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monitorchakas · 1 year

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343 Guilty Spark Mega Fan Girl DUMP

Hi welcome to my trash takes that started sometime before 2007 and has continued well into the future

Fyi: I will talk spoilers without warning for both forerunner saga and rion forge trilogy

Part 1- Bungie Era

Yes I loved 343 Guilty Spark before he got any of his big character development. I'm a huge fan of scifi robots I was also obsessing over portal and hal 9000 around this time. I defend hal 9000 too lmao read the books to find out why

He's round hes cute hes really just following protocol ok leave him alone.

I VIVIDLY remember my highschool friend being like BUT WHY DO YOU LIKE HIM??? and me responding :

I've always been in love with the "mystery of the forerunners" especially in Halo 1 where we are just walking around this ancient beautiful place with 0 knowledge of it. Guilty Spark has always been the one connection we have to forerunners and that makes him awesome.

even before 343 industries made those (absolutely perfect amazing) terminals we knew that Guilty Spark had been alone for 101,217 years on a ring, he witnessed everyone who was susceptible to the flood die as planned.

Halo 3 Era we learn all he knows is his halo ring because his makers limited his knowledge to only about his ring thru

compartmentalization

(which is clever mention at the end of primordium. I know bungie didn't intend it, I don't care still think it's neat) (halo 3 the ark cutscene)

He's always been interesting to me, he never meant to be evil, he's just programmed to be the way he is. He literally doesn't know any better

"Protocol dictated my response"

"Now I have only one function to help you reclaimer as I always should have done"

"The installation was my responsibility"

"I take no pleasure in doing what must be done"

P.S. I've watched the halo 1-3 cutscenes so many times that I can recite some of them word for word. Lmao

I legit made a cardboard foam version of Guilty Spark during this era (and tim dadabo saw pictures of it online!!!) Also wore a Guilty Spark dog tag to school for many days. It was confused a few times with Wheatley and sometimes I just let people think it was Wheatley lmao.

Also NO JOKE First time I played the library (I was in middle school mind you) had a dream about walking around in the library (empty of flood) and finding a broken little guilty spark. Weird takeaway but Im convinced the universe was foreshadowing my blorbo obsession lmao

Around this time I made a Master Chief costume out of cardboard and got my helmet signed by Steve Downes. I was around 15yrs old, this was literally the greatest thing to happen to little me

Part 2- Forerunner Saga

I really didn't expect my beloved blorbo bleebus the one skrunkly mofo that everyone else seemed to hate to get content past Halo 3's Saddest Anime Ending. Yet here we are!

Prelude: the halo 3 terminals. I definitely printed the transcript out and read them in class instead of actually paying attention in school lol I remember being obsessed with Mendicant Bias. Funny that he'd later be involved in killing Chakas...

Jan 4, 2011, 2 days before my bday, 1 day after my best friend's bday, Halo Cryptum was released. During the time before this day I was major hyped about this book. I was caught up with all previous halo books, I wanted the mysterious forerunner lore, and best of all here is the chance to get some lore of my favorite Guilty Spark.

I remember preordering this book without paying the extra amount to get it signed. I remember being very confused as to why I'd pay to have a book signed before I had read it. I'll regret this for the rest of my life.....

I absolutely adored Cryptum. I love adventure books and the beginning half is just so amazing and special!!! I remember being slightly disappointed that Guilty Spark never showed up (lol to my knowledge at the time) but the book was SO GREAT that I didn't even care. Also Chakas name was so funny at the time I had recently seen "shaka when the walls fell" - Star Trek TNG

I started stalking when the next book in the forerunner trilogy would release because I MUST KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO CHAKAS RISER AND BORNSTELLAR MY POOR BABIES also hopefully Guilty Spark will show up?? Haha!! I remember someone asked 343i in some panel if Guilty Spark had any lore in the forerunner trilogy and they responded something along the lines "we have something big planned for him but we can't elaborate"

Needless to say my hype was astronomical

Later that year GUILTY SPARK CRASHED COMICON!!! HALO CEA (my favorite halo game) REMAKE WITH TERMINALS!!!! SCREAMING AGCTJCDYUC!!!

I watched this video about 101,217 times:

youtube

Also hey!! Primordium is releasing Jan 3, 2012 on my best friend's bday!!!

A Great Time For Guilty Spark fan like me

I watched the first few terminals in early Dec then went on vacation and had to finish the rest later which unbeknownst to me worked nicely because this meant Id be reading Primordium and watching the halo cea terminals side by side which made me suspicious of the chakas/guilty spark connection because

Guilty Spark in the library and the maw terminal speaks VERY FONDLY of the Librarian, and Chakas also just speaks very FONDLY of her thru most of the book. Plus Chakas is revealed to be a monitor at the beginning of the book so I definitely was thinking THATS SUS!!!!

Going back to Dec I remember reading the preview first chapter of primordium on vacation at the top floor of my grandma's house by stealing neighbors internet and I don't know why I remember this so vividly I must have really enjoyed this moment

When Primordium released I spent the entire book going "Is Guilty Spark Chakas? No it can't be thats stupid" because reasons explained above and also every time a monitor would show up id think "uhh Guilty Spark???" Thought the same of Genemender lol.

Also forgot to mention: I was at first very upset that they had killed my boy Chakas like what the heck they mean saying he's a monitor How Dare They??? LOWKEY STILL UPSET

FUN FACT: I WAS 18 YEARS OLD WHEN PRIMORDIUM RELEASED

I remember being like WOW CHAKAS IS around the same age as me!!!! Which just makes his death ever more tragic.

I've said it before I'll say it again, even before the Guilty Spark reveal, I genuinely enjoyed Primordium. I like adventure books and I like character development. Walking around aimlessly on a halo ring by characters Im already in love with from the previous book is great. Also Gamelpar.... he's so absolutely great.

Remember when people started using Salty as a term? Well I found that silly and slightly annoying so I started telling anyone who would use that word "WELL THE GODS PISS SALT THATS WHY SOME ANIMALS LIVE BETTER IN SALTWATER" Nobody around me understood and my explanations only caused more confusion and I still think thats hilarious.

Anyway book ending. I immediately recognized

COMPARTMENTALIZATION

Because this is legit my favorite Halo 3 Guilty Spark cutscene. He looks so absolutely adorable here. Look at him!! He does a twirl!! Cuteee!!!! AAAA!!

I definitely was very happy that my earlier suspicions were correct, but very sad that my boy's human life had ended. Such conflict, much sad.

Also HOLY SHIT HIM TAKING CONTROL OF THE RUBICON I LEGIT ENJOYED THAT ENDING WAY MORE THAN I SHOULD HAVE

Anyway I made this 343 Guilty Spark plush this year (2012) lol

So lets talk about primordium releasing in 2012 and renegades releasing in 2019. Do you know how long 7 years is to a nerd like me? Yes Silentium Continued part of the story, but holy shit getting spark back in the current halo timeline then waiting 7 years to continue

I begin to understand how guilty spark felt after the halo rings were fired just waiting alone for 100,000 years just like me waiting alone for 7 years gosh this is so corny lmao

Silentium was great my favorite part was when Monitor Chakas rescued Bornstellar and said the whole "chakas could have murdered you back on erde tyrene and he didn't" because you know BEST FRIENDS SO PRECIOUS

I have lots of fond memories of listening to the forerunner trilogy audio books during long car trips. One time we were on our way to take a ferry to an island and I jokingly went "I hope they are playing the right songs" to which my brother rolled his eyes (I was referencing the merse lol). I associate a lot of my adventures with halo audiobooks and its awesome.

I remember Halo 4 came out and I thought for sure we'd see Spark when we saw the Librarian

Lol Nope. Not mad, Halo 4 is a masterpiece and I will forever miss that era of halo especially now that we have the train wrecks that are 5 and 6.

When Halo 5 came out, I didn't buy the game. I watched the cutscenes on youtube, was horrified and didn't interact with halo for about a year or so. I fell behind on the halo books. I'm still behind.

I still occasionally stalked Guilty Spark's Halopedia for that possible Primordium sequel but this was much less often than before. I was very upset at what they did to our Cinnamon roll Cortana.

Part 3- Rion Forge Trilogy

So May 11 2019... I check Guilty Spark's halopedia page because hey I haven't done this in years what the heck

and I see the Armiger...

So after waiting 7 years. I finally got my book.... But Im almost 3 months late...

Needless to say I went that same day to Barnes and noble and bought the book. Started reading it and didn't get very far. I still had not read Smoke and Shadows so lol didn't make much sense. I couldn't find a local bookstore that had it so I got the digital copy. I hate digital copies.

I genuinely LOVED Smoke and Shadows I was very upset when they killed Cayde and its cool that Rion is Halo Wars Forge's daughter. Also FINALLY SOME EVIL SPACE CIA LORE. I hadn't enjoyed that since back when hunt the truth came out

On to Renegades: I was so genuinely excited for this book after 7 years, we got the sequel, And what a great sequel it was.

I love how organic and down to earth these books are. It's own style not something epic and out there like Greg Bear. It's the perfect place in time for Spark to regain touch with his own humanity.

I love the relationships of all the characters! I love watching them all forced interact with Spark whether they wanted to or not (Niko sure wanted to lol)

Gonna list some highlights from the book in no particular order:

When they went to Myer's Moon and Spark sat on top of a rock waiting for the right moment to shoot a fish out of the water. You don't understand. I grew up near the ocean, sitting on top of rocks waiting for an opportunity to catch a fish (which I later released)... this is absolutely great and so oddly close to me...

When Spark compared himself to Niko, where he said something along the lines of "the life and friendships stolen from me (chakas) since he was Niko's age when he became Spark. Also him wondering if his mom and sisters ever looked for him, if they thought he died in a knife fight. My brother is now near Chakas age. So that hits differently now...

When they got their stuff back from ONI and Spark snatched up Rion from falling and him later snatching up the siblings and lecturing them to be more careful!!

Spark going back to Erde Tyrene.... holy shit. I remember him asking to go back in Silentium...

Spark telling the librarian that "the greater good is merely an excuse for the strong to make decisions for the weak"

Them doing the ritual at the end and Spark letting go of his friends....pain...

This book was definitely very special to me. I'm really glad they put so much thought and love into this redemption arc. (Even though he didn't need redemption in my eyes lol)

I remember how EXCITED I WAS for Point of Light

I remember just doing the weirdest most EXCITED scream when I saw it announced. And I mentioned it before will repeat I legit was freaking out internally when buying this. I was legit stupid levels of excited. I remember vividly how I felt when buying this...

I loved the connections we got in point of light to forerunner trilogy. I said this before but for the sake of this post: To prepare for this book I had reread a month or so before the forerunner trilogy and the two Rion Forge books and that was so absolutely rewarding especially since..... poor Spark got sent back to Zeta halo by the librarian. What a great mom!! /s

Gonna list some highlights from the book in no particular order:

Spark's redesign for this book is not only lore accurate but he looks GREAT much better than renegades

Spark and Little Bit interacting. I wish we got more....

The as was before place or w/e where Spark liked to pretend he was still Chakas on earth

Going back to installation 07 was great (horrible for Spark) but great to read, the silent cartographer.... omg... why wasn't it in infinite...

There were a few moments where Spark was doing "cool ai stuff" like when he destroyed all of ONIs bugs and trackers

Spark's (brief) interactions with Veridity (lowkey mad we didn't see her in infinite

When Spark was explaining how Chakas (innocently) thought he could trick the primordial/mendicant bias and escape

The ending.... where Spark says goodbye to Rion as Chakas and does a smirk..

Fun Fact! At the beginning of this book Spark talks about how his mom says to not dip you toes in still water since there's crocodiles and I read this a few days before I had plans to go kayaking in a swamp with gators and I was already pretty spooked about it and this didn't help lol.

Anyway I could continue but I think this enough random incoherent babbling from me. If I forgot to add anything Ill reblog or something

Thanks for coming to my SparkTalk

Ill leave you with my custom figure of Spark ❤

Never forget that he's baby lol

#halo #343 guilty spark #halo shitpost

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meeedeee · 3 years

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The First Post To The First Slash /Shipping Mailing List

The Date: October 19, 1992 ("it was almost 29 years ago") The Poster: sherrold*

Context: the first pan fandom slash (shipping) mailing list, Virgule-L, was in its infancy. Safe spaces for women to talk about slash online were rare. And most fan fiction was distributed in print fanzines (which is why fanzine reviews like the one Sandy wrote were so important as a single fanzine cost $15-20 or around $30-40 in today's dollars.) Fan run conventions were the only way to meet other groups of fans and mailed letters and phone calls were the tenuous tethers that strung these fan groups together. The mailing list - and the Internet - was about to change...everything. ****************

Well, welcome to my adventure in mailing! I hope to have this set up soon as a 'real' mailing list, with it's own address. Until then, I only know one way for one of you to write to everyone at once. Just reply to a letter from the list, and answer yes, when it asks, 'reply to all'. So far there are 7 of us. I'll let everyone introduce themselves. I am Sandy Hereld,* I write as Alyx (often with a friend who used Alys) the pen name is *not* a secret. I started in "/" fandom in trek, moved to Pros, and now am very crazed about B7. I still love Pros, and like a lot of different fandoms, including Wiseguy, Starsky and Hutch, and Muncle. I helped run a slash con here in town last week, Virgule, and hope to make Escapade** this year (in February, in Santa Barbara--one of the list subscribers co- runs it--memberships still available), but not Revelcon.*** Maybe, if I get a new job, Media West. I've never been there, and I've always wanted to go. I just finished a great Multi-mediazine called Homosapiens Too. It has an interesting variety of fandoms and crossovers; even more important, there wasn't a single story that stunk (though I liked some better than others, of course.) Page count is Pros/Booker 18 pgs (Bodie/Booker) Eroica/Muncle 5 pgs (Eroica/Illya) Batman 4 (Batman/street punk) Nightflyers 6+ (cartoon, from the movie) TNG 5pgs (Beverly/symbiote) B7/TOS trek 5 pgs (Blake/Spock) Dangerous Liaisons 7 pgs (Valmont/Danceny) Damiano 2 pgs (from the R.A. McAvoy books) MUNCLE 2 pgs the usual Star Wars 4 (cartoon, original characters) Pros 4 pgs the usual B7 50 pgs (Blake/Avon) Perhaps I should mention at the there was a contest for most outrageous crossover pairing. My favorites were: The Right Place To Be (Bodie/Booker) by Arcane Annie & Stew--Bodie quits in a huff after an Operation Suzie, and is too embarrassed to go back; Booker has quit somewhat similarly. Seeing how stupid the other's foolish pride looks, they both learn things about playing roles and 'what really matters.' They also have pretty good sex. Do Blond's Really Have More Fun? (Eroica/Illya) by Barbara T. This definitely is set at a time when Solo and Kurykin are having some problems. The crossover is a fascinating one, and it works. (Anyone needing Erioca explained, just e-mail me. It is a pretty new/small fandom, but growing fast.) Brand New Day (Spock/Blake) by Jane Carnell follows immediately after Blake's pod makes planetfall after Star One. A great Blake, and if not a totally convincing Spock, it's close. Worth it for this scene alone. --Blake "What do you like?" "Anal penetration," "Which way round?" Blake inquired. "I am a telepath. It hardly matters. Whichever way pleases you." Valmont (Valmont/Danceny) by Stew -is a romantic, but very plausible retelling of the movie Dangerous Liaisons, all from Danceny's POV. For any that have read the book, you know it is told solely in letters and diary entries, so this collection of Danceny's diaries is very faithful to the original feel. It is also an amazingly concise retelling, squeezing 2 hours into 6 1/2 pgs. Submissive It Ain't (Pros) is basically just a sex story, but one firmly based in the very different personalities of Bodie and Doyle. Nice idea, beautiful sex, slightly weak ending. Puppeteer (Blake/Avon) by Bryn Lantry is a convoluted but beautiful story where: the action is in the emotions, everyone has multiple motives, and no one truly knows their own minds, much less understands their crewmates. A bit alternate, set sometime in the months before Star One but after Blake has already got the idea in mind, this is a wonderful character study of Blake and Avon, with Vila and Cally in strong supporting roles. Not my favorite type of story -- I think I prefer something a bit more straightforward, but undeniably compelling and well written. The other stories weren't dogs either... The Muncle story, Hanging In Time, by Y.J. is a very disturbing portrayal of the hurt-comfort syndrome in Illya, The Batman story will appeal to anyone who liked "The Dark Knight Returns" With All My Symbiotes -Susan Douglas- has some nice female slash. Why Couldn't It Be Me has gotten a certain amount of press as "Biblical slash." It does have two biblical characters in it, but it is just a vigniette, and has no overt slash content. A few caveats: I disliked the art in the first story, and was indifferent to the rest. I had a hard time reading the 2 cartoon sections; I thought the penning needed to be clearer, and the xerox needed to be darker for those sections. With those few quibbles in mind, I recommend the zine highly. It has an interesting collection of stories set in an amazing variety of universes. The editor is joining a growing number of publishers and putting the word count down -- 80,700, with 40,700 of it in Bryn's B7 story. It is available from Manacles Press here in the U.S. at [address removed]. There is no U.S. price on the zine; it says to SASE Manacles Press, and I can't remember whether I paid $15 or $18 at the con. From Australia, it is available from the publisher...[address removed] $12 within Aust, $20 posted overseas airmail. (I assume that's $Aus)”

*Sandy passed away in July 2011 of cancer. One of our final joint projects was going through our emails dating back 20+ years to find fandom history we could share

**Escapade is the longest running slash convention and is still held in Southern California (as of 2021)

*Revelcon is a slash friendly multi-fandom convention held in Texas. As of 2021 it is still running

#fandom history #fandom love #escapadecon #fanzines #Blake's 7 #Star Trek #Star Wars #Eroica #man from uncle #the professionals #book fanfic #feedback #snady

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dex-xe · 3 years

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(And an ask requesting Captain + anyone Angst #5 - I lost all the asks by accident cause I’m an idiot!!)

Pat & the Captain Angst #5: “I don’t want to feel this. I want to be numb again.”

Pat & the Captain General #48: “I won’t hurt you.”

(I combined these three because I really felt they’d work well together. I didn’t wanna make the romance obvious but it’s definitely implied!! Anyway, thank you to you for sending these I really love this one!!)

Prompt list

Inbox

Pat had always felt fairly content with his tiny attic bedroom. Four walls barely metres apart, a sloped ceiling, and small window that gave him a rather pleasant view of the gardens of Button House. He’d chosen the room mere hours after his tragic and sudden death. One glance at the miniature single bed tucked into the corner was all he got before he was forced to dedicate his afterlife to those four walls, hoping his choice of attic room would place the least amount of burden on the apprehensive ghosts already haunting the other bedrooms. It had suited him just fine. Being a man of small stature, he wasn’t particularly bothered by the cramped nature of his quarters, always one to make do without complaining.

That was all until the past week, when the suffocating closeness of his bedroom became abundantly clear. A few nights prior, the Captain had entered Pat’s room following their nightly patrol. They’d been deep in discussion about the best way to build a shelter; so that if, in the unlikely event the deceased pair managed to get lost in the wilderness, they’d thrive and survive. The conversation wasn’t finished so Pat didn’t hesitate to invite the Captain in to sit and continue.

Very quickly, Pat had realised his mistake. He was hesitant to even call it a mistake but, as the discussion developed and continued, they had strayed, as ghosts often did, to reminiscing about their lives. Comfortable ground for Pat, slightly more treacherous for the Captain. It had started innocuous enough with the Captain regaling the odd story of woodland walks and the flora and fauna he had discovered.

But soon enough, Pat had watched the Captain begin to slacken both physically and mentally and his stories had become looser and more personal. He told tales of his overbearing father and doting mother, his more successful and respectable older brother, and his grandmother; his adoring grandmother who lived up on a hill and waited every day for her nervous little grandson to trek up to help her bake bread and plant flowers. Pat couldn’t lose the golden opportunity that had fallen straight into his lap.

