#this was originally a meta post but it spiralled. like. a lot spiralled.
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so here's the thing. Cass's favorite brother is probably Tim. he's her little guy, her sweet cheese, her good time boy. they're both very similar to Bruce in a lot of ways, but more than that, they find it easy to be around each other. Tim is more quiet than the others, which Cass appreciates, but he's also fascinating to watch because there's constantly a thousand things going on beneath the surface of him. Cass and Tim are masters of parallel play, but only and primarily with each other. Tim is quiet when Cass wants to be quiet or talks when she needs to talk, and if she doesn't have the words for something he never so much as bats an eye (even Dick bluescreens sometimes trying to figure her words out), he just helps her find the right ones. Tim can read her almost as well as she can read him, just slower and not trained into him, it's just how he is. he looks at her and tries to figure out how she works, the way he does with everyone, a way most people don't. it makes her feel seen the same way she sees, and that's valuable to her.
another thing is that Tim is also, in all honesty, Jason's favorite brother. like it's almost counterintuitive considering how they first really met, but hey — brothers forged in blood, right? there's some wild poetry to it and they Get each other on a level the others don't really bc they're the middle children, 2nd and 3rd and always afraid of being rejected. but they've got each other. Tim is Jay's favorite because he's so incredibly forgiving (to be welcomed back to the family by the kid he nearly killed? the kid he hated? INSANE.) and because he doesn't judge. (Jay is Tim's favorite bc he's chill when Dick or B can be smothering sometimes. Jason isn't the one who lost a brother and a son, he's the one who was lost, so he's not quite so afraid of losing. yes, he's protective, but not overwhelmingly so.) they have an instinctive kind of brotherhood where they balance each other out, tempering each other's worse tendencies and bolstering the better ones without having to talk about it.
the third thing: Cass really does not like Jason. she has the no-kill rule in her heart even before she had words to explain it, and it's different than with Bruce because she's lived it. she's lived the reason why they have that rule. and Jason has too, but come out on the other side, what Cass considers the wrong side of a worldview completely different than her own. Jason kills, he breaks the law written in her soul and in their adoptive father's, and no one stops him. she can't comprehend it, and she will never accept it. she rarely uses his name, rarely interacts with him at all if she can help it because much as she wants to start a fight, it would hurt Bruce if she did and she doesn't want that. she just calls him Hood, most of the time. if they absolutely have to work together, she does what needs done and leaves.
so. Cass hates Jason. and Jason hates being hated. as far as the principle goes, he can get why Cass doesn't like him, but she's loath to even be around him and that bothers him. she's just this side of being actively hostile, meanwhile Jason is honestly trying his best not to tick her off but it's really hard when he gets glared at by possibly the most intimidating Bat every time he's at home. the same way there's a difference between Bruce and Batman (they put away masks at home, or at least they try to), there's a difference between Jason and the Red Hood. but Cass, determined, rock-solid Cass, refuses to accept that. it's not a good situation, especially when Tim gets in the middle of it, because both Cass and Jason love Tim but hate each other and Tim is just tired and wants his siblings to get along and see, this is why he prefers one on one time to family gatherings.
because at some point something happens and Tim gets hurt, maybe captured or outnumbered (as capable as he is, even a great strategist and skilled fighter can be overwhelmed at times) while out on patrol, and Oracle, sitting in front of her computer array, sighs and rubs her temples and opens up a communications channel to the only two Bats available to assist — Red Hood and Black Bat. she tells them what's up, gives them Red Robin's location, and then dips back out of the channel because she is not going to spend the rest of the night listening to palpable silence from Cass and increasingly frustrated questioning from Jason. she's not paid enough for that.
so Cass and Jason HAVE to work together. HAVE to team up to save their mutual favorite sibling (who, for what it's worth, has no clue he's ANYONE'S favorite). and neither of them is pleased with this turn of events, on multiple counts — 1, Tim is hurt. 2, Cass hates/at least strongly dislikes Jason. 3, Jason has tried everything to make peace with her and is honestly feeling a little bit desperate about it at this point because he has tried EVERYTHING, so now he's just right back at aggression. it's a situation that really can't have a good outcome for everyone, because Cass and Jason's mutual dislike for each other is at odds with their mutual love for Tim and both of them arrive at the same conclusion: all they can do is work for the best outcome for their little brother.
Tim, who has only been lightly stabbed and could have probably gotten by with just one person for backup instead of two, let alone THESE two, is both exasperated by the turn of events, and just plain glad that someone came for him. he's bleeding and hurting and watching from the alley floor as Cass stares (glares) at Jason, who's trying to figure out how to get a shot in that will give Tim a way out without, yknow, shooting his brother in the process.
and then Cass just swoops down and between her insane skills and the intimidation factor of a bat with a full-face mask the entire situation is diffused before Jason has a chance to shoot anybody, which is a better outcome than Tim expected. Jason grapples down as Cass is finishing up with the last few bad guys and she turns around and starts glaring through the mask again. the problem is, she loves Tim. he's her favorite brother, the one most like her and most like their father. but Jason loves Tim too, and Cass can see it as soon as she looks, really looks to see it. and it's so, so obvious when she sees Jason's bloodstained, scarred hands carefully bandaging Tim's (slight) stab wound and the fact that Jay pulled off his helmet as soon as it was safe to and is talking and grinning and keeping a steady eye on Tim because everyone knows that Tim plays down his injuries often and you have to watch him, because he's smart enough to hide things unless you really know him. and Jason knows him. and Cass can see that. and as much as she doesn't like Jason, as much as she's possessive of Tim, she softens for just a minute.
not that she'd ever tell anyone, and Tim was too distracted and half-foggy from blood loss to see it in her at the moment. Cass still doesn't like Jay. Jay is still utterly frustrated by the fact that she won't give him a chance. Tim is still annoyed by all of this and complains to Babs about it (bc Steph just laughs and says all three of them need to suck it up and move on, which is TRUE, but unhelpful) any chance he gets.
it isn't until an Arkham breakout, not the worst they've seen but obviously not good news, when Jason gets badly hurt and Tim (who was with him at the time) gets Really Scary, like full-on not moving a muscle, staring down the man who did it with such intensity that it feels like he could kill with only his masked eyes, sharp and suddenly absolutely terrifying to anyone who doesn't know him, that something really clicks for Cass. because she slips in as Tim coldly, calculatingly shatters the guy's kneecaps just as thoroughly as Jason's bullets would have done and then his rigid intensity falls away and he's a kid terrified that his brother is hurt.
Cass sees the way Jason is with Tim and she can't quite reconcile that caring with all his killing but she knows, because she can SEE it, that Jay cares about Tim much the same way she does. and then she sees how Tim acts when Jason is hurt, the scary sharp side of her little brother that only comes out when he's very, very afraid and very, very determined, and she sees the way he loves his older brother and... she can't deny that either.
and maybe Cass will never LIKE Jason, maybe there will always be some tension between them, but. she doesn't call him only "Hood" all the time, anymore, and Jason is capable of recognizing that tiny detail as her version of a peace offering. Tim is just glad they're not yelling at each other (or Cass's silent staring version of yelling) all the time. maybe it's a whole mess, but hey, they're working on it. as long as there's love, somewhere, there's something. (there's family)
#this was originally a meta post but it spiralled. like. a lot spiralled.#i just think they should have a contentious little thing going on. sibling rivalry but they don't consider themselves siblings#like it's funny but also fascinating. they're narrative foils!! they're their fathers precious children! they have#directly opposing worldviews and mindsets!!!#this could be so deep but also. SO comedic#i need to write the stupid little batfam road trip fic in my head bc the ensemble dynamics are SO FUN#Lu rambles#meta finding tag#batfam#cass cain#jason todd#tim drake#i didn't proofread this if it has typos I'll find it once it's too late and it's already been reblogged. as usual 😂
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A Lesson in Drowning with Prophet Delilah Dubois
Adelaide first saw the headlights. The rain scattered their light, diffusing the fluorescent brightness into a hazy glare that consumed the whole world. She was standing square in the middle of the road, but she did not wince as the car beared down on her. She was too busy wondering what it would be like for it to consume her too. Would she also disappear into the white noise? Or would it be more like a classical devouring, replete with metal tongue and a cavernous chrome stomach?
She stood her ground.
Then, the jeep swerved. It missed her by inches, sent a shower of muddy water up her stockings, and rattled to a stop some yards away.
Adelaide’s next instinct was to run. She could sprint between the well-manicured lawns to her right or scale the nearest fence to her left and take her chances with Warwick Lord’s German shepherd howling something pathetic in his yard. But she had barely taken one step toward her escape when the driver’s door swung open. A tall, slender figure stepped out, features obscured in the storm.
Still, she knew who it was.
“Adelaide Lenora Dellouise, just what do you think you’re doing out here?”
The full name did make her flinch, but Adelaide squared her shoulders and set her jaw, trying to hold herself taut enough that she couldn’t shiver.
“Walkin!”
As he came around the back of the car, Adelaide caught a glimpse of her father’s dour expression in the red sheen of the tail lights, all furrows from his sandy hairline to the bridge of his nose.
“In the middle of a shelter-in-place advisory? Without so much as a raincoat on?”
For all his exasperation, Wyatt Dellouise didn’t have to strain to be heard over the sound of the raging storm. Then again, he had his deacon voice on. This wasn’t the soft muttering of a man who seemed perpetually ashamed to be alive for risk of deriving some pleasure from the whole ordeal, but rather the preacher’s booming, fit for a pulpit and louder than thunder.
Adelaide responded with a shrug. As much as she tried to hide it, though, she couldn’t ignore how cold and damp she was now that she had stopped moving. The wind ripped through the thin, soaked fabric of her sundress, and she had so much water in her shoes her toes squelched with every slight shift of her body. A moment later, her teeth began to chatter, and they wouldn’t stop knocking against each other no matter how hard she pressed her lips together.
Her father folded his arms and moved between her and the trunk of the car. Shadow eclipsed his face again, and all Adelaide could make out through the sheets of rain was his hazy red silhouette.
“Are you fixing to get pneumonia?”
“I was thinking I’d let the storm wash me out to sea, actually!”
The silence that followed delighted Adelaide so much she almost didn’t care how true her words were or how deep they hurt her. She’d swallow a knife and let it rend her from the inside out if it meant he knew it was his fault she was bleeding.
“Quit this foolishness,” her father said at last, sighing like a tempest gale. “Just come with me, Addie, please. We’ll go shelter together in the church.”
“Just drop me off at home!”
“Get in the car!”
And that was that, as Adelaide knew it would be since the moment the jeep rolled up, an outcome equal measures inevitable and terrifying. Who, after all, could ignore a direct order from Deacon Wyatt Dellouise? The voice of the First Church of Her Will spoke. You listened. That was the way the world worked, as immutable as any law of physics. Adelaide couldn’t fight that, no matter how hard she had tried over the last two years. For as many days as she had spent steeling herself against her father’s influence, in that instant she withered under his ironclad certainty like she was still seven years old and arguing about her bedtime. She could not help but be compelled.
She took a few teetering steps toward the jeep as an arc of lightning split the sky above them. In the crack of white, she saw her father’s face soften.
“Thank you, Addie.”
She shivered, tucked in on herself, and said nothing.
The worst part was that it actually was nicer in the car. Her father had already turned up the heat all the way, opened the passenger-side vents, and switched on the seat warmer. She didn’t want it to feel good. She wanted to resent it like she resented everything her father touched, but her body obviously hadn’t gotten the message. Feeling returned to her slowly, nipping at her numb extremities and stiff joints and hunched, frozen spine.
“Weeeeeell, Lady Dellouise… So kind of you to join us.”
Adelaide bolted upright as a low, smooth voice from the backseat interrupted her involuntary relaxation. She whipped around, damn near relishing her skittering pulse and tight lungs because it meant her defenses were still up, but there was no monster behind her. Just a man. Slimy John, as he was colloquially known, was certainly one of Harborview’s more disquieting citizens, with a penchant for selling knives to children. But he was still just a man, and he gave her a toothy, human smile.
“Johnathon and some other residents will be sheltering in the church with us.” Her father had climbed back into the car. There was a megaphone in the driver’s seat which he rested in his lap as he closed the door, dampening the storm. “Folks who’d be safer there than anywhere else, you understand. The Davises are cooking up dinner for everyone, and the Owens have lent us some camping equipment to help stay comfortable while we wait this thing out.”
“I am much obliged, Deacon Wy,” commented Slimy John. “Y’all really don’t have to go to so much trouble.”
“We’re a community. We take care of each other.”
Adelaide scoffed under her breath. She knew exactly where this so-called community’s care ran out, and it was at crossing her father.
They drove straight back to the church. As they trundled through Old Harborview, her father rolled down the window to blare his pronouncements about the shelter-in-place advisory and the church’s open doors, but he didn’t slow down to accept any other transients. Adelaide could only assume the new haste was for her benefit. The sooner she was locked inside, the better, right?
Adelaide dug her nails into her skin, glanced at her phone, and started counting the minutes til the storm’s passing, just like she and her best friend Nat used to do during Sunday School. Whoever could go the longest without checking the time got the other’s oreos during snack break.
She always lost.
Lit beneath by a pair of austere spotlights, the First Church of Her Will surged from the darkness, its single spire towering and curved like a giant rib jutting out into the night sky, a carcass picked clean. As the car pulled up, the wind’s rabid howling grew louder, screaming against the windows. Adelaide, who could finally wiggle her toes again, couldn’t decide which would be worse: braving the storm once more or facing whatever was waiting for her in the cathedral.
