sort of strange punishment, had forced him to repair some of the more damaged cases and he had gotten several of them wrong, which sent agents to very different times than they were supposed to be in without the ability to get help. “It’s a risk that they know they’re taking when they use your power. Each of us has the ability to do something wrong that could hurt other people. Ours specifically is more difficult because it can land people in places like this. But that’s okay. I’m sure that they’ve forgiven you for making a mistake, Psi.”

“Yeah, they love you because they’re your family. Family is supposed to forgive each other,” Keiren nodded. He wasn’t very good at comforting people because he could rarely pay attention long enough to know their social cues but he was also pretty familiar with the frustration that came with their abilities. The three of them were naturally intelligent and gifted when it came to math, but that didn’t meant that they were immune to the same mistakes and accidents that every human was.

The adult leaned forward so that he could catch Psi’s eye. “I know that the feeling right now sucks and is making you feel even worse, but it does pass. You haven’t done anything that’s irreversible. Your parents are going to come looking for you soon and if they aren’t here in the next two days then you and I can work together to get you back, alright?”

The smaller version of him considered it for a moment before he gave a sure nod. “Right.”

“Come on, let’s go see if dinner is ready,” Five chuckled as he brought both boys back into the house.

---

Mateo had just finished explaining the basics of what had happened to Ronan as they finished coming down the stairs. While they weren’t allowed to use their powers willy-nilly and explain who their parents had been earlier in their lives, several people very close to the Hargreeves were aware of their powers and how they had originally ended up in the universe. They figured that if someone decided to leak it, the Umbrella Academy had been dissolved for long enough that the news about what they really were either wouldn’t be believed or Allison and Imani could clean it up to protect the family’s anonymity.

I’m really sorry that we have to cancel tonight’s show. I just don’t think it’s a good idea with everything that happened this afternoon, Mateo signed.

Ronan was a little bit dressed up, like he always got right before a show, but most of his show-clothing was tucked away in the bag slung over his back. He was wearing a short black and red checkered skirt with a studded leather belt. His shirt was tucked in at the waist and black as well, with blocky white writing spelling out their band name. He was wearing just a little bit of mascara and eyeliner with red lipstick that matched his skirt. The taller teenager smiled softly at Mateo before he tilted the other boy’s face up to give him a sweet kiss. It’s alright. Next week?

They didn’t get to finish their discussion as Indie and Valentino poked their head around the door leading into the hallway. “You guys are in a band too, right?”

“Oh, yeah,” Mateo was still signing as he spoke. That was one of the things that he and Ronan had originally bonded over, the fact that Mateo was fluent and sign and fairly immersed the deaf community even if he himself was hearing because of his father and brother.

“What kind of music do you play?” Indie asked, signing as well.

“You don’t have to sign, I have my hearing aids in,” Ronan turned his head to the side to reveal the black device. “They’re not even the old pair that I use for shows.”

Mateo stared at his boyfriend with a kind of dopey smile, his eyes soft and adoring. Valentino and Indie shared a look with each other before the former asked, “What kind of music do you play?”

“Depends on the venue. We’ve got a hardcore album out on Spotify but I prefer classic rock,” Ronan shrugged. “We usually get booked for hardcore shows because I can play them really well. The classic rock is a little harder to get booked for because it’s more mainstream. Hardcore let’s us play in the back of pizza parlors and abandoned garages.”

“You guys are punk too, right?” Mateo asked. It only made sense for the other universe version of himself to share that trait,

“Yeah, we’ve got a band together,” Indie nodded. “Maybe we can show you some of our stuff.”

“I don’t know how well files from other universes are going to transfer because your band certainly doesn’t exist on streaming services in this universe,” Five chuckled as he walked over to the children. “Wrap up so that we can have dinner, alright?”

“Yes, Dad,” Mateo immediately replied. Five looked over the children as if checking to make sure that they were all still there and okay before he walked into the living room to have the same discussion with the rest of the kids.

“It was nice meeting the two of you. Indie and Valentino, right?” Ronan asked, pointing to them both respectively.