The Captain had returned the following two nights and Pat had learned more about him in three days than in the previous seventy years, and he was determined to bring the Captain to a place he wasn’t even sure the soldier knew existed. Very strategically, the Captain had been avoiding bringing up anything that could potentially lead to his romantic life, he’d refused to indulge Pat in talking about Carol and had quickly shut down Pat’s amusing first date anecdotes.

It reached night four before Pat finally broached the subject, waiting for the perfect moment. The pair sat in comfortable silence, curled up and knees pressed together, in the window seat of Pat’s miniature bedroom gazing out over the shadowy gardens.

“The stars are rather bright this evening, no cloud cover, see?” The Captain muttered contemplating the inky black sky. “I wasn’t much of an astronomer in life, I can’t say I know very much about the cosmos but I can appreciate its beauty.”

“I don’t know much either,” Pat confessed, but he pointed up into the sky just to the Captain’s right. “But that one’s Ursa Major.”

“It is?”

“No idea, could be!” Pat chuckled. The Captain smiled softly at him and turned back to the view. “The best date I ever had was taking Carol stargazing.” “Mhmm,” the Captain shuffled awkwardly in his seat, but said nothing to drive Pat away. So he pressed on.

“We’d only been together a little while. We wrapped up in so many layers and went up Bromley Hill, I held her hand the whole way up, to keep her warm, you know? And we lay down and just talked and drank hot chocolate. It was so wonderful: that was the night I realised I was in love with her. Yeah, good night!”

“Sounds lovely,” the Captain mumbled. Silence fell between them as Pat waited patiently for the Captain to talk, a technique he’d picked up over the past nights: give the Captain a minute to think and he’ll be willing to share.

“When the soldiers were getting rowdy of an evening,” he began slowly. “I would take myself off. The banks of the lake have a rather wonderful view of the sky. I’d just lie there and wait until the early hours, when the men had disappeared for bed.”

“A regular occurrence?”

“Now and again,” the Captain said non-committed. “Occasionally, very occasionally. I wouldn’t be alone, friends would join.”

“Friends?”

“Friend.”

“This friend would keep you company?” Pat asked carefully, eliciting the smallest hum of agreement from the Captain. “It’s nice, isn’t it? To have someone to share a night with?”

“And what precisely do you mean by that, sir?” The Captain turned suddenly. Pat realised he’d stuck his foot in it - rookie mistake really. He sat staring back at the Captain in silence before deciding on a response: in for a penny. “Well, you and this... friend. You’re like myself and Carol. Someone you can talk to, relax with, and truly be yourself around.”

“And how do you gather that from me telling you of my friend?” The Captain interrogated.

“You wouldn’t let just anyone gaze with you,” Pat pushed his glasses further up his nose. “I know you, Cap. They must have meant a great deal to you to let them anywhere close to you.”

“Do not compare him to your wife, Patrick,” the Captain huffed and turned back to the window.

“Why not?” Pat pushed.

“You loved Carol,” the Captain said. “She was your wife, he was but a friend.”

“And?” Pat avoided the Captain’s glare pointedly.

“Completely different situation.”

“You know, Captain, I’m not entirely sure that’s true.” The Captain spluttered and raised his stick towards Pat. His eyes were wide and very, very afraid of wherever the conservation was going. Pat half thought he might get up and run from the room as, like a deer in the headlights, his fight or flight reflex was taking far too long to kick in.

“Now listen here!” He stuttered. “I don’t know what you’re insinuating about Havers but I shall not sit here and listen to you slander a good man. You did not know him, he was nothing like your beloved Carol.”

“I wasn’t saying anything about him,” Pat argued. “But he was ‘beloved’ to you, as you put it?”

“How dare you-,” the Captain started. “I don’t understand, what are you- I don’t understand? He was never... ‘beloved’. Not by me.”

“You cared for this Havers?” Pat waited before the Captain nodded slowly. “You cared what he thought, what he had to say?” Another nod. “You wanted to spend time around him, make him happy? He made you happy?”

“What is this is aid of?” “Your face would go red when you saw him, yeah? Hands would get sweaty? You wanted to be the very best version of yourself in front of him?” Pat locked eyes with the man opposite him, both deathly afraid of the unspoken words. “You found him... physically attractive?”

“Now, what are you-,”

“I hate to be the one to break it to you, Captain.” Pat said quietly. “But that sounds rather like what love is.”

“No, it isn’t. It wasn’t.” The four walls of Pat’s tiny bedroom closed in, suffocating the pair despite their lack of need for breathing. “It wasn’t love.”

“Did you ever feel that stomach-flippy thing? When he walked into the room? Like you’re going to explode with emotion, or be sick, or perhaps both,” Pat asked. “Think about your other friends. Think about Robin. Does that happen when you see him? Or Mary? Kitty? Does that feeling happen?”

“No.”

“Now think of your Havers.”

Oh God. The Captain’s stomach fell over itself with the image of Havers’ dark eyes floating in front of him. His insides twisted and turned as he listened to Havers’ voice describing the intricate details of their weapon plans, the silky smooth tones of his voice flowing straight into the Captain leaving him shell shocked. How had he never noticed that feeling before, that horrifying swirling feeling. It made him feel both comfortingly warm and ridiculously sick at the same time, as if every illegal thought he’d ever had for Havers were about to burst out from inside him.

“It’s there, isn’t it?” Pat prompted. The fear in the Captain’s eyes told everything Pat needed to know, guilt overrode his body. “It’s okay, Cap! You’re okay.”

“I- I- is that?” He stammered. “It- love?”

“I shouldn’t have pushed you,” Pat conceded.

“No. No, it’s not love! What are you talking about?” The Captain was overcome with anger all of a sudden, frustration threatening to spill out. “He was, well. No, he was a ‘he’ to begin with. That’s not- that’s not how love works.”

“Love is love is love,” Pat told him. “You can fall in love with anyone. Legal now, Cap.”

“I- I’m sorry,” the Captain’s head was scrambled.

“Don’t you dare say sorry, mate. You’ve bugger all to be sorry about.”

“I really- I don’t want to feel this. I want to be numb again,” he stumbled over his words, avoiding Pat’s gaze and pointedly staring out of the window instead. “I can’t feel this-.”

“Feel it, please,” Pat grabbed the Captain’s wrist in a tight two-handed grip and locked him into place. “It’s not healthy to keep everything inside.”

“We’re dead, Patrick!” The Captain urged. “We have no need to feel, no health to maintain.”

“Up here,” Pat tapped the Captain’s head carefully, the cold tip of his finger brushing through the thin grey hairs at his temple sending a small shiver through the Captain’s spine. “Healthy, up here. You need to take better care of yourself. It’s like a dam, holding back gallons of water simply increasing the pressure inside. Let a little emotion spill over once in a while, keeps your head on right.”

“Water will not spill, Patrick, it will flood. And then where will we be left: vulnerable to enemy attack, that’s where.”

“There’s no enemy,” the Captain moved to interrupt. “No, no enemy. Just allies. Let me in, just for a little while.”

“I can’t-,” he stopped, a single tear tracking its way down his cheek, burning hot onto his skin. “I wouldn’t know where to start.” Pat finally released his tense grip on the Captain and opened his arms, nodding to give the Captain silent permission.

“I won’t hurt you,” Pat whispered, brushing his hand over the scratchy khaki uniform at the Captain’s shoulder. “You don’t have to be the big, brave Captain you always try to be, not in front of me. Just for a moment, let go.”

After only a moment’s hesitation, the Captain dove forward head butting Pat in the chest, pushing him back against the window frame and practically folding himself in half to curl into the open arms. Seventy years of denied feeling poured out of the Captain to pool in their laps, warming their lonely ghostly forms. Pat dropped his legs to either side of the Captain, allowing him to curl closer and lie steadfast against his shoulder taking as much affection as he could having suppressed anything he wanted for years.

“Thank you for talking to me,” Pat whispered. “It’s a big thing to come to terms with, a big, big thing. But a good thing, yes? It’s good that you cared for him, good you felt a way you didn’t know you had. It’s all very, very good and very, very okay. And it’s for you to know and me to hopefully find out a little bit more about, okay? No one else need know.” He paused, his calloused hand finding the Captain’s in the darkness. “You can talk to me, Captain. Whatever you want to say, whenever, and I’ll listen. Hey, I’ll listen to you rant and rave about the shades of brown in his eyes for hours if it means you can start feeling again. Is that okay?” The Captain nodded vigorously, unable to trust himself to produce words.

Pat’s tiny bedroom no longer felt quite so suffocating to either man, nor did it feel like the dingy attic, barely tall enough to stand straight, that it had before. Instead it was a sanctuary to whispered secrets and profound confessions of adoration, four beige walls protecting the Captain in a way his emotional barriers had never quite been sufficient at. He tilted back to glance up at Pat, who smiled softly down at him running a hand over the Captain’s back and leaning to rest his chin among grey hair. The gentle look in Pat’s blazing blue eyes causing the Captain’s stomach to give off a familiarly warm flipping sensation.

#for some reason this isn’t appearing in tags #which is mighty odd #let’s try again #bbc ghosts #patcap #ficbymax

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shiftingslightly · 3 years

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tw for blood at the end, nothing major just cuts. also sorry about the abrupt fandom change

Mister Garak,” Julian Bashir slurs, leaning against said man’s couch, “has anyone ever told you how very precious you are?”

Garak tilts his head in that Cardassian way of his and gently pulls the bottle of kanar out of his drinking partner’s grip. “I do believe you’ve had enough, Doctor. You of all people should know how potent this sort of drink is in Humans.”

Julian offers him a loopy grin. “Aw, come on, Garak, it’s only two glasses, I’m fine,” he protests. His point is undermined by the fact that he keeps swaying unsteadily as he sits cross-legged on the couch cushion, not bothering to try and stabilize himself. Garak presses his lips together and tries to put on an exasperated expression. He thinks he does fairly well- in any other case it would’ve been impeccable acting, but the glass of kanar he’s already had makes the amusement he’s feeling shine through a little more than he’d like.

His friend doesn’t notice, lost in the alcohol and too busy further destabilizing himself, giggling as he tilts closer and closer to Garak next to him. “Whoa,” he mutters as he tips out of balance, twisting at the last moment and landing with his head in Garak’s lap. Garak freezes, and he has the odd urge to slowly raise his hands in a placating gesture, as if to demonstrate he doesn’t mean this beautiful creature in his lap any harm.

He doesn’t. There isn’t much reason to, anyways. They’re alone in his quarters- no one to be suspicious of him except, of course, himself- and it’s not like he’d hurt Julian anyways. Or want to. The man himself doesn’t seem very worried; in fact, there’s a fond look in his eyes, an adoring, trusting, almost-loving sort of look that he hasn’t seen directed at himself in a while. People look at him, yes, but always with fear or distrust or hatred tainting their expressions. Take your pick of reasons- Tain’s man, Obsidian agent, Cardassian, rumoured spy- but it’s always there, lurking beneath a thin veneer of politeness (or, more likely, outright glaring, veneer nonexistent).

Julian, though. Julian Bashir has always trusted him, from the moment he sat across from him in the Replimat to the time Garak raged and flipped tables at him to now, alone with him and drunk and vulnerable and feeling totally, utterly safe. It almost makes him uncomfortable, seeing the extent to which Julian trusts him. He knows he doesn’t deserve it, knows the doctor’s illusions of his mysterious but altogether clean past would shatter upon hearing of even the most irrelevant of errands he ran for the Order. Still, even with no small amount of guilt, he savors the kind curve of Julian’s mouth when he catches sight of his Cardassian friend.

Julian, not bothering to get off Garak’s lap, giggles and reaches up. He almost flinches away instinctively, but all Julian does is tap his nose once. “Boop,” he says with yet another giggle. Garak raises an eyeridge.

“Nothing.”

“I see,” Garak says, leaning back against the couch and looking around the rest of the room, content to sit in silence for a while.

“No- wait, it’s an Earth thing,” Julian says hurriedly, as if Garak had threatened him.

“Ah, I believe I’ve heard of it,” he responds absentmindedly, reaching down to thread his fingers through Julian’s hair.

“You’re lying,” Julian pouts. His mood suddenly turns serious, and he peers intently at him. “Why do you always lie to me, Garak?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t take it personally, my dear,” he says. He’s vaguely aware that he keeps forgetting to add “Doctor”, but at the moment Julian is warm in his lap and his mind is foggy and he can’t bring himself to deny this simple affection. “It’s simply a habit of mine.”

Julian hums in acknowledgement, but doesn’t seem to have anything to say to that. He makes a grab for the kanar bottle, still in Garak’s other hand, and sits up, taking another drink before the bottle’s taken away again.

Garak, kanar in hand again, chides, “ Julian. You really should stop,” but for once he feels relatively safe and isn’t cycling through all the reasons he should stay far, far away from the Doctor and the tangled mess of feelings that come with him and so he tips the bottle up.

He sighs afterward, setting the bottle on the coffee table in front of him with a satisfying clunk , other hand still in Julian’s hair. Julian’s got a face full of anguish when he looks down at him, and Garak tilts his head, inviting him to explain. He shakes his head, but a moment later he lets out a long breath and says, “He annoys me so much.”

Garak laughs. “There’s a lot of men who annoy you, Doctor. You’ll have to be more specific.”

Julian goes on as if he never heard him. “Really, though, I wouldn’t have it any other way. He’s splendid, you know?” He gestures wildly on splendid, somehow managing to smack Garak in the face and nearly overturn the kanar bottle sitting on his coffee table. “So mysterious.”

Garak, clenching his jaw against the bitter taste of jealousy, manages to get out an “I see”, but it doesn’t really matter; Julian’s far gone at this point and continues to ignore him, lost in thoughts of this mystery man.

“He doesn’t love me,” he says, giving Garak heartbroken puppy eyes. “He doesn’t love me… he said he hated me, once. He was lying. I think. He always lies but he doesn’t lie sometimes and it’s so confusing- Garak, it’s so confusing. ”

“He doesn’t sound all that nice.”

“He isn’t, really- he’s nice to me, though. Makes me feel nice.”

“That’s nice, then.” Even with years of Obsidian training, it’s still a concerted effort to keep his voice steady. Damn Federaji , damn Humans, damn this particular Federaji Human with his honeyed smile and his charming naivete and his slender body and his brilliant fucking arguments and-

“He’s brilliant, did you know?”

“You seem to have forgotten you still haven’t told me who he is, dear,” Garak says. It’s an indulgement he can’t help but allow himself. He’s lost his Doctor; what’s one little word?

“I don’t know who he is, either.” Garak makes a questioning face. “I don’t know if he knows who he is either. He’s kind of lost. Stuck.”

“Ah.”

“It’s a sad thought.”

“That your-” he pauses for a second- “that he’s stuck?” He feels silly, trying to talk to an obviously drunk, in-his-head Julian who keeps ignoring him. He might as well have put on a movie and tried to talk to the characters.

“Most people have never heard their friends’ actual voice,” Julian says. Garak pauses, considering. It’s an interesting sort of thing to think about, if (as Julian said) a bit sad.

“I learned Kardasi for him,” he continues. And that’s even more interesting- this man speaks Kardasi? He dismisses a thought before it can form. Some aren’t worth entertaining, even for a moment; hope is a dangerous thing, flighty and tempting and ultimately disappointing, and he isn’t such a fool as to invite that sort of creature into his head.

“I learned it for him,” Julian repeats. “It’s a very nice language, you know. Very interesting. I speak it to my friends and no one notices. He didn’t notice either.” So he talks to the mystery man. Hm. He starts to analyse the information, mind almost subconsciously going through the steps and piecing together what he knows. So far, very little.

“Tell me about this man,” he says.

Julian gives him a little head-tilt. “Whatever do you mean? I’ve been telling you about him,” he says. Garak can’t tell if he’s genuinely confused or if alcohol makes him more of a little shit than usual. It’s certainly making himself more impatient.

“I mean that I don’t know who this man is, and if you’ll excuse my bluntness, I would like to know,” he says shortly.

Understanding seems to dawn in Julian’s eyes. “Oops.” Scale-less arms wrap around his neck and he pulls himself up and before he’s got a chance to think bad idea bad idea bad idea soft lips are on his and suddenly all he can think is OH! and Julian’s kissing him harder and maybe the Humans were on to something with their kissing because dear god it’s so good and he leans closer and Julian hums against him and

crash

He’s on the floor, rubbing at his shoulder, at the place where Garak shoved him away. “Garak-”

“ Out .”

His eyes widen. “Garak, I’m so sorry,” he says, but his words are slurred and bad idea bad idea bad idea is rushing through and he gets up off the couch ( my dear Cardassia what have I done ) and picks Julian up and goes for the door ( damage control damage control ).

“No- Garak- wait- no don’t leave me I’m sorry we can talk about it-” the door slides open with that same mechanical beep-whoosh as he approaches- “Garak, please- you can’t just leave me out here-”

“I can and I will, Doctor,” he grits out. “You’re drunk. Go home.” Bashir is set down just outside his door.

“Garak- Garak wait- no-” the door starts to slide shut again- “Elim!”

whoosh-click.

He sighs heavily, leaning against it, head in his hands.

bad idea bad idea bad idea bad idea

The pieces of the kanar bottle are sharp as he picks them up off the floor. Julian’s momentum had knocked it against the opposite wall, shattering it, breaking it beyond repair just as surely as he’d broken any semblance of camaraderie between them, and now they lie glimmering in the window's meagre light. He can’t simply leave the pieces on the floor, jagged and dangerous- can’t keep seeing Bashir, all of our usual engagements will have to go, and then some- and so he picks them up, slowly, even though they slide against his palm when he closes it around them, edges breaking skin when he shifts the wrong way ( it’ll hurt, yes, but I can deal with it, I can deal with it, I’ll have to deal with it ). He can’t feel it, can’t feel much over the roaring in his head- Tain’s voice, of course it’s Tain’s voice, it’s always Tain’s voice- you knew this would happen, it’s your fault, you knew you shouldn’t have gotten closer to him don’t be so selfish now look what you’ve done. He’s gone and deluded himself into wanting someone like you and he’ll never have happiness and it’s your fault your fault your

There’s a sharp pain and the feeling of cold blood trickling down his hand. The glass piece slides out of his grip and lands on the carpet, dripping in the stuff and staining the carpet.

He huffs. Control, Elim. Control is the key. The memories seem to dissipate as he shakes his head, along with Tain’s admonishments.

There’s a knock at his door. Doctor Bashir. He’s the only person who actually knocks, like the Humans used to in the old days before automated doors. He’s also the only person who’d want to come see him in his quarters. “I’m not here!” Garak calls.

There’s a thump that sounds suspiciously like a human fist hitting the door in frustration, a groan, and then Bashir calls, “Let me in, Garak! I just want to talk!”

Unfortunately for the doctor, talking is the last thing he wants to do. Bashir keeps yelling, desperation seeping into his voice, but he simply turns and continues picking up more pieces of the glass bottle. There’s a flash of pain and then cold blood dripping from a fresh cut ( go talk to him, what the fuck are you doing, he wants you, go out there and just take him ) and he shakes his head, sighing, but he tips the piece into the bag he’s using to hold them all because he can’t just leave them on the floor ( the fuck do you mean just go out there and take him you can’t do that you’d destroy him, you know it, you and all your secrets and your cruelty would crush his bright-eyed smile ) and it’s always the harsher voices that are loudest but this one’s right. He can’t give in to the man outside his door, has to not be selfish for once in his entire bloodstained life and so he just keeps going, collecting cuts as he handles the edges of what used to be a beautiful, whole bottle and grits his teeth against the sting.

Eventually, footsteps sound, padding away from his door, and he sighs and slumps against the edge of the coffee table. It digs into his back scales uncomfortably, but he can't bring himself to move.

subscribe to the fic here to be emailed when it updates! part two is coming soon, projections indicate about three days

#star trek #ds9 #garashir #fanfic #fanfiction #school is hectic but a. what else is new and b. it's ending really really soon #like a day soon #so i should have more time for this!