“I’ll get the umbrella out of the trunk,” her father announced. “No need for you to get any wetter than you already are.”
He turned off the engine. The car plummeted into darkness, and when the heat cut out, Adelaide shuddered, an ugly, reflexive twitch.
She snapped, “I’m fine,” and reached for the car door.
Before she could open it, however, Slimy John let out a long, low whistle of a laugh.
“Whew! She really got Melanie’s quick temper, don’t she, Wy?”
Adelaide and Wyatt both went rigid.
For her part, Adelaide was rarely ever equipped to talk about her mother, fifteen years gone and mourned more in the last two than at any other point in her life. On that particular day, when she was already hanging on by a thread, just the name was enough to send her trembling.
Worse than the name, though, was her father, who mirrored her tension in the corner of her eye. The symmetry between them, clamped tight around the same loss, made Adelaide sick to her stomach. Suddenly, she needed to get out of the car as fast as possible. Even the church had to be better than sitting in that moment of connection.
She threw herself out into the storm. It swallowed her up for a moment, but she ran up the slick steps and through the heavy double doors, and in an instant, the hurricane disappeared. In its place, the First Church of Her Will opened up before her for the first time in a year.
And in that instant, Adelaide knew she had made a mistake: this was worse.
Like her dad’s car, like the mansion down the road, like just about every inch of Harborview, it felt so much like it should’ve been home that she nearly burst. The memories slammed into her, cresting and crashing from every corner of the nave: the worn pews where she and Nat used to play hide-and-seek, the glinting prayer candles where she had knelt after her mother’s funeral, the lectern where her father had stood for so many days of so many years still larger than life, the painting behind the altar rendering the church’s founder, Our Lady Prophet Delilah Dubois, in severe beauty, each stroke of her countenance exactly as Adelaide remembered it after spending one too many sermons lost in her oil-slick eyes, each detail another mouthful of saltwater she couldn’t swallow.
And mercy, it was warm like the undertow wrapped around her throat
And it was full. The smiling faces of familiar strangers dotted her horizon, all brought together under the banner of community care and that stubborn, unerring streak of self-sufficiency that defined Harborview, and Adelaide hated it so much she could’ve choked on it.
The storm surge of her rage broke through its levee, and she was too full too sudden and sputtering for air as her vision blurred white-hot. Her mind churned, dizzy and desperate, around one furious thought: how dare?
How dare this no longer be her home? How dare he spoil that too?
And how dare they abide it? Her so-called family friends, the congregation that had raised her and now sat by twiddling their thumbs while her father drowned her?
“Adelaide!”
In one moment, the entire world was tilting around her, as if she were a liferaft thrown out to the roiling sea.
In the next, there was a hand on her shoulder. Her focus broke, and everything went still and straight again.
Nat’s father, Duke Owens, beamed down at her and tugged her inside.
“So good to see you, kiddo. How long’s it been?”
Adelaide blinked and stumbled after him. Sluggishly, the social scripts of polite society and normal conversation came back to her.
“Too long…”
“Well, it’s great you’re here. Sarah Davis is making her famous collard greens, and her, uh, third… the current husband brought over a huge batch of potato salad, and we’ve just put on a pot to cook some corn. We’ve also got water, juice boxes, even a lick of bourbon if you think you can get away with it.” He winked as he directed her down the aisle.
A shake clearer-headed, Adelaide got a better sense of who else was milling around in the shrine to her poisoned youth. About two dozen of Harborview’s fine citizens sprawled out across the pews. They were split half and half between those who were dispensing the charity and those who were receiving it. Among the latter, Adelaide identified a smattering of residents from the trailer park at the west edge of town, a stoned vanlifer, a young city couple whose car had probably broken down, a handful of farmers who didn’t trust the structural integrity of their houses, and Madame Tilly, the congregation’s oldest and most devout member.
The other half—composed of Mary Owens, her two sons, Sarah Davis, her daughter, her current husband, one of her ex-husbands, and another priest—clustered at the front of the nave. That, Adelaide knew, was her destination: the insufferable snare of small town small talk with people she had known all her life and resented.
The altar and the lectern had been pushed back to make room for a pair of mismatched folding tables. One held the Owens’ camping stoves and large, bubbling stock pots, while the other was attended to by the younger generation, who were setting out plates, bowls, silverware, and napkins. Combined with the drink coolers and the warming tupperwares of potato salad, the spread could have been any church potluck or community barbecue.
Indeed, the only indication of the hurricane was Adelaide herself, tottering to a stop in front of them and once again failing not to shiver.
The fussing began immediately.
“Oh, sweetheart, what happened to you?” cooed Mary Owens.
“Poor thing, you gotta go change!” exclaimed Sarah Davis. “I’ve got some spare stuff in my duffle…”
“Dang, Adelaide, you’re gonna get sick going out dressed like that,” tutted Nat’s older brother, Jack.
“That’s what I told her.” Adelaide felt her father’s hand on her shoulder like a vice. “I found Addie halfway back home. She got caught out in the storm when the advisory went into effect, but, mercy be, we’re all safe here now.”
The others, ever the faithful parishioners, nodded and intoned, “Mercy be.”
Smothering the urge to gag, Adelaide cleared her throat and mustered up her most charming cheerleader smile.
“Mrs. Davis, that change of clothes sounds swell just about now.”
The church’s holiness had never quite extended into the single-occupant bathrooms in the basement. The consecration stopped short at the harsh fluorescents, speckled linoleum tiles, grimy ceramic, and the half-empty trash can perched on its throne of wet, crumpled paper towels. The closest thing to sanctity in the room was the pastel cross-stitch wall art reminding its viewers that Delilah preached moderation in all things… except cleanliness!, and even that couldn’t compel anyone to actually throw their paper towels away.
It was as close to an escape as Adelaide was going to get.
She had to peel her sopping clothes away from her skin, like wearing away the adhesive of a band-aid until she was hunched and nearly naked in the middle of the bathroom with two handfuls of dripping fabric. Her flats were coming apart at the seams, and her stockings were so drenched and muddy that she abandoned any hope of salvaging them. Instead, she threw both articles of clothing in the trash before trying to ring out her dress over the sink. The twisting and squeezing yielded some measure of success, so she stuffed the dress into the plastic bag Jack had offered her.
She then began to rifle through Sarah Davis’ assorted athleisure: a pair of neon pink and green tennis shoes, socks that said namaste, two tight yoga pants, and an assortment of sporty tank tops emblazoned with bubble text that ranged from mere novelty (KEEP HARBORVIEW WEIRD) to outright suggestion (MY EYES ARE UP HERE). Adelaide picked one that said FINE LIKE WINE not because it suited her particularly but because it had the loosest fit. Both pairs of pants, however, were as form-fitting and skin-tight as the wet stockings she had just taken off, hugging every curve and divot of her legs.
In the end, she was dressed but exposed, unable to control something so simple as her appearance, hating the glimpses of herself she caught in the mirror.
Even her face seemed foreign to her. The rain had ruined her makeup, leaving streaks of mascara down her cheeks and blotchy patches of red lipstick on her mouth. Her hair hung from her in frizzing, ropey strands plastered to the sides of her face and neck. She didn’t recognize the face staring back at her with the tears rimming its wide, desperate eyes.
That other person trapped in the glass snarled, wrenched a paper towel from the dispenser, and clawed the rest of its makeup off. A moment later, it raked its nails through its hair in a biting impression of a brush, gathering the strands together in a loose ponytail with a scrunchie from Sarah’s duffle bag.
At least she had control over something.
At least she could still control the muscles of her unvarnished face, massaging out the furrows in her brow and slackening the tension in her jaw and schooling her lips into an effortless smile.
When she looked in the mirror one last time, she almost resembled herself again.
Supper was up by the time Adelaide went back upstairs. Townsfolk were gathered at the front of the chamber, salting and buttering ears of corn and taking deep, indulgent whiffs of the collard greens, laden with thick-cut bacon and leftover ham hock. Strains of jovial conversation reached her by the stairwell. How is so-and-so doing? Some weather we’re having, huh. Got any holiday plans? How old is so-and-so now? She’s where? Oh my, but they grow up so fast…
Adelaide heard Nat’s name in the mix—something about an athletic scholarship at Clemson—and felt sick again.
Her empty stomach grumbled its complaints as she turned away, but she ignored it, forcing her attention to settle on Madame Tilly, who had not joined the others for dinner. Rather, the old woman, sporting her trademark purple velvet cap and elaborate gem-encrusted beetle brooch, was still kneeling by a box of candles near the front door, lost to the world as she muttered her prayers.
Adelaide reasoned that that, at least, was a conversation she could handle.
Matilda Lawrence had been just as much a part of Adelaide’s life growing up as the Owens. For as long as she could remember, she and her father had been checking up on Madame Tilly after Wednesday service. It had been Adelaide’s earliest act of charity, a kind deed for a kind elder whose mind had wandered even in her youth. Even longer than those visits, though, Adelaide recalled her unwavering faith. As distracted as she might be elsewhere, in church, Madame Tilly was nothing but resolute and focused. Indeed, her knowledge of canticles, verses, and hymns was second only to Deacon Dellouise himself.
Adelaide used to think it would be nice to grow up and be someone like Madame Tilly: refined, devout, at peace.
Nowadays, she just barely had one of the three.
Adelaide squatted beside the prayer box, three tiered rows of tea lights set in small glass bowls. Only a few of the candles were lit, each a pinprick prayer glinting above a puddle of grey wax. She watched them flicker as she listened to Madame Tilly continue her supplications without so much as a glance in her direction.
The words were as familiar as the low, hoarse voice that mumbled them:
“That I may deliver my own salvation, I bequeath upon myself a clear mind and a strong heart. That I may shoulder my own burdens, carry my own weight, and discipline the limits of my own desires, such that I never exceed the boundaries of restraint and propriety. That I may survive the oncoming storm, I pray for clarity, fortitude, and tenacity…”
“And in so praying,” the words spilled forth from Adelaide’s marrow, deep and reluctant as every fiber of her being, “I grant upon myself such virtues as foreseen by our lady prophet.”
Madame Tilly lifted her head, blinking, and smiled up at Adelaide, slow and indulgent.
“Little Addie,” she murmured, gums stretched wide. “How are you?”
“Surviving by someone’s grace.” Adelaide didn’t know if it was her own or her father’s or Delilah’s herself. Probably wasn’t her own. “How ’bout yourself?”
“All is as we will it.”
Typical Order of Dubois bullshit response. Adelaide smiled back.
“Well, it looks like dinner’s up, if you’re hungry.”
“Oh, that’s very kind of you, but I can’t stop praying. There’ll be time to feed myself later. Harborview needs my prayers now. It is as our lady prophet says.” Madame Tilly tapped her forehead with the second knuckle of her right pointer finger, tracing a loose oval between her brows. “‘In seeing clearly, might all the Earth resolve itself in perfect and accurate order.’ Worship is the only way to a clear mind’s eye. A clear mind’s eye is the only way to a righteous world.”
Righteousness seemed a terribly inappropriate framework for understanding a natural disaster, but Adelaide’s good sense told her not to argue.
Instead, she picked up one of the lit prayer candles and tilted it forward. The melted wax pooled to one side, threatening to drown the pinpoint of light quivering inside the glass. When she narrowed her eyes, the flame blossomed into a thin white line across her vision. Its expansion was an optical illusion, she knew, but if she focused hard enough, she could trick herself into thinking that the glass was heating up, cracking, splintering, shattering…
“We could all use some clarity just about now,” Adelaide remarked as she spun the bowl, watching the silvery wax swirl like wine.
“Don’t I know it… You seeking clarity yourself, little Addie? I haven’t seen you around here in a while.”
“Y’know how it is.” Eyes open, eyes closed, flame thinning and widening and winking like blinding starlight, glass hotter and hotter against the pads of her fingers. “One day, you’re suddenly an adult, and you gotta take some time to figure things out.”
“I’ve been an adult for quite a while, dearie. I did all my figuring out long ago.”
“And how’d that go for you?”
“She simplified things a good bit.” Madame Tilly nodded toward the back of the church, and Adelaide followed her gaze to the oil painting of Delilah Dubois. The prophet’s watchful steely eyes stared back from underneath a windswept cowl. “I was a wild and wayward soul once upon a time, but I wandered back to her eventually, and she set me on the straight and narrow… You could always come back too, y’know. Give it all a second chance.”
Adelaide’s grip on the bowl tightened.
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Ah, but showing up is only half the work.” Adelaide glanced back at her out of the corner of her eye. Madame Tilly responded by touching her finger to her forehead again. “You still have to have faith, dearie. Otherwise, it’s only a paper moon.
“That was the first lesson Lady Delilah taught us, after all. She saw the end of days on the horizon, the plagues and the storms and the fires that would burn this world to its core, and she turned to prayer. Not just mumbling a few half-hearted words, you understand, but complete dedication of body and soul to her worship. That was her salvation.
“And it’s saved Harborview dozens of times since then. Right before you were born, actually, we had another hurricane. This one got so close the state put us under an evacuation notice, so your daddy rented a whole fleet of buses and he went out in his jeep with his megaphone to round folks up and make sure they got out safe and sound before the storm got bad.
“But instead of leaving with them, he and Melanie came back here, and the three of us set about doing what Delilah mandated we do in the face of travesty. We dedicated ourselves to our piety. We didn’t eat, we didn’t drink, we didn’t sleep, we just prayed.
