"Sweetie?" Sylus opens the door a crack, peeking into your little "personal alone time" room. It's been quiet for a while. Not the normal quiet of your headphones playing your music just loud enough for him to barely hear it while you hum along, or the quiet of reading a book or playing a game or any of your other hobbies.
And sure enough, as he scans the room, he finds you slumped over your desk. He can see the rise and fall of your back with slow, measured breaths.
With a tsk - part amusement, part annoyance for your refusal to take a break away from your computer before passing out - he strides over and gets to work getting you to bed.
He slips your headphones from your head, setting them on the desk. Saves your game with a silly title like "Kitten Nap Time". And he draws you up into his arms, cradling you close to his chest, making a path through the mansion to his bedroom. You instinctively lean into his warmth and familiar presence, barely stirring as exhaustion well and truly claims you.
Sylus isn’t the guy who waits for your birthday to drop something huge on you.
He’ll just… do it. Random Tuesday in March, you wake up to him already dressed, leaning in the bedroom doorway with that lazy half-smirk, tossing a set of keys onto the bed like it’s nothing.
“Get up. Yours now.”
You stare at the key; matte black, sleek logo you recognize instantly. Your brain short-circuits for a solid five seconds.
“…Sylus, what the fuck is this?”
He shrugs. “Your new car, sweetie. Parked downstairs. Figured the matte red would look good with your new gear.”
You’re still blinking at the keys. “You bought me a sports car. On a random day. Because…?”
“Because I saw it and thought you’d look hot driving it.” He says it like that’s the only explanation required. No card, no ribbon, no celebratory card. Just him, already walking toward the kitchen like he didn’t just change your entire driveway situation.
Birthdays and holidays are different with him.
Those are quieter. More private.
On your actual birthday he doesn’t do grand gestures or flashy jewelry. He waits until the apartment is dark, everyone else long gone, and then he sits you down on the couch with nothing but a small velvet box in his palm.
Inside is something small and personal. A tiny silver heart shaped locket with a picture of the two of you in it. It’s the kind where you aren’t posing, not deliberately trying to look good for the camera. It’s a small intimate moment shared between the two of you and even in the picture, his full attention is on you. He’s had it cleaned, strung on a thin chain he picked himself.
No speech. Just him fastening it around your neck with careful fingers, lips brushing the nape before he pulls back to look at you.
“Been carrying that around for a while,” he mutters. “Figured it was time you had it.”
You’re crying before you even realize it. He doesn’t make a big deal, just pulls you into his lap, lets you hide your face in his neck while he strokes your hair like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
Valentine’s, Christmas, anniversaries, he keeps it the same. Thoughtful, quiet, stupidly intimate things that mean something only to the two of you: a leather-bound sketchbook filled with his own rough drawings of places you’ve been together, a single pressed flower from the field where you first kissed, a custom knife engraved with the date he decided you were never getting away from him.
No billboards. No parades. No “world’s best girlfriend” mugs.
Just him, quietly proving every day that you’re the only thing he’s ever really wanted to keep.
And then on some random Thursday in July he’ll walk in, drop a set of matte-black keys on the counter while you’re eating cereal, and go “bought you a bike. It’s downstairs. Don’t scratch it.”
You stare at him over the bowl.
He just kisses the top of your head and steals a spoonful of your cereal like he didn’t just casually drop five figures on a whim.
That’s Sylus.
Big gifts whenever the hell he feels like it.
The ones that actually hurt to give, those are saved for the days that matter.
love and deepspace is so funny in a ton of ways, not the least of which being that it’s an angst game full of angst with a huge helping of angst on top masquerading as a romance game
and this angst romance game has wacky characters like:
🐠 merman sea god who is an artist with flame powers for some reason. his symbol is not a fish but a duck. there is a section of the story where he goes into heat. canonical billionaire. also a serial revenge killer.
❄️ accomplished heart surgeon with ice powers who is trapped in a cycle of multiverse-spanning reincarnations. mc’s childhood friend and also her doctor. blatantly the horniest of the lot but you wouldn’t know it because he has never shown anyone an emotion ever.
