lisalisbury

elizabeth | 25 | infp | my schedule for today lists a six-hour depression

[b1adie]

HONKAI: STAR RAIL — RONDO ACROSS COUNTLESS KALPAS

Some people hold onto memories, while others are haunted by them, unable to escape. That is why I took action. I want to know what she is. What have you done, beautiful “ranger?” … Excuse me... are you asking me?

[91939art]

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This Valentine's day, fight for it! 💙💛

Fight 28 times if you have to! If machine is someone's choice, we all can be 💙💙💙

[cartethyia-fleurdelys]

Himeko

[lkn3520]

[Markus RK200/North WR400]

After playing Detroit Become Human for months, I requested a commission of my favorite couple of the game to @FiammahPrice on Instagram. She made it public later on, so I figured I'd share it here on Tumblr. Hope you guys also like it.

Sources: Twitter / Instagram

[wake-up-lieutenant]

[frankedz]

Sugar snow

[91939art]

Don't worry, Connor has their backs.

It cleanses our souls that even if North's opinion is supported only once in the game, that comes from Connor.

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[alkern]

amen

[frankedz]

For all of you, who chose violence! (ILYSM)

Context

[frankedz]

Local androids need help!

Kissing Booth

Licking Booth

Hugging Booth

Biting Booth (Not recommended)

Voting ended onApr 20, 2023

[cerberusdreams]

Care for a bedtime story?

[frankedz]

[leelany-world-deactivated202501]

Model swap done with deadray.com + free cam tool by otis_inf

[point-maitimo]

« Future for the Androids ».

« Whatever happens tomorrow, I just want you to know that I… I’m glad I met you. »

( commissions • patreon • redbubble • ko-fi )

[hanbunmensch-deactivated2025060]

[wake-up-lieutenant]

leader chimera North

[my-name-is-markus-with-a-k]

[konami-code-ao3]

Hey idk if you remember it but, a while back you did a writing ask meme thing about tropes? Something along the lines of, 'ask a trope and I'll overview how I'd write it' maybe it was DBH related? I assume it was dbh related *shrugs*? But I couldn't think of a trope to ask (if this wasn't you or you don't wanna it's alright <3 ) but I finally thought of a trope to ask! So uh if it's not too late or whatever: Time Loop. Also glad to hear the dbh political backdrop writeup is going well! <3

Oooooh! I like this one!

I think I’d want to have Markus as the focal point of this trope, continuously trying to lead the revolution and failing over and over again until he gets it right. Like, in the original version, he gets all of his friends killed and the goes into the Demonstration but dies because he kinda sucked as a leader and never got the public on his side. But then he wakes up and he’s getting paint for Carl again.

Over and over again, Markus tries to change what he did before. He manages to save John from being torn apart by dogs after six or seven tries, but then watches the poor guy get his head bashed in after he stands his ground in Freedom. He doesn’t figure out that he has to shoot Evan Thompson dead if he wants to get Simon off the roof until twenty loops after that and nearly has an aneurism when Simon dies in John’s place that loop. Each time he tries to save something different during the Demonstration, just to see if it’ll make any difference. But even in the verses where he gets to live, things still turn out terribly because Warren always ends up siding with CyberLife and having Connor being in the army brings negotiations to an absolute stand still.

And then, on the fifty-seventh loop, Markus connects with North.

He’s always enjoys her company, for all that they disagree with each other on strategy. Markus feels like he can trust her with his doubts and worries, and has opened up to her about how lost he feels on multiple loops by now. He’s also left Jericho to North on multiple occasions, and taken command back from her just as often. He’s yelled at her as often as he’s alighted with her, and of all the people he’s met on his journey, North is the one that he feels like he genuinely wants to seek out when he’s lonely. But it’s only once he presses his palm to her’s and sees the world through her perspective that he sees why she is the way she is, why she believes what she does, why she—

North looks up at him, eyes wide with barely contained horror.