“And we were rewarded, as Delilah said we would be. For all those weather boys saying we would be wiped off the map, the hurricane only grazed us. Oh, there was some superficial damage to a few buildings on the Docks, and we lost the old community center to the flooding, but we survived. Harborview survived, as it always has, on the back of its own self-efficacy.
“That is the power of faith, child: making divine and mortal providence one in the same.”
But much of Madame Tilly’s sermon had fallen on deaf ears, for Adelaide could not let go of the thought of her mother holed up in this church listening to the world end around her. She pictured her crouched before this same prayer box, hands clenched, eyes shut, trembling.
Had she wanted to stay? Or had she been coerced, her husband never being one to let his things wander too far from his domain? She was a devout woman, but did her faith hold? Did she believe Wyatt when he told her devotion was the only way to salvation?
Did she have any other choice but to believe, to paper a smile over the worry and go through the motions of her worship while her fear gutted her from the inside out? How many screams and sobs did she smother because doubt was still the worse sin in the eyes of her husband?
Did she nurse some secret seed of resentment toward him for condemning her to die alongside him?
Adelaide’s own fear spiraled as sudden as a lightning strike. It was an old anxiety at this point, but it hadn’t yet lost its edge or its weight: that moment of feeling the entire ocean bearing down on her chest. Too tight to move, too heavy to breathe, just the water in her lungs trying to drag her down.
Trapped.
Crack!
The candle holder exploded.
Madame Tilly yelped as glass and wax showered the ground. The still-burning wick hit the carpet. A chorus of gasps and shrieks and questioning grunts surged from the other side of the church.
But all Adelaide knew was the flame. The orange glimmer cut through the fear, and for a blinding moment, she had that holy clarity that the Order of Dubois revered so much: a crystal-clear image of the church reduced to smoldering ash and burning rubble, so real she could taste the heat and smoke sweet on her tongue. If she just focused…
Some smell like ozone and chlorine hit Adelaide square in the nose. Her vision blurred, head swimming as that sublime image warped before her eyes. She tried to hold onto it, but it vanished out from underneath her, like missing the last step in the dark. For a moment, she reeled in the free-fall, stomach plummeting and body lurching, staggering back onto her heels.
Then, her vision settled. She was back in the church. It was normal and whole. The flame was out. And her father was staring hard at her from across the room.
Outside, the thunder boomed as loud as any pipe organ, deep enough to shake the church’s foundations.
The power went out.
The congregation gasped again as the darkness took them. The precious few points of candlelight were quickly joined by the glare of cellphones at the front of the nave. Madame Tilly merely shook her head and resumed her praying, while Adelaide stared at the faces huddled near the altar, cast in a waxy and uneven sheen by the weak flashlights they clutched to their chests. An anxious murmur bubbled up amongst them until their deacon cleared his throat so loud even the rain seemed to hold its breath for him.
“There’s no need to panic, folks.” Wyatt Dellouise only owned a flip phone, so for a moment, his voice seemed to emanate from the darkness itself, ever-present and ever-vigilant. Duke Owens switched on a camping lantern, suffusing the back of the church in a too-white glow. Wyatt appeared, his features ghastly as the light carved steep shadows into his countenance. “We knew this was a possibility, but the church has a generator precisely for this situation. I’ll go out back and turn it on. Duke, you mind if I borrow a flashlight or a lantern?”
“Of course, Wyatt, and if you need someone else to go out with you—”
“I’ll go.”
The glaring cellphones all turned toward Adelaide as she stretched her hand up into the air. A stuttered silence followed. Her father’s thin silhouette shifted.
“That’s awful kind of you, Addie, but—”
“You shouldn't have to go out there alone, Daddy!” Adelaide interrupted brightly. “I wanna help.”
He couldn’t deny her this, not when she was playing the dutiful, smiling daughter he wanted so badly to have back. With a nod and armed with raincoats and a high-powered flashlight, her father led her out the back door of the church.
Stepping back out into the storm, Adelaide’s mind wandered to her other childhood best friend, the one she tried her damnedest not to think about. Once upon a time, before Adelaide had ruined everything, Zak Ibis had been the genderqueer prom king to her prom queen. As the self-proclaimed arbiter of good taste and cultural relevance in a backwater town he resented, Zak could deliver gospel as well as any priest over DairyQueen blizzards or in the Barracuda’s locker rooms. Their vast but shallow reserves of amateurish expertise included computer science, film, sports, economics, and numerous pop science areas like sleep health, fad diets, and wolfpack dynamics as allegories for the human condition.
One such lecture came to mind as the first splash of rain hit Adelaide’s face, turned up toward a patch of clouds where the faint light of the moon filtered through the storm. She remembered one of her many late night break-ins to the lighthouse down the street from the Dellouise Mansion. With Nat giving her a boost, Adelaide would shimmy into the cracked second story window and open the door. Nat provided the snacks, Zak the weak booze, and they’d spend hours playing card games or listening to Zak pontificate.
Over cold, congealed nachos and watered down beer, Zak had once opined about the mammalian diving reflex— in his words, how to trick your lizard brain into thinking the world’s not ending by being in some water about it.
And in the storm’s totality, it did feel like being swallowed up by the sea: the whole world disappeared in the torrent, no ground, no horizon, no body, just the numbness where the droplets pelted against her skin.
Zak was right, it was kind of relaxing.
Would that she actually were in the ocean, sinking into the abyss so that her corpse could give rise to untold and monstrous ecosystems deep beneath the tides. Instead, the swinging of her father’s flashlight, cutting sharp through all that wet nothing, reminded Adelaide of where she was.
“The generator’s just back here.”
“Mhm.”
“Hold the flashlight, will you?”
Adelaide lifted the light up to illuminate the boxy grey generator on the ground and the paneling in the wall above it, which her father began to fuss with. She watched him work in silence, trying to puzzle out the function of the multitude of switches and blinking lights. She didn’t have the faintest idea what her father was doing with them.
Then again, that was the way the two of them functioned, wasn’t it? She didn’t have to know much of anything because daddy dearest could always solve all of her problems.
The irony of being dependent on a man who had dedicated his life to preaching self-sufficiency was so bitter that Adelaide drew in on herself, shivering in Mary Owens’ raincoat and Sarah Davis’ yoga outfit and despising the kindness they had shown her.
“What are you going to do if we ever have to evacuate?!” she shouted over the roar of the storm.
“We won’t need to evacuate,” he responded evenly.
“Sure, not this time around, but there’s always next time, ain’t there, and the time after that? We have a million fucking storms every summer, what are you going to do when one of them finally threatens to wipe this miserable shithole off the coastline?”
Her father’s hands paused, hovering over some button or another. Adelaide could not see his face, but she watched the outline of his Adam’s apple quiver.
“Watch your language, Addie,” he mumbled at last. He pushed the button, and light flooded out of the stained glass window suspended above their heads.
“That’s not an answer, and you fucking know it! Tell me what you would do!”
Desperation seized her as he finally turned toward her, mouth set like a tombstone to match the hard granite of his eyes. Adelaide could not feel her lips spluttering around her words, but she tasted the rainwater against her teeth.
“Would you let me go?!” She came so close to pleading that she wanted to retch. Barely swallowing the bile, she spat, “Or would you trap me here like you trapped Mama?!”
What little color was left drained from her father’s face.
“Addie, don’t—”
“You’d rather see me dead than gone!” The tempest didn’t stop for her like it did for him, but she could match its fury. “You’d let me drown before you’d let me leave!”
“I’d— I’d protect you!” He reached for her, stammering out familiar pleas and supplications. Adelaide shrunk away from his grasp. “I’d keep you safe, like I always have!”
“You’d just keep me!”
He tried to grab her again. Adelaide stepped backwards, slipped on the slick grass, and plummeted to the ground. He lunged to catch her, but she slapped away his hands as she fell. She’d rather have the pain: the sharp ache of a future bruise thrumming through her thighs and up her spine, the scrape of her knuckles against the ground, the twist of her wrist as she held onto the flashlight like a liferaft.
Standing above her, Wyatt’s face contorted, no longer the picture of the austere deacon but of a tired, sad old man.
“Addie, please,” he whispered, extending his hand again, “please just stop this. You’re only hurting yourself.”
In response, Adelaide chucked the flashlight as hard as she could in the other direction.
Somewhere in the darkness above her came a sigh, followed by heavy footsteps headed toward the flashlight, which had rolled to a stop near the fence of the cemetery. Still, Adelaide made no move to pick herself up. Instead, she leaned back to lay down in the mud, letting the rain wash over her.
She couldn’t see the sky.
She couldn’t see much of anything, but she knew Harborview’s geography well enough to draw a straight line from her outstretched fingertips to her father’s house, less than a block away but lost in the storm. She could extend that same, unerring line through to the lighthouse, that last bastion of unspoiled childhood, and she could stretch it out further to the ocean beyond.
She could feel it out there, roiling just out of sight. And if she closed her eyes and focused on her breathing, she could almost feel it inside her too. In her mind’s eye, she saw a wave as tall as the sky cresting over the town, poised just before breaking. It would flood every street, level most buildings, wash away thousands of lives, erase Harborview from the face of the Earth and drag its fractured remains out to sea… and maybe that could free her.
Maybe it would be enough to call her father’s bluff and scare him into breaking the magic that tethered her to Harborview.
Or maybe the magic would break on its own if there was no Harborview.
As soon as it had occurred to her, Adelaide couldn’t let that thought go. The flood, the catastrophe, the destruction, the death. The horror sunk its fangs deep into her, gnawing the edges of morality and logic alike, and she let that callousness fester because it burned oh so tenderly even as she was slowly losing feeling in her limbs.
Why, after all, should she care about the wellbeing of the people who showed up twice a week to suckle at the teat of her father’s dogma despite everything he had done to her?
Why shouldn’t they drown too?
Who was Adelaide to deny the prophecies of her Lady Delilah?
#adelaide posting#okay shes DONE#topping out at 6000 words#this was legit originally just going to be the convo about what adelaide & wyatt would do if there was an evacuation notice#and it was just going to be a bit of dialogue in their house#and then i was like 'wait wouldnt wyatt be at the church during a shelter in place advisory'#and things........ spiraled from there#i have so many meta thoughts but im trying not to add too much commentary for the integrity of the piece#just. ugh. im screaming a lot inside.
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Empty Movement's 2023 Revolutionary Girl Utena UPDATE
Fashionably late? As always. 2023 was a HUGE year for Empty Movement, so much so that to confess, we did a big fail in actually keeping up with sharing the stuff we did! OOPS. So finally, we proudly bring you: all the Revolutionary Girl Utena content we dropped in 2023. Essays, artbooks, CD information, you name it. Click below for the entire site update, or get it at the source, as always, at ohtori.nu.
In Analysis (Fan Essays):
• seebee's essay The Power of Living an Embodying Narrative is about more than Utena, it's about the fandom--including us. We were both interviewed for this piece, and the result is an absolutely beautiful essay that has helped inform how we do Utena stuff going forward. Thank you so much for letting us be part of this!
• seebee's VIDEO essay FILM CUTS BACK | transfeminism in utena absolutely blew our minds and it's so good we're listing it. Look at the title. Just go watch it, it rules.
• Nicole Winchester's essay No Choice But To Become Witches: The Bishōjo-Demonic Phallic Mother Dichotomy in Revolutionary Girl Utena catches you up to speed on the academic discussion around what might best be described as the shoujo manga iteration of the Madonna-Whore complex. Then, naturally, it finds plenty to say about Utena. Great work that was well worth the coding!
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In From the Mouths of Babes (Translated Meta/Creator Content):
• Cross X Talk, A Round Table Discussion Commemorating the Second Musical Utena GOGAI FUCKIN' GOGAI. Nagumo and friends bring us the final untranslated part of the 2019 Black Rose Musical's program guide: the monster interview with Ikuhara and the director of the musicals, Yoshitani. INCREDIBLE content here that 100% lives up to the first musical's similar encounter! A must read!!
• The Rose Apocalypse's Ei Takatori Interview The director of the mysterious 1999 musical (yes the machine gun one, and YES WE HAVE MORE INFORMATION ABOUT IT COMING) interviewed in The Rose Apocalypse book. This...is that. Thank you so much to iris hahn for translating, and I can't wait to bring you more of this mythology!!!
• The Utena Dossier Animage Magazine's June 1997 supplemental, this 36-page Utena tome has ben translated by Nagumo with editing by Ayu Ohseki. Because so much of the content is in its visual presentation, I worked the translation into the original scans! Check it out! (PS. Yes that is an entirely different gallery on the emptymovement.com domain, no this won't stay there, yes it has been a weird couple years.)
The Dossier includes two long interviews that are also worked into html pages for easy viewing!
The Auspicious Joining of Manga and Anime: Saito and Hasegawa
For Whom the Director Smiles: Ikuhara and Kitakubo
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In Historia Arcana & The Bibliothèque (Untranslated Resources):
• There are a lot of changes happening in this arena!!! How and where to place different materials has been a moving target, so I'll do my best! The sites don't quite reflect this yet, but Historia Arcana will be for cover to cover Utena media, including special magazine publications. Something Eternal's gallery, the Bibliothèque, will be for magazine articles, clippings, and other things. Major artbooks will likely be in both places, cross referenced.
New books in Historia Arcana:
• The Rose Spiral: Reflections on the Mythology of Utena While not strictly official, this is a fan published book of in depth analysis of Utena, circa 1998! Yep, cover to cover.
• Revolution Dictionary (OST 1 First Press Bonus) Cross-referenced from Audiology, this is the bonus dictionary you only got if you grabbed it early! Cool!