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cyndecreativity · 3 years

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Get to know me Tag Game

I got tagged by @mysteries-x-mistakes for this! Thank you! I’m really confused at all the attention (read: any) I’m getting recently, but I welcome it. I am in desperate need of new friends as all the ones I currently have suck.

Favorite color: Short answer: pinks and purples. I have found that I hate locking myself into one thing via favorites, so I try not to. My favorite colors are pinks and purples. I would probably be one of those obnoxious UwU gamer girl aesthetics but without the personality.

Currently reading: Short answer: The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie. I haven’t read much since middle school and I’m trying to get back into it. I watched a Youtuber talk about his favorite books over the last year (he read 45!) and he said as a writer, reading is the closest thing to an apprenticeship you can get. But I don’t like reading, so it’s proving difficult. Being broke, though, has made it so I don’t want to purchase books when I don’t think I’ll like them, because then I’m out an increasing amount of money that I don’t have to spend. So I’ve gotten a library card, but my library doesn’t have all the books I’m finding, so when I get the desire to read a certain one and I can’t, then I just... add other ones to my list and never pick one to read. I acquired The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie and I’m not enjoying it because it’s too edgelord and gory for my tastes, but it’s the one I invested in for now. Also my husband was home on summer break, so I couldn’t really read while he was home. And the library loans are 2 weeks. I also tried to read a Jane Austen book and there was a sentence that went on for an entire paragraph in like... 1800s fancy English and I couldn’t do it. So I figured I’d grab the audiobook at some point.

Last song: Short Answer: I have no idea. A Youtube compilation of City Pop. I don’t listen to Spotify because of ads and I can’t curate it myself, so I listen to a lot of Youtube compilations. I love the Japanese 80s City Pop, the one popularized by Mariya Takeuchi’s Plastic Love. I also enjoy the like 2hr long compilations of video game music, or piano medleys of video game music, or covers. I listen to them while I write because I can’t process auditory words and writing words at the same time, so the instrumentals and foreign language don’t bother me. Kanye just released another album and my husband likes him, so he was trying to make me listen to all of Kanye’s discography, so I might’ve been subjected to that if my husband hadn’t realized I didn’t like Kanye after all his good albums.

Last movie: Short answer: I don’t remember, actually! So, my husband and I probably went to see Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker in theatres here in Japan, but as for a movie on, like, Netflix or something... Probably Spiderman Far From Home? Or maybe something else I don’t remember. We watch a lot of series, either on Netflix or an anime site. There’s plenty of long-form Youtube video essays, but I wouldn’t count those as movies...

Last series: Short answer: Star Trek Deep Space Nine Before that it was My Little Ponies, The Chair, Star Trek Voyager, and... Boku no Hero Academia. Star Trek DS9 became our comfort watch for a while. It’s very philosophical and relaxed and character focused. My husband really digs it. And I loved it as a kid. And I remember loving Voyager, but upon rewatching it, Voyager is way different than I remember.

Craving: Short answer: Chocolate. Always chocolate. Sometimes I crave other things like Coco’s curry or American chinese or American Ramen or Chef Boyardee or other stuff, but right now, I just wanna stuff my face with Arnott’s Tim Tams.

Coffee or Tea: Short answer: no thanks. My husband started to drink a little coffee every day to stay awake at school. In solidarity, I asked if maybe I should start trying coffee so he wasn’t alone. We stopped at a rest area along the toll road between Yamaguchi and Chiba (I don’t remember where) and got me a Cafe au Lait from a vending machine. I readied myself for it to be gross, since I’ve always hated coffee, but it tasted like chocolate and smelled like the best parts of coffee smells. Now I can tolerate a latte, but that’s as far as I’ll go down on the milk content. As for tea? I hate pretty much all teas except for dumb Crystal Light Peach Tea or Peach Mango Green Tea. It’s really difficult to live in a country with a million different bottles teas and coffees and I hate all of them. I usually grab a Salty Lychee or a Coke Zero if we get a beverage at the konbini. Or, lately, a Protein Drink or something as a meal replacement.

Currently working on: My WIP I have affectionately called Zodiac. It is a multi-book epic elephant of a series that I am feeding every day with more ideas. I don’t know if I’ll ever start eating it.

As for tagging others? I tag... @master-duncan @eriquin @stuffaboutwriting @ruby-overlock @thewritingpikachu Uh... And of course anyone else that wants to participate. And, usual disclaimer, you don’t have to do this if I’ve tagged you.

#writblr #writeblr #wip #writblr community #writblr boost #writeblr community #tag game #get to know me #about me

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spatort · 3 years

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I’m at my parents’ house and I have too much time on my hands apparently, so it’s time for a trip down memory lane! More specifically, a trip into the weird world of 1990s for-profit teen idol RPF, such as this beauty:

No, I did not find this at my parents’ house, I bought it second-hand specifically in order to make this post because I’m a person who enjoys studying fan culture in her free time. So, if you’re wondering what the hell the monstrosity pictured above is, and why it exists, don’t worry, I’m about to answer that question extensively.

LONG (AND HOPEFULLY FUN & INTERESTING) POST UNDER THE CUT

Let’s start with a bit of history: In the pre-internet era, fan culture differed from today in a few key regards. Although fanfiction existed, without the internet it was much harder for fans to share their stories with each other. Large fandoms such as Star Trek did have fanzines where fanfic could be printed, but all in all it was a much more niche thing than it is today with millions of fics accessible on AO3.

Fan culture in general, however, was a big thing in the 90s – particularly when it came to pop acts that appealed to teen (and tween) audiences, such as the Backstreet Boys, the Spice Girls, or (mostly in Europe) the Kelly Family. When I was in elementary school, you basically had to pick whether you were a BSB or an NSYNC fan – and god forbid you were a Kelly fan like me, then you were the lowest rung on the social ladder and the target of relentless mockery. Like many German kids in the 90s, me and my sister would religiously read teen magazine BRAVO, cut out every single bit of material about our faves and collect them in folders and self-made fanzines. We created fan art and fanfiction without having words for these things. Without the internet and social media, fans did not have a constant stream of content about their idols, and were left with no other choice but to cling to every bit of information they could find in magazines, on TV shows, or on the radio.

Enter a savvy businessperson who comes up with the perfect merchandise product to sell to these popstar-obsessed teens: fan novels! These books, featuring taglines such as ‘The novel for all Backstreet Boys fans’, typically revolved around a relatable female teenage protagonist who is a fan of the celebrity or music group in question, and usually ends up meeting their idol or, gasp, even becoming romantically involved with them. As far as themes go, they look pretty much exactly like your classic self-insert RPF. Except there is a big difference setting these books apart from ‘actual’ fanfiction: Rather than being written by real fans to express their ‘fannish’ feelings about the subject, fan novels were most likely commissioned works created by professional romance authors purely to profit off of actual fans. There is very little background information available about this ‘genre’, but I did stumble across an academic work on Google Books which featured a passage about these fan novels (translated into English by me):

There are several commissioned works by professional authors, which could be mistaken for fanfiction. Especially in the 1990s, when lots of boy bands were on the market, many books of this kind were published. […] These are fictional stories for fans [redacted].

Jennie Hermann: Backstreet Girl. Projektionsfläche Popstar - Wenn der Fan zum Schriftsteller wird (2009) [Popstar as Projection Surface – When fans become writers]

One of the things I find most intriguing about this type of commercially published fanfiction is the question of personal rights. Obviously, the celebs in question or their management must have consented to using their names in the story, their pictures on the cover and so on – because a profit could be made with this. Especially with the fan debate around RPF allegely being unethical, I wonder if the celebrities themselves were aware someone was writing these stories about them, putting words in their mouth, and if they had any clue what exactly happened in these novels. Now, I’ve read a couple of them in my own youth. Some of them deal mostly with the state of being a fan, e.g. I recall a novel about a girl who is so obsessed with Leonardo Di Caprio that she doesn’t pay attention to real life guys at all, only to learn that her actual dream boy has been in her life all along! This story did not feature Di Caprio himself as a character, it was more about the protagonist’s arc of realizing your idols are not all that matters in life. Others do describe fan encounters with teen idols, and some even feature (hints at) romance with a celebrity. When I decided to purchase a vintage copy of one of these books, I opted for one of the latter category, precisely because of the popular argument that writing romance stories featuring real people is somehow ‘wrong’. For only a couple of euros, I was able to get my hands on a weird and wonderful relic of fan culture: Mein Frühling mit Nick (My spring with Nick) by the likely pseudonymous Maxi Keller, heralded on the book cover as ‘the novel for all fans of the Backstreet Boys’.

The story revolves around 16-year-old musical prodigy and designated wallflower Katharina, who lives in a German small town and cares about nothing else than playing the organ – certainly not about boys, let alone ones that are super-famous American pop stars. This means she is not initially a fan of the Backstreet Boys, which I guess is something of a trope itself – the protagonist meeting a celebrity by chance without knowing who they are and the celeb being thrilled that someone doesn’t just like them for their fame. Anyway, the boys visit Katharina’s hometown while on tour in Germany because band member AJ is doing some research on his German ancestors who happened to live in this very town. Katharina runs into them, she and Nick (who was only 17 himself when this was published in 1997, so it’s legal) fall in love at first sight, she helps them dig up information on AJ’s ancestors and finds out the two of them are related, the boys invite Katharina and her friend Saskia backstage after their show and … nothing happens. The book is 200 pages long and Katharina doesn’t even get one kiss with her boy band sweetheart, even though they mutually crush on each other right away. Perhaps that’s as far as the band or their management agreed for the novel to go – a hint at romance, but no trace of any on-page action, no matter how innocent.

That said, the book is so hilariously poorly written that it was still very entertaining to read. Although I could not find out anything about the author Maxi Keller, and therefore assume this might be a pseudonym, their writing style very much suggests that their are a professional romance author who usually writes for an older audience (plus, the book was published by Bastei Lübbe, who also publish a range of cheap romance novels known as ‘Romanhefte’). The language is extremely flowery at times, and even teenage characters speak with an eloquence that is hardly age-appropriate, with some 90s teen slang peppered in at unfitting times (such as the overuse of the English word ‘girl’). Often the novel loses itself in pointless detail that does nothing to move the plot forward (such as an extensive description of a house party hosted by Saskia’s rich parents, with minute details of their luxurious lifestyle and assets, even though Saskia is only a supporting character in the overall plot). It appears as if the author is desperately trying to fill the pages with meaningless drivel so they don’t need to write too many scenes featuring the presumed main attraction, the boys themselves.

If Keller was indeed merely hired to write this, and is not a fan themselves, one must still admit that the author did their research when it comes to the band. Whereas fanfiction typically assumes that the audience is already familiar with the characters and often skips any introductory descriptions of their appearance or personality, Keller makes sure that even a reader who is completely unfamiliar with the Backstreet Boys can keep up. The author delivers extensive descriptions of the boys’ appearance and demeanor, even spelling out their full names repeatedly, and frequently peppers in ‘fun facts’ such as ‘Kevin was raised on a farm in Kentucky’. While an actual fan might do so to prove how knowledgeable they are, and earning their status as a ‘true fan’, in this case it only seems like Keller really wants to show off how much research they did – as if not a single piece of information they took in must go to waste by not being used in the novel.

When it comes to the question how realistically the non-fannish author replicates the way the boys act and speak, there are two barriers to delivering a well-founded answer: Firstly, I was personally very young when BSB were popular and I really don’t remember too well what each member was like. Secondly, the elephant in the room: the language barrier. All of the aforementioned fan novels were written in German, and the problems posed by writing about an English-speaking band interacting with German OCs (and teenage ones at that) are addressed poorly, if at all. Pretty much all dialogue is written in German, and the audience is left to assume that everyone is actually speaking English whenever the boys are involved – except the novel does nothing to explain why two 16-year-old German girls would be able to express themselves so effortlessly in a foreign language. (Remember, the internet was not a thing, so German kids were not exposed to the same amount of English in everyday life as they are these days.) It would have been easy to make one of them a language nerd who gets straight A’s in English class, and give the other a British parent and make them bilingual. Instead, Katharina initially even worries about the prospect of having to talk to boys at all, and in English on top of that! But when she actually does, the language barrier never comes up again. The suspension of disbelief expected from the reader is therefore immense. The language barrier also gives the author an easy way out when it comes to imitating the way the boys speak in real life – there is no need to take into account idiolects or regional differences (such as ‘you guys’ vs. ‘y’all’) if the boys’ speech is essentially translated into a foreign language. However, I wanted to give you guys (or y’all, if you will) a taste of how Keller attempts to write a scene where AJ and Nick discuss the latter’s crush on Katharina:

I would argue that this sounds realistic enough for what it’s worth, if a little cheesy, which is excusable in this genre. Perhaps a true 90s BSB fan would beg to differ, so if you happen to be one, feel free to drop me a message. But in my semi-professional opinion, this most likely holds up for readers.

So, to answer the initial question that drove me to purchase this book: Do fan novels like Mein Frühling mit Nick count as fanfiction?

If we assume that something is only a fanfic if the author themselves is a fan of the subject matter, then I would argue no, Maxi Keller is probably not a fan themselves and therefore this work of for-profit real-person fiction does not qualify as fanfic. However, fan novels definitely have a (however small) place in the history of fan culture and fan-adjacent works, and I personally found reading this relic both entertaining and insightful!

#fanfiction #fanfic #backstreet boys #nick carter #german stuff

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neurotic-crackhead-trash-panda · 3 years

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Cold and Alone, Laying in My Own Sweat

when the pandemic hit I had the absolutely brilliant idea to have my girlfriend at the time move in. She was in a real tough situation at home and we’re both adults despite still living with our parents and my mom didn’t mind having her around so why not. One thing led to another and we were out on our own, not permanently but house sitting for a family friend, and I got so used to just skin on skin, every night, for a year. The same person I had come to know and love over the course of a year and change, but of course as time passes things rot, and the sweetest of things always attracts flies, decay, disgust. I find that disgust in myself sometimes, especially now as I lay in my old bed in my childhood home, alone with too much space. I’ve always been oddly specific about temperature, my body’s just really sensitive generally because I’m shit at taking care of myself but that’s besides the point. I sleep fine once I’m asleep, but getting comfortable is beyond difficult because I always need some very precise amount of coverage or I’ll overheat and wake up in my own sweat. Tonight was one of those nights, I smoked before midnight and knocked out around 1, woke up around two because of a loud noise outside and felt my back was wet and the sheet under me were damp. I tried snuggling into the pillow I use to simulate someone there with me, and the weed made me especially focused on how it really almost felt like a leg was wrapped between mine, but my stomach was cold. The fire in my belly burnt out and the coals dying as the lose heat to the freezing snow now gathering in my mind, Thoughts becoming fluttery as and bracing, struggling to keep my eyes open as I feel the ac blowing in my face, I could’ve sworn I was trekking across Siberia. Recently I’ve been writing more to try and vent due to all the personal isolation, living pretty much alone in a decent size home that once was a warzone, but at least there was family. Now all I can tell you about this place is the how dusty the cold tiles under my feet remind me of walking through snow. Anyway, I spent a few minutes just typing to my heart’s content (seems that didn’t quite work by account of the word count here) and if you’ve gotten this far you might as well read some more senseless over indulgent crap, so thanks for reading and I hope you like what you see . . . if its all just a farce nought but shit ffrom an arse then make it an art don't make it a dream, those you'll always forget and don't pass up your passions and live in regret but fulfill your soul, die sans spiritual debts find you a muse whose home's in the stars who shares with you their soul, y'know vibes in the car putting on tunes grabbing green from a jar but this too shall pass, just a blip, random noise remember the key is to always stay poised and maintain contentment, only then search for joy thanks again, come again, and have a nice time while you can

#poetry #wordvomit #a collection of thoughts

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lesbian-percy-weasley · 3 years

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Chapter 3: The woods in deep winter

Ship: Perciver

Content warning: none

Description: Winter is when foraging is most important. Percival is managing to get more done with his friend. Maybe it is time he indulges in a little distraction even if it means breaking the rules.

A/N: tumblr is a hater and keeps removing my fics from the tags. If you can’t find the first two chapters here then you can on my Ao3 and please enjoy reading

~🌿~🌿~🌿~🌿~🌿~🌿~🌿~🌿~🌿~🌿~🌿~

Percival and Oliver had been meeting in the woods for months now. Every Thursday like clockwork, Percival would be sent foraging and Oliver would meet him in the clearing. It was a simple routine. They would both work to get the things his mother needed and then spend time together. Just the right amount of time before anyone got suspicious.

But, alas, they were 11 and did not know how to act inconspicuous. Percival’s family noticed he had been spending more time in the woods the past few months but decided not to bother him about it. After all, he seemed to have a more agreeable demeanor after he went foraging. Perhaps they had thought he spent time in the village or took up a hobby in drawing but he wouldn’t give away much.

It was deep into the winter now. With no harvest, his family relied even more on foraging. This of course meant a bigger load Percival would have to carry. He didn’t mind it, the extra work made him feel important. They did occasionally buy food from the village but it was much more expensive this time of year since it came from the eastern cities.

Percival knew full well his family had a strong aversion to the eastern cities. That's where the rich and powerful lived. He heard his older brothers complain about them taking grain from their harvest every year, costing his family money, only to sell it back to the village in the winter. He never cared enough to stick around long enough to really understand. He assumed his family didn’t want him worrying about it.

But everything they could forage, they did. Nuts, berries, herbs, flowers. It was important to gather everything they could. And they trusted Percival every Thursday to go out and get food and other supplies. He hadn’t let them down so far and he wasn’t going to start now.

He grabbed everything he had used all the times he went before. His mustard yellow cloak was retired for the winter so he used a pale blue winter cloak, that was handed down to him by his older brothers, and a long knitted scarf that his mother made. But other than that everything was the same.

He headed off into the forest, which was now blanketed with snow, most eager to meet Oliver once again. Though it was covered, Percival still knew exactly where the path to the clearing was. Along the way, he picked up some things he knew he needed. There was a chestnut tree not far from the clearing that he could stop by on the way.

It was more of a trek than he had planned but he got to the tree. He went up and shook it a little to make sure he wasn’t going to get attacked by snow. Then he started climbing and harvesting chestnuts, as he did with the hazelnuts a few months before until his basket was full. Satisfied, he began to climb down. Only, unlike the other times, he slipped and fell when he was about halfway down. Luckily, the snow softened the fall. Had it been spring he most certainly would’ve broken something.

He quickly got up and tried to brush the snow he had gotten on his cloak. The basket had spilled at least half its contents. He went to pick what he could find from the snow when he heard someone walking towards him. He looked up from the ground to see Oliver running towards him.

“Percy! Whatever happened to you?” He exclaimed while Percival was still attempting to pick up the lost chestnuts.

“I fell from the tree and dropped the basket.” He stated whilst looking up at Oliver.

“Well, are you okay?” Oliver asked while bending down to meet Percival at eye level.

“I’m perfectly ordinary. The snow broke my fall. I'm just looking for the chestnuts that fell out of the basket.”

“It would take forever to find all of them in the snow. Why don’t you just pick more from the tree?”

Percival scoffed putting a handful of chestnuts back into the basket. “The first rule of foraging is to only take what you need. If you take more then you fall out of the forest's good graces.” He explained. Percival went back to picking up the chestnuts off the ground and Oliver waited not so patiently for him to finish.

Once he was done, he and Oliver went on to gather the other things on the list. They made small chatter whilst they were working but mostly walked in silence. The last thing Percival needed to get was pine cones.

Reluctant to climb after the tumble from earlier today, he decided to pick what was already on the ground. Oliver was standing right next to him, watching as he picked up every pine cone and examined them with great care. He admired the way he would gently place down the pine cones that didn’t meet his standards. It was like he held every single one with the greatest regard. Once Percival was done he simply fastened the satchel closed and started to walk towards home with Oliver. It only took a little bit until they started chatting again.

“Could you meet me in the clearing tonight?” Oliver asked, looking at Percival.

“Why?” He replied being more interested in the snow under his feet.