💫 centuries old immortal space prince. literally an alien. got stuck in the past after attempting wormhole travel and has been bopping around earth until mc is born. mc’s monster-fighting coworker and upstairs neighbor. secretly batman.
🐦⬛ dangerous crime boss. also an alien, probably. also a dragon whose soul is bound to mc’s. once made mc shoot him in the heart to prove his immortality. wife guy in a “he supports women’s wrongs” way.
🍎 cyborg military commander with gravity powers. flies space planes. was killed in an explosion but got better. a narrative representation of the biblical eve. diagnosed mentally/emotionally unwell. wife guy in a “he is the wife” way.
and. like. originally i was going to say only a sentence about each of them but i could not pick just one of the many, many unhinged things about the tiny men who live in my phone.
absolutely batshit insane game. hilarious.
i have cried probably a dozen times while playing it.
being anti ai is making me feel like in going insane. "you asked for thoughts about your characters backstory and i put it into chat gpt for ideas". studies have proven its making people dumber. "i asked ai to generate this meal plan". its causing water shortages where its data centers are built. "ill generate some pictures for the dnd campaign". its spreading misinformation. "meta, generate an image of this guy doing something stupid". its trained off stolen images, writing, video, audio. "i was talking with my snapchat ai-" theres no way to verify what its doing with the information it collects. "youtube is impletmenting ai based age verification". my work has an entire graphics media department and has still put ai generated motivational posters up everywhere. ai playlists. ai facial verification. google ai microsoft ai meta ai snapchat ai. everyone treats it as a novelty. every treats it as a mandatory part of life. am i the only one who sees it? am i paranoid? am i going insane? jesus fucking christ. if i have to hear one more "well at least-" "but it does-" "but you can-" im about to lose it. i shouldnt have to jump through hoops to avoid the evil machine. have you no principles? no goddamn spine? am i the weird one here?
(Note: haha apologies for the long absence i am in fact still alive and do intend to continue with my analysis of caleb's cards and main content very soon! on top of my final exams ive also been having weird health stuff going on these past few months as well as just general life obstacles, but im back at it now!!)
I was talking to a friend today about the weird tension a lot of people have picked up on between Caleb and Grandma Joe, and specifically about why she seems much closer and more affectionate with MC and why she seems to potentially be trying to push her towards Zayne and away from Caleb.
Now the obvious answer is that MC has no memory of the Gaia experiments and Josephine's previous role as a researcher and so holds no resentment towards her, meanwhile Caleb has more of his memories intact meaning that there was likely some form of mutual hostility particularly on Caleb's end. This is a fair assumption, and seems to be quite accurate from how we hear her speak about MC, however I do think there is a lot more nuance to it especially when it comes to Caleb.
First of all, I feel it's important to note a fact that many people seem to forget, which is that canonically Caleb does not remember his time at the Gaia centre in its entirety, as we learn from his first anecdote that he has dissociative amnesia. While we do see him having flashbacks to the experiments in the form of nightmares in both his anecdote and his standard myth, all we see are glimpses, and given his condition it seems fair to say that his memories aren't the most comprehensive. Additionally, in the flashback scene we see in Homecoming Wings from the day Josephine took them in, Caleb does not present any kind of fear or apprehension towards her, indicating that at the time he may not have even known or remembered that she was a researcher.
Josephine, however, definitely does remember that Caleb was a test subject, something she seems to display at least some level of discomfort towards. For example, in the World Underneath story "Sealed In Dust", which contains both her research and personal notes about MC, she writes:
"It's always been just me at home. But with her and...
Things have started to change."
A few things worth mentioning here:
Throughout her notes, this is the only time we see her reference Caleb, likely suggesting that she was not one of the researchers responsible for him which may explain why he doesn't seem to be afraid of her), or perhaps that she just didn't care about him enough to make significant notes about him as she did with MC
It seems odd that even in her personal journal entries, she does not actually refer to him by name, almost as if she's cutting herself off. Initially I assumed that this was simply Infold not wanting to reveal that Caleb was a test subject before the main story caught up to that point, but even if Josephine had mentioned his name there's actually nothing else about this story that would imply this. It would simply confirm that Caleb had been living with the pair since they were children, which is something we already knew, and it's fairly obvious that she's talking about Caleb anyway, so what gives?