• Revolutionary Girl Utena Making of Visuals Book Art of UTENA I am mentioning this for completions sake and because I already uploaded it, but this is a cover to cover high resolution, uncleaned scan of the 1999 Art of Utena artbook. I am going to clean the scans, and ultimately be posting the official artbooks elsewhere.
• Revolutionary Girl Utena Photobook: Rose Memories This special Animage bonus could be purchased for 700 yen, and back then, was probably a great way to keep the anime in your pocket! It's entirely shots from the TV series, though, so there's nothing specifically new. But I scan it all, baby.
New books in the Bibliothèque:
• Chiho Saito's 1999 Revolutionary Girl Utena Original Illustration Collection
HI THIS IS A VERY BIG DEAL. Read more about why when you visit! TLDR? Here's some of the best artwork of Utena, rescanned and remastered by yours truly to be the best big big scans of big big beautiful Chiho Saito Art. This is a feast. I even made myself a calendar! (Note that the price is such that I don't make a profit on these, so if you're looking to donate, definitely go by other routes, haha.) You will find multiple ways to obtain the scans, and in more than one size. Either way you soak up the rays, enjoy 'em!
New articles and clips in the Bibliothèque:
• H! Rockin' on Japan Magazine Saito X Oikawa This fashion music magazine's July 1999 article has ALREADY BEEN TRANSLATED? Like, I am going to add the translation officially to the site of course, but holy hell Nagumo is amazing!! This article is actually the origin of a Saito art piece that uh, well. Now we know she went to a love hotel with movie Akio's VA. Cool! Anyway check it out!
• Comickers Magazine, August 1997 This absolute monster find is an industry-focused magazine with this gorgeous spread and interview with Chiho Saito. It gets into how she does things. The making of Utena. All kinds of stuff. I'd LOVE to know more about this one!!
• Comickers Magazine, June 1998 Again, an industry-focused publication, this time it's exploring the manga and the anime and how they compare. Again looks like a tasty meal!!
• Volks Magazine, Spring 2022 YEP SCANS OF THE BOOK OF THE DOLLFIES. For a lot of us, this is at close as we get to these ludicrously gorgeous dolls. I included a few extra pages because they were just fuckin' cool and felt relevant.
• Sega Saturn Magazine, December 1997 One of two grabs I got recently on Yahoo! Japan! This appears to be the first look announcement of the 1998 Utena video game! (Yes we have more on it, yes we will eventually post links.)
• Sega Saturn Magazine, April 1998 This feature brings attention to the voice actors, who are all returning for the game!
• Dengeki G's Magazine, January 1998 Another gaming focused magazine, with frankly a more adult edge, cheaply lets the readers know about Utena. These three game magazine moments are just a bizarre reminder of how we did things before the internet, LMAO
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In Audiology (Music and CD Information):
• Complete information about the STAR CHILD - Girls Character Song Best album! You also definitely can't grab the two new remix tracks there.
• Did you know there was a first press bonus dictionary for the first OST? I DIDN'T UNTIL RECENTLY. Now I know all about it, and so can you. Check it out! Obviously, scans available, both here and in Historia Arcana.
• I FINALLY acquired a complete set of the Utena CD singles!! Check out complete track lists, scans, and information for ALL FIVE Utena singles. Yes. Including the movie Akio guy's one.
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In The Doujinshi Gallery:
• Several dozen dounjinshi were uploaded earlier in the year, and can be found listed on the Site Update archive here.
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That's all for now, folks! There's so so so much coming. I have the episode 18 and 20 (!!!!) storyboards to scan, as well as a fully translated scanlation of The Duelist Bible. We're planning to do something for Anthy's rare LEAP YEAR birthday coming up, probably a musical stream or something! Love!
#revolutionary girl utena#rgu#empty movement#empty movement update#utena meta#chiho saito#shoujo kakumei utena#utena movie#utena merch#utena
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So when I wrote down that Big Undertale Meta Post about how Sans probably doesn’t remember RESETs at all and why that’s cool - I got a lot of responses to the tune of ‘that’s probably canon but I’m still gonna enjoy Sans Remember fics because of the angst’. And, well... first I want to emphasize that those are very good and correct responses! Like ‘I acknowledge might or might not be in the text but I am also gonna explore alternative ideas Because I Enjoy Them’ is a Good Damn Position to have! Transformative Fandom is Transformative on purpose! Engage with the text and it’s various analyses but don’t let it chain your creativity or fun!
It’s just that… all of the people saying that they prefer Sans Remembering ‘for the Angst’ make me think that maybe folks are kinda ignoring the incredible angst potential of Sans NOT remembering.
My original post focused on how cool it is that Sans manages to be so on-top-of-things even though he doesn’t remember anything - but let’s not ignore the fact that this situation is also grim as shit.
Through some mysterious super-science or whatever, Sans has managed to discover that his timeline is being RESET and altered constantly (before the Player came along, Flowey had already managed to basically 100% the entire Underground) and he has no memory of what's going on and what exactly is being altered.
He knows he might’ve gone through the same day over and over and over again thousand times but he’s simply not aware of it. It’s all the helplessness and lack of forward momentum of a classic timeloop and none of the benefits of memorizing occurrences or acquiring extra information. That’s exactly the thing that drove him into his depressive spiral.
That line always strikes me. It’s like… Sans suspects that without the meddling of capricious immortal time gods, he’d be a much happier and motivated person. But he doesn’t know for sure, because he can’t remember how he was in some distant ‘original timeline’. He is essentially fighting to avenge a version of himself that might not even be real.
Like, yes, it is very impressive and badass how well Sans trained himself to notice every tiny little hint that might indicate that a RESET happened - but it’s impressive because the deck is stacked so heavily against him. And it is very impressive and badass how Sans managed to turn his weaknesses into strengths during his Boss Battle - but it’s impressive because these are usually huge weaknesses. Trying to work to solve a timeloop that you can only infer is going on through context clues is quite a hopeless and desperate mission!
Another bit in the Sans fight that I often think about is his unique reaction if you kill him and then RESET to Fight him again.
With how skilled he is at reading expressions, Sans probably knows what that ‘weird expression’ means, he knows the Player killed him once before and is here to try again. And yet he still goes along with the same attack plan he has, the one he knows killed him in that previous timeline. Why? Because he doesn’t know where the flaw in his plan was exactly, he can’t even begin to guess. So he has no choice but to go along with the plan he knows did kill him, because that’s the only thing he has.
You know, the thing about Sans, is that he always plays his cards very close to his chest. It’s very hard to tell what exactly he’s thinking. That’s probably why so many people do believe he remembers RESET. If any non-Flowey character remembered RESETs, only Sans would be remotely able to hide it so well. But for me? It makes me wonder how much of his Troll who Knows Too Much persona is a bit of an act as well.
You know, Sans’ deduction requires some keen observational skills - does he ever second-guess his conclusions? Living on constant high-alert that something has been reversed or that someone knows something they shouldn’t requires fostering a lot of paranoia, and that can’t be healthy for him. Is he ever overcome with doubt on whatever something was really an indication of a timeline RESET or not? How does he feel when he realizes something horrible happened on a previous timeline (for example, his brother dying) but he doesn’t know about the context to feel sure that he can stop it from happening again?
I also think about it in terms of his relationship to Papyrus in general. Sans tends to hide so many things from Papyrus, especially in timelines where the Player is particularly kill-happy...
In part it’s about his perception that Papyrus’ kindness and pacifism is born from naïveté and thus the only way to preserve it is to hide the cruelty and harshness of the world from him (Undyne also does that). But also, with the paranoia and helplessness Sans lives in every day - is it any wonder that he might believe that ignorance is bliss?
I do truly think it’s beautiful how fandom can experiment with cool non-canon ideas! There are probably so many great emotional angsty ideas tied up to Sans remembering RESETs! I just feel it’ll be a shame if people ignore just how dire and depressing Sans’ canon situation also is!
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Celestial Navigation by @sabrecmc
18 year old Omega!Tony finds himself Bonded to Captain Steve Rogers. He isn't happy about it until he is.
An absolutely gorgeous story of learning to love yourself, even when you feel like you don't fit in & that you grew up wrong. I'm so happy to have gotten to bind this mammoth work for Sabre & as a gift exchange for @mourningmountainsbindery (who bound me this beautiful copy of Astolat's Let the River Run—JUST LOOK AT THAT COVER!).
Also to anyone who has @ed me lately (looking at u, em @powerful-owl & tacky @tackytigerfic particularly) & I've been derelict in responding, here is WHY.
This has been the longest binding project I've undertaken, both in page count and in time. My original message to Sabre was on March 16th—can't decide if I want to use the laughing or crying emoji here—and the colophon says I made the book in April 2023 (which was when I started typesetting, maybe). I had been randomly perusing dying videos on Youtube in bed on a Saturday morning, as one does, and came across a video showing how to spiral tie-dye. I IMMEDIATELY had a design premonition of the full design for this fic as a two-volume set, planted into my brain wholesale by the binding gods. I learned many new techniques throughout the process (edge painting, edge trimming/sanding, tie-dying/dyepainting, embroidery, typesetting meta from tumblr which copy-pastes with the worst goddamn formatting in the world, kill me now). Overall, alternately extremely painful & wonderful, and I'm extremely proud of this set.
Design-wise, I went whole-hog with the scifi stars theme. Endpapers are recolored versions of the star charts from the Apollo 11 mission:
Title page & chapter titles are both rips in the galaxy:
Epigraphs both star-themed:
Some more glamor shots because I'm so proud 💕
8.6 lbs // 3.8 kgs worth of books (~3000 total pages) 🥰
Celestial Navigation is also INCREDIBLY popular, and Sabre has been incredibly generous answering asks on her tumblr + writing additional one-shots in the universe. There is also a veritable volume of fanart. I was so inspired by seeing @robins-egg-bindery copy of ********, with its appendix of fanart & meta, that I promptly copied them.
fanart redacted because lots of the artists are no longer active on tumblr but just know i am ECSTATIC about the amount of art in these books
Lastly, I love how @clovenhoofbindery includes their 'Illustrator mess' with their bind posts, as a behind-the-scenes look into the wild process of designing these books. I don't actually have an Illustrator mess for this book (the chapter titles & title page pretty much came in one take), but I do have a DYING MESS. It took me sososo many tries to figure out how to get the dye to look how I imagined in my head. I ended up 'dye painting' instead of tie-dying in the end, but my inbox is always open to chat hand-dying/tie-dying/dyepainting (or what I did differently between any of these attempts). Numbers are the dying attempt.
Last process shot: I hand-dyed variegated linen thread to match the colors of the bind, which ends up being incredibly difficult to see on the finished bind, but was super fun while I was sewing!
Materials:
Body font: Kepler
Title font: Compaq 1982
Chapter number font: aliens & cows
Endpapers: recolored versions of the star chart used by Michael Collins during the Apollo 11 mission (archived at The Smithsonian)
Bookcloth: dyed using Dharma Trading Procion Fiber-Reactive Dyes
Title page and chapter headers: designed in Photoshop using the Ultimate Space brush pack by jeffrettalyn on DeviantArt
Metallic embroidery thread: Cosmo Nishikiito thread
I would dye for this embroidery thread. It is LIGHT YEARS better than the classic metallic embroidery thread from DMC: much easier to work with & much more sparkly. Literally so eye-catching; it truly doesn't translate to photos.
Paint for edges: Daniel Smith watercolor tubes in Iridescent Sunstone and Prussian Blue
Note: these are GORGEOUS watercolors. The color is so saturated and strong and beautiful BUT I don't think I'd recommend watercolors for edge painting. They went on very differently depending on the grit of the sandpaper I used for the edges + they sometimes bled into the pages + they had to be set with fixative, which then stuck the pages together.
#blood sweat and TEARS into this bind#and now it is DONE my god#stony#stony fanart#celestial navigation#my fanbinding#posts i actually wrote
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Your genuine delight over Goncharov made me really happy ☺️ If you have more thoughts on how/why this happened on a meta level, I’d love to hear them! 💕
Look. Look at me. Look at my face. This is the compounding and expanding creation you see in something like tiktok going ham over sea shanties (loved that, shanties are great) and the original one, that ended up with like, 9... mixes? add ons? idefk i don't use tiktok. But see. see. tiktok has fame and engagement baked into the mix. Its your face. you want followers for it. Your followers can gain you money or influence or whatever the hell. and this doesn't have that. in part because this is tumblr, we couldn't create a market friendly influencer if our lives depended on it
But this is ALSO a joint collaboration in the scope of something like fucking qanon. and yes, qanon is a full on fascist breeding ground so I hate to use it but thats how desperate i am to find a reference point. Bc it started as a single drop on a website that one person encourage and then it spiralled into full offshoots. BUT its also totally not the same bc it was made wiht an agenda and purpose and the intent to convert and persuade people
And sure, maybe some of the first posts were people going 'haha this'll be funny' and yeah, looking at the note counts, some people are drowning in the reactions for the elements they made, but this isn't done with an agenda. It's all Yes, And, never a disagreement except in the sense of people bickering over which of their meta analyses of a non existent movie is more accurate.
Maybe something like Cicada? or or. the way they dropped the joker image??? Or the album that dropped early by leaving random fucking USB drives in bathrooms at concerts???? But cicada was secretive and antagonistic to each other in a lot of ways. And Joker was built by a marketing team. and the USB drives weren't as effective as they wanted?
Geocaching?? but there's an element of accumlating clout and bragging rights there that excludes it from comparison.
But its such a pure creation that I keep reaching back to the kinds of myths that that we told before we left africa. the stories that pervade humanity so far back in time that we can't find the origin. They were made and told and retold solely because we are humans and we want to share this thing we made so others can see it and enjoy it and share it again.