“Yeah, how did…?” Valentino trailed off.

Mateo looked down at his feet with a flush on his face. “I kind of tell him everything.”

The taller teenager grinned as he wrapped an arm around his boyfriend’s shoulder. “Loses his filter around me every single time. All I have to do is tilt his face up and kiss him.”

“Kisses from someone taller than you are pretty nice,” Indie conceded as they thought back to their own boyfriend back in their home universe.

Ronan chuckled and then said, “Nice chair, by the way. If you wanna spice it up there’s some good backing covers that you can find on etsy. My mom uses when for hers.” After that he paused just long enough to give Mateo a last kiss before he slipped out of the door and headed towards his car so that he could go home.

“That was thoroughly embarrassing,” Mateo muttered to himself as he locked the door.

“I like your boyfriend,” Valentino chuckled. “It’s nice to know that wherever we go we can still pull the hottest person int he room.”

“You should see him when he performs,” Mateo replied. He pulled his phone out of his pocket to show the duo some of their promotional band snapshots that they had convinced Calliope, Ronan’s twin, to take of them after Mateo had joined the band. They had to almost redo everything after they added another member to the group, but at that point Ronan and Darcy (the previous two members of the band) had enough supporters that they were able to call in their favors no problem.

The trio was completely enveloped in their discussion about music and instruments other than the classical ones that everyone else in Mateo’s family played. He was eager to have someone other than his uncle and bandmates to talk about this with. Mateo was awkward enough, and did a plethora of other activities that made him unappealing to some of the more mainstream punks, that it was hard for him to make friends his age that were interested in all of the things that he was.

Viktor came to collect them almost ten minutes later when dinner was finally ready. Einar and Fionn had just finished helping him extend the table with a couple of the removable eaves and get the additional chairs out from the kitchen closet. It was something that they did every time their piblings and cousins came over, so there was plenty of room for their guests at the table.

“I don’t know if any of you are vegetarian or vegan, but that’s what these two pizzas are,” Viktor explained. “We also have these two that don’t have lactose for Reyne and Emrys. I got a couple things other than pizza too because I don’t know what all your preferences are so I wanted to make sure that everyone had something to eat.”

“Thanks, Papa,” Imani kissed his cheek as she took a portion of the vegetarian pizza and then sat down at her regular spot.

Everyone else got the food that they wanted and then sat down at the table. Most of them sat near their counterparts so that they could talk about the differences between them, which is what they were all curious about. They were all chatting quietly, discussing their differences in extracurriculars, sexuality, and career choice quietly amongst each other. Several of the conversations petered out while people turned away from their counterpart and began to talk with some of the others that they found they were more similar to.

Then, Andrya smacked their hand into the table hard enough to make the plates and cups rattle. The visitors to their universe jumped, all startled by the sudden sound, all turning towards the person that had made it. The natives to the universe, on the other hand, looked up and towards the youngest of the Hargreeves. “Sorry,” they winced when they realized how badly they had startled the others. “I was just trying to get Keiren’s attention, he took his hearing aids out and that’s how we get his attention when he can’t hear us. I didn’t mean to startle anyone.”

They were talking so quickly and nervously that their fingers stuttered over the sign, leaving it messy and half done. Viktor reached over the table and placed his hand on their arm, “Take a deep breath. You’re okay. They were just startled, no one is mad at you.”

“Yeah, we just didn’t expect you to do that,” Indie immediately nodded. “I didn’t know that was the way that you got the attention of people that are deaf or hard of hearing.”

“It’s because we can feel the vibrations through the table. It’s also the way that someone can get our attention when we’re in another room, by stomping,” Five explained while signing along with his words. “We’re sorry that it startled you, this is just something that we do in our family so we didn’t even think about it.”

“It’s okay,” Claire quickly said, ever the diplomat in this universe or the next. “We were just surprised. Now that we know it’ll be easier for us to adjust. We don’t expect you to stop communicating with each other in the way that you’re used to and need to just for us.”