“Markus…” she whispers, “How many times have you done this already?”

He runs from the roof. In all his loops, Markus has never told anyone and the idea that someone might know is… is…

She doesn’t press him for answers, doesn’t do anything except support him as he leads his people into yet another hail of bullets. But there is a moment within the barricade, a moment where they usually just talk about how Markus wishes he knew what to do to make things right, where North steps forward and presses her palm against his once more and—

Next time, she tells him. Try pushing Leo. See what changes.

Perkins’s bullshit deal— and he knows that it’s bullshit, he accepted it once and never has again— is different this time. He changes to threaten North, saying that he’s seen just how much he cares about her, about how they could run away together and start a new life and—

Markus just shoots the motherfucker where he stands. It doesn’t change anything, but it makes him feel better.

It’s not like Josh is alive this time to yell at him afterward.

He doesn’t connect with North for another thirty-two rounds, and by then he’s figured out the exact way to push Leo away from him without killing him. He’s also figured out that there genuinely is nothing that he can do to keep the cops from shooting him in Freedom March, and that running away is the only way to get both Simon and John onto Jericho for the raid. He’s done everything that he can, tried every permutation that he can think of, and nothing changes. Nothing works. He’s beginning to think that it’s hopeless, and really just wants to spend the next few loops goofing off when North’s palm finds his and—

She sees. She sees.

Markus doesn’t run this time, but doesn’t exactly know how to answer when she asks him, “How many times?” The very question sends him into a panic attack, and he’s barely able to ramble together enough people to attend his March before the cops arrive and Markus is staring down yet another execution squad that will not stop until he is either dead or fleeing with his tail between his legs.

But this time, when North usually shouts panicked words of wondering, or desperate pleas to fight back before the slaughter begins, she instead says, “Markus. Is standing here or running away going to work?”

It’s so blunt, so blatant, that Markus barely fucking heard Josh’s counter. All he can think of is all of the times he’s taken bullets to the chest, all the times he’s limped back home after watching his friends die, that he actually considers answering her.

“No,” he finally says. “No, it’s not going to.”

“Then do something else.”

His hand is in the air before he knows what he’s doing, and Markus brings it down with an order to charge before a word of complaint can come out of Josh’s mouth.

Markus dies that time around. There’s no John or Simon to save him, and he’s seen Josh pulling North back often enough that he knows that neither of them will ever throw themselves on the blades of their enemy to save him if the other two aren’t there. But the next round, as he’s pushing Leo in the exact way that he knows will spare his life, Markus thinks, I’ve got time to learn.

It takes twenty-eight tries to make it to the end, and Markus walks away from the fleeing police lines shocked to see his numbers more bosterous than they ever where in any other loop.

He hasn’t connected with North this time around, hasn’t since the last time, and he almost regrets it as he watches her leave the captain’s cabin in the moments before Connor’s arrival. He says all the right things to make Connor join them, knowing from far, far too much experience that not having the Deviant Hunter on Jericho’s side is all but a death sentence even though the army is going derail any attempt to get negotiations started after his final protest. But this time, after the raid is done and over with and Connor is offering to get him a grand army to shift the balance of power in their favour, Markus asks, “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why do you… want to get me an army?”

Connor blinks, and tilts his head to the side in confusion.

“To… To liberate the camps, of course,” Connor answers. “What else would you use an army for, Markus?”

Markus doesn’t know what to say to that, doesn’t know how to feel about it either. But all he can think of is North’s advice from all those loops ago, and wonder why he hasn’t considered it before.

Except, of course, he does know why. Because Carl’s influence on him has always been that strong.

Winning the revolution takes far more practice than winning the battle against the cops ever does, and he’s died with his back against a sand bag more times than he cares to count. The first time North offers her heart to him, he outright refused, and refuses every other time that comes next. He won’t kill her to save his own life, because he will get this right, damn it.

He will get this fucking right.