LOOK. This. it's. Look at my face. This is a work of spontaneous public art. This is a thing that the greatest artists of the last hundred years would saw off their testicles to achieve. They would with a smile on their face. People literally HAVE spent millions and millions of dollars trying to force this stuff. they have tried to carve this out of people. This kind of genuine engagment. People hire teams to work for years to make a tiny fragment of this happen and they cant bc it always feel false???
And! This! Just! Happened! Spontaneously! That first rush was in like. 30 hours?? idk, I need to build a timeline. But even if it happened over 72, this is. this is. idefk its so amazing send help I'm back to rambling
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I kinda already commented and it felt weird to do it again? So I thought I’d ask here instead:
I just saw a post on tumblr that Batman did try to kill Joker and Superman stopped him??? And it was because Joker was somehow linked with Iran, and couldn’t be killed cuz it would start a war. And other Batkids also tried to kill Joker???
I’ve honestly always thought Batman didn’t kill Joker cuz he’s too popular a villain so it was just sort of waved off because of ‘Batman rules’ and publication reasons.
Is Batman almost killing Joker included in your fic? I have very little knowledge of the comics and hearing about newer versions overwriting previous stories makes me even more confused.
Congrats to you for having unlocked a secret level of rambling through deciding to send an ask rather than a comment. This would totally have ended up on AO3 below your comment. :p
And it is going below the cut because it's long as hell.
The scenario you've heard about was from the original run of A Death in the Family, which is the story arc where Jason was killed back in the 80s. In the aftermath of Bruce finding Jason dead (and Jason's birth mother dying shortly thereafter), he hunts for the Joker after realizing that the warehouse explosion didn't, in fact, kill the clown. Somehow (racism!) the Joker ends up being appointed as the Iranian ambassador to the UN. This was later retconned to the fictional country of Qurac, because even DC realized that was a step too far. In the scene after that fun little reveal, Superman is on hand to try and keep shenanigans to a minimum, the Joker predictably tries to gas the entire UN assembly chamber anyway, and then flees via helicopter. Batman, who has been trailing along this entire time in a rage, pursues.
He's planning to kill the clown. Superman, for reasons related to "we don't whack ambassadors and start wars," has been holding him back for the arc thus far. Helicopter pursuit turns into a helicopter fight, during which the Joker's henchman fires a spray of bullets that kills the pilot while everyone is on board and having a bad time. Batman exits the aircraft alive, intact, and furious, and doesn't give a single shit if the Joker died when the chopper hit the sea.
And then a month later the fucking clown comes back again like nothing happened. Only the entire setting has undergone a serious tone shift since Jason's death, which means you're gonna see a lot heavier, dramatic stories that have more significant body counts. Batman cannot get over the death of his son, because no, and eventually Tim Drake pops up in the middle of that death spiral with a hypothesis: "Batman needs a Robin."
He's not wrong.
He also doesn't go about it super gracefully, including an attempt to convince Dick to come back to the Robin mantle that goes nowhere, but eventually he convinces the Dark Knight to take on a third Robin. Unlike Dick and Jason, Tim is locked the fuck down for training and not allowed out in the field willy-nilly. And when he does go out, he is ferociously competent.
Incidentally, this is because the writers/editors realized that after the child murder storyline they'd just done, Batman had to have one hell of a reason to ever take on another kid sidekick. And they needed to try and drag the Robin role's popularity back up, since killing a kid sidekick was also a symptom of DC's tanking sales at the time; the whole thing was ultimately a publicity stunt. It was a bad idea and now we just live with it.
So Tim is, broadly, never portrayed as incompetent in any aspect aside from maybe high school socializing. I don't think he gets kidnapped even a tenth of the number of times Dick did during his decades-long career as Robin. Certainly never falls for a honey trap plot or anything like that.
But yeah, the meta reason why the Joker never dies is because he's an iconic villain who drives plots. But unless you step out of the main continuity, he's also never just been a "no-frills funny" villain since.
ANYWAY.
As far as the rest of the Batfam taking a swing at the Joker, there's one incident that I can recall off the top of my head.
Dick Grayson, currently Nightwing, wasn't especially close to Jason while he was alive. During Jason's original run, they had a cordial (if brief) relationship, but they basically didn't get any storylines together, so it's hard to really tell how strongly they bonded. After Jason died, Dick began experiencing...I wanna call them chronic night terrors. The idea is that a boy in a Robin costume is falling, and falling, and Dick can never save the kid.
I'm sure it has nothing whatsoever to do with his dead brother, no sir.
So, some time later, the Joker gets told he has terminal cancer by a psychiatrist who assumes that if the clown was convinced he was going to die, he might try reforming or something. A terminal turnaround. Lots of people do that, right?
He assumed wrong.
The Joker goes on an utter tear, doing all sorts of escalating villainy that starts with gassing everyone he can get his hands on, including other Arkham inmates. Somewhere amid this rampage, Robin III goes missing and the Joker cheerfully tells Nightwing that yeah, he killed the kid. And he has the gall to bring up Jason in the middle of all the gloating. By name. (The Joker knows Jason's name due to some nonsense involving Crane and Fear Toxin hallucinations and Batman in a prior story arc.)
And Dick
fucking
SNAPS.
Pummels the Joker right there on the floor. Barehanded. No sticks, no pausing, just beats him to death.
Two seconds later, a very alive (if hurt) Tim manages to get there and go "oh god what happened." Because Dick is not doing well! He has a crisis about killing a dude, no matter how terrible. He never thought he'd go that far.
Batman swoops in and resuscitates the clown. In the time between Jason's death and The Joker's Last Laugh, he has apparently decided that it's more important to keep Dick from suffering a breakdown than it is to kill the clown. DC editorial was gonna keep him alive either way, but whatever.
And now for the third part of my ramble.
As for Under the Red Hood, Jason's death is seriously streamlined for the film. In this version of events, none of the UN chicanery happens. Ra's al Ghul hires the clown for a distraction job while trying to crash the world economy (again) and whoops, the clown killed Batman's son. Crowbar, bomb, whatever. Before Jason's body can be buried, the League of Assassins steals it, hucks Jason into the Lazarus Pit, and now he's alive again!
Except, given how he died and how long he spent dead and how that interacts with the magic, he wakes up as a berserk ball of rage and pain, kills two of Ra's al Ghul's guards with his bare hands, escapes, falls into a river, and disappears.
...So much for making that whole thing up to Batman. The League of Assassins just quietly lets Bruce bury a latex dummy and doesn't ever bring it up.
Cut to Gotham, years later, when Red Hood is tearing up the place and Batman goes "Ra's al Ghul, what the fuck" and the whole story comes spilling out.
In A Ninja's Guide to Gotham, Jason's dropped hints in his narration that he was actually with the League of Assassins for a while, even before going 'round the world training with assassins and stuff. The Lazarus Pit just got him back to full functionality. So, you can assume it leans more on the comics' "spontaneous resurrection" scenario.
If Bruce ever tried to kill the Joker while Jason was dead, Jason doesn't know about it. And because we haven't been in Bruce's head, there's no indication either way.
(Bruce makes mention of how easy it would be kill the Joker in the film, but that he could never come back from doing so. It is not specified if he made the attempt or just thought about it a lot.)
I've been holding back on Jason's and Bruce's accounts of events because they're both owed a moment of dramatic catharsis (and shouting). You can generally rest assured that it'll be more likely to be a mix of events than a pure account of any one take on what happened in the warehouse that day.
Thanks for setting off an exposition bomb~
#a ninja's guide to gotham#jason todd#bruce wayne#batman#dick grayson#tim drake#asks#anonymous#comics are weird#so weird that there's not really a simple answer for a lot of things#tl;dr: none of the POV characters so far know the truth
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saw this comment on Reddit about the latest chapter and thought it was interesting:
“The shot of Rickert kneeling down over Guts lying face down on his stomach saying “Guts, is that really you?” parallels the scene of Guts finding Griffith in the dungeon, also lying face down. Just swap the names and they essentially say the same thing.
Personally, I do think the behelit will activate for Guts sometime before the story is over. Or at the very least, it will start reacting, seeming like it wants to activate.
Thematically, I just can’t see it belonging to anyone else. It’s our Chekhov’s gun.
I see only one of two things happening:
The behelit activates for Guts, and obviously he will refuse.
Or
He finds a way to infuse it into the dragonslayer to make it have the same potential as SK’s sword of actuation.
I’m leaning towards the former.
Though, there is one more possibility that I’m just now starting to consider: that the behelit belong’s to Rickert.
It seems like Rickert might become a major player for the final act. I think they might be building him up to be Griffith’s true foil. He evens looks a lot like a young Griffith with his new hairstyle. I’ve always felt like Rickert is the story’s moral center. He might not have directly suffered as much as Guts and Casca, but he still lost all of his friends — all of his family — and was betrayed by the man he once looked up to above all others. However, unlike Guts, instead of running off to seek revenge, or spiraling out into self-destructiveness, he faced the pain of his losses, honored the memories of his fallen friends, and turned his focus towards those precious few he had left in his life. The kid has been through a fucking lot, but he hasn’t let his pain harden his heart or crush his soul. Now, just like Griffith, he went from being a total nobody to an incredible leader at a very young age. But unlike Griffith, his reasons are not vain, selfish ones.”
Obviously there are elements in the comment that I know you will disagree with like the Griffith being selfish and the part where they say guts would never sacrifice. but I think the thing about the parallel with Griffith and also the stuff about Rickert is a thing I haven’t seen people consider yet. Sorry if you don’t like other peoples comments being posted here, I know you don’t like what happened with the metas but my intention isn’t to criticise this comment I just found it interesting and I kept them anonymous
Yeah no, I personally don't see anything wrong with discussing comments made publically, and yeah nothing about your vibe comes across as malicious or anything. I don't want to encourage these kinds of asks because they obviously do bother some people, but I'm not gonna turn them down either unless I get bad faith vibes from the asker, or whoever originally posted it makes it clear they don't want others discussing their takes.
So yeah my thoughts on the subject:
Basically I see their point about Rickert being the moral centre of Berserk - idk if he's a prominent enough character for me to describe him that way, but he's definitely meant to be a foil to Guts in how he handles the Eclipse and losing all his friends, and to illustrate a much healthier method of coping, forging new relationships and goals.
I think it's a stretch to suggest he's meant to be a foil to Griffith, a better version of Griffith in any sense. Like there's no indication that he's leading the troops here first of all, he's just one of them. I wouldn't describe him as a leader, certainly not without further information.
And I doubt the behelit is Rickert's, for the same reason I doubt it's anyone's except Casca's, possibly Guts', or mmmmaybe Serpico's: there's no foreshadowing of a despair condition or sacrifice material. It's possible Miura was just gonna cram it all in at the end, like surprise! lol, but idk, that feels cheap to me. It'd be disappointing if so, imo.
Also I do think there are Griffith in the dungeon parallels right now with Guts falling apart lol, so maybe that's purposeful? But I think Guts' despair is more likely to lead to the armour taking over than the behelit opening. Mainly because Guts doesn't need two separate ways to give in to his inner darkness lol, and now that he has the armour the behelit is both redundant and probably too permanent for a protagonist. The armour is perfect in that he can succumb and then be pulled back to himself after crossing a moral event horizon. The behelit is a little too conclusive whether he says no or yes to monsterism. Also the armour is just Guts' style. Passively make an agreement to become a monster? No, but lose his shit and start ripping people apart? Absolutely.
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Ask Compilation 08/08
He codes exclusively in B++!
The mental image of a software pirate who physically raids people’s houses for their data is pretty great.
Prince sounds like a ‘leader’ or ‘controller’ class. I hope it allows me to change Homestuck’s time rules, because I have ideas.
In other words, if we do get nine new characters, as I theorized a few months ago, the new Pesterchum letter will probably be U.
I did miss the Karkat-carcinogen thing. I forgot that was his original theme, since he has a lot more going on now than just his ‘cancerous’ personality.
You guys said these ship names were good, and you're delivering.
That's a good point. I haven't really played any point-and-click games myself. I guess Professor Layton and Phoenix Wright both have point-and-click elements, but they fit more neatly into other genres.
I didn’t think the point-and-click genre had any analogue to RPG classes, but it is a lens that I haven’t really viewed Homestuck through up to now, since, like I said, I haven’t played any. Totally open to anyone else weighing in, though!
I'll put it on the list!
I might need to compile an actual recs list for the blog at some point, because I’ve got a good few by now.
It’s a very Felt-themed thought experiment. they’d probably love it, and so do I.
It’s definitely possible to simulate simple time-loops, and extrapolate them to more complex scenarios. The problems kick in, like you said, when you try to factor in human choice, or ‘free will’.
If Tavros had a human name, it absolutely would be Martin. Kind of fits him perfectly, don’t you think?
Looking back at the pre-Hivebent troll appearances, this does indeed seem to be the case! Plus, I noticed one thing I hadn’t picked up on before:
An Act 4 cameo from AG!
Lusi works for me. I don't know any Latin, and since there’s no canon answer, I’m just going for whatever feels right.
Dangit, you're right. I was saying Meg-ee-do in my head, but just typed it wrong.
The narration called it inelegant, but Sollux’s name for the game works on multiple levels. Elegance ain’t everything!
Plus, it seems to be fully functional. I wonder the Alternian Exiles aren’t as far in their planet’s future as the Earth Exiles?
I personally doubt that a session would abide two identical Titles. They’re surely different - and maybe my Title, as a liveblogger, is different as well...