“Andrya is kind of nervous about it because some bullies at our school were being ableist and decided that they were going to harass them about it. Papa and Dad quickly put a stop to that by having a visit with the principal about their accessibility issues, but it still kind of sets us all on edge because we’re worried something like that is going to happen again,” Harun explained. He was the second most protective over his baby sibling, right after Einar, so that whole situation still really bothered him.

The rest of dinner went very smoothly. Keiren was taking care of the leftover pizza boxes while the rest of the kids were sent up to their rooms so that they could get some of the things from their room. They were all going to be sleeping in the downstairs rec room that night since none of them wanted to be away from each other when they felt like they had so much to discuss with each other.

Viktor was walking the rest of the kids downstairs to show them where they would be sleeping while Five approached the teenager. “Indie, I’m afraid out house isn’t very disability accessible and unfortunately the upper and lower floors are only available via the stairs. Luckily, our downstairs area where the rest of the kids are staying has a mini-kitchen that is stocked with plenty of snacks and dishes and it has a full bathroom. Do you feel comfortable staying down there or would you prefer to be on the ground floor so that you can get out?”

The young teenager considered it for a moment, slumped back in their chair. “I think that I can handle being downstairs. It sounds nice and I want to be with the everyone else,” they finally answered. Five knew how much it sucked to be disabled in a world that wasn’t very accommodating to that kind of thing, even if their disabilities were very different.

“Alright,” he nodded. “Do you want me to teleport you downstairs or would you prefer that I carry you and then bring your chair down afterwards?”

“Can you teleport me?” Indie asked politely.

Five nodded. He walked behind them and then told them when he was going to touch their wheelchair and then when he teleported them both down to the basement. The kids all got their sleeping arrangements spread out along the floor. The natives had several of their mattresses spread out on the ground while the visitors got to be on the pull out couch and a couple of the camping cots so that they were comfortable. Viktor had also brought down as many pillows and blankets as he had been able to find so that they could all be comfortable.

They all settled in so that they could go to sleep, the conversations from earlier beginning to emerge again. Reyne had just settled down on her bed after putting her hair back in a bun so that it wouldn’t bother her while she was sleeping when Emrys walked over and sat down next to her. “So, you said that you all came over way earlier than we did, right?”

“Yeah. I was about four or five when Papa adopted me. How old were you guys?” Reyne asked. She was very different from the other version of herself. Emrys seemed a little bit more quiet and reserved than Reyne was, but the had the same fire and passion burning endlessly inside of them.

“I was eight,” they explained. “How did you deal with the ghosts, by the way? I can’t imagine that your version of Viktor would have been okay with you using substances.”

The other teenager thought about it for a moment before she answered, “I dunno. I guess I never really felt like I had to deal with them. I had only been getting training for a little while since I had just gotten fine motor control and the ability to talk by the time I was taken away from my version of Reginald. Papa always made sure that I knew what the ghosts were and why they weren’t scary. He made sure that all of us knew there was nothing to be scared of because he was there to protect us. I think it had something to do with how he grew up.”

“How did he grow up?” Emrys asked. “My Uncle Viktor was the Number One of the Umbrella Academy and the strongest out of all the siblings. I mean, he has the same sensory overload thing that all of the versions of him do but my uncle doesn’t seem nearly as anxious as your dad does.”

Reyne blew out a breath as she began to explain, “Well, my papa was number seven, first of all.”

“They had the same ranks that we did then, before we came over and stopped being in the Umbrella Academy,” Emrys nodded.

“I think that it’s pretty rare to find a version of the Academy that didn’t have that ranking system,” Reyne laughed. “But anyway. Gramps decided that since Dad’s powers were too much for him to handle with training that he was going to pretty heavily medicate him.”

“Same thing happened with Indie. That was why they agreed to go through the portal in the first place, you know. Viktor immediately recognized it and took them off of those meds so that they could become the person we know today,” she laughed.