Each loop gets him closer to the end, and with it comes one smaller change after another. Both Simon and Josh are living through each loop now, and Josh seems to understand why he needs to finally pick up a gun so long as he can keep him alive. Markus has figured out exactly what to tell Carl to get him to see how hurtful his words are, has patched up his relationship with Leo enough that his brother is now bringing a few dozen human soldiers to his side, can play public opinion like a fucking fiddle to get a couple hundred more, but he still struggles with the final fight. Because nothing accept everyone living is unacceptable, and he will make it out of this with all of his friends beside him or die trying.

Four hundred and sixty two loops in, he connects with North again, and neither of them run. But Markus does look at her, look deep into her soul and see, and finally, finally asks, “Can you help me?”

Markus abandons his March to spend the rest of the day planning it out the assault on the roof, drawing lines in the snow with sticks and placing different sized rocks to denote the numbers of the enemy.

“Why didn’t you ever tell the others about this?” North asks as the sun begins to dip over the horizon.

Markus stalls, his face heating up as he stammers out, “I… I guess I only really trusted you with—“

“Markus,” North raises an eyebrow. “You know that Josh taught military strategy. He knows this shit better than me.”

They tell Josh. They tell Simon too, and the four of them figure out a plan for Markus’s next assault, and—

Markus gets the farthest he’s ever gotten, only to watch North get shot in the back by a drone and fall face first into the snow. He screams, running to her body, desperately thinking Our hearts are compatible only to realize that’s she gone, she’s gone and he’s failed again and—

“I love you,” slips out of his mouth before he knows that he’s saying, before he realizes that he’s telling the truth. Markus loves her, has probably loved her for a long time, and now she’s gone, now she’s dead and she’s never ever died before, now there’s nothing—

Markus bombs the city. Strips himself of his human skin. Rules as king for a month within his irradiated wasteland before he is killed when Warren firebombs the city. Spends the next seven loops abandoning Jericho entirely to bringing CyberLife to its knees in increasingly horrifying ways and—

North, standing as Leader of a skin-and-bones Jericho, stands between him and the sell-out President that would have had her killed in another life, and tells him, “No. Not this way.”

He lets her kill him, and vows to never ever abandon Jericho again.

It takes him fifteen more loops before he connects with North in the roof, shamefully showing her all of his failures before whispering, “I don’t know what to do…”

North blinks, takes it all in stride, and says, “Okay. So there’s a drone? I’ll make sure to shoot it down before I advance on the machine gun. ”

God, he fucking loves her.

There’s still another wave of soldiers that Markus needs to deal with after they make their final advance, and it takes practice to get through them too. He connects with North and lets her see each time now, brings Josh and Simon and John and all the others in to help him practice defending against the techniques he learns his enemy will throw at him. Markus gets farther and farther each time, wins and wins and wins in a way that he knows will eventually lead to a victory that his dozens of protests never could attain and—

There’s a rocket launcher on the ground. He knows that it’s there, but has never had the opportunity to use it. But now, after the last soldier falls, after his friends group around him, bloodied and ferocious and alive, Markus finally, finally picks it up and fires.

“Markus…” North whispers as the walls of that hell crumble into dust, as Connor’s army comes in to secure a future that Warren and CyberLife could not touch. “They’re abandoning the camp. We won.”

Markus falls to his knees and cries.

He’s thought about this moment for a long time, though about what he would say if he ever got to declare a true and honest victory for his people in a world where the choice lay squarely in their hands. But his words fail, and for a moment, he’s worried that this damn speech is part of whatever divine test he’s been apart of too. But then he sees his friends beside him, Connor at his back with the remnants of the Zen Garden fully under his control, North’s hand in his, palms pressed together, the world changing underneath their feet, and…

…and…

“I love you. Can I kiss you?” He asks North, because it’s all he really wants to do right now. North nods, pulling him in and never letting go.

She tastes like blood and Thirium and triumph, and Markus finally knows that he’s free.