To make an 'alien' race, they don't remove this photoshopping, of course. They just layer a second bad photoshopping onto the horns, to clumsily erase them.
We’ll wait till I’m finished the liveblog, and see what state the game’s in then. This blog ain’t going anywhere for at least another year, so maybe we’ll see some movement.
Aradia's - specifically, the ones in her main sprite. Its just a cool spiral pattern!
Right? I had a minor revelation in the tags shortly after I posted that.
AG is Troll Captain Hook, it's definitely on purpose, and now that her relationship to Tavros has come to light, it’s starting to make more sense.
Guys, these puns are killing me. You're killing your liveblogger, guys.
I’ve played a lot of tabletop RPGs, and it does seem like I let it seep into my admittedly tenuous understanding of LARPing. I did know it was live, but I was under the impression that you were still acting as a party in a campaign, working collaboratively.
I guess I didn’t think about who’d be playing your enemies. They can’t all be played by the DM unless she can mind-control people so I should have guessed it’d be party-vs-party - or augmented reality, which is what we got.
Quitting my job to make the crOSby a reality.
Yeah, some of them aren’t exact matches. Maybe the color balance on this image was changed, at some point - or maybe these colors represent the ‘default’ blood for their caste, and each individual troll has different minor variations in their blood.
I've played once or twice. It's fun, and I’d love to get better, but the meta is so complex that I wouldn’t really know where to start!
Discard and Draw, though, is a kind of obscure TvTrope. I like the trope, but I like the phrase even more. It really encapsulates a lot of ideas, and I like the sense of change it evokes.
Hell yes! Enjoy the ride!
Wow, that's getting close to that one Super Smash Bros fanfic. I thought Homestuck itself would be longer than any of its fanworks, but I, as always, underestimate fanworks.
For what it's worth, I'm increasingly confident we have got to Vriska - just not officially. Who else is going to do it like AG?
Oh, that makes sense. I wonder if this implies my trollsona is yellow-brown colourblind?
The list I was working from didn’t have many meaningfully different options for Leo - most of them were just variations of ‘Lion’, and most of them were less than six letters. I saw the Finnish ‘Leijona‘, liked the look of it, and cut off the last letter. Voilà - we have our catgirl!
Don’t worry, true Derséheads will always find each other. It's like those Jojo things.
Gotta practice character voice while I can. The 1.8 million word Sahlee fic will drop one day, whether y’all like it or not.
Yup. Like with the humans, they often act like they’re older or smarter than adolescents, but that’s just Homestuck’s writing style. They’re just kids, which makes Alternia’s culture so much worse.
[ I never had a kidsona actually 🤔 the trollsona may show up some day, Sal, you have full permission after I show you her xD - C]
We shall have to see what happens, once Sahlee gets to her Land...
I’d say the resemblance is vague enough to be a coincidence - and it probably is - but you never know for sure, when your author is a CS major.
NAND gates always output 1, unless both of their inputs are 1. Thematically, that’s kind of similar to Sollux’s dual-universe deadlock virus, but if we pull that up again I’ll be here all day.
We’ve talked a lot about what Homestuck categories I’d fall into, but we’ve just locked in the most important one of all: my fursona.
Silly rules like this really give Homestuck a distinct identity - just like the trolls’ silly quirks do the same for them.
Also - a couple replies from a few weeks ago that I thought I posted, but it seems were eaten by tumblr:
Yeah Davesprite says he’s supposed to be vague, so it’s definitely intentional on the part of Sburb, and not just when your sprite is a capricious jester. The implied reason is that solving Sburb’s riddles yourself is part of the game’s challenge.
It could serve multiple purposes, though. Vaugeness about Titles, specifically, could be so the Players can make their own judgements about what their Title means.
This mythology is ‘hyper-flexible’, and Players decide what form their enemies take - so maybe they also decide what form their Titles take, too. Maybe what the game is ‘tailoring’ itself to, here, is the Players’ own interpretations of its lore.
That's a good point - and Jade lives in a big empty island, so she has more Space than any of the other Players! That’s the sort of thing that may or may not be deliberate.
She still hasn't displayed any Space powers, though, of any flavor. Jade - who spent years as a pseudo-Seer - certainly seems to have a funny relationship with her Title.
That's true - although their Trollian handles, plus the spectrum of their colors, are arranged in the correct zodiac order, so there must be some in-universe meaning to it.
I'm pretty sure the purples are the highest of all. Plus, AG is apparently 'aristocracy', and, more intriguingly, Karkat is seen as ‘gutter blood’, despite his anonymity. The plot thickens.
Yup, GA is as Jadelike as they come. Maybe the game always assigns a Player as the Frog Temple’s custodian - which makes me wonder if GA has her own Bec, too. He’s still a huge question mark.
Absolutely locked in as my headcanon.
#asks#full liveblog#act 5#edit: YES it actually posted this time. thank you tumblr gods.#edit 2: edits only work sometimes. i think this post is legitimately too long for tumblr to handle
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Wait wait, can I hear more about the itachi not using shisui’s eye thoughts? Because honestly, for a character that’s supposed to be a pacifist, itachi seems to be written much more like an Angel of Death esque serial killer?
Uhhhhhhh okay I'll try to get this down before tumblr makes me wanna gouge my eyes out (why is dark mode just as painful to look at as light mode make it stopppp)
-It is very clear that Itachi was originally intended to be a Pure Evil character with different motivations. In Naruto OG we *really* have no reason to think he is anything other than a nutjob who murdered his family and tortured his brother for the lols. NOW. This isn't actually an irredeemable factor for him as a character, with a show as long as Naruto it is perfectly possible to rewrite him and tweak him into a tragic villain or even the tragic hero Kishi wanted us to later believe he was. *IF* proper work is done to explain why the so called pacifist resorted to so much violence.
-Which obviously never explicitly happens even though with how Itachi's backstory is set up it honestly wouldn't be that hard.
-Moving on from the meta perspective may I put forth to you this answer to All the Itachi Questions:
-Danzo.
-No seriously. I already suspected this when I was reading just the fanfic, but actually watching the arc where we see Itachi's spiral there are some Key Things I noticed happening that are literally never mentioned or expanded on that would make Itachi choosing Massacre over Brainwashing make perfect sense.
-Gonna have to backtrack just a bit for this, but when I say that Danzo wanted the Uchiha dead, I *mean he wanted them dead*. Not just in a "the village and the Uchiha were starting to butt heads anyway and he took preemptive murder action" way but like- "intentional years long plan to kill off this entire clan" way.
-One of the big things that fueled the rumor that the Uchiha were at fault for the Kyuubi attack, other than the old story of Madara controlling the Kyuubi, is that the Uchiha were not present for the defense against the Kyuubi. A lot of clans took heavy losses trying to fend the biju off or drive it out of the village until Minato could arrive, but the Uchiha were literally not there, and people got suspicious as to why. The answer is literally Danzo. Fugaku was planning to marshal the Uchiha *because* he hoped he and his clan would be able to mass genjutsu the Kyuubi into being docile, but at the last minute he received orders from *Danzo* through one of his Root, to instead take his clan and.
-Guard the civilian underground shelters and the village outskirts "in case an enemy tries to sneak in in the chaos". I'm sorry but uh. YOUR CHUUNIN COULD DO THAT WHILE THE PEOPLE WITH MIND CONTROL POWERS HELP WITH THE BIJU PROBLEM? But no. Danzo specifically ordered them to the two places they could not help against the Kyuubi and would be mostly out of sight/would be accused of using civilians as an excuse to save their own skins.
-No explanation is ever given to the general populace for why the Uchiha were not there, even though it was a direct order from the man who was, at the time, Sarutobi's known SiC and primary advisor. All Sarutobi would have to do is say 'they were following my orders' and it would clear up. He does not. Which indicates that Sarutobi *possibly* did not even known Danzo did what he did, and the Uchiha never told the Hokage because Danzo is his SiC and this would not be the first time people just assumed Danzo is operating on Sarutobi's orders/permission.
-We see multiple mULTIPLE times in this arc that over the course of literal years, starting from the Kyuubi attack and on to the Massacre, that Danzo was intentionally orchestrating the tension in the village. The isolation of the Uchiha compound wasn't Tobirama, it was Danzo, who had them relocated post the Kyuubi attack for "better reconstruction of the village". They were so far removed they were outside the chakra barrier/radar thing that Pain used Itachi's passcode for in the Pain Arc. That's how far removed they were from the village proper. They were under 24 hr, intense surveillance, cameras on their streets, watch towers hidden around their compound border, cameras even looking *into* the windows of their houses. And they were aware of it, because the Uchiha are not dumb and also have really good vision thank you. They can see that. Their one foundational position in the village, the Police Force, was being forcibly and slowly taken from them with Danzo pushing Sarutobi to insist they take on officers from other clans like Inuzuka and Aburame, and some of their traditional patrol beats were being straight up reassigned to ANBU. You know, the guys who are supposed to be busy assassinating Konoha's enemies, not breaking up bar brawls.
-I could go on with this but if you actually watch that arc and watch Danzo, he is very intentionally *trying* to force the Uchiha to plot a coup. He is trying to get an excuse to kill them all. AND on top of that, we already know he has a sharingan eye already, yes even before Shisui. In fact he steals Shisui's eye because his current one is going blind *presumably from overuse*, which means he's already spent who knows how long subtly influencing/genjutsuing Sarutobi and other high ranked shinobi into looking the other way or agreeing with him on policy stuff.
-Enter *Itachi* and Shisui, who are trying to juggle this entire situation at ages like- 11 and maybe 14 when this starts and later Itachi at a lonely 13 by the end. Every time they come up with advice on how to help lower clan tensions to Sarutobi, Danzo railroads it and makes the situation worse instead. There's literal dialogue for it, where he'll interrupt them or just later on dismiss the idea and bully Sarutobi (who lets himself be bullied) into doing something else that is clearly just going to make the Uchiha madder.
-Somewhere about ... halfway I'd guess? Halfway at the earliest through this train wreck, Itachi gets pulled from Kakashi's ANBU squad and given, by Sarutobi, *to Danzo* and his ROOT shinobi, who at the time were not only known about by Sarutobi but implicitly approved of, they've worked alongside normal ANBU for several missions in the past. So now Itachi, the pacifist, the clan heir, the linchpin to this entire disaster, is directly under the command of Danzo Eye-Stealer and Genjutsu User Shimura, is within his reach and probably in his presence for *long periods of time* to receive orders/get pontificated at. Remember that point.
-Okay so now, NOW we get to Shisui's eye and Itachi not using it. To start with, Itachi was fully on board with Shisui's plan, he *wanted* this plan to work, he and Shisui were gonna meet up, go to the Clan Head, and do the thing. But Shisui, poor naive soul, reported to Danzo first, to inform him that "hey we're going to fix this problem". Danzo's response is to attack Shisui and rip out his eye to replace his now mostly blind current sharingan. Shisui runs, suicide by dramatics yada yada, his dying words are for Itachi to take his remaining eye and DO THEIR PLAN.
-Itachi straight up ... does not do it. In canon there is no actual reason stated. I don't thing we even get Itachi doing a long-winded monologue (which Kishi usually adores doing to kill us with boredom) about why he thinks the plan will fail. Instead we hit a *timeskip* of anything from a few weeks to possibly a few months, and then we have Itachi approaching "Madara" for assistance in the massacre.
-Madara who, iirc, Danzo is also aware of, I believe he bargained with Madara at least once in canon for something but I don't remember where that shows up.
-Funny how the guy who now has a fresh new brainwashing eye suddenly is not going to be responsible for the final blow to the Uchiha. Funny how the 13 year old who is under his direct command and influence goes from wanting to fix the problem without bloodshed to *recruiting a rogue shinobi* to help kill everyone, and then handily removing himself from the village entirely to go spy on the Akatsuki and make himself Konoha's enemy #1 for years to come.
-Funny how no one ever heard the massacre take place, and how the Uchiha compound was already conveniently outside the barrier radar so no one would notice the Uchiha chakra signatures going out en masse.
-Funny, how the first people on the scene of the massacre? Are Danzo and his root agents.
-Funny, isn't it, that the man with years of experience using a stolen eye to influence people in secret suddenly has everything he wants, and the talented but much less experienced *child* directly under his command goes against all his previous ideals of pacifism to do something that will fully benefit Danzo and then removing himself from the situation entirely to serve as a spy against Danzo's other potential problems.
-Funny isn't it that the one thing Itachi loved enough to defy orders for, Sasuke, almost *died* from the trauma of the Tsukuyomi anyway (iirc he was in a coma for a few *days*, but that could be fanon I'm misremembering).
-Funny that, over the years, this one single loose end of Danzo's, this one last thing Itachi would be willing to destroy Danzo for even after all he has done and abandoned, is systematically isolated and then later hunted by a missing ninja who *also* spent a lot of time in the past working for Danzo. Including being able to send the Sound Four in to get him in the heart of the village without any alarms going up in the barrier radar thing. For which Danzo has the codes for his root ninja who are also now not supposed to exist.
-Funny how this one loose end keeps running into circumstances that by rights should either kill him or make him *also* a missing ninja that Konoha should hunt down, and the only thing that keeps Sasuke from being declared an enemy of the village and slaughtered for a bounty is the unanticipated attachment of Tsunade to Naruto, who loves Sasuke enough to beg for clemency for him.
-Funny how one of the *first* things Danzo does after becoming temporary Hokage is put out a bounty on this one boy that survived his plotting and was the only threat left to him from Itachi, even after Itachi has died.