Reyne knocked its foot into the other teenagers before it continued explaining. It gave a small shudder when it realized how quickly its gender was changing and fluctuating, most likely because it was around so many new people and trying to figure out how it wanted to be seen around them. “Well, I think that’s where the difference happened. Papa was drugged for his entire life, to the point where he wasn’t even able to discover what his gender was until like a month after he had gotten Andrya and stopped the meds. Reginald isolated him from all the other members of the Umbrella Academy. He made sure that Viktor was never included in anything beyond lessons. According to my Uncle Ben, both Five and Ben tried to be close to him but Reginald tried really hard to make sure that they couldn’t do that. Everyone was totally a dick to him so he felt scared and alone his entire life. When he got us I guess he just decided that he didn’t want any of that to happen anymore.”

“Makes sense. Is Ben dead in your universe?” Emrys asked, tacking on the last half of the sentence like that part of Reyne’s story had just occurred to her.

The rest of the room quieted down, obviously interested in that part of the story too. Reyne screwed up its face before it answered, “Yeah. Uncle Ben died eighteen years ago. None of the adults will talk about what happened and Uncle Ben doesn’t like to talk about it so I don’t force him to.”

“That’s really fucking weird,” Indie grimaced.

“In our universe, Ben, Quentin, and Viktor are in a polyamorous relationship together. Quentin is our version of Five, by the way,” Hiroshi explained. “It’s weird to think that in a universe where they were all controlled by Reginald the entire time they were growing up and without Viktor’s powers being unlocked that I would have died.”

“Yeah, it’s kind of freaky for me to think about that too,” Harun admitted. “It’s gotten easier though, the more I talk to Uncle Ben’s ghost. We think that he’s pretty close to making peace with the fact that he’s dead and doesn’t get to spend all the time he wants with his siblings though. Like, he’s going to pass on soon.”

“Harun has been helping me on that front since I learned how to call ghosts from the afterlife. Uncle Ben goes back and forth between the afterlife and being a ghost. He spends more time in the afterlife though, so I think it’ll become permanent soon,” Reyne explained. The conversations drifted back so that they were all talking about what they had been before and the attention was no longer directly focused on the two psychics.

Emrys flipped over so that she was laying on her stomach and toying with some loose strings on the blanket spread over Reyne’s bed. “So have you ever walked around in a graveyard after dark?”

It let out a small snort. “Why would I do that when the ghosts at the theater that I perform at are so much more fun to be around and I have a key?”

“Do you think that we could go?” Emrys asked, their eyes lighting up with pure excitement.

The other teenager quickly got off of her bed and then began to rush to the staircase. “There’s only one way to find out, let’s go ask my parents!”

Emrys was off the bed in an instant and rushing after her alternate universe counterpart. None of them had changed into their pajamas yet since it was only about seven o’clock at night, which meant that they could get going on their journey a lot quicker than they would if they had to change. 

The duo came to a stop as they reached the living room where Five and Viktor were cuddling on the couch. “Hey, baby, everything okay?” Viktor asked as he detached from his husband and sat up to face his eldest.

“Yup! Do you think that I could bring Emrys to the theater? I wanted to show her around and introduce her to some of my ghost pals. I think that they’d really like some of them since they’re interested in graves and ghosts and stuff,” Reyne explained. She was being rambly and a little bit avoidant of what she was actually asking in the hopes that it would make her father more likely to say yes.

“I’m not sure that you two going out into the real world is such a good idea right now,” he pursed his lips and glanced back at Five.

The other man looked between the two teenagers and saw how desperate they were to go on this adventure with each other. Five was well aware of how much his daughter wanted to be connected to someone that could see ghosts. Even though Klaus was mostly clean at this point in his life, he still flitted in and out of everyone’s lives in such a way that it made it hard for Reyne to really connect with him.

“Do you promise to text us every half hour with a proof of life picture?” Five asked. He was holding his husband’s hand to help Viktor feel more secure with the decision to let Reyne leave the house after something so stressful had happened.

“Yes,” the teenager immediately agreed.

Five gave a little nod. They were both aware that Viktor struggled with his children being out of hearing range where he couldn’t check that they were okay. It was the only thing that any of the kids had ever heard their parents talk about. While Reginald had been too eager to put them in danger, Viktor had tried to swing too far the other way so that he wasn’t letting them do anything risky. It was a fight for him to try and let them do things that he viewed as needlessly dangerous, so Reyne was happy to give in to her parents demands if it meant that they would feel better about letting her have adventures.