“The stars are supposed to be very visible tonight and I didn’t want to witness them alone.”

“We shouldn’t be in the woods at night.” Percival shook his head.

“Oh…” Oliver responded with a hint of sadness in his voice, “Maybe we can view them by the bay? It should be safer than the woods.” He offered as an alternative.

“Won’t there be people by the bay?”

“No one really goes down there this time of year. The only people there would be merfolk and selkies. They don’t bother you if you don’t bother them.” Percival explained. Oliver pondered it for a minute.

“Okay. I’ll meet you by the bay tonight.” He said with a smile which Percival returned.

By the time their conversation finished they were back on the main road and heading their separate ways. Both practically giddy with excitement over meeting each other again at night.

#harry potter #hogwarts #percy weasley #oliver wood #perciver #fanfiction #gay #percy weasley x oliver wood #faerie au #faeries #ao3

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lobster-tales · 3 years

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The Moon - Yueki

Day 6 of Winter ATLA Femslash Week. This work is available here on AO3.

Prompt: The Moon or Ten years later... / Post-Canon

Suki makes a choice that will save the world, but at a steep price. But what she must lose, Yue is grateful to gain. Also they totally fall in love. Based on the song "Hijo de la Luna" by Mecano

Night became necessary for Suki. Her days belonged to the Fire Lord and officials, ensuring the Kyoshi Warriors were at their posts. The only time she had for herself was bathed in darkness, when she scaled the walls of the palace and perched on the tiled roof. Most nights, she was content to sit under the stars, letting the sky swallow her whole.

This was not one of those nights. Suki pulled her knees closer to her chest, her eyes downcast. Around anyone else, even her warriors, such a vulnerable posture would betray her, compromise her strength in their eyes. She could only let down her guard when she was alone.

A cloud drifted past the strongest source of light. Suki looked up at the full moon, relaxing in the silver glow. Well, she was almost alone.

“Hey Yue,” Suki said. “Me again. How are you?”

She was met with silence. Suki never received an answer from the elusive moon spirit, but she made sure to ask anyway. “I’m sorry, but I don’t really have any good news. Everything’s still the same. Fire Lord Zuko’s been bedridden for nearly a week now. Yesterday, he looked like he was getting better, but his fever went up again today.” Suki paused, unsure how to proceed. “Aang is a wreck. Katara has barely slept. She and the other healers have been working to find a cure, but so far they haven’t succeeded.”

Suki slid her hands down her calves, the fingers of her left hand gently grasping the wrist of her right. “I um… I overheard some officials in the hall. They were talking about who's next in line just in case…” She squeezed her eyes shut. “They mentioned Azula’s name, but she’s still recovering. She won’t be able to run the nation in her state. Which leaves… no one.

“I know what happens when there’s no one to take the throne. I’ve read about coups before, and even all of my warriors wouldn’t be enough to stop the Fire Nation officials, or at least,” Suki said darkly, “whoever poisoned Zuko.”

A breeze ruffled her hair. In the distance, far beyond the palace walls, a dog barked. And still, the moon said nothing.

Suki pressed her lips together, fighting back the wave of feelings. Tears already welled in her eyes as she said, “And… I don’t know what to do.” She looked skyward, her cheeks wet. “I know… you grew up during the war too, Yue. We all did. I don’t know what it was like in the Northern Water Tribe, but for the rest of us…” Suki began to shake, her voice trembling. “I don’t want it to happen again. It

I don’t think the world could survive another war.

“And it’s not just that, it’s…” She began sobbing, burying her face in her knees. She whispered hoarsely, “Zuko’s my friend. And I don’t want him to die.”

Suki wept openly, letting the feelings tear through her. She had spent countless hours fending them off, forcing through the pain. She had to be a leader, to stay positive in front of everyone. Now, she could release those thoughts, each ragged breath a testament to her fear.

A hand pressed against her back, gliding gently across her shoulders in a show of comfort. Suki froze. Who could have followed her this high up? Maybe the Avatar?

She lifted her face, the cold light spilling across her features. Her mouth dropped.

A girl sat beside her. Physically, she looked to be 16, but her eyes betrayed centuries of knowledge. Her white clothing contrasted her dark skin, the fabric floating around her. Her white hair was pulled into two loops, a water tribe band holding the style in place. The girl smiled, a hint of uncertainty in her blue eyes. “Hello Suki.”

Suki’s breath escaped her in a single word. “Yue!” She tried not to gawk, reigning in her expression like she did around the Fire Nation officials. Unsure how to address a spirit, Suki rose to her feet and bowed respectfully.

Yue remained seated, nodding. “Please, sit.”

“Yes, your… spiritness.” Suki lowered herself onto the tile, crossing her legs beneath her and keeping her spine straight.

“No, just… call me Yue. Please.” Yue considered her carefully. “I suppose you’re wondering why I’m here.”

“Yes. I am.” Blood rushed to Suki’s cheeks as she began to think. After the war, she’d spent countless nights beneath the moon’s glow, pouring out the feelings that she couldn’t share with anyone else. What had Yue heard? What secrets did she spill by accident?

“I know this must be a shock for you,” Yue murmured. “But… I know everything that’s going on. About Zuko, the poisoning, and I want to help.”

No amount of diplomacy training could stop Suki from staring. “You… want to help? I thought spirits didn’t interfere with human affairs.”

“I’m not all spirit,” Yue said. “I actually used to be human. Part of me still is. And as someone who used to live in the material world, I want to do something to protect it.”

Suki had heard the story before, of the water tribe princess who sacrificed herself to become the moon spirit. Yue’s act had been described like death. She never thought Yue had retained any of her humanity, much less enough to intervene.

“How?” Suki asked.

“Well, I actually can’t do it alone. You see, the moon spirit has the power to grant a wish.” She hesitated. “But at a steep price.”

Suki searched her face, trying to guess what a spirit could want, or even possess. “Anything.”

Turning her head, almost ashamed, Yue murmured, “For someone to get help from the moon spirit, they must give up their first born child.”

Dread washed over Suki. “Zuko can’t. His first born child… He needs an heir.”

Yue nodded slowly. “Anyone can make the wish to heal him. Anyone can make the deal.”

A thought struck her. One that put the sour taste of martyrdom in her mouth. She had told her pupils a thousand times: the greatest strength of a Kyoshi Warrior is her warrior’s heart, because not all battles needed weapons.

Suki straightened her arms, hands on her knees, and she took a deep breath. “I’ll do it. In exchange for his life, I’ll give you my first born child.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

Yue bowed her head reverently. “Consider it done.” Suki expected her to disappear, but instead Yue leaned forward and embraced her. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “But also… thank you…”

Her skin was cold, but Suki didn’t mind. Without thinking, she lifted her arms around Yue. The moon spirit stiffened at the human contact, then relaxed into her embrace. Yue pressed her nose into the crook of her neck.

Suki asked, “Why do you say that?”

“Hmm?”

“Why did you thank me?”

“Oh!” Yue pulled away, averting her eyes. “I… Sorry, that was inappropriate.” She tucked a loose strand of white hair behind her ear. “I know it will pain you to lose the child, but… it gets lonely, up there.” She nodded towards the full moon.

Suki searched Yue’s blue eyes. She realized the opportunity she’d been granted. After years of telling Yue all of her secrets, now she could return the favor. “Why don’t you tell me about it?”

Yue frowned. “What… it’s boring. Really.”

“Come on,” Suki said, a hint of a smile playing on her lips. “You already know everything about me. Now I want to know about you.”

“Oh.” Yue glanced at the sky, biting her lip. “Well… I guess I could stay for a few minutes…”

***

Violet dawn crept over the horizon. Yue surrendered to the hour, wrapping her arms around Suki again. Their laughter still hung in the air around them.

Suki murmured, “Will I see you again?”

“Only once, when you…” Yue paused. “When you… finish the deal.”

The thought sent a jolt through Suki. Over the last several hours, she’d forgotten the terms. Yue was such a lovely distraction.

“Goodbye, Suki,” Yue whispered, and her form disintegrated.

Suki lowered her hands. Yue’s smell lingered on her clothing, the soft scent of moss. When the first beams of sunlight touched Suki’s skin, she still faced the space Yue had taken up. She waited a few more seconds, exhaustion setting in.

In the palace below, someone shouted Zuko’s name. Suki rose to her feet. She would go see him. Katara would cry, Aang would hug her. None of them would ever know the cost of his recovery.

Suki looked at the moon, still hovering in the morning sky. Then she descended.

***

The hills of Kyoshi Island were short relative to other ranges in the Earth Kingdom. The highest point on the island was shorter than the lowest in the nearby Patola Mountains, home of the now empty Southern Air Temple. This summit was named Hei-Ran Peak, after the mother of Avatar Kyoshi’s wife. A wooden hovel had been constructed on the flat top. Rumors said Kyoshi would meet with her enemies here, away from civilians.

Suki sat several yards in front of the hovel, legs crossed, facing west to watch the sunset. The winds of early spring bit at her, but the bundle strapped across her chest kept her warm. The trek to this spot had rocked the child to sleep, and she could feel his steady breathing.

A few minutes passed, then an hour. The sun and all it’s light disappeared. The stars became visible, and Suki saw her shadow lengthened by a brightness behind her. She remained seated, still.

A hand pressed against her back, gliding gently across her shoulders in a show of comfort. Suki relaxed into the touch, rising to her feet and facing Yue. Two years had passed since their first meeting, but the moon spirit hadn’t aged at all.

Yue grinned, almost sheepishly. “Hello Suki.”

“Hey Yue. How are you?”

For the first time, she got an answer. “I’m good,” Yue said with a smile.

Suki wasn’t sure how to proceed. She felt like there must be some ritual, some rite she had to perform, but hours of research on the subject had revealed nothing. Apparently, very few individuals in the history of the world had accepted the deal with the moon. “I brought him.”

Yue’s eyes widened, and she reached a hand towards the bundle across Suki’s chest. “Is this him?”

“Yep.” Suki carefully removed the fabric concealing his face.

Yue leaned in, gasping at the sight. The infant had the dark skin of a water tribe descendant, with snow white hair. He slept soundly.

“He’s… he’s beautiful,” Yue said. “Who’s the father?”

Suki chuckled to herself. The question was fair, but that part of the process had been the easiest. “Sokka.”

Yue froze, meeting Suki’s eyes. “Oh? I thought you two weren’t...”

“We’re not, but we kept in touch after the break up. Besides, I thought if you had the choice, that’s who you would have gone with.” Suki gazed down at the boy. Though she’d known his fate for years, no amount of preparation could soften the upcoming loss. “So um… how does this work?”

“We don’t have to do it right now,” Yue said. “I was thinking maybe we could… talk? Like last time?”

Relief washed over Suki. Not once in the last few years had Yue left her thoughts. In her dreams, she still heard the sound of Yue’s laughter, smelled her mossy scent. Suki outstretched her hand, indicating the hovel. “I can make us some tea?”

The night passed easily. Yue told Suki that the tea was delicious, withholding the fact that she’d long lost her sense of taste. A few hours in, the child woke up crying, and Suki showed Yue how to change his cloths and feed him. Yue learned diligently, though in the spirit world, he would not need any of those things.

The three of them laid together on a bamboo mat, the boy in the middle. Yue had not stopped smiling, her eyes on the boy. Suki trained her gaze on Yue instead, focusing on her face, filling in the gaps of her memory.

“Did you name him?” Yue asked.

“No. I thought you would want to.”

Yue considered for a moment. “How about Arnook? After my father?”

“You don’t have to ask me,” Suki said with a smile. “But that is a good name.”

A moment of stillness passed.

“He made the deal, didn’t he?” Suki asked. “Both of your parents did.”

Yue pressed her lips together, her eyes solemn. “Yes.”

“But you grew up in the human world.”

“When I was born, the spirits gave my father a vision. He knew I would become the moon spirit,” Yue said. “So… he negotiated with the moon. I would get sixteen years in the material world, then spend the rest of eternity as a spirit.”

Suki nodded thoughtfully. “I see.”

A thought crossed Yue’s mind. “Did you want to? Negotiate, I mean.”

“No,” Suki said, tracing her fingers over the baby’s small hand. “He was never my son. Always yours.”

“He could be yours, too.”

Suki frowned at her. “What?”

Yue shifted, leaning on her elbow. “You could pass over to the spirit world, live with us there. Humans have done it before.” She tilted her head. “Actually, I know someone who is planning to, when his time here is done.”

“Who?”

“Zuko’s uncle, Iroh.”

“Iroh?” Suki’s eyes widened. “How do you know that?”

Yue smirked. “You think you’re the only one who talks to the moon?”

Heat raced across Suki’s face, but she pushed through the embarrassment. “Oh.”

“Do you want to? Live with us?”

Yue looked at her so earnestly that Suki hated her next set of words. “I can’t, Yue. At least, not yet.” She sighed. “I still have work here, unfinished business.”

“Ah. I see.” Yue’s face fell. “Well, when you’re done… come find me.”

Suki grinned. “That won’t be a problem. You’re hard to miss.”

“How dare you.” A playful look flickered across Yue’s features. “It’s not polite to comment on a lady’s weight.”

They chuckled together. In a movement so natural that Suki felt she was born to make it, she leaned forward and pressed her lips to Yue’s. The kiss was soft, not hungry or needing, and Yue hummed contentedly.

“The sun’s about to rise,” Yue whispered against her lips.

“Damn.”

Yue scoffed, pulling away. “Not in front of the baby.”

“He can’t understand me,” Suki said, leaning in and kissing Yue again.

“Suki,” Yue giggled. “I have to go.” She ran her fingers through Suki’s hair, murmuring, “I’ll see you again?”

“Of course.”

Yue reached for Arnook, taking the baby into her arms. “Say goodbye, Arnook.”

He gurgled at Suki, and she held up her hand in a lame wave as a response.

“Goodbye, Suki.”

“Goodbye-” but both Yue and Arnook had already disappeared.

Suki rolled onto her back, gazing up at the ceiling of the hovel. Sunlight peeked through a few holes in the wood. She closed her eyes, and slept.

#winter atla femslash week #suki #yue #hijo de la luna #yueki #the moon #my fic

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i-will-physically-fight-you · 4 years

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A Singular Cog in the Machine Chapter 3

Chapter Title: Soul and Emotion

Summary: "It was pure logic when it came down to it. Why allow harm befall the others if Logan could stop it? Surely, it was much more beneficial for only one to be harmed than for all to undergo excruciating pain and misery. A broken cog is more easily replaced than if the whole machine fell apart.“

Logan adheres to the belief that needs of the many far outweigh the needs of the one, the latter being himself. Or in other words, Logan tries to sacrifice himself for the sake of the others. Fortunately for Logan, they won’t let him get away with that.

Chapter Word-Count: 2k

Pairings: platonic lamp

Warnings: Injuries, Referenced Torture, Crying, Misunderstandings, Angst With a Happy Ending

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | End AO3 LINK

As promised, here comes the comfort! I want to give a quick shout-out to both @delimeful and @today-only-happens-once as their own sci-fi aus helped inspire me to finish what I started with this one heh <3

Logan woke up alone for the first time in a long while. Approximately sixty-six cycles, five hours, thirty-two minutes, four, five, six seconds ago.

‘Internal Clock program is running functionally,’ Logan thought as he closed his eyes, running a quick diagnosis scan. It was not...completely optimal. Parts of his code had been ravaged, leaving him vulnerable and exposed. His biological body still suffered grievous breaches. His artificial eyes were damaged, only working at 70% efficiency.

This made viewing things from a distance rather difficult. However, it was clear enough to recognize he was not in his own quarters. Rather, he was still in the ship’s common recreation area. The “living room” as Virgil referred to it.

He laid on the couch, swaddled in soft blankets and cushioned with a plethora of pillows. Both he expected came from Patton’s hoard in his quarters. He was almost surprised not to see a stuffed animal in the crook of his arm. The television was on, the volume lowered to only a pleasant murmur could be heard. Images of animals flashed onto the screen. A nature documentary, one that Logan had previously found to be captivatingly informative.

“--we’ll take care of you, we’ll watch all your favorite nature documentaries, how does that sound?”

Patton had said that, he recalled. But when? He tried locating the source of the memory file. Except--

ERROR MEMORY FILE CORRUPTED.

He dug a bit deeper, finding more and more memory files in a similar disarray. He’d known this problem was occurring. But that didn’t explain the chill that swept through his body just then. A fever perhaps? No, his body temperatures remained at their normal regulated levels.

Before he could contemplate this further, his ears picked up on noises in the distance. Too far away to make it out from his position. There was a simple solution to his quandary. The ship computer. Or Odysseus as Roman insisted on calling it. He could request an audio transcript.

Pinging...pinging...pinging…

He couldn’t reach the ship computer. That was not optimal. His only option was to investigate the noises himself.

Logic dictated he was wounded. He should remain on the couch unless absolutely necessary. He remained put, concentrating on the television. The urge to find the source of the noises would not go away. It festered, growing rapidly like a disease until he could not withstand it any longer.

Standing up from the couch proved far more difficult than he anticipated. His torso flared in pain, his legs shaky and unstable. He gripped the side of the couch, breathing in deeply. His vision spun, distorted and decorated with bright spots of light. It took a moment for it to completely clear.

He looked down the corridor, the distance stretching into oblivion. No, that was a falsehood. It was only ten meters long. However, in his current physical state it might as well be a thousand meters.

It didn’t cause his pressing curiosity to fade in the slightest. He took a step forward, his foot stinging like pins and needles to quote an idiom of Virgil’s. He didn’t collapse. Granted, he heavily leaned onto the couch for support. He took another step forward and then another.

He held onto the corridor wall the whole way, a small grunt of pain leaving him. The dizziness returned, but he pushed through it. All that mattered was reaching the end of the corridor. If Logan’s memory was still accurate, it should lead to the ship galley. Perhaps the others were engaged in re-energizing through fuel consumption?

As he drew close, the noises crystallized into recognizable speech.

“Are you sure?” Virgil’s voice asked, pointed and edged. Someone responded, much too low for Logan to catch. He gritted his teeth, propelling himself onward at an accelerated rate. His vision frizzled and crackled, everything becoming a blobby mess of colors.

“Maybe we should--Logan!”

An arm wrapped around his waist, hoisting him up. Logan opened his mouth to protest when a wave of nausea hit him. He quickly shut it in favor of keeping his stomach contents down. The person guided him to a chair, careful and steady. He sat there, grimacing as the nausea gradually subsided from his systems.

When he glanced up again, he met the furrowed brows of Roman, Patton and Virgil. They gathered around him, forming a semi-circle. He examined them, scrutinizing every detail. His drive whirred from the amount of tests he processed in the matter of nanoseconds. Each one proving the validity of his suspicions every single time.

“You’re real.” He croaked.

They all exchanged a glance.

“Yes, we’re here Logan, you’re safe now,” Patton confirmed, laying a hand on Logan’s shoulder. A gesture meant to be reassuring except it wasn’t reassuring at all.

“No,” Logan shook his head, “You should--cannot---I don’t--it does not make sense!”

“Why does it not make sense?” Roman asked, dropping down on one knee. He acted odd, more muted than usual. The way his head bowed indicated a sign of exhaustion. Logan shook this thought aside in an attempt to formulate a response.

“To quote Spock from the movie Star Trek II Wrath Of Khan, ‘The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one,’” Logan said. Upon their blank stares, he elaborated, “A singular cog in the machine is more easily replaced than if the whole machine falls apart. As the ship engineer and navigator, my role is vital but replaceable, therefore--”

Patton drove into Logan, embracing him firmly around his middle. The titekan’s whole frame shook as deep, guttural sobs fell erupted from him. Logan blinked, almost short-circuiting from this unexpected turn of events.

“I...do not understand.” Logan admitted. He glanced up at Roman and Virgil only to find them in similar states of malfunction.

“You colossal intelligent idiot,” Roman murmured, his face dripping with ivory tears. He shoved his head against Logan’s shoulder, placing his arms around both him and Patton. “Did you really think we could function without you?”