-But sure. It was all Itachi's idea to massacre the clan and never use Shisui's eye to fix the problem. No sir definitely no brainwashing of a baby Uchiha involved there, nope. Nada. What are you talking about. Itachi totally did this all of his own choice and volition.
#SE asks#anon asks#Secret Engima Rambles#SE Rants#uchiha massacre#naruto#danzo shimura#hi i have thoughts and today i will be saying them.#can you tell i have issues with how ppl in canon and fanon characterize Itachi and the massacre#when danzo is#right there#with canon mind control powers
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My Thoughts On Having Run The ‘Keeping The Narrator Company’ Livestream
As we enter the final days of the livestream, which you can find here: https://www.youtube.com/user/MyLittleCoward09/videos
I wanted to put some of my thoughts down for posterity. I was going to wait until the last day or so of the stream to post this, but I don't have any faith in my PS4 to hold out so I figured it was best to get this out now, just in case. This is going to be a long post so TLDR: That Ultra Can Deluxe.
What was the actual point of this stream? Why did I do something so odd and pretty dang unwise? Well, to get it, you kinda have to actually like the Narrator as a character, which a lot of people don't. I've seen so many people go along with the initial joke and skip button him into oblivion without picking up on the existential horror of it at all, and others do it intentionally because they just don't like him. For me, I was troubled by the way the game forces you to go through with it, so I thought, why not commit to doing the opposite for awhile?
When you pull back the jokes and all of the existential dread talk, I think, at the end of the day, this stream was meant to bring some small sense of hope to an incredibly bleak part of this silly game. I don't believe that's consciously why I started it, but that is what it ended as. I did originally start this largely as a joke when I needed to go into quarantine after I caught a certain virus, despite being fully vaxxed, but then the existential dread kicked in and I tried to embrace that as an experiment.
As I ruminated on some things, as was bound to happen while doing this, I came to understand more and more why this scene got to me in the way that it did. As it so often does, The Stanley Parable tends to mockingly hold a mirror up to your face, and I saw so much of myself in this scene. I hated that there was nothing I could do to stop the self-destruction brought about by insecurity, couched in humor and exaggerated ego, until it was not, which I immediately picked up on the first time I played this scene, long before it started to spiral out of control into pure horror.
I struggle with criticism and parsing out what is valid criticism and what is just someone being flippant in their critique, and I speak of this both from the perspective of a writer and just as a person. I've done an incredible amount of harm to myself trying to please others and so often at the expense of myself. I'm still working on undoing all of that damage and learning how to just be me without the shame others instilled in me. So, yeah, I find the whole thing a bit relatable.
It was a bit of a gut punch that the game forces you to partake in this character's self-destructive insecurities and that there's nothing you can do about it, because let's face it, absolutely no one was going to avoid pushing forward in this game they just bought, no matter how hard the game tries to make you feel bad about it. There's a million different ways to interpret how this scene ends for the Narrator and what the epilogue implies for him too, but I won't get into any of it or else we'd be here forever. In the end, I decided that I was going to shake my fist in defiance of the whole thing for a little while, even if it was always going to be in vain.
That's not to say I hate the skip button scene, not at all. I think it's one of the best pieces of writing to come out of the The Stanley Parable, and I wouldn't have put my PS4 at risk otherwise, but I do dislike the inescapable hopelessness of it. So I made my own hope. Aggressive compassion and silliness in the face of a cruel and unyielding outcome. Hell, if you really want to get meta with it, I even gave the version of the Narrator who wanted me to be consumed by this mentality the peace of mind he so badly needed lol.
I've been in a deep depression for awhile now, and as stupid as it sounds, this game really helped to pull me out of it for the time being. I laughed and had fun and it had been so long since anything made me feel so happy. And then, shortly after that, it became one of those autistic hyperfixations of mine, and as any autistic person can tell you, there is nothing that feels quite so good as having a new obsessive interest to completely engulf yourself in. It has been a very, very long time since this has happened for me, probably well over a decade at this point. I think this stream was a way for me to hold on to this feeling for a little while longer and have a great time with it before it passes. It has become such a rare and fleeting thing for me now and this may very well be the last time I experience it.
Aside from that, this stream was a way for me to express myself and put myself out there after having been so withdrawn for so long. It was a way for me to be my weird, wonderful self with a devil-may-care attitude and with no shame involved, despite the occasional self-deprecating humor. Most would consider this a stupid, tedious, pointless thing to do, but I had fun, and that's all that matters in the end. I fully expected this stream to just be me with the occasional person popping in to tell me what an idiot I am, so I never expected that it would gain a bunch of regulars who understood what the stream was meant to represent. Thanks for helping me keep the Narrator company.
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Pinned Post
The text of this post will change. This blog is under design, and will likely change a lot.
For now, expect to see a lot more original posts (about hypnosis and maybe some sexy stuff - but I repeat myself) and even responses to asks than at my old blog @wakewithgiggli
The serious stuff, like tales of the holodomor or israeli genocide, won't appear here. The other blog is for that. But this still holds the same viewpoint, so DNI if you are an asshole.
More to come
Some tags I will be using:
Babe: sexy girls, the kind I aspire to be or find aesthetically pleasing.
Bimbo: Lots of my posts will crossover with bimbo concepts, or doll concepts, and will have those tags.
Cute: how could I not post kitties? There might be other cute posts, but it'll be mostly kitties.
Entranced: posts designed to entrance you - spirals, trances, and the like. These follow my usual rules - if they include unsourced comics or pictures of women without names, I wont post them no matter how entrancing they are.
Hypnosis: Posts about hypnosis from a meta level - not fiction, bbut the practicalities of hypnosis.
Second Life: I practically live there now, and the hypnosis scene there has a few things work talking about.
Stories: Erotic stories whether created by me or others, nearly usually involving mind control of some sort.
SWG: All my original posts will have this tag. It's a catch-all.
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Mini-post (meta?) on Daisuke's Weakness
You know, a lot of people had complained for AGES that Daisuke had no weak points, that he was "invincible" and had no flaws. But that's not true. Daisuke has flaws and weaknesses.
On today's Daisuke Tuesday post, we will talk about Motomiya Daisuke's weaknesses. No, this is not a negative post and it's most to show how complex this kid is despite Daisuke himself saying he's easy to understand.
So, first thing you have to know is that Daisuke is not that smart but also not that stupid -- i always thought he was on the middle of those two edges, in which he's smart for some scenarios but stupid most of the time when he's not focused on a goal.
Daisuke is a pragmatic type, which means he does not overthink on unnecessary things like Miyako, but he has an issue of struggling with things his mind cannot comprehend. Things like a Vending Machine in the middle of the jungle, or a manhole in an Edo period city were things Daisuke himself questioned when going to the Digital World, things which in his opinion shouldn't be the places to have those no matter what.
Where am I going with this? Well, on this "interview" he describes he cannot understand ghosts. This sounds familiar when you remember the Original Stories ~Spring 2003~ drama CD track focused on Daisuke's backstory as one of the victims of Vamdemon attack back in August 3rd 1999. Daisuke talks about it briefly in the anime too, on ep 14, when the kids are discussing about what digimon event made them become Chosen years later.
Knowing this, you might get the gist. Daisuke's weakness is what he cannot understand. And more.
On ep 8 and 11 we witness Daisuke being under pressure and not working well with it. The Kaiser psychologically tortures Daisuke for his own amusement, forcing Daisuke to obey every word and request given in order to save his friends. In the end, the Kaiser says he will only let one of them be freed, but Daisuke refuses and goes into despair. Then, once the time is up... Daisuke himself jumps into the conclusion he is the one who should be eaten by Deltamon. The Kaiser accepts the offer, but thankfully the real 02 kids appear and save Daisuke from death.
Now, on ep 11 Daisuke is again pressured by the events: He cannot understand what Taichi and Yamato meant about fighting your friends and how this makes them understand each other, so he feels the Digimental of Friendship is not his. He gets in conflict with Takeru all again when the Kaiser captures Patamon, who is saved by Garurumon. Daisuke cannot understand why Takeru would sacrifice himself for Patamon, or understand how Taichi felt regarding Agumon. In the middle of the battle he's really falling in despair because there's no other solution to save Agumon from the Evil Spiral, until he manages to get the glimpse of what the others were telling him this whole time, admits his stupidity and the Digimental comes directly to him.
Okay, but why those two episodes are important here? Because other weakness he has is not working well under pressure. If you torture him psychologically to the point he starts getting confused and uncertain of what to do, he will break. This connects to the fact he fears what he cannot understand, like ghosts and stuff.
Thus you have this formula to beat this kiddo.
Have fun breaking Daisuke's mind in your stuff for fun and profit!! (?)
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Fic asks: 37, 38 (I'm done now xoxo)
Talk about your current wips.
First: BOATS! AND PLOT! ok, so my post-S1 longfic; you know much of this, but the two drivers of the story have been:
Stede gets the Hot Topic Boat
Jim is actually a prisoner in the Kraken Era
And then a whole ton of other stuff has spiraled out of that, including: Olu recoups his investment with Abshir, what I have described as The Spanish Jackie Plot, competent lesbians dunking on Calico Jack, art therapy, more death faking, and tattoos! Plus I keep futzing with it as I read new metas and analysis, trying to just absorb all these interesting ideas (blender noises intensify). And also I'm using it to work through Some Stuff about love and grief and burnout (and burnout in grief times, even).
Also there are so many fucking boats in this dumb fic. (at least four?) And so many POVs! (at least 8?)
I am hoping to get the first chapter out soonish, since I have four chapters more or less nailed down (altho only the first beta'd), which should give me enough space to get farther in a few weeks. (the doc is about 30k, altho a good chunk of that is notes)
The other main WIP is ofc Hungry for love, ready to drown, my Stede POV canon retelling fic, which has turned out to be so much more than I expected when I started! I do love poking around in Stede's head, though; I've seen lots of stuff I didn't notice originally in the show, and I've had some uhhhhhh interesting personal revelations as I've been writing.
I'm currently noodling around in episode 6, which I started from the ending (sort of), because something struck me about the duel scene that I hadn't noticed, and I think it's going to thread through the whole chapter? But then also I enjoyed writing this bit this morning, which is a fun counterpoint to Izzy's narration from the actual show:
There is a sweetness in those days, an unhurried joy in the time they spend together. In his memory, the light glows around them like honey or amber, as they talk, as they sip brandy from cut crystal, as they lounge on the deck, Ed's hand on his knee, Ed's hand on his shoulder, Ed's laugh warm as the sun.
Talk about a review that made your day.
There was someone back when we were posting The Reckoning Arrives who left just fantastic comments on every chapter, to the point where I remember Ryn and I looking forward to them, and sending each other messages when there were new ones. (I would have to go back and look for more details than that, it's been forever, and I only just now remembered about that!)
That, and the people who commented on from here the view goes on forever, which is the technically unfinished last collaboration of the series that Ryn and I wrote together, because those comments were also condolences in a way, and hearing from people who only/primarily knew us through our writing together meant so much.
TBH, every comment makes my day, even if it's just a heart emoji. It's so lovely to hear from someone who enjoyed something I wrote.
#boats! boats! boats!#also: smooches to everyone who has ever left a comment you are my personal hero#my fic#god it's been a while since we wrote Reckoning#(again: 2018 was An Time)#asks#ask games
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18, 23, and 24 for the meta ask game?
💛 @house-of-laminations
for this ask game!
sweet jess!! it is very good to see you 😍😍😍 i only saw this after i woke up so apologies for the wait :(
18. Do any of your stories have alternative versions? (plotlines that you abandoned, AUs of your own work, different characterisations?) Tell us about them.
ooh baby i think almost all of them do! it tends to be because i basically don't plan ahead At All so my initial concepts sometimes get buried under brainrot...
one more paradox - i mentioned this yesterday, but this one changed DRASTICALLY during writing! you can find the original version of that in this post (q10), and some of my personal hcs about the background lore of it in this post (q20).
thy fair imperfect shade - poor elliott tries very, very hard (hehe) to not impose on sunshine, and his morality crisis was a lot of fun to think about, but i like to imagine that there's an evil!elliott AU out there where he gives in to his fantasies completely and purposely dream-seduces sunshine into being with him...
(...wait, isn't that basically just canon blake? if by some miracle he's tuesday's BA and he does this then i am a genius)
take a sip - [head in hands] i'll be totally honest - they were going to fuck right there in the classroom but i was too much of a coward to write it in 😭 GAVIN WOULD!! he would and i won't apologise for it!! also, freelancer was meant to tip the drink down his front and get him all sticky (to facilitate all kinds of, uh... let's just say licking) but then i couldn't have them skip away still sluuuuuuurping on it, and i really wanted that to be a neat little ending, so alas - it was not meant to be. i've mentioned gavin's penchant for suspiciously-cream-coloured drinks before, and i toyed with the idea of giving freelancer one of those instead of something pink, but eventually i decided that it felt a bit too on-the-nose and was better off as a little bonus detail at the beginning. fun fact: i like to think that the barista who does the wednesday afternoon shift is someone we know like elliott or honey, but don't quote me on that. i know i said that DAMN polycule is implied but not necessary, but i do think that the polycule is a thing in that universe, mostly because a) i want them all to be happy and in love, and b) the, um, diplomatic incident is much more exciting when there's kissing involved.
body contact - full disclosure: the idea of the special couples' valentine's day dance was not in the original plan at all! i put in the line about mammon mentioning "something about a particular dance that everyone is supposed to do in pairs" as just a throwaway excuse for why barbatos might be at the ball as a guest, but it spiralled into a much more exciting concept as i tried to figure out why he might ask MC to dance.
wonderland - the tea party and the final goodbye on the doorstep were last minute additions because i thought it was too short, and it was supposed to fade to black with some sort of flowery happily-ever-after in the hedge maze that they walk past. reading it back, though, it was such a lame ending that i'm so glad i changed it, especially because it meant i got to add in all those extra cute bits at the end :)
rebel flesh - MC was meant to die! like, completely! originally, the plan was for the exorcism to be successful, but MC's body had been too irrevocably changed/damaged by the possession to support itself any more - lots of horrible description of their skull cracking around where the horns break through, fingernails falling out and claws not yet grown in, muscles atrophied and degraded by a body that was starved for energy... fortunately for satan and sweet, orange-scented MC, i chickened out and gave them a slightly more hopeful ending. i imagine two possible outcomes after the end of that series though - one where MC has to learn to live with their altered, half-demon half-human body, and one where their body shuts down because it's incapable of functioning correctly any more.