“I think that it’s not unreasonable to shorten down your weekend curfew to ten because of everything that’s happened today,” Five said.

"Right. So ten o'clock we're back in the house," she nodded in agreement. 

“And how are you going to get there and back to the house?” Viktor asked. He was trying his best to let his daughter make her own decisions, but it was obvious that she was struggling. 

"Bria has some family stuff she's doing so I was going to ask her for a ride since she'll be driving that way anyway. You know she'll want a moment to escape to bring us back too," Reyne explained. She then turned to the other teenager and said, "Bria is my girlfriend, by the way."

"Alright. But only because I like her and she keeps you out of unhealthy amounts of trouble. Please be safe," Viktor smiled nervously at them. 

Reyne leaned down and kissed both of her parents on the cheek before she tugged Emrys over to the door so they could wait for the aforementioned girlfriend. They both talked about some of their experiences with ghosts and then the differences between Klaus in their worlds.

They waited in the decompression room for the car to arrive. As soon as it did, Reyne dragged the other version of herself outside. She beamed when she saw her girlfriend, rushing over to give her a quick kiss on the lips. Bria was leaning against the hood of her beat up white car, dressed in a pair of nice blue jeans and a half unbuttoned dress shirt that revealed her lacy undershirt. Her overly curly red hair was tucked back into a bun that barely contained it.

“Hey sweetheart,” she laughed as she pressed their lips together in a quick kiss. She kept one hand on her girlfriend’s hip while she extended the other one to the alternate universe version of herself. “It’s nice to meet you, my name is Bria.”

“Emrys. I love your outfit,” she beamed as she took the offered hand.

“Thanks. I usually wear a lot less clothing but I have a family thing so I have to look at least somewhat presentable,” she laughed. She gave Reyne another brief kiss on the cheek before she got into the driver’s side of the car. Emrys took the back while Reyne got in on the passenger’s side.

The beginning half of the car ride was spent with Bria asking questions about what had happened and Reyne patiently explaining it. Similar to Ronan, Bria had everything explained to her after she started dating Reyne and spending more time around the house. No one liked having to pretend like they didn’t have powers and they hadn’t come from a different universe when they were in the comfort of their own home, especially not as often as it would have taken had Ronan and Bria not been updated. The second half was spent singing along to the radio, which was playing a playlist of the songs that Reyne and Bria were going to be performing in their upcoming play.

They pulled into the abandoned parking lot at the back of the theater. Despite what it was like on a normal day, it was closed to rehearsals that night so they were going to be the only living people in the building. Bria turned so that she was looking back at Emrys, “I don’t know how long you’re going to be staying with Reyne but I would love the opportunity to paint the two of you.”

“Depending on how long we end up staying, I would love that. I don’t know how long it’s going to take my Uncle Five to get to us either,” they explained. They all bade their goodbyes and then the duo was left standing at the back entrance of the haunted theater, giddy with anticipation.

---

The next morning, all of the kids were exhausted as they hauled themselves out of bed around nine in the morning. Reyne and Emrys had gotten back at ten just like they had promised, but then they had all stayed up for hours while talking about the differences in their universes. The ones that were interested in it had also painted each other’s nails and done their hair in different styles.

They all slowly made their way upstairs so that they could eat something. Einar was teaching Fionn how to make pancakes when a portal began to swirl open in the living room. “Kids?” the adult version of Five from that universe shouted to try and get their attention from wherever they might be in the house.

“Dad!” Indie beamed as they quickly wheeled themself from the kitchen and into the living room again. Psi followed after, though he paused and looked shamefully down at the ground once he reached there.

Viktor and Five were in the living room in an instant, worried that someone might there to hurt the children. They relaxed when they saw that their visitors obviously recognized that version of Five, assured that it was safe. The rest of the kids piled from the kitchen, the visitors feeling excited to go home but dismayed that they wouldn’t have more time with their new friends.