‘‘Yes,’’ Logan wanted to say, but he couldn’t. The word wouldn’t come out of his clenched throat. Virgil was the only one left standing at this point. He was the captain, the system administrator. He was a much-appreciated source of reality. Surely, despite his human emotions, he understood the logic.

“Lo,” Virgil sighed, running his hand through his hair, “When you disappeared, we searched all over the galaxy looking for you. We looked for weeks. And after we found you, we’ve been taking care of you in shifts. You know why?”

Logan shook his head.

“Because you’re not a broken cog to us. You’re more than that--you’re a kraffing sentient being. You’re--” Virgil’s voice wobbled. He inhaled harshly, pushing on, “Dammit, you’re family, Logan. And it’s cheesy but we don’t give up on one another. Never.”

“Captain Fearless is right,” Roman said, and Patton made a rumbling sound of agreement.

“Oh,” Logan managed, swallowing, “Oh.”

He’d thought so much about the others’ and their importance to the system. He analyzed and calculated it all. He saw how removing any of their variables would be detrimental. But in all his calculations, he never considered how he himself affected the equation.

“I did not--I made a slight miscalculation--” Logan breathed in, “I am sorry.”

“No,” Virgil said, stepping closer, “I’m sorry. It’s my fault. I should’ve told you, I assumed it was an understood thing. We could’ve rescued you sooner if I hadn’t second-guessed myself--”

“Virgil.” Logan said, the clenching feeling in his throat tightening. Wordlessly, he reached out a hand to Virgil. He wasn’t quite sure what he was attempting to convey. Fortunately Virgil seemed to understand. He leaned over and joined the entangling of limbs and bodies.

‘A group hug,’ Logan’s dictionary program informed him, ‘an instance of three or more people embracing one another simultaneously, typically to provide support or express solidarity.’

They held onto one another for quite a while, not moving a single muscle. Great globs of tears were shed amongst them all; even Logan wasn’t immune to it. He rationalized it was his body reacting to the others’ emotional displays. It probably did not have to do with the strange, tingly warmth lit up inside his chest.

He would worry about this sensation if not for the melatonin in his system starting to take effect. He closed his eyes, a long intake of oxygen following this action.

“Logan?” Patton sniffled.

“Yes?”

“Th...there’s something we need to tell you about.”

Logan’s eyes fluttered open. He looked expectantly at Patton, waiting. The titekan opened his mouth to continue, but Virgil and Roman beat him to it.

“Patton, are you seriously going to tell him--”

“We should wait--”

“No,” Patton said, interrupting them both, “we can’t keep this from him. He deserves to know.”

It didn’t increase in volume, but Logan’s heart was the only thing roaring in his ears. Deserves to know? The only scenarios Logan could come up in his mind was his tests were faulty, wrong wrong wrong about this being real. It was all fake. A simulation, surely or worse; an experiment. The thousand eyes watching him behind a screen, shattering his hopes once more.

“Logan?” A soft hand touched his cheek, “you with us?”

“Yes,” Logan heard himself saying, “Yes, I’m here. Go on, Patton. What is it that you’d like to divulge?”

“When we brought you back, I did a few medical scans, to try and see if there was any internal bleeding going on,” Patton hesitated, refusing to meet Logan’s eyes, “I found an AI chip in your brain.”

What? Impossible, his AI was supposed to be undetectable by scans--

“That disgusting buvah must’ve stuck it in you for the kriffs and giggles,” Roman growled, his scaled tail whipping with indignation.

“As far we can tell, it doesn’t have a tracker,” Virgil said, “and removing it could be lethal.”

“Okay.” Logan said faintly.

“Okay?” Roman repeated, squinting, “We just told you that you have a freaky AI chip in your brain and your response is, ‘okay?!’”

“Hey, lay off him, Princey,” Virgil hissed, “He’s been through a lot, you know that.”

“Well,” Logan began, “this is not how I expected to inform you all of the fact that I am an advanced artificial intelligence operating inside of a biological body.”

“What?!” Roman gaped at him. Virgil and Patton also stared at him, showing similar signs of duress.

“I did not think it was imperative intel as it did not negatively impact my performance as neither an engineer or navigator.” Logan said. And while it was true, it was also a bit of a lie. The reality was that most people seemed to be wary of AIs. This was why he chose to clothe himself with a biological body to blend in, so to speak. All it took was working lungs and a beating heart for others to respect and listen as illogical as that may be.

“I admit, that perhaps that was another lapse of judgment on my part. I understand if knowing this...makes you uncomfortable,” Logan added, a weird twisting feeling settling in his gut. Perhaps he was ill? He could not find himself to meet their gazes. He tried not thinking about how that was a sign of nervousness. He was not nervous, after all, AIs do not get nervous.

“Freaky?” Roman let out a high-pitched laugh, “did I say freaky? I meant to say there’s a freaking fantastic AI chip in your brain.”

“I agree,” Patton chirped up, “You could almost say that he’s too cute to compute!”

Now it was Logan’s turn to gape at them. “It really does not bother any of you?”

“It’s like I said,” Virgil told him, a small smirk growing on his lips, “you’re family. We love you, AI or not.”

Logan blinked, slowly processing the others--no, his family’s words. It didn’t make sense. His systems struggled putting it in neat, quantifiable boxes. He feared trying would only result in his systems crashing. For once, however, he found it didn’t matter that didn’t need to make sense.

So his response to this was purely logical. In ways Logan refused to elaborate or share even within himself.

“I...find you all sufficient as well.”

#thomas sanders #sanders sides #logan sanders #patton sanders #roman sanders #virgil sanders #lamp #kat writes

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renaxwrites · 4 years

Text

Eleven

.05 - Girl Almighty

synopsis: the number Eleven had always appeared in milestones of your life. it was a constant, and you didn’t know why. but you would soon find out when you study abroad in japan and meet Him.

pairing: tsukishima kei x fem!reader

warnings: mentions of death, depression

masterlist: here :)

a/n: this honestly was such an endearing chapter to write. we finally learned what happened in y/n’s past, and her bond with mizuki grows strong. also, for this chapter and the next, I’m doing a lot of cultural research to try and incorporate it in the story, and it feels really cool to be exploring the culture! hope you guys enjoy this one 🥺💕 yes I cried at one in the morning finishing this and what about it

previous || next

Her light is as loud as as many ambulances as it takes to save a savior.

Sleep. School. Practice. Home. Repeat. Soon, you were nearing the end of September without even knowing it. As the weeks had flown by, the tension between you and Tsukishima had only grown. Only, it wasn’t a ‘bad’ or ‘awkward’ kind of tension. It was more like a ‘something-is-happening-between-us-but-neither-of-us-know-what-it-is-or-how-to-address-it’ kind of tension.

As if the universe was tired of this ‘tip-toeing around each other’ crap, a special event was coming up that was definitely going to stir the pot. The Harvest Moon Festival.

“Tsukiiiii! Are you excited for Tsukimi tomorrow?” Yamaguchi teases. Tsukishima knowingly groans.

You look up from your camera, contemplating whether you should keep the last shot even though Tanaka photo-bombed it. “The moon-viewing? You guys do the festivals here, right?”

Yamaguchi nodded. “Yeah, it’s kinda ironic, isn’t it? The festivals usually fall around Tsukki’s birthday, so we usually do a joint-celebration! But this year, it’s a little earlier, so we won’t celebrate his birthday at the same time, but it’s still exciting!”

Tsukishima peers down at your camera, pressing the delete button faster than you can react. “Shouldn’t you know about it? You are Japanese, right?”

Pettily, you recover the photo from the recently deleted section. You were going to delete it anyway, but you just wanted to spite him. “I did celebrate, but I’ve always wondered how much more authentic it would be to celebrate it in my mother’s home country. It sounds like a lot of fun!”

Yamaguchi realizes you haven’t gone to the festival before, so he cheerily invites you to come along with him and Tsukki, to which Tsukishima replies, “My mom would probably force me to drag her along anyway. Might as well.”

His statement and tone implied that he didn’t want you to join, but you felt his gaze on you with a slight glimmer of hope in his eyes.

You agree, but are quick to come to a devastating realization.

“But I don’t have anything to wearrrrrr!” Cue two clueless-looking boys not knowing how to react.

Upon hearing distress, Yachi comes dashing to your rescue. “Y/N!! I heard your cry! I’m actually going shopping tonight for a new festival outfit, did you want to go with me?” She really was a savior at times.

You throw your arms around her in gratefulness. “You’re an angel! I would like nothing more than to accompany you! I’ll just text Mizuki to let her know where we’ll be…”

Yachi ponders for a moment. “Actually, do you think she would mind coming? I don’t want to bother her at all, but my mom’s staying late again, and I like having an adult’s second opinion…”

Fortunately, Mizuki was more than happy to bring you two to the downtown shops later that night. Once practice was over, you and Yachi bid your farewells to the boys and met up on the street corner, with Tsukishima trailing behind. Mizuki began to wave from under the streetlight, letting Tskishima know that dinner was already made, and that you won't be back too late. And so, the three of you were off!

─── ･｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Although your current location was quaint and serene, downtown was the opposite. There were endless amounts of shops, stands, and everything in between. Shoppers were bustling about, kids were frolicking in groups, and the smells of various foods wafted in the air. The energy in the downtown district was definitely lively and contagious.

Mizuki took a deep, content breath and turned to the two of you. “Alright ladies! I have a few shops in mind, so we can stop by those first just to ease into it. Let me know if you need anything! If you want to even stop for a snack, I certainly won’t hold you back, not when it smells as good as this! Alrighty, let’s goo!!”

The first shop was very quaint, but you were a bit clueless as to what you should be looking for. Good thing Mizuki and Yachi was there to guide you! You apparently were in search for a yukata, a more informal traditional robe that is similar to a kimono, but not quite. Great! Now that you knew what you were on the hunt for, how were you supposed to decide what color or pattern? Every shop you stopped by were overflowing with more patterns, colors, and combinations than you can possibly imagine.

By the third shop, Yachi had already picked hers, and was currently being fitted. She chose a radiant yellow, decorated with white carnations and pink morning glory flowers print.

“You look like a ray of sunshine, Yachi! Yellow definitely suits you,” you and Mizuki shower her with praise, causing her to flush pink.

You laugh as you admit, “This must be what prom dress shopping feels like, haha.” The two ladies curiously look at you, and you’re quick to explain how back at home it’s a huge deal to find the dress, since prom is the most anticipated formal event for American high schools.

Needless to say, the pressure of finding one that spoke to you began to worry you. You bring your hand to your locket. Mizuki noticed this, then eyed your locket for a brief moment.

“I think I know the perfect one that would go along with your locket. We’ll stop by once Yachi’s fitting is done,” she offers you a warm smile to calm your nerves.

Once Yachi’s outfit was purchased, the three of you head to a shop that was in an easy-to-overlook nook. The second you step inside, you’re greeted by two eager women, ready to meet your requests. You browse, but begin to feel a bit of gravitation towards the back of the shop. The invisible force brings you to a halt. In front of you is an absolute masterpiece.

The overall color was navy blue, as dark as the night sky above. But the design was what made it stand out. The yakuta was sprinkled with constellations, and thousands of silver stars were scattered around the fabric. Around the waist was a deep red obi, a wide silk sash designed with light moons and stars lined all around it.

You were speechless. It was perfect.

Mizuki looks over and finds you with your jaw slightly agape, looking entirely mesmerized.

She turns to the women and tells them, “That’s the one for her.” And they get to work on your fitting.

During your fitting, Yachi went to buy a couple of snacks for you to share, leaving you and Mizuki alone, with the two women helping. You raise your arms over your head as they measure your waist. Suddenly, you catch her drying what looks to be a couple of tears.

“What’s wrong, Mizuki? Are you alright?”

She tenderly looks over and chuckles, wiping another tear that managed to escape.

“It’s nothing, really. I just always wondered what it would be like to go dress shopping with a daughter…” she looks down at her hands, wringing them deep in thought. “My sons are wonderful, and I wouldn’t give them up for anything in the world, but I always loved shopping with my mother, even if it was buying a mere hair accessory. Her calling me beautiful... and, I don’t know...it kind of felt like that for a moment.”

She looks up at you and smiles. “You haven’t been with us for too long, but I speak for both myself and my sons when I say we are grateful that you’ve been led into our lives.”

You jump off the pedestal and tackle Mizuki into a tight embrace. “I’m glad I came, too.” She hugs you back, and you look at each other, and suddenly burst into laughter at your tear-stained faces.

“Alright, that’s enough baby tears. Now, get on up there so we can see the finishing touches,” she gently urges you. Just as the last details were being made, Yachi comes back, just in time.

She does a dramatic gasp. “Y/n, you look beautiful! It’s like all the stars wanted you to wear them!” She almost drops her snack out of pure shock, but manages to catch it.

Mizuki helps her carry them and agrees. “She’s right y/n. It also matches your locket color perfectly. I can see that it’s important to you, so it’s like both a piece of home and a piece of here going hand in hand.” Even the two women who fitted you were quick to offer their praise.

You look down at your outfit and tenderly put a hand on your locket. “It’s perfect.”

─── ･｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

The three of you drop Yachi off at her house, and once you were sure she was safely inside, you and Mizuki begin your trek home. There’s a comfortable silence between you two. The stars in the sky were glistening and drowned you in tranquil light.

Mizuki thoughtfully looks over at you. She’s carefully thinking of something she wants to say.

“Is there a story to the locket?”

You stop in your tracks and look up at the stars twinkling above you. The moon’s serene appearance gives you the courage to respond.

“This is the first gift my parents gave me, on their official wedding day. And now it’s the first and last thing I look at every day. It’s one of only things remaining from them that I own.” You look over to find sad eyes.

Mizuki’s eyes were not viewing you in the sense of pity, which you have always gotten for the past year. Instead, she was looking over with the most wholesome look in her eyes, wanting to help and protect you.

That encourages you to go on.

“My mother and father went out on one of their weekly date nights. They liked to go out on Friday nights to get ice cream down the road. They’ve done it since even before they got married. It was normal. Nothing out of the ordinary.”

You choke up.

“Almost a year ago now. My parents were on their way home. They got hit by a drunk driver. Eleven at night. I open the door to complete strangers telling me that their passing was instant, that there was nothing that could be done. November eleventh was the day that my life fell apart.”

You look up at the stars again.

“My relatives took care of me for the rest of the year. I wallowed in depression. Hardly moving, hardly eating. Hell, it even hurt to breathe. Knowing that my dad wouldn’t pop his head in my room just to tell me a joke to annoy me on purpose. Knowing that my mom wasn’t there to drink tea with me while she told her favorite childhood stories. Knowing that I wouldn’t see them dancing in the kitchen to their cheesy love song. Knowing they weren’t there.”

Your eyes are so clouded with tears your vision is extremely blurry, but you manage to lock eyes with her in understanding.

“My relatives thought it would be a good idea for me to transfer somewhere new for the start of high school. I had always wondered at the beauty of my mother’s home country. The way she would light up whenever she mentioned something as simple as the cherry blossoms floating in the breeze, or how the stars seemed to shine differently. Well, she was right about that,” you chuckle at the thought.

“So here I am, in Japan. Here to discover myself, but more importantly, I’m here for them too. I know they are always watching me from above, but this locket keeps me grounded at times when I need them the most. It reminds me of the times we’ve had. I think of the future they wanted me to strive for, it pushes me forward. I would give anything to heal the heartache, to fill up the emptiness of their missing presence. But I know they want me to be happy. It’s why I was brave enough to travel to a new place I’ve never been to, because in the end, I know I’m not alone. This locket reminds me of all that.”

More comfortable silence follows. Mizuki puts a warm hand on yours.

“Y/n, you are the bravest soul I have ever come to meet. If fate is what brought you here, then I am glad for it. You have such a bright, intelligent, endearing and determined soul. And I know for a fact that your parents are looking down on you right now and are smiling at the sight of their brave little girl persevering the odds. And there is absolutely nothing in this world that could demolish the love your parents have devoted to you. You really are special, y/n, don’t you ever forget that.”

The two of you embrace once more. You check the time, and the lateness caused the slow trek to a brisk walk back home.

It was Eleven o’ clock.

There’s something happening here. I hope you feel what I’m feeling too.

taglist: @jiminslonglostjams @fantasymirror @shewastheriot @lukes-princess @iamthepenguinwhosearseisonfire @its-bnha-babe @desi-studys @shootooooo @noya-senpai-imagines @animefan7420 @anpancari @tsukkx @cadabby @thoebe-fly @it-was-just-a-ship

#tsukishima x reader #tsukishimaimagine #kei tsukishima #kei tsukishima x reader #tsukishima kei #tsukishima kei x reader #haikyuu!!#haikyuu imagines #haikyuu x reader #eleven

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syndianites · 4 years

Text

The After; The Athar: Chapter One

Chapter 1/?

Chapter 1 [Here] - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5

AO3: This Chapter - Full Fic

Summary: Post Season 2, non-Mianitian Compliant. The crew finally land back into the world after the events of Ruxomar. That should be a good thing, right? But Wag is feeling the burden of everything that has happened to him, and he didn’t even get his magic back to boot.

It’s hard to be happy when life has been so shitty.

Relationships: Sparklington (end-game), Marthlington (temporarily), Sparkanite (Spark x Ianite) (past, mentioned), Motanite

Content Warnings: Death Mentions, Implied Depression, Implied PTSD, Self-Deprecation, Breaking up a Relationship (Marthlington)

AN: I’ve been working on this since September? of 2019! I have 5 chapters done and still going. I wanted to wait to post this until I was done with it, but my impatience has gotten the better of me.

@the-moon-pal I’m coming for your crown king >:)

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They’d made it home a couple weeks ago, to the land of Mianite. It’d been such a relief. They got to meet the rest of the alts, got to watch Dianite meet the other gods- and cringe at the tension that crackled between them- got to find all their homes again. For once, in the past-however-long, there was peace. They could relax.

So why did Wag feel like utter shit?

Right. Because he literally got the worst part of the deal.

He thought his powers would come back when they got home. And they did, for a few hours. Not the full range, but a lot of it. It felt good to be full of magic again. It felt like he was himself.

But then things started to fall apart. Martha grew distant. His powers fell away in fits and bursts. He realized that the rest of FyreUK had moved on after they made amends in Ruxomar. They found their way on. Without him.

Nothing was the same, he realized, as he spent more time around the place they had called ‘home.’

Spark had done what he did best: built a city. Well, more like a village. What had once been a place of buildings thrown about at random and mostly open plains was now sparsely populated. Neatly arranged shops and a few houses took up the space next to the beach. New people had even begun to show up.

Everything was changing around him, yet he was stuck holding onto the past. Holding onto his wizardhood, to his brotherhood, to a partner that was farther now than ever, and- worst of all- he was still holding onto the hope that everything would just… go back. To how it was.

To when he was important.

Well, like fuck is he was going to sit around and loathe his existence. He could at least try to do something. Swear to Athar, he wasn’t going to turn into a lump of depression just because he couldn’t handle change! He’d rather be a walking mass of depression! That way he could at least pretend he was being productive.

Potions or spellbooks? A question as old as time. Potions were a staple in his life. If there was one thing that would never leave him, it was his ability to make fucking potions. Like, fucking make potions. Not potions to help people fuck. On the other hand, the more he poured through spellbooks, the more likely he was to get closer to finding out how to get his powers back.

Maybe his powers left when FyreUK left, taking all the glory of Athar with it. But that was too terrible of a thought, so that got chucked in the ‘not-today-bitch’ bin. Which was a handy dandy mental bin that stored all of his worst problems.

He never could fit himself in it, though.

So potions it was.

Now that he was out of the business of magic, most of his money came from his potion making. He had made yet another little wizard- alchemist? Potion master?- tower. Plopped some advertisements in el Pueblo de Spark and took orders to pass the time. He had to fund his botany experiments somehow. Someone had to introduce weed into this world, that might as well be him.