23. What’s the story idea you’ve had in your head for the longest?
ooh... that's a good one! i'm actually in the process of fulfilling my dreams of a cute swing-dance inspired little something (that's the milo wip that's giving me grief atm), which i've wanted to do for AGES but i've never quite found the right pairing or scenario, so that would probably be the one. they're kind of cheesy, and will probably never happen, but i've also always wanted to write either about soulmates (like, red string of fate type thing), fantasy/fairytale aus (like ivory tower but with an actual original story instead of a retelling of canon) or weddings - unfortunately, i don't think my worldbuilding skills are quite ready for the first two, and the details that i would want to include if i were writing about a wedding don't really fit with the whole keep-the-reader-really-neutral thing... i'd want to describe the clothes and the food and the location and the ceremony, all those sort of things, and that's so variable from person to person and culture to culture that i don't think i'd ever be able to make it work without being so vague that i may as well not bother :(
24. Would you say your writing has changed over time?
YES, because it's not quite as cringe as it used to be lmao - look, if you go back and read net zero (let's face it, you probably shouldn't), you can see that my writing style hasn't changed enormously, but it's certainly developed over time! i still like a lot of the same concepts and themes, and the general rhythm is much the same, but i think it's got a bit more refined and a bit less pretentious as i've written more and more. tbh i don't pay a huge amount of attention to cultivating a specific style - i just kind of throw words at the google doc and hope they stick? so it's cool to see how it has and hasn't changed ✌
#ooh a game!#hello miss jess!! ily 💕💕💕#ginger speaks to lovely blogs#redacted asmr#in which i run my mouth yet again#gingerbreadmonsters
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Hello, I'm PS. I sometimes paint minis and write fanfic.
I primarily rep the Salamanders, but I also like the Red Corsairs, the Iron Warriors, the Thousand Sons, Vashtorr the Arkifane, my original Dark Mechanicum sect, and several Astartes/Legionary characters from other Chapters/Legions.
This is (unfortunately) a sideblog, so apologies if it's hard to tell whether we've interacted. If it helps, my main is a very old astronomy-related blog!
Asks are always open! I welcome feedback on my painting and writing. I'm trying my best to improve at both. 😅
Ao3
Minis
Meta Posts
Salamanders 6th Company
Thousand Sons Killteam
Asks and Replies
Now, come under the cut and I'll tell you a little about myself and all about my favourite guys. [WIP, please forgive the mess.]
About me:
I live in the UK, but I wasn't born or raised here.
I was an archaeologist, but I'm a copy editor now. Cheers, Brexit. 🙄
My major hobby is LARP. I crew and play quite a lot of small and mid-size games.
My first experience with Warhammer 40k was a Dark Heresy TTRPG Campaign campaign where I played a "pilgrim" (scout equivalent) from a rogue Space Marine Chapter who was part of an Inquisitor's retinue. Still one of the best TTRPGs I've ever played.
Fell in love with the Salamanders due to a plot point in that game. Later read the Tome of Fire books, which only deepened my love.
I wanted to start painting then, but after an uncomfortable experience at what was then my local GW store, I didn't feel like it would be a good idea.
My spouse and I painted minis for a few RPGs and Legacy board games together over the years. We sucked, but it was fun.
Last year, I started watching Warhammer videos while painting Frosthaven minis. Finding Ebay Miniature Rescues was what finally got through to me.
Since then, I've been painting and reading when I can. I've played Killteam a few times with my spouse, loved it every time.
I'm neurodivergent and just absolutely horrendous at communication. I have three modes: enthusiasm, anxiety spiral, and complete hermit. All of these can make me difficult to interpret. I've spent years giving myself hell for it and I'm trying not to do that any more, but please understand that it only takes one brief conversation for me to consider us friends. If I forget to reply, I still think you're amazing and I will genuinely be delighted if you nudge me or randomly get in touch months or years later.
Canon Faves:
ALL THE SALAMANDERS - literally all of them. I'm super hung up on Nick Kyme's Rebirth though, so my favourites are Ur'zan Drakgaard (whom I HC as being a dreadnought in current 40k), Adrax Agatone, and the poor little meow meow x feral massive hiss hiss duo of Exor and Zartath (yes, he counts!!). Also, Chaplain Elysius is always 10/10. Sa'kan from Pariah Nexus is also wonderful and I hope we see him again soon.
All the cool humans around the Salamanders - RIP Makato. Issak and Agatone should kiss once. Shoutout to Tsu'gan's brander, he didn't deserve what happened to him. Colonel Redgage is babygirl and I'll always wonder if he survived.
Non-Salamander OCs:
Kemal Afshar and Setka Radjedef of the Thousand Sons. Technically my spouse's OCs, but they're kind of shared at this point. Despite being on different sides of the Ahriman-Magnus divide, these ancient Terran boys meet often to play sorcerous board games together. You can read more about them here! Also, these lads have minis!
Warsmith Kirakos Neman of the Iron Warriors and Fleet Captain Roscius Sedulius of the Red Corsairs enter into a trade agreement together with personally devastating consequences. You can read more about them (and other characters from their warbands) here!
Skitarius Escher has been requisitioned from Forgeworld Urum by the Inquisition, serving in a team headed by Interrogator Arion Astraeus under the auspices of Inquisitor Griselda Novaria of the Ordo Hereticus. You can read more about them (and the rest of the team) here!
I also have several techmarines-in-training, though there are no available stories for them yet. So far, I have Irran Alto (Dragonspears), Adathan (Blood Angels), and Ganzorig (White Scar).
OC squad: The 6th Company's 3rd Tactical.
(Apologies for the Heroforge pics below, I hope to actually put together my squad's minis this year and then this'll have proper pictures. Or I'll commission some artwork.)
The 6th's 3rd [name TBA] is a squad of Salamanders currently stationed in the rotating garrison at Clymene. Currently eight men + a Sergeant, though they often deploy with the addition of Lexicanum An'terea, an elderly Astartes who was caught up in the Psychic Awakening at the turn of the millennium.
Brother Lattis (R) describing a creature to Sergeant Te'rien. (L).
Led by Sergeant Benedan Te'rien (~160), a fixture of the 6th. In the forge, Te'rien specialises in fine metalwork. Te'rien has tried to run his squad like a family where he is the paterfamilias, but he's still emotionally compromised after the death of someone he had an intense friendship with in the past. Even though younger Astartes are often seen as more emotional and less detached, Te'rien is an example of how untrue this is. His deep love for the 6th Company stands in contrast with his stubborn refusal to leave Clymene to rejoin the rest of the 6th in Aethonian. Only his current Captain and second-best friend Nehr Ur’Venn knows that his self-imposed exile isn't meant to keep him away from the company, but is based on his need to preserve a status quo that actually died many years ago.
An'terea (L) and Philo (R) reminiscing.
Pe'tar Philo and Carix An'terea go back like 250 years and are absolutely devoted to each other. It's not that they exclude others on purpose, they're just unrelatably old and are the only ones left from an extremely tight knit squad that died many years before. An'terea isn't technically part of the same squad as Philo any more, but he takes advantage of his new Librarian status (thanks, Psychic Awakening) to attach himself to whatever squad Philo is part of. There are several younger Astartes he cares about like Kea'hi and Val'ten, and both Philo and An'terea have grown closer to Sabinus in recent years.
Philo is a brash, avuncular man who cares deeply about the squad. He was a Sergeant in the 5th many years ago and hated being in charge. Since then, he has rejected promotion. He just wants to fight on and spend the calm parts of his life reminiscing with An'terea. Only bothered crossing the Rubicon because An'terea asked him to.
Cor'en (L) scanning Bai'keti (R) after an accident with a malfunctioning power sword.
I don't plan to discuss this further in any of my Salamander stories beyond All-seeing Dawn, but pilot and emergency medic Cor'en (~300, claims 75) is an infiltrator. Not from Alpha Legion, but from a homebrew rogue chapter called the Reavers in Metal. He was meant to infiltrate the Deathwatch, but got stuck with the Salamanders by mistake. He genuinely respects Te'rien. Watching the flawed little Sergeant do his best reminds Cor'en of humanity's tenacity. He's not a big fan of the rest of the squad, though. He misses his old squad. He hopes to leave the Salamanders soon. He just this needs to get his hands on one thing, and then he can “die” on the next battlefield and go home. He's the only Firstborn in the squad at first, though more will arrive as young Primaris marines are promoted and older Firstborn marines transfer to the reserve companies.
Lattis (L) and Keleth (R) having a drink.
Lattis (60s), Keleth(80s), and Kea'hi (~45) are the tight core of the squad. The Themian Lattis thinks he's the ringleader of this group because Te'rien was his Forgefather when he was a child, but it's actually Keleth, a cuddly Hesiodian with many forgechildren of his own. Kea'hi is a bit younger, he is a very normal Salamander. Kea'hi worries that his position might be insecure since he's the youngest in the core and Lattis gives another soldier called Atsen Bai'keti a hard time for being “the baby”, but Kea'hi only thinks that because he doesn't understand what's actually going on between those two. The truth is that Lattis hates people he sees as dishonest, so he saw red when Bai'keti showed up and started swaggering around. Unfortunately, Lattis hasn't noticed that Bai'keti has grown up a lot over the years, so he keeps tormenting him.
Keleth (L) with one of his forgechildren.
Sabinus (R) comforting Bai'keti (L).
Sabinus (~65) used to be part of the core group until Bai'keti showed up. His defense of Bai'keti from Lattis's bullying split him off a little from that group, but only Lattis actually lost respect for him. Everyone else still likes him, and Sabinus, Philo and An'terea have become more friendly since then. Sabinus has a heavy, sullen face, but he's actually calm, perceptive and knows the backgrounds of all his squad mates except Cor’en. He has a big heart and a forgiving nature. He would make a good Sergeant, but he's utterly uninterested in command and doesn't know the rest of the 6th Company well on account of being stuck in Clymene for many decades. He may still be promoted someday. Teased Val'ten a little at first because he found him a bit soft and twee.
Bai'keti (R) discussing his dodgy power sword with Sabinus. (L)
Atsen Bai'keti (~32) was never meant to be in the 6th's 3rd. He was once a special scout, not intended for the companies at all but for Mars. However, he suffered a medical mishap and ended up taking significantly longer than average to ascend, meaning that a different scout who began ascension after him left for Mars in his stead. Unfortunately, all the stress, memory issues, and the fall from star scout to disappointment meant that he was a complete mess when he joined the squad. At first, he acted childishly superior and conceited out of insecurity. He has mellowed over the years, especially now that his body has stabilised. Nevertheless, Lattis still gives him hell. When Sabinus stood up in Bai'keti's defense, this unfortunately created tension in the squad and isolated Bai'keti further. With only two friends and a horrible power sword he is desperately failing to make work, Bai'keti doesn't feel like he's part of the squad. Things will improve tremendously for him once he leaves for Mars and finds that he's older and more experienced than the average Techmarine-in-training. He will probably join the Deathwatch after that and return in his 80's with an actual reason to swagger around.
Val'ten (R) gets a talking-to from Sergeant Te'rien (L).
Dejan Val'ten (~25) is the newest member of the 6th. He was a PDF orphan from Heliosa before he was apprenticed to a Brother there. He's the opposite of Bai'keti, having had a relatively straightforward ascension. Unlike his Brother Salamanders, he isn't particularly gifted in the forge, but what he lacks in technical skills he makes up for with tenacity, diplomacy and a strategic mind. He's overly aware of his youth and inexperience, so he tries hard to fit in. He makes friends quickly with Bai'keti, which makes Kea'hi avoid him by proxy. Lattis and Keleth, however, treat him relatively well. On the flip side, Sabinus makes fun of him sometimes. Val'ten idolizes Sergeant Te'rien at first, but comes to see his human side. They will have been good friends for many years by the time Te'rien dies and Val'ten replaces him as Sergeant.
Dal'ris Moloi (~27) is not a Salamander. He was an aspirant who failed to ascend, and is now Val'ten's brander-priest. He requested to be assigned to Val'ten because Val'ten helped his family while he was a scout. The two become very close, working on a secret project together. Val'ten discovers that he enjoys making Dal'ris happy, Dal'ris thinks Val'ten is hot and is flattered that his Lord Astartes pays so much attention to him. They're falling in love.
Drek'tyr (~300) is a very old firstborn who moves down from a higher company when he realizes everyone around him is Primaris now. He replaces Bai'keti. He has a stupid saurian hat and I love him a lot. A little gremlin of a man. He's literally only here because my spouse gave me a very silly mini of a Salamander with a dinosaur head.
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