I believe that the reason Josephine does not mention Caleb by name here is the same reason she doesn't attend his graduation, the same reason she doesn't call him "my dear", and the same reason that every interaction between them seems laced with tension and coldness: Caleb serves as a living embodiment of Josephine's actions, and the only person remaining in her life who could actually hold her accountable for anything.
Throughout both "Sealed In Dust" and the flashback we see between Josephine and Zayne in Under Twilight, we see that Josephine seems to view her relationship and guardianship over MC as a means for her own redemption, insisting that it's better that she does not remember her childhood and that "by helping her you help yourself." Because MC does not remember what was done to her in the labs nor that Josephine was one of the main perpetrators, Josephine is able to decide for herself whether she is forgiven, whether what she is doing is enough to "help herself" and whether it is better for MC to forget everything that she did to her (which, after Homecoming Wings and Death and Rebirth, we can definitively say is not what MC would choose if given the opportunity). She essentially has herself the perfect victim to use for her own salvation: a child who was hurt, but does not know she was hurt, and therefore has no power to confront her abusers for what was done to her, however the same cannot be said about Caleb.
Even if Caleb does not remember exactly what was done to him or by whom, the lasting effects of his trauma would (or at least should) have been evident to his guardian: the recurring nightmares and sleeplessness, the paranoia and anxiety, the dissociative amnesia, and the intense protective behaviour that borders on irrational and often leads to violence, just to start with. No matter how much or how well Caleb may have tried to hide these, a responsible guardian (and especially one who was aware of Caleb's traumatic childhood perhaps even more than he was) should have been able to pick up on something being wrong and tried to offer him some kind of support far beyond the little we see Josephine do for him throughout the story.
This is because Caleb's ability to at least somewhat remember his trauma, and his very clear responses to it, serve as a constant reminder that what happened to both of these children at Gaia was real, and that simply taking them in as her "grandchildren" is not enough to erase or forgive what she has done. The one person who might genuinely be capable of condemning her actions and holding her accountable for her part in the abuse and torture of children, no matter how much she regrets it, is therefore the one person she seems to hold any kind of genuine discomfort towards, which then leads to the general tension and coldness we see growing between them throughout the story.
tl;dr - There is some clear hostility or at least a lack of warmth between Caleb and Josephine, but I don't think it started with Caleb hating Josephine for what she did. Instead, I think it's due to Josephine not being able to handle the fact that Caleb is still impacted by what happened to him during the EVER experiments and the fact that she may never be able to be truly forgiven.
This card gave me old fairy tale vibes, like if they were some sort of Romeo and Juliet from the deep sea. And I think this song by Vangelis fits them so well, it's called La Petite Fille de la Mer/The Little Girl of the Sea.
HE'S FOR YOU. HE'S FOR YOUUU. HE'S FOR YOU REGARDLESS OF GENDER, PERSONALITY, UPBRINGING, TRAUMA, HOBBIES, ETC. HE'S FOR YOUUUUU. DON'T LET ANYONE MAKE YOU THINK OTHERWISE. HE'S LITERALLY FOR YOU. THEY'RE ALL FOR YOU, IT'S YOU WHO DECIDES.
Emperor Sylus! — the most feared man of the empire. And your husband, nonetheless. Despite the weight his name carried, he was tender, loving, and incredibly clingy. It was impossible to rise at an acceptable hour. You, being the empress, had a life of endless schedules and fittings, yet none of them could be completed — not with the man himself tangled in your limbs.
Getting away was a struggle; every time you tried to place a pillow in his arms to imitate the feeling of your body, he would grumble into your ear, wrap his arms tighter around you, and mold you against him all over again. Completely ruining your work…..
It was hardly shocking to your staff by now, all of them well aware of their “fearsome and cruel” emperor’s habit of being unable to keep his hands off his bride — his continuous teasing leaving you flushed with crimson-stained cheeks. From the kisses he placed on your cheeks to your temples, nearly any piece of exposed skin made do for him.