If he was going down in history for something, that wasn’t ‘Word Renowned Wizard Extraordinaire’, then ‘The Guy who Made Weed’ would sure as hell work.

Wag pulled up his log of orders. Luck, luck, dexterity, healing, luck, love- yeah, those didn’t really work but he’d make it anyways-, strength, luck, yadda, yadda, yadda. Lots of luck. He could probably get away with making a batch or two of luck potions, then work through the rest.

He spared a glance outside. Spark’s little hut-square town was beginning to develop into a pleasant little fishing hole. Surprisingly- or not, given how deep the waters were nearby- the place was actually a fairly hot place for single fish to mingle. Warm waters, nice and deep, lots of cover, and not much human interference. Until now, anyway.

Either the fishermen were starting to get a fair amount of revenue going or they really needed help. Luck potions were among his most expensive. The ingredients were hard to acquire regardless of how you made it.

Rabbit’s foot? Morally and physically hard to get a hold of. Rainbow trout? Terribly rare. ‘Star-light Fruit’? Not even confirmed to exist.

His method was a little more straightforward. A butt load of four-leaf clovers, a tiny bit of alcohol, and a fuckton of glitter. Clovers for the magic, glitter for the look, and alcohol for the feeling of being lucky.

It was a very bullshit potion.

It took forever to find the clovers, let alone collect them.

Athar give him strength.

Giving one last look outside, he tucked his log book in his cloak. Then he went and rummaged through his chests.

Monotony here he comes.

~~~

Wag was halfway through his second batch of luck potions when a distant knock came from his door, followed by the sound of bells. If not for the bells he’d have ignored the knocking. With a stretch, he putzed down the stairs. The many flights of stairs.

He missed being able to make elevators.

Opening the door revealed one Mr. Sparklez, hair tousled but otherwise neatly groomed. He was relaxed, if not a little winded from his trek up the hill Wag claimed as his own.

Wag smiled. “Hey Sparklez, what brings you up to my tower of terror today? Here for a chat or a swanky danky potion?”

He gestured for Jordan to head inside and get comfortable, but the man waved him off. “Actually,” Jordan started, “I was wondering if you’d seen Martha? I needed to ask her something and I haven’t seen her all day. Figured she’d be with you.”

Ah, so Jordan wanted to find Martha.

Ouch.

Doing his best to ignore the squeeze in his chest, Wag kept his smile firmly in place. “No, I don’t think I have. She, uh.” He paused, going for a nonchalant shrug. “She doesn’t come around the tower all that often. I’d ask Spark instead. She tends to hang around him more. Her good ole pops and all, y’know. They do have a lot to catch up on.” Wag tried to ignore how weak his words sounded. He didn’t want it to sound weird that Martha wouldn’t come around, but instead he just sounded pathetic.

Great.

Jordan gave Wag an awkward smile, seemingly uncomfortable with the sad display. “Ah, alright. I’ll ask around for Spark.”

He turned to leave but caught himself before he was fully turned away. Jordan chewed on his words. “Are you-” His eyes swept over Wag. “How have you been? We don’t see you as much anymore. Other than Tom, I guess, but it's hard to get rid of Tom once he decides you’re friends, y’know?”

“I’ve been,” Wag wanted to laugh, but pushed through the sentence, “swell, thank you. I would get out more, but I’m always so busy potion making. Gotta pay the bills somehow.” The words tasted bitter on his tongue. It wasn’t the exact truth, but he did spend a lot of time on potions.

Letting his shoulders settle, Jordan gave a small laugh. “Who would press a wizard to pay bills? Someone who wants to catch on fire, I’m sure.” He opted for a friendly smile. “If you ever want to hang out or something, let me know. I’ve been getting kind of bored between Spark telling me how to be a better champion of Ianite and living in an actual, peaceful society.”

Wag waved after Jordan as he began his descent. Yeah, a wizard. A frown tugged at his face while he shut the door.

A real fucking wizard.

~~~

Making potions was rather methodical. Each step took a certain amount of time, each item had certain effects, meshed certain ways with other items. It was like following a recipe, but with bigger consequences for messing up. Cooler results, though.

Wag had just finished melting down the clovers he’d gathered and extracting the essence- which is to say he lit it on fire after sprinkling a generous amount of blaze powder on it- when Jordan had stopped by. Which was convenient, since he needed to wait for the weird half-liquid half-slime to cool off enough to move it. The awkward potions, glitter, and alcohol were already prepped. Now all he needed to do was mix shit together.

Oh joy.

At the very least, it was satisfying to roll the clover essence into little balls to plop into an awkward potion and then watch them dissolve. The clover gave the essence a natural, healthy green color while the blaze powder, which clung to even the most thoroughly washed slime, gave it something of a yellow highlight. Golden glitter gets dumped in to make it feel like you were about to drink something special. Yes, the glitter was edible. No, most people didn’t realize he put glitter in this shit. Then the alcohol was for that background buzz. It was meant to dull the senses just enough to trick people into believing, wholeheartedly, in whatever god-forsaken abomination he just made.

Sorry. What ever divinely crafted, totally safe potion he’d just made.

Sure, he didn’t test it himself, but it seemed to work well enough for the people he gave it to. So where was the harm?

It was fine.

The next part was perhaps the most boring. And he’d spent all day yesterday crawling on the ground looking for four-leaf clovers.

Tagging and packaging. Writing names on slips of paper, tying them to the potion, putting it in a small, padded box to prevent any breaks. Rinse, repeat. It was annoying, wasted money, all that jazz, but it helped the look. Who wants to be handed a regular old potion, by hand, when you can get it in some majestic looking box to really add some sparkle to your magic?

Maybe Ruxomar rubbed off on him in a bad way.

In any case, the look was important, and by Athar was he going to make it look fucking fantastic.

Unfortunately, this task was also terribly, horribly monotonous. Worse yet, it left room for thinking. And thinking was Wag’s least favorite pastime since floating in the Void. Especially since floating in the Void.

It lead to him thinking deeply about himself and Athar knows that most of his life problems could be traced right back to that. His mistakes, his fuck ups, his shortcomings, all of it came back to him thinking way too hard about himself.

Gross.

Instead, he tried to run over potion recipes in his mind. Or any recipe, really. All the different ways to make a fire resistance potion when you don’t have magma cream. Counting how many potions used lemongrass. Figuring out what potions would make it more likely to catch fish. Literally anything. As long as it was potions, it was fine.

Not about himself, not about Athar, not about wizards, and not about… Martha.

Yeah, that last one would be a one hit k-o.

But now that his mind had touched on the subject, it dug in. Sunk it's claws into the delicate stability of his mind. Dramatic, he knows, but that’s how it felt. It was like the more he tried to get the thought out of his mind, the further it burrowed into him. Awful, painful, and not even worth the effort.

Martha… clearly didn’t care about him anymore. Or, well. He winced at the thought. She didn’t love him like she used to. If she, uh. Did in the first place. But this was old news. This was something he pondered after she seemed to avoid him like the plague, seemed to grimace when she looked over and saw him and not him.

Steve.

The name sat heavy in his head. They hadn’t meshed well, ‘specially where Martha was concerned. But they managed, for her, because they loved her.

Wag felt guilty, looking back on it now. For stealing their time together, for messing with their relationship. They hadn’t gotten to be together enough, had lost too much time before-

Yeah, he didn’t like thinking about Steve more than he didn’t like thinking about Martha. Wag didn’t feel like he deserved to think the name, let alone put himself up against his image. Steve was a hero. He rebelled against Helgrind in a cunning, intelligent way, he was selfless in more aspects than any of the heroes that appeared in Ruxomar, and he was the one to sacrifice the most. To sacrifice it all.

Where did Wag stand against that?

Honestly, it was no wonder Martha couldn’t stand to look at him. He was just a reminder of Steve, a reminder that she didn’t have Steve. That she had him instead.

Had she ever loved him?

That wasn’t the point. The point was that Martha was hurting, trying to pick up the pieces of what she left behind in Ruxomar. What she had lost. And Wag wasn’t doing anything to help. He was stuck up in his tower, making potions, trying to forget about everything that he wasn’t.

He should try to look for her.

But the last time he did, he got turned away. She was “catching up with her father.” She was “busy settling into the new world.” She was “trying to get a grip on her new goddesshood.”

Wag was persistent, but even he could get the hint.

By Athar, he got the hint. “I don’t want to see you.” “Don’t come near me.” “You can’t help me.”

He wondered if Spark was doing anything to help her or if he was also caught up in everything that had happened. From what he had learned about the man in Ruxomar, he was devoted to his wife. No, he gave everything for his wife. Learning she was dead after working up everything to see her again?

He had played it well. When he heard the news, Spark kept strong, only letting his tears show. If he had gone home later after parting with Martha, who had her own grief and guilt, crumbling on the inside no one would know. And if he had locked himself away and let everything loose, let himself break, none would be the wiser. But they could guess, they could give him a passing glance, a thoughtful frown.

Wag wondered if he still carried that grief around with him.

Spark had taken to trying to discipline Jordan to be a better champion of Ianite. It had made the man uncomfortable with getting told he could be a better follower and all. Or rather, having it implied that he wasn’t the best follower. Spark was stubborn in ‘training’ the champion of Ianite to be a full fledged follower.

Still, Jordan didn’t appreciate the sentiment.

Wag understood. Having the husband of the very goddess you watched die get on your case about being a better follower? When the crushing weight of guilt hadn’t fully let off your shoulders? He wondered if Spark hadn’t taken to coaching Jordan to make himself feel better, to remind himself that he would have kept Ianite safe, that he would have fixed the world before it broke out from under them.

It sounded like torture.

But it helped settle Wag. Call him selfish, but he felt better knowing other people had real problems, real grief, to deal with. Sure, Wag had his hang up with Martha. Yeah, he had his issues with being-a-wizard-yet-not. But he wasn’t as close to neck deep as Spark was. Like Martha was.

He wished belittling his problems made them feel less suffocating.

Martha. Martha was still pushing him away. And he was letting her. What did that say about him? About their relationship?

A sigh heaved out of his chest. It was like someone stuck a large rock right in his rib cage, tucked neatly between his lungs. Hard, heavy, and an all around burden. Potions. He needed to think about potions.

His hands betrayed him with a subtle shake. How many names did he have left to write? How many boxes did he have left to pack? Fuck if he knew. He had to keep counting, to find a way to wrap up all his issues, his panic, his fear, into a nice little package and tuck it away like a forgotten gift.

Athar help me, Wag tried to control his thoughts, I might drive myself insane by the end of the year.

As if on cue, another knock at his door broke his thoughts. He tried not to feel relieved to rush away from his potion packaging. He was fine, cool as a cucumber.

Throwing open the door, he came face to face with his second visitor of the day. Tom.

Tom was standing in front of his door almost uncertainly, like he wasn’t quite sure why or how he got there. He took one sweep over Wag’s unhidden face and a determined, focus look set in on his own.

“We,” Tom looped his arm around Wag’s in a sudden movement, “are going out somewhere. No if’s, and’s, or but’s.”

Eyebrows shooting up, Wag let himself be dragged from his house with an aborted motion to close the door behind him. He mournfully watched his door stay ajar. Hopefully no one else ventured up the hill today, otherwise he might be down a few potions.

“Why?” Wag turned his attention back to Tom, who was resolute in his intention of pulling Wag away to Athar knows where.

A grin was shot in his direction. “You look like you need to get out of the house. Also, I’m real fuckin’ bored and you’re clearly in need of some company.”

A wry smile snuck on Wag’s face. “Oh lucky me. We should get some tea, live up to our trademark.”

Tom nodded. “Absolutely. Let’s hit town. Fuck it up. Flaunt our hero-ness and get shit faced.”

“Let’s not get shit faced, and especially not get kicked out of town for making a ruckus.” Wag fondly rolled his eyes. “I do quite like living here and it’d be a shame to have to follow you around to make sure you don’t die.”

Tom gave a mocked offended gasp, free hand coming up to his forehead as he leaned away. “How dare you! I’ll have you know I’d never die if I didn’t live in a community. I’m a rogue, don’t you know.” He sniffed. “I can easily hold my own in the dangerous wilds.”

“Without anyone to pester and annoy?”

“I can pester anything!”

Wag bit his lip to stop a laugh. Tom always brought such energy with him. It was refreshing. Maybe he was right, he just needed some company.

He wouldn’t say that to his face, though.

“I suppose so,” Wag continued, “You are rather persistent. I bet you could annoy the sun into setting early.”

“Nah, I’d blow that fucker up instead.” Tom winked, snuggled back up to Wag, effectively trapping his arm. “I still think we should get shit faced. Drink our sorrows into the drain, throw them up another day.”

Wag mock gagged. “I’d rather keep them down the drain, thank you. Besides, what a waste of alcohol. If I’m drinking, I’m drinking to keep it down. Not!” He quickly cut Tom off, “That I want to go out drinking.” He eyed the sky, giving a disapproving look to Tom when he saw that it was still early afternoon. “No one should be getting drunk before the sun touches the horizon.”

With a pout, Tom leaned into Wag’s side. “Lame. I suppose,” he drew out the word, “we could go get some good old fashioned tea. Call it a pre-game without the game.”

Wag rolled his eyes. He wasn’t looking to out game his issues. That wasn’t a solution. It’d just make him turn into a sad drunk and give him a headache in the morning.

This is why he needed weed back.

But also, he didn’t want to develop another problem. Gotta keep it clean. For now.

Tom still had his own plans, alcohol or no alcohol. “I find when I’m feeling down that doing something batshit stupid makes me feel better. We should go fishing with our bare hands- no, with only our teeth- and no shirt on. Attract ladies and gents to us alike. Are they looking at our finely chiseled chests or our daring courage? Who’s to say.”

“You are far from chiseled my friend. Try soft.” Wag poked Tom in the stomach jokingly. “And who said that I’m feeling down?”

“Hey!” Tom swatted his hand away. “I’ll have you know I’m more ripped than you’ll ever be!” He huffed, squeezing Wag’s arm. They walked in silence for a moment, now upon the town. After wandering the street for a second, Tom spoke again, quieter. “I had this feeling.” Wag eyes him. “It was weird. My gut was telling me to check in on you. And then when you opened the door it was written on your face. Even I’m not dumb enough to miss that.”

Wag heard the unspoken I was worried carried in Tom’s words. Talk about soft. He squeezed Tom’s arm back. “Oh wow, a gut feeling?” He teased lightly, “I think it was just you missing my magical presence. It is hard to go too long without seeing me.” If only that were true. “But I’m here now, and we can go do something absolutely stupid, just for you.”

They share a smile, a quiet thank you floating between them.

Tom gets a glint in his eyes. “Does this mean we can go catch fish with our bare hands?”

“I suppose so.” Wag drawled. “How else are we going to show off our toned figures?”

That got him a laugh, one concerningly maniacal, and he was dragged between houses.

Yeah, he might regret this.

Tom turned and gave him a smile that was all teeth and no common sense. He paused next to the shore, a little ways off from the docks. Shucking his clothes, one Tom Syndicate stood proudly in his underwear, unconcerned about the effect of sunlight on zombified skin. People gave them a look of distaste.

Oh, he was definitely going to regret this.

~~~

Soggy was one way to describe how Wag felt. Wet as shit was another. All in all, he was rather pleased with himself and the rather large, shiny fish sitting in his lap. The fish which so happened to be a fair amount larger than Tom’s.

“Oh fuck you.” Tom spluttered around a mouthful of fish, laying down an arm’s length away. He had gathered quite an amount of fish, a solid number for catching something with your mouth alone. None of them were that large. In fact, most were an average, if not slightly below, size.

Wag eyed the pile smugly. He may have only caught two, but damn if he didn’t go big.

“Well, it seems that I’ve caught myself a winner.” He tried not to look too pleased. The look on Tom’s face told him he failed.

Tom scoffed, letting the fish fall to the sandy floor with a wet fwop. “You got lucky! Clearly, quantity wins the game here. Sure, you caught one big, old, dumb motherfucker, but I caught a dozen other dumbass fish! I should get the win.”

“Wasn’t size the goal here?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, I think you do.”

Before Tom could fire back, a voice from behind interrupted him. “I think the two fools sitting in their underwear soaked to the bone are both losers.”

Wag tilted his head back to see Tucker standing with his hands in his pockets, back slouched, and an easy smile on his face, standing just where the sand turned to grass. Next to him was one lovely fox lady, Sonja herself, and one Sparkle butt, Jordan.

Nice to see the gang all here.

Tom sat up. “How dare you! I’ll have you know we are the best fishers on the island!”

Tucker raised a single eyebrow. “Really now? Are all the other fishers out at sea today?”

“Well excuse you, Mr. Boner. I’ll have you know we caught all of this,” Tom sweeps his arm across their score. “And I think that’s quite the haul.”

“How long did it take you?”

“Fuck you.”

Tucker snickered, moving closer to poke his foot into Tom’s side. “That’s what I thought.”

Wag, meanwhile, was carefully moving his prize to the side so he could stand up. Brushing the sand off himself, he exchanged a smile with Sonja and a nod with Jordan. Sonja gave him a good natured headshake. “And here I thought you were smarter than this.”

Jordan’s eyes trailed down Wag’s chest before flittering away. “Right down to your boxers? Tom must have gotten you good.”

“Well, I was fairly set on getting a nice cup of tea and walking across the beach, hand in hand like real lovers, but Tom was far more intent to go all macho and catch fish with his mouth alone.” Wag leaned in with a hand against his mouth to give a stage whisper. “Between you and me, I think he’s trying to step up his oral game.” He winked.

Jordan groaned, giving Wag what he thought to be a rather dramatic eye roll. That wasn’t even the worst he had to offer, and he’d given him such an easy setup! Sonja waggled her eyebrows and giggled when Tom butted in. “It’ll never be as good as yours dear.” He batted his eyelashes mock innocently.

The group burst into laughter. Tucker stepped closer, swinging an arm around his vaguely damp shoulders. “Hey, it’s nice to see you out and about man. It’s been a hot second. Almost thought you’d drank the wrong potion and kicked it or something.”

Wag nodded seriously. “Quite the real possibility. Why, just yesterday I almost drank real glitter! The kind you’re not supposed to eat.”

“Been there,” Sonja added, “I thought I was going to die when I did. Just gave me a very colorful trip to the bathroom.”

Tom grinned as he moved to elbow Jordan in the side. “I bet our good ole Captain here wouldn’t know the difference. How else did he get his namesake, right Mr. Sparkley Butt?”

“Hardy har,” Jordan gave Tom a fondly disgusted look. “The name’s Captain Sparklez, that ‘namesake’ came from you giving me a stupid nickname.”

They fell into more chatter, giving Tom and Wag the time to put their clothes back on, Tom not caring that he was still wet as he put his suit back on, while Wag just slung his cloak over himself. No point in putting pants on over wet underwear.

The group, all now clothed to some extent, began to wander back towards town. Wag was more than content to listen to Tom ramble on. He would get interrupted by Tucker when he said something ‘incredibly stupid’ and, more rarely, by Jordan, who would correct some technical thing that Tom clearly did not give a shit about.

Sonja drifted next to him, giving Wag a conspiratorial smile. “You’re looking mighty fine in just a robe and boxers. Is this the bedroom Wag special? Or is that sans boxers?”

“The bedroom Wag special is whatever you want it to be.” He winked. “It’s magic all around.”

They exchanged a laugh, falling silent again.

Wag knew that wasn’t what Sonja really wanted to talk about.

She looked back at him, a warm look in her eyes. “It’s nice. To see you out. Been a while, y’know?” Sonja stretched her arms out in front of her. “It really has been a bit since we’ve talked. And since you’ve left the house. But honestly?” Her tail swishes behind her. “I could have made a few more treks up that damn mountain myself.”

Shaking his head, Wag elbowed her side lightly. “It is a fairly tall hill, but I think mountain is a bit of an overstatement.” It was, in fact, a bitch of a climb, but Wag didn’t think it was that bad. He’d put the tower just on the other side of the Glowstone Forest, across from the Priest’s house. (What was it called again? Forest of the Void? Abyss Forest? Obsidian Trees? Yeah, he didn’t know or care).

Left unsaid was a ‘That’s okay, you don’t have to go out of your way’.

He received an eye roll. “Please, the only trek worse than that is up to where Tucker’s first house was. I was so happy when we moved it down the mountain. Well, into.”

It’s no trouble, her words left hanging, I don’t mind.

Wag huffed. How dare she be considerate. “You know what’s worse than a trek up a mountain? A trek up a mountain to get some rare flower, only to be spited by the universe and have not a single flower growing up there. Honestly, I could use some help from someone so used to climbing mountains.” A smirk pulled at his face. “Or maybe just send someone up there for me.”

We could always hang out when I’m playing master botanist. If you’d like.

Sonja smiled at him, but couldn’t resist getting a dig in. “Aw, did you skip leg day? Have some chicken legs over there? That’s alright, I’m sure someone,” she tilts her head, eyes sweeping past the buildings around them, “would be willing. Get a nice little lackey so you can rest your old bones at home and complain about how the cold makes your joints stiff.”

“How dare you,” Wag sniffed, hand held up to his heart. “I’ll have you know, my joints are just fine in the cold! Some of us just aren’t made of the cold, little miss fox.”

Sonja, ever so mature, stuck her tongue out at him.

They kept up some conversation, occasionally stopping to listen in to whatever Tom was saying. Wag, for a moment, realized that he had missed this. Missed them. That even though he wanted to avoid all the new things in this world, he’d always have his friends.

A quiet, hopeless voice asked if they’d leave him too.