“You’re all here? That’s going to make it a lot easier. For a second there I was worried that I was going to have to search different universes for all of you,” he chuckled. He hugged his children, as if to just confirm that they were okay and really there in front of him. Viktor could relate to that. He then straightened out and motioned towards the portal. “Come on, everyone go through.”

There was a good deal of hugging from those that liked touch and several goodbyes before each of the visitors finally stepped back into the portal and into the waiting arms of their parents. Quentin turned towards Five and Viktor, “Thank you for taking care of my children and niblings. I appreciate it.”

“It was no trouble, they’re all good kids. Thanks for coming to get them,” Five smiled at the other version of himself. He settled a hand on Viktor’s shoulder to try and reassure his husband that it was okay, that he didn’t have to get anxious now that the bad situation was over.

Quentin nodded towards all of them and then stepped back through the portal so that he could close it and seal the rift between the two universes.

#fanfiction #fanfic #writing #ao3 #archive of our own #the umbrella academy #tua #tua fanfiction #the umbrella academy fanfiction #viktor hargreeves #five hargreeves #luther hargreeves #diego hargreeves #allison hargreeves #klaus hargreeves #ben hargreeves #umbrella ben #number one #number two #number three #number four #number five #number six #number seven #tua number one #tua number two #tua number three #tua number four #tua number five #tua number six

[charliethemanticore]

Hi! I watch/read a lot of anime/manga, so I figured I'd discuss the filler thing with you! Hope that's ok!

That's actually a very good point, I never thought about it that way! I think people disregard filler and don't consider it a regular addition to an adaptation, like it happens in other movies or shows, because in most cases its point is not to add anything worthwhile to the story, but to gain some time to not catch up to the manga.

So then, particularly in longer anime such as Naruto or Bleach, there are these entire arcs that completely deviate from the story and are ultimately pointless and stick out like a sore thumb. Whatever happened there is never brought back again, and its characters are promptly discarded as soon as the arc ends. This is something that doesn't happen in adaptations in other media (as far as I know), and what makes filler such an unique thing to anime.

Then there are cases where from some point on the anime completely deviates from its source material, such as Fullmetal Alchemist 2003 or Soul Eater. People don't refer to its original content as filler anymore because there's an understanding that they're doing their own thing.

I think what ultimately draws the line on what's filler or not it's its purpose and of course this is not a black or white thing, or matter of quality. Most people would agree that FMA 2003's ending is garbage, and the episode in DBZ where Goku and Piccolo learn how to drive is incredible. But then in cases where filler adds to and elevates the source material, can we still refer to it as such? That's a more difficult question! But I think we can all agree that Naruto's filler is pretty pointless, it made the show near unwatchable, and it's as fillery as filler can get. It's there to fill time and nothing else, no one's happy that it exists but alas it's there.

Sorry this got so long haha

Disclaimer: I have a migraine so this is very rambly and not the response such a well thought-out explanation deserves.

Thank you so much for your perspective I really appreciate it. (Also I feel like my tags were misleading. I watch a lot of anime I'm just like... Sitting in the corner doing my own thing bc I find active participation in fandom tends to be bad for my specific combination of issues)

But my biggest toxic trait is I fucking love like... 60% of the Naruto filler arcs (they're the only time my most beloved shino gets any real airtime and he DESERVES IT)

BUT based on every conversation I've had with my friends about this, this is because I have very different... Requirements when it comes to the stuff I like. The filler arcs are silly and fun and I enjoy them immensely (the only one I couldn't watch to completion was the robot Naruto one). Have a lot of complicated feelings about them though. Like The Three-Tails' Appearance is great because shino gets to be competent and Lee is a sweetheart and Sakura and Ino get to work together... But if that adorable child plays that leaf whistle one more time I may cry (guess where I'm up to in my rewatch)

Bleach filler is so much worse. Bount arc wasn't even enjoyable 0/10 couldn't even be saved by hot villains. I watched all but one arc of Naruto. I did not grant the same to bleach, it burned me too many times.