~~~

There was nothing quite like hiking up a hill, in only your boxers, a little buzzed, during the night time. The pure amount of skeletons that had sniffed around looking for a cheap shot alone was bad enough, but the fact that his legs already hurt from struggling to fish with just his mouth without drowning? Yeah, it felt more like he was climbing up a mountain that was near vertical.

Fuck gravity.

A pit of warmth had settled in his chest a couple hours ago. Whether it was the alcohol that Tucker, of all people, had got the group into drinking or just the effect of being with friends for a while, Wag felt content. Not a common feeling in recent times. It was nice.

Really nice.

Upon reaching his door, his mind scrambled to figure out why it was left slightly open. He shrugged. As long as nothing was missing or stolen, he didn’t really care.

He made his way inside- making sure to actually close the door behind him- and wandered over to the stairs. Ah, his mortal enemy. Between being a wizard way back when and the magic rampant in Ruxomar, he had gotten way too used to avoiding stairs. Now it was a chore to move up and down the tower. But his bed was upstairs and he was not sleeping on the crappy couch he shoved into the lobby for guests or customers again.

So stairs it was.

By the time he got halfway up the stairs, he wanted to quit. Why, in Athar’s name, did he put his room on the third highest level? Stupidity, that’s why. The view was so not worth it.

When he actually made it up to the correct floor, he pushed the door to his room open, chucked his clothes to one side, and collapsed in bed. Now this, this was worth it. Soft, plush, warm, and very much without skeletons.

The less arrows being shot at him the better.

A soft chuckle caught his attention. Or rather, killed the peace he had wrapped around himself mere hours earlier.

He didn’t move. Not because he was scared. No, he knew who was in his room. He just wanted to pretend, for a moment, like this was something he was used to.

Like coming home to his lover being home wouldn’t surprise him.

The bed dipped beside him and his robed and boxer-ed glory. A hand ran through his hair. Wag tried not to tense.

“Seems like you had a good night out.” Her voice was like silk, soft and pleasant on his ears. “Hopefully they didn’t hassle you too much.”

Wag breathed. His chest was tight, emotion punching at his ribs. “Yeah,” he said, “It was nice to have some time with them again.”

All of this felt so forgein, now. To have her here. Was she here? Or did he drink more than he had originally thought. Shit.

Martha scratched his head. “I do have to say, I’m surprised that you actually left the tower. You’ve been holed up here for so long I thought I’d have to drag you out.” He could hear the smile in her voice. Or maybe he was imagining it. His head was a mess and he wasn’t quite sure what he was making up and what was real.

It was kind of pathetic.

He laughed. “Yeah, Tom showed up and dragged me out. Not complaining though, I had a lot of fun. It was nice to take off from work. Making potions gets boring.”

So did sitting in your own depressing thoughts, but that was more exhausting than boring.

“Oh,” Wag turned his head to face Martha, looking up at her. The darkness made her hair stand out. It looked like a halo around her face, bringing out her lovely lilac eyes. She was just as beautiful as the last time he’d seen her. But there was something heavy in her eyes that she tried to wipe away when his own reached her. “Jordan was looking for you earlier. Did he ever find you?”

Martha blinked and the heaviness was gone. Ish. He knew it was there. Somewhere.

“Ah, no.” She frowned. “I’ll have to see what he needs tomorrow.”

He nodded. To be honest, Wag wasn’t convinced Martha was actually sitting here with him. Which was kind of sad. Very sad.

“I can come with, if you’d like,” Wag rushed out, trying not to sound desperate. “We haven’t had much time together, which is understandable with your dad being around and all the stuff you need to do. And, y’know, it’d be nice to walk with you for a bit.”

Oh, he sounded so desperate.

Yikes.

A smile graced Martha’s lips. “Sure, I’d love that.” Wag let out a breath. “We’ll take a stroll, get a nice scenic view of the beach as we go, call it a date-” She cut off. The heaviness came back to her eyes. Wag knew what she was thinking. Who she was thinking about.

It hurt.

“I’m going to go take a shower before getting ready for bed. You can go ahead and sleep, if you’d like. I know you’ve had a long day and you’re probably tired. Don’t force yourself for me.” Martha stood as she said this, fingers trailing in his hair. Then she left.

Reluctantly, Wag got up to do just that. Changed his boxers and hung up his cloak. Buried himself back into bed, under the covers.