DBZ filler is complicated though because a lot of the filler has canon stuff sprinkled in which I think is a more seamless way to buy time - sprinkling filler into existing arcs rather than having just... 76 episodes of near continuous filler NARUTO. I understand the constraints were different though.

(fma:b is one of my favourites and I sort of just pretend 2003 didn't happen. It has some good points but I just can't. The author told them to go with their hearts and I respect that they committed but results were questionable)

Point is I think it's really interesting to see how other people interact with media because I'm mostly just sitting here like "are my favourite little guys talking? Brilliant. 10/10 you're doing great sweetie etc" im stressed out by literally everything else, a few episodes of some kids trying to unmask their teacher is enrichment in my enclosure

#asks #thank you for such a well thiught out response

[frenchgremlim1808]

How to spot a toxic ship community in somes steps

I have been apart of many toxic ship community before and after a certain time of interacting with them I started seeing a pattern. It's not like a scientific research or something's, I'm just a bored idiot but I thought it could be helpful

Before i start i just wanna clarify some point, being a fan of a ship who is sadly in a toxic community doesn't make you toxic (ex: you can ship komahina without being a toxic person). Any ships that i used as a reference in the post is not meant to be Taken as an insult towards you okay, it's just my opinion. No hate

Let's start :

1.They act like their ship is the only one who's important and better than the others

For exemple: -They seems to only care for their ship. -They would be able to sacrifice any characters or any ships for theirs to thrive. - They commit slander against other ships fan for no particular reason except being mean and acting like their ship is either a joke or not as interesting as theirs

2.They harass/dox people with differing opinions to them about the ship/characters

It can come in different ways, like for example doxxing address, bullying shippers who ships the character with somebody else, forcing their own opinions on others about the character/ship, harrass the actor/ actress for shipping a different ship or not shipping the ship in general ( wow that make me think of something, but what...,🧐)

3.They tend to make make problematic content for their characters

Okay, when I talk about problematic content, I don't really talk about sex. If both characters are consenting adults then everything's fine. I'm mostly referencing sex with minors characters. A lot of fandom tend to forget that the characters are under the legal age of either consent or maturity. That means they are children, which means it child porn. An example .... Bakudeku I don't need to explain myself.

Then we can see other problematic things like for example shits like abuse, yandere,torture ,obssesion which aren't the characters real personality but are implented in fics for being "sexy". But I think you get my point

Also just because some people did problematic things doesn't mean that the whole community is filled with psycho p*do, it's mostly about the numbers of people who do it.

4. THE +

This are the things that don't really make the community toxic in itself but combined with the other point can show you that's it's pretty toxic, in itself it's just cringe or annoying or just normal. No community is perfect so it's normal to have some of the trait I have mentioned and some I'm gonna mention now. Let's start:

They sexualize a lot the characters,they use one off the characters as a self insert for themself cause they just want to ship themself with them,the idolise the characters and put them on a pedestal, they act like the characters are perfect and did nothing wrong, if the characters are m/m or w/w they fetishize the relationship just because they're gay ( like treating all the gay character like uwus boy in skirt who always talk about sex, the mostly feminize them)/ they don't seem to accept other interpretation of the characters, they always tryies to bend the story for their own enjoyment and don't seem to accept the reality of what happened in the show / They seem to like the characters only for the fanon interpretation and not the canon one , etc

They're is probably more things so comment what you think I missed.

CONCLUSION:

If the ship in question check some af the dots doesn't mean that your ship community is toxic, I'm a byler and I know even tough my community is welcoming that were not perfect and we check some of these dots. But's that normal. Every community is kinda cringe. But like if the ship in question check all the dots I consider running. Don't interact to much with the community and stays with the sanes one.

Anyway I'm tired, for once I did an analysis, but the memes are coming back soon, I don't have my computer so you have to wait. ( You can use this in an argument just credit me)

-a french gremlim

#byler #you guys are my people #stranger things #anti mileven #oh also you can take all the point and inverse them it can make what is a positive ship community #lumax #elmax #like them