Yeah. It’d be a date.

~~~

Martha didn’t like to get up early. Neither did Wag. Normally, this lead to them sleepily cuddling until one felt so inspired as to get up. Normally.

Ever since the group returned to the land of Mianite, Martha didn’t sleep as well. Between nightmares, being a fledgling goddess, and the… absence of certain people, she found herself waking earlier and earlier.

Wag had his fair share of sleep troubles. Where sleep troubles stopped Martha from sleeping as much, it led to Wag sleeping more. The less he slept the more exhausted he was. The more exhausted he was the more he slept. It was a vicious cycle and actually the reason Wag didn’t leave the house as much.

Nonetheless, both found themselves getting ready to leave just after dawn. Martha moved like last night didn’t end awkward and uncomfortable. Bright, cheerful, and painfully affectionate with Wag. Like she hadn’t been avoiding him for the better part of their stay here.

The worst part was that this wasn’t the first time she came back like nothing was wrong. It was almost like she could tell when he was starting to doubt their relationship. Except, he was constantly doubting their relationship. Even when things had been going well. But this time, it was like she knew when he was thinking about how much of a relationship they didn’t have.

Which was concerning if she actually knew what he thought.

Wag, on the other hand, moved like a zombie. Tired, groggy, and barely awake. The picture of early morning beauty. It wasn’t far off from how he used to act, but now it was like someone had chained weights to his feet.

Damn, he was tired as shit.

Martha had set about making some breakfast from the little food he had. Some eggs, some- thankfully not spoiled- fruit, and milk. Wag was pretty sure he didn’t have milk, but he wasn’t going to question it. She was the more magical of the two, now, so it was within reason that she could get milk in the few minutes he’d lagged behind her in getting out of bed.

He, on the other hand, was on the task of making coffee. Coffee was something of a luxury here, since it was so new to the land. It wasn’t grown naturally on the island and Wag wasn’t sure if it was imported from some far off place or if it had been introduced by the earlier dimension hoppers that still hung around. Spark, for sure, seemed to run on the stuff.

That didn’t really matter to Wag, though. He had a plant of it in his garden, for ease of access, but more importantly to see if it could be used to help crossbreed weed into existence. No far off land had procured the plant yet, so he would still strive to be the maker of weed.

Not the best plan in the world, but that wouldn’t matter once he actually made the plant.

He really shouldn’t be encouraging substance abuse.

Surely, coffee would wake him up. Then he could go on a walk with Martha and do that thing they seemed to do where they avoided those topics and pretended like everything was fine. And maybe, just maybe, they’d enjoy the conversation. Maybe they’d feel something again, feel whole for the brief moment where they let themselves forget about the person who was missing, the person that clearly held more place in Martha’s heart for it to have torn so much when he-

Maybe Wag would get his shit together and let things die between them.

Maybe he’d decide that fighting an uphill battle wasn’t worth it.

For now, though, he was content to pretend things were the same. It was better than being entirely, wholly alone. And, deep in his heart, he still loved her. So, so much.

Enough that he knew it would hurt no matter what he did.

They chatted over the food Martha cooked. She complemented his coffee, the beans from the plant he owned, and he told her that the cooking is just as good as it’d always been.

Neither mentioned that it was usually Steve, not either of them, that did the cooking.

They tossed little affections at each other with ease. Like it was second nature. A brush of hands, a quick smile, a peck on the cheek. It was like a dance. As though they were trying to make a show of how much they still cared, how much nothing had changed despite the fact that everything had changed.

Hands loosely held together, they left the house as a unit, holding up a conversation with ease. If either of them tripped up in their speech as they avoided that topic or this word, neither called each other out for it. For all that everything was off and wrong, they made it work. They found a way to shove a cube into a round hole.

Whether it was because they wanted it to work so bad or because the hole was a giant chasm with space for miles was up to debate.

The beach was calm in the early morning. Fishers were stocking up their ships to start up on their daily trip, tightening a rope here, making space there. Few people walked about the town, the kids either asleep or getting hassled to eat breakfast. With so few people out, it felt like they were on the outskirts of life, just the two of them. Like viewing the world through a painting.

That illusion was helped by the sheer height of Jordan’s tree. It was still there, despite the damage it had received when Tom got to it. If he looked closely, Wag could see the remains of burn marks and grooves held in the thick bark. He had heard that, after the heroes had left, Ianite had nursed the tree back to life in honor of her lost champion.

He ignored the fact that Ianite had sent them into the void in the first place.

Wag himself had left before that, called on to help the heroes that he had watched over as a distant wizard. Even now, he wondered if it had been worth it. To lose everything because he was asked to. In his weakest moments, he wondered if it hadn’t been the gods’ way of throwing him out.

That thought hurt the most out of everything in his life and he never let it linger.

It wasn’t long before they made it to the base of the hill that Jordan’s tree- sorry, Jerry’s Tree- sat beside. They weren’t that close to getting inside yet, but it was a milestone.

As they climbed the hill, massive roots stretching out below them, Wag started up some conversation about the different species of trees. He never once mentioned apple trees. It was part of his botany, after all, and important to keep track of. The types of trees, not apple trees. Apple trees were just one of those topics and therefore something they made an unspoken agreement not to talk about.

He pondered, during his ramble, that Martha could have just flown up the tree. She could do that, after all. Wag couldn’t. Not anymore. The worst part was that he’d help build this tree, or, well, make it. Way back then. That was a sore spot to think about, but even still he was in awe of the tree. Not because of the fact that he's contributed to it- no, he had felt a sense of pride for that a long time ago. Rather, because of how it’d regrown.

Ianite’s gentle hand had turned it from merely a large, enchanting tree to a behemoth of divine wonder. Its branches had spread further, with more room between them and the tips reaching towards the heavens. The leaves had shaped up and gotten fuller, surely the size of a full-grown adult by now. Fireflies could be seen lazily hovering about clusters of leaves, giving the tree a pleasant, natural lighting.

Many more platforms and walkways had been built, new buildings having been added on top of that. They stretched from one end to the other. The most daring teased the edge of a branch, hung firmly along the length of it. The walkways were either long rope bridges made of braided vines that shimmered a faint purple or ramps made and reinforced by the same wood the tree was made of, the bottom featuring fancy swirls alongside the support beams.

Other vines, flora, and bushes lined the branches and platforms. Though they looked like they were leeching off the tree at first, a closer inspection- granted you were on the tree to get an inspection- showed they were delicately wrapped around the branches and sneakily planted in hidden pots for a more natural look. The flowers ranged from all sorts of purples- fitting. Buddleias enclosed doorways, Hyacinthus were wound along lanterns strung along pathways, and an abundance of Jacaranda could be found wherever space was made for flora.

The more he looked the more nature there was to see, the more connecting walkways there were strung along, the more everything there was. It felt like the whole world was home under the canopy.

The tree had gone from the house of a solitary man to a city of nature.

It didn’t feel like the same tree.

Wag pushed aside the nagging thought that it was better than anything he could have ever made. Ianite was a full fledged goddess, Wag was- had been- a mere wizard with the idea of godhood in his head. What he made had been incredible for mortal standards, and was still incredible for the standards he had held himself to. It would do no good to compare himself to Ianite, especially when all she had done was repair what was already there.

As they made their way up to the crest of the hill, following the path from the town to the tree as it curled around Jordan’s old home, Wag spared a glance at the birch and quartz house. It was simple, sleek and minimal. It suited Jordan. Of course, Jordan himself had made it, so why wouldn’t it?

Compared to Jerry’s Tree, though, it seemed rather dull and insignificant.

Actually.

Wag spared a closer look at the smaller home. It looked lived in. A frown pulled at his lips. Was someone living there? Who else, other than Jordan, would?

Martha had picked up the conversation now, adding in details about trees that she had seen in her travels long ago, ones he’d never have had the chance to see. There were many interesting species, some magical in the same sense as Silverwoods, some as plain as a simple oak tree, but all more than enough to satiate Wag’s desire to know more. His mind kept getting pulled back to the Casa de Sparklez, though.

A thought struck him, one he’d had just moments before.

Jerry’s Tree looked and felt so different, now that Ianite had tended to it. Like it was a different tree. Did Jordan think the same? Did it feel less like home, after being away for so long and having watched it burn?

Was Jordan living in his older house because the tree felt so forgein?

Martha was going on about a beautiful tree known for the lights its seeds shone, especially during the night hours. It really sounded like a sight to behold. More than that, the gentle, awed look on Martha’s face pulled at Wag’s heart.

Take care of her.

There was a sour taste in his mouth. Wag decided not to mention what he had just noticed. That was Jordan’s business, not his.

Martha was looking at him now, a small, shy smile on her lips. Wag felt like if he said the wrong thing it’d disappear in an instant. Like Martha was used to having her interests pushed aside, or used to pushing them aside herself when people didn’t seem to care about what she was saying.

Take care of her.

He offered a smile back, a genuine one. He really did love her. More than anything, he wanted to keep loving her. But something told him it wouldn’t work. That what they had had started to decay sometime around the end of Ruxomar, around when he left.

No, around when Martha almost became Mrs. a instead of a Ms.

Bitterness clutched at Wag’s heart. For all the love he held for her, he wondered, again and again, if she held the same. If she ever held the same, if she even held something close to the same.

Take care of her.

Looking up at Jerry’s Tree, Wag remembered what it used to be. He remembered watching it burn, the pain he had felt in seeing his hard work get tarnished, in seeing a friend’s home wither away.

Now, though, it was different. Not quite a home, anymore, but reborn. Alive. And maybe, in the future, it’d be a home again, or maybe not. Maybe it needed to burn for it to become what it was now. Jordan would have never built it up to this, but Ianite had.

Maybe that was the secret, Wag pondered. Maybe you had to let things burn to be able to build them up stronger.

He looked at Martha again, at the softness in her face and the hardness in her eyes. His heart pulled in so many directions. Love, anguish, love, despair, love, hurt, love love love.

Yeah, he was going to have to let this relationship burn.

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eat-the-richard · 3 years

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Why Super Mario Sunshine is kind of bad (and how to fix it)

It’s safe to say that in our current hellscape that there are few games in the Mario franchise with as strong of a following online than Super Mario Sunshine. And how could it not? It’s so unique and fun that most people could probably have a good time with it. But it’s interesting to note just how much this perspective has changed over time.

When Sunshine came out it was considered by some to be the black sheep of the series. Or at the very least a noticeable step down from 64. There’s quite a lot wrong with Mario Sunshine. While there’s a great game at the core of this thing, there’s certainly a few miles of paint-like goop to sift through.

What’s frustrating is that a lot of these problems could have been solved with just a bit more development time. Mario Sunshine was rushed. This can be observed even without prior knowledge, but it becomes plainly evident when you look at some of the prerelease videos. In some instances it doesn’t even resemble the final product. Even at E3 2002, just three months before launch, there are a lot of noticeable differences to the final product.

Because of this rushed development, a lot of corners needed to be cut to pad out the game’s relatively lacking amount of content. The result is a game that is fun and well designed in some instances but a complete and utter disaster in others.

The issues plaguing Mario Sunshine were emblematic of a Nintendo-wide issue. At the start of the GameCube’s life, many prominent franchises were rushed along development to meet strict deadlines to fill out the console’s thinning library and boost sales. The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker is a textbook example. A lot of people had issues with that one too when it came out. Despite some clearly dumb points about the game’s art style, there’s definitely a lot to say about how Wind Waker pads out limited content. Doesn’t that sound familiar?

Thankfully, in 2013, the Wind Waker received an HD rerelease for the Wii U. Alongside a hefty visual overhaul, there were many under the hood changes to make the game an overall smoother experience stemming directly from those 2003 critiques. Sailing is made way simpler and faster in this version and the Tingle-inspired back-half of the game is shortened significantly. These two changes alone make this version superior, at least to me.

In the years since, I believed that Sunshine could have benefited from a rerelease similar to Wind Waker. Not necessarily in terms of its visuals (which I think have held up rather well) but in terms of its structure. Some small changes to the way Sunshine progresses could really benefit it overall, and I believed, erroneously, that it was only a matter of time before it received this treatment.

But we live in a post-3D All Stars world, and Nintendo’s response is clear. They believe Mario Sunshine is perfectly fine as is. Just touch up some of the textures, give it a resolution increase, and you got yourself a solid product. And yeah, its still pretty fun like this. But its hard to look past the missed potential in refining some of Sunshine’s rougher edges.

Which is what I plan to outline in this video. If I were to be given the reigns to nosedive Nintendo’s current plans to revamp a 2002 GameCube game, what would I change? After a suitable amount of complaining, I’ll discuss a fan project that comes close to doing what I think Nintendo should do.

So sit back, relax and let me refresh your body and spirit.

The first changes I’d make have to do with the frame rate. It’s evident that Super Mario Sunshine was supposed to be a 60 frames-per-second game. Some prerelease footage even shows as much. But somewhere late in development, the framerate was capped at 30, making it the only 3D Mario Game post-64 to not reach 60. Using Gecko codes, it’s possible to unlock the framerate and play at a pretty consistent 60. It’s so consistent that it starts raising the question of why Nintendo didn’t implement this into the Switch rerelease. This code isn’t emulator exclusive either, it also works pretty well when used on Wii consoles. Also, a hypothetical rerelease using the source code wouldn’t even have to deal with this anyway. But it’s good that the game works so well like this even without more structural changes. I don’t really need to explain the benefit of an increased framerate, so strike that one down.

And with that out of the way, it’s time to outline the biggest change my hypothetical Mario Sunshine remaster would make. One seemingly small but with major ramifications towards the rest of the game. But first, some background.

Super Mario 64 took a pretty big risk back in 1996 by significantly changing the main objective of playing a platformer. It was no longer about clearing a level. You aren’t going through these areas to reach an end point. The objective is now to find certain major collectibles, in this case power stars. But the game doesn’t want you to collect all of them. I’ve heard a lot of discourse recently about the boot-out system, but even when I was a kid I realized that 64 kicked you out of every level not just to pad out game length but to keep you moving around the castle.

64 is always inviting you to explore new areas with a constant trickle of new content the more total stars you collect. At first, the amount of stars needed to unlock a new level are small. The first area of the castle has every level besides Bob-omb’s Battlefield locked behind a small star total. And the amount needed to progress onto the next full area with five more major levels is only 8. But these star totals gradually increase over time, requiring 30, 50, and finally 70 stars to unlock new content. But what stars you got never mattered, just how many in total. This allows for free exploration where the player doesn’t have to think about where their next objective is. For instance, exploring pretty much every cardinal direction of Lethal Lava Land will lead you in the direction of a star. And because it doesn’t matter which star you get, it allows players to choose how long they invest in each level. Are the constant treks up Tall Tall Mountain or Rainbow Ride annoying you? Well all those stars are completely optional, you just have to compensate by completing more of the other levels. It’s an ingenious system that allows for a lower total amount of levels to feel more rewarding.

Super Mario Sunshine is practically begging to be like this. In fact, for the first few hours, that’s exactly how it works. New levels are unlocked progressively through getting Shines. But it doesn’t work in quite the same way. These shine totals are never outlined to the player. It shows you that you’ll eventually be able to use the Rocket Nozzle and has objects like the pineapple blocking Sirena Beach to make you yearn for a Yoshi. But you’re not told when these things are to be unlocked; it just sort of happens. Which is fine, it definitely makes the game feel more mysterious. But it lacks that forward momentum of 64 where your end goal is always simple and in the back of your mind. Oh, I need 30 stars to unlock this big door. Sunshine doesn’t have this despite literally operating in the same way. But it still maintains the ability to slowly unlock content to players through playing more of the game, which is good. And importantly, which stars you get for these gates aren’t important, just that you’re getting them at all. And if the game stuck to this principle, that would’ve been great.

Except it didn’t.

After the rocket nozzle is unlocked and Pianta Village becomes accessible, your total amount of Shines is never relevant again. Instead, game progression is contingent upon completing mission 7 of every level. Not every shine is valued the same according to the game. The progression is far more linear than in 64. You can no longer choose to avoid the Chuckster mission. Or the Sand Bird mission. Or the teeth cleaning mission. Or racing Il Piantissimo three times. Or fighting Gooper Blooper three times. Or fighting Petey Pirahna twice. Or defeating these same Piranha Plant Gatekeepers five times. Or even chasing down and squirting on Shadow Mario E L E V E N T I M E S. There’s a lot of repetition here which would’ve been eased simply by allowing the player to avoid doing these missions wherever possible. 64 had similar situations of reused content, but it’s not as egregious when there’s no incentive to collect stars you don’t want to.

This structure is also weird because there’s a ton of extra missions in this game. Some of the game’s most, err, fun segments are hidden away in Delfino Plaza. These can be some pretty time-consuming tasks. You know what I’m talking about. But that’s not all. Every course also has some bonus shines. Every secret stage has an additional Red Coin challenge. There’s some “cleverly” hidden shines even within certain missions. There’s even a mission 8 to every level. Every level also has a 100 coin mission which, just to get it out of the way, should absolutely not spawn the shine somewhere 100 feet away from you AND boot you out of the level upon collection AND not be possible in every mission. Like c’mon, Mario 64 got this right on the first try. So Nintendo went out of their way to put all these extra shines in the game, and yet none of them matter towards game completion. Which makes me wonder what the point of completing them is supposed to be?

All this extra content, regardless of quality, would benefit from a system similar to Mario 64. In its current state, there’s not much of a reason to even bother with these extra missions, especially when some of them are of questionable quality. On that same token, there’s some pretty fun missions hidden in this extra content, and it’s a shame that they aren’t more important.

Well, with that...

B L U E C O I N S

I almost forgot about you!

Blue Coins are pretty despised. But in concept they’re pretty smart to put in a game like this. It’s kind of like the Red Coins but on a broader scale. They’re packed into every little tiny corner of the levels, giving players more of a reason to explore the pretty environments. And once you collect 10 of them, you get a Shine Sprite from the local beavers. If these Blue Coin shines counted towards a grand total for game completion, Blue Coins could give players a nice buffer to replace some of the games more questionable missions. But just like all of the extra content, Blue Coins matter not one iota towards finishing the game. So, the only reason to collect Blue Coins at all is if you wanted to collect them all.

And that’s precisely why people hate them. Because collecting all the Blue Coins is an absolute nightmare. Let’s not even talk about how cryptic some of these coins are because honestly I’ll be here all day. Let’s instead talk about how impossible it is to know how close you are to getting every Blue Coin in a level. You can intuit through previous levels that it caps out at 30 per level, but the game never tells you that. There’s obviously no Blue Coin tracker like there is for shrines in Breath of the Wild, so if you’re frantically darting around Noki Bay looking for the one coin you missed that's hidden inside a wall for some reason, you’ve only got GameFaqs and Jesus to help you at that point.

To top it all off, just like the 100 coins missions, it’s impossible to get every Blue Coin in every mission in a level. Some blue coins are exclusive to certain missions. And it’s impossible to know how many are exclusive, which ones are exclusive, how many exclusives you’ve gotten, how many exclusives you need. Must I continue? This process is a disaster and gives Blue Coins a bad name. If they were put in a game like Mario 64, I feel like these things would have much more of a positive reputation. But as it stands these things are so toxic they’ve been reduced to POW switch fodder in later games.

I think Blue Coins summarize the issue with the extra content pretty succinctly. In a game like Mario 64, they’re harmless. But in a game where none of it is tied to beating the final level, the only purpose they have is 100% completion. And 100% completion should never be the focus of 3D Platformers. Some players prefer playing to completion but there’s a reason why most don’t. Fully completing a game is a soul commitment as much as it is a time commitment. It’s saying to yourself that I am willing to go through all the unfinished, janky, and cryptic content Mario Sunshine has to offer all for the extensive reward of… a different end screen. So yeah, there is no reason to get 100% of Mario Sunshine’s content. Even completionists are going to be disappointed. Not only is this content useless towards Any%, it’s aggravating for 100%, since fully completing the game is so unrewarding.

So, how do we fix this issue? Well to do that, let’s take a look at a mod that, in my opinion, does exactly that: Super Mario Sunburn, made by Epicwade.

The biggest change Sunburn makes is in its requirements for completion. Rather than Bowser being locked behind completing the seven Shadow Mario shines, the door to Corona Mountain is opened when the player attains 70 shines overall. If you recall, that’s the exact same amount 64 requires of the player to reach the final level. This change, by itself, adjusts Sunshine more towards what I would like it to be. But if you’re crazy enough to prefer the previous mode of completion, it’s still there as an option.

That’s not all, though. Now, when you collect a Shine, you’re no longer booted out of the level, and instead are simply asked to save and then you’re free to explore the rest of the level. My feelings on this essentially boil down to which mission I’m playing. I think the first two shines of Bianco Hills show this working pretty much perfectly. You squirt on the gatekeeper to get the first shine and then you’re immediately free to go forward and fight Petey Piranha. This feels far more natural than having to get booted out after the first shine and make the entire trip through the first half of Bianco Hills just to get back to where you just were. So in this case, it’s a positive.

However, Sunshine very often changes its course layout per mission. And when that happens, it feels a bit unnecessary to have to boot out of a level manually and boot back in just to get the next event to trigger. Sometimes you can chain getting a bunch of shines out in the open with a secret stage which resets the level upon entering the newly placed warp pipe at the end of it. But otherwise you’re stuck pausing and exiting. I feel this issue may be able to be streamlined by doing something like Mario Odyssey does, where collecting certain Moons boot you to the beginning of the level with the new mission unlocked. This might be outside of the reach of Sunshine modding at the moment, though.

This isn’t the only change set to make Sunshine more open. One of my favorite parts of the original game was that you could see other levels whenever you looked around. Turning at the start of Bianco Hills and being able to see not only Delfino Plaza but also the yet to be unlocked Ricco Harbor and Pinna Park was fascinating to me when I first played it. Sunburn takes this concept one step further by allowing players to travel from stage to stage. For instance, taking the river in Bianco Hills spits you out Ricco, and climbing a vine in Ricco allows you to travel back. This is a pretty novel idea and definitely makes replaying the game an entirely different experience, especially when combined with the lack of boot out. It does lose me a bit in how it necessitates for every level to be unlocked at the start. As I mentioned previously, slowly unlocking stages to the player by collecting whatever collectible they’re using allows for 3D Platformers to have constant forward momentum, which is lost here. But for those who’ve already played the game I think this is a fun option.

Other quality of life changes are strictly positives. In most instances, Blue Coins are now accessible from any mission in a level. I say most because it’s impossible for some of these coins to make the transition. But in the vast majority of cases, it’s been done. More coins have been added to each stage, along with Red Coins counting as collecting two coins just like in 64. This makes getting 100 coins a lot easier, especially when you’re doing multiple missions of a stage in a row. Two of the game’s weakest sections become far more manageable with these changes. There’s some smaller changes too, like being able to skip cutscenes, Blue Coins no longer bringing up a save screen, and Shadow Mario’s invisible health bar being restored. There’s also new content here, with additional secret stages being accessible from the main courses. Nothing mind-blowing, but it’s at least pretty neat to run around Outset Island as a FLUDD-strapped Mario.

Super Mario Sunburn addresses a lot of my issues with the original version, which was exactly the point. I’m not the first to bring up these issues, nor will I be the last. There’s so much potential within Super Mario Sunshine to be one of the best examples of its genre, so to see it fall short in such fundamental areas is undeniably frustrating. As usual with Nintendo, and even with other publishers, it’s often the community that sees itself to correct the issues with the games they feel deeply passionate about. Basically the only difference between Sunburn and an official Sunshine remake or remaster would be a significant layer of polish. That still might happen, but I’m not holding my breath at this point. So if you find yourself feeling similarly as I do about Sunshine, it might be worth it to check Super Mario Sunburn out. Here’s the download link again if you’re curious.

#mario #super mario sunshine #nintendo #essay #rom hack

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zahneundklauen-retired · 3 years

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Something Fishy || Alcher and Dave

TIMING: A few weeks ago, during the sleepwalking potw PARTIES: @seizethecarpe and @zahneundklauen SUMMARY: Alcher and Dave wake up in the middle of the forest surrounded by lights and a fishy smell. CONTENT: Nudity mentions (non nsfw)

The first thing Dave noticed when he woke up was that he wasn’t in his van. The autumn wind buffeted his skin where he lay on the ground. A beetle was crawling over his hand, tickling as it crossed from uninjured skin to hyper sensitive scars. As he shifted, the ground did too, layers upon layers upon layers of leaves shifting underneath him. The second thing he noticed was that he’d been swimming. There was a thin layer of slime still covering his skin, and his hair was wet. Dave suddenly felt himself go tense - he had no fucking clue where he’d left his pelt, where he’d gone swimming before passing out, but he clearly had. He swallowed, looking around. Which brought him to observations three and four - the third was that he was surrounded with old lights. Looked like some were regular old lanterns knocked from a boat - covered in algae and whatnot too. One looked at old as electricity itself, and there were at least two that were tail lights Observation 4, he wasn’t alone. There was someone else here, amongst his pile of broken lights. “The hell are you?” Oh, and 5? He wasn’t altogether that dressed.

Control was something that Alcher cherished. She was confident in it, steeped herself in it, had been practiced in it since the day she was able to walk on two feet. But waking up in a place she did not recognize, through sight or smell, meant she had lost the thing she cherished so much. The ache in her bones was clear enough to let her know that she had shifted, too, and when she moved, her hands collided with glass and wet wood. Leaves squished beneath her hands as she pushed herself up, glancing around, shaking her head to clear the fuzziness from her vision. It took longer than she would’ve liked, and through the haze of metal and damp forest floor, she could smell another. Human, with the lingering smell of the ocean. Blubber. Alcher blinked, his voice breaking her thoughts. She looked over at him through hazy eyes. “I could ask you the same question, stranger,” she muttered, feeling around them. “Where are we? I do not recognize this place.”

“Can you speak up?” Dave asked, pushing himself up to his knees, and then onto his feet as his joints creaked from the cold. In the night, it was damn hard to read lips. He could guess the general gist from what he did hear, so he built an answer around what he thought she said, regardless of whether she repeated herself herself. “I’m Dave. Don’t know where the hell all these lights came from.” He didn’t like it one bit. The ground was dry, there were no real reverberations travelling through the ground that he could see. He could still smell the ocean, so they couldn’t be too far inland. “Your turn.”

“I asked who you were, and if you knew where we are,” Alcher said a bit more loudly. Though her tone was still curt, it was not for having to repeat herself. Her mind was on edge and her muscles were still taught, as if preparing for an attack. She went to struggle to her feet, only to realize her prosthetic was not attached. She looked back up at the man, squinting through the haze and darkness at him. “I am Ada. And I need you to help me find a stick for support,” she said, shifting in her spot to try and use a tree to lean against as she pulled herself up to stand. “And then we should figure out where we are.”

“Ah, right, no, I don’t know where we are. Forest, maybe?” Dave replied, rubbing his head. He couldn’t see much further than the trees. Careful not to trip over any of the lanterns, he looked around for a nearby tree with low branches. When he saw one thick enough, Dave lumbered over to it, groaning as he dragged at the branch until it bent and then snapped with a crack that echoed through the forest. He walked back over to Ada, ripping twigs off the branch until it was smooth. He tested his own weight against it before handing it to the woman. “Here. That work for you?” He breathed in deeply, and looked up to the stars. “East’s thattaway,” he said, pointing to her left. It was the smell of the ocean, and while he couldn’t see the north star through the tree tops, he’d spotted the three stars of Orion’s belt, which would have to do enough for now.

Alcher watched as the older man made his way over to a tree and secured her a branch. The noise was louder in her ears than she would’ve liked, but she wasn’t about to complain. She took the support gratefully and leaned her weight on it, now at ease enough to take a better look around them. She gathered some of the rags that had laid around her and tied them around her waist for at least a small amount of covering. “Obviously it’s a forest,” she said back, recognizing the smell of it. “And what if the town is to the West? Or North? Which way do we try first?” she asked, wondering if her nose would be enough to guide her home when everything here smelled strange and new.

“Good thing there aren’t all that many forests in Maine,” Dave replied drily. “Town is coastal, so once we hit the coast, it’ll only be north or south. Unless you reckon we can find a way to the nearest river, I haven’t got any better ideas.” He breathed in deeply. He smelled of sweat, thick and heavy musk and salt. Thing was, Dave knew he’d showered before going to bed last night. He’d been swimming and working hard, whatever this was. No one had just dragged him out here while he was asleep. “Hey, have you been sleepwalking recently?”

Her companion seemed just as tense about the situation as her. Alcher’s brows furrowed as she looked over at him, trying to place the scent he gave off. He smelled of dirt and ocean and sweat. It was familiar, but again, she found herself unable to place it. Just like with Zinnia. Wrinkling her nose, she looked around them. “Normally I would follow the scent of the town, but it seems...blocked. Or perhaps too far away,” she noted, perturbed by this revelation. They would have to rely on his method for finding their way back, then, wouldn’t they? Alcher glanced over at him, narrowing her eyes. “I may have. Why? Have you?”

“Likewise,” Dave replied, looking her up and down appraisingly. No human would ever say anything about smelling their way back to town. Intentionally or not, she’d given something crucial away, and had been fortunate (or cunning) that he had heard it. “Might as well get on our way then,” he said. He couldn’t walk all the way to town naked, but if they stayed by the ocean it would be fine. “Yeah. This ain’t the first time I’ve woken up in weird places. It’s like I’ve been getting all these lights out of the lake and the depths. Most nights, now.”

“Might as well,” Alcher echoed, hobbling after him as they began the trek back. Out towards the ocean, which, when she concentrated, she could hear the waves crashing against rock far, far off. She glanced over at him. “Lights? That seems to be what I’ve been collecting as well,” she muttered, “strange…” She reached up to remove some leaves and twigs from her hair, giving her arm a moment’s rest. She wasn’t used to carrying her full weight on it and a branch. “From the lake? You do smell like saltwater and seaweed. You are a good swimmer, then?”

“Hmmm. Here I was, thinking it was some long forgotten childhood trauma coming back in my nightmares. Worse that it’s two of us,” Dave spat on the ground in disgust. “I don’t like shit that fucks with my head.” He was becoming more keenly aware of her movements as they moved, initially driven by interest, but the more he thought about it, the more he realised that he could literally feel more of her. He could feel her makeshift cloth rustling in the breeze, each crack of her branch crunching through dry leaves. A fog was setting in around them, threatening to take out what vision he had. “Sure am. You might as well as whatever it is you’re asking.”

Alcher furrowed her brow. He was a strange man, but perhaps his strangeness was part of his non-humanness. She could tell that he was no regular human, but it was always hard to decipher just what others were when her father had not cared to teach her. She’d had to learn that one on her own. “Well, trauma or something else, it’s certainly not something I want to keep happening,” she said after a long moment. She looked back behind where they’d come from and found it was now completely covered in fog. She shivered, wishing for her fur. Turned a sharp eye back towards him. “You are not human. What are you?”

“Preaching to the choir here, ma’am,” Dave agreed as the trees around them began to thin. “Nor’re you. Humans don’t smell their way back to towns,” Dave replied with a shrug. “I’m a selkie. Doesn’t bode well that the two of us are doing the same shit and both of us are something other than human.” He squinted, as the fog around them thickened. The cold didn’t bother him much, but there was something unnatural about the thickness of this fog, like swimming in water. “Something strange is happenin’, watch out.”

“No,” Alcher agreed, “I don’t suppose they do.” She wasn’t entirely sure she liked the way the older man approached the topics. She couldn’t quite place it. But her concern with that could be put away until later. “Werewolf,” she said, glancing around. The thickening fog made her nose itch, and her throat scratch. She hunched over, glancing around. “It smells-- do you smell that? It’s fish. We’re not near enough the ocean, though. Where…” and then she saw it, the two glowing eyes staring out of the fog at them. “What...what is that?”

“I’m not sure.” Dave didn’t have to wait long to find out, as the fog became thicker than pea soup, ramming him off his feet and into a nearby tree. His back clicked as his shoulders jerked around in their joints. His grunted, but the creature in front of him did not bite, it twisted with unfettered grace, and swam to Alcher, leaving Dave damp from the humid air. The creature was unlike anything Dave had ever seen in his life, distinctively in the shape of tuna, but made solely of gas. “What the hell. Get out the way!”

Alcher watched, bewildered, as the fog lifted the man from his feet and slammed him backwards. She stumbled, trying to move away, but it was too fast for her, hobbling on one leg and a tree stump. She swung the stump at it, but it simply went through the figure, spreading its form like a wisp before it reconstituted itself. It reared and raised Alcher off her foot, into the air, before tossing her aside. Her back hit the ground roughly and she groaned with the effort. Angry teeth grew in her mouth, claws sprouting over fingernails as the floating foggy fish turned its lantern eyes back towards them. She tried, hard, to hold her anger back, but it washed through her like an ocean wave and before she could help it, fur sprouted along her arms. “Get out of here,” she growled, her voice mixed with a snarl, “before it’s too late.”

It was undeniably a tuna. A ghost tuna? What kind of unfinished business did a tuna have anyway? Why would a tuna haunt them? Dave rubbed the sore spot on the back of his head as he found his landlegs, trying to spot some way to help Alcher when the damn thing was made of fog. He didn’t exactly have any salt lying about. At first, Dave didn’t make out what Alcher said, her voice too deep and growled, but when he smelled fur, Dave didn’t hesitate. He did not fuck with wolves, not like that. Trusting her word, Dave turned and ran, until he could practically taste the sea, and when he plunged into the icy water, he knew the currents well enough to guide him home.

As soon as the seal turned and ran, Alcher let go of the control she’d been trying to hang onto. Something primal inside of her clawed its way out and tore through her body. Fists turning to claws, mouth turning to muzzle. Fur sprouted along arms, back, legs. The fish charged her again, and Alcher charged right back. She went straight through this time, paws clawing the ground, as the wolf took over fully and she raced off into the forest. The only evidence left behind of her the stick Dave had so kindly found for her to use as a crutch.

#chatzy #chatzy: dave #wickedswriting #something fishy #dave

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