#bwoa aftermath

[callmearcturus]

crockpotcauldron replied to your post:I just marathoned your rt-avengers fic and I...

don’t you have a tag for it? you did get some fanworks and discuss some headcanons afterwards.

oh god lemme check what tags come up with this post.... 

[callmearcturus]

yooo so i just finished bwoa and it was amazing and i have 5 billion questions but ill hold back. I was just wondering about ryan and ray's relationship? like was it real for either of them or was it just a sexy thing?

Haha, welcome to the post-BWOA world. I've still not recovered.

Ryan and Narvaroth were complicated. Ryan had affection for Narvaroth but was also under the impression he was manipulating him, so forging a strong connection was important. He was convinced that he had a handle on the Narvaroth situation and that he'd get Narvaroth back to Oestret Roethe and all would go according to plan.

Narvaroth, though, was obviously out-manipulating Ryan to a serious degree. The sex scene though was about something else entirely. Narvaroth's almost repulsed by humans, he has such fucking issues with them, but after running into Gavin and the state he was in and how Narvaroth's prince chose a human over one of this own kind, etc etc-- Narvaroth fucking Ryan was a way for him to take out some of his aggression towards humans in general.

He also tried to egg Ryan up, like Gavin had been, but if didn't work, and that's important subtextually. Remember, Michael was only able to egg up Gavin because he'd matured to the adult stage of his life. Narvaroth, though? Has not adapted to earth, in fact refuses to adapt to Earth, and is such still an adolescent amaranth. So, he can't make eggs.

Hope that explains that part!

[callmearcturus]

FLASHFIC: untitled

dexanari said: BWOA!Ryan post-fic, getting used to his new life on Oestret Roethe. From humble beginnings, to modest ends.

Ryan relearns how to be a man when surrounded by aliens.

Somewhere, he can feel Michael Jones being smug. Or, maybe not. Ryan doesn't know if the man who was Mogar thinks about him. He doesn't know how he feels about being forgotten. It's perfectly justified, a poetic punishment, for the icon of Captain America to fade into history, first by the people he'd hurt the most.

On Oestret Roethe, he's not Captain America. He's Ryan, just another alien in the red glass melting pot that is the Amaranthine homeworld. He works in the orchards under the watchful eye of the amaranths, and otherwise is left alone.

It is far, far better than he deserves but Ryan would almost prefer the alternative. The execution or the imprisonment. Something less luxurious than the apartment he's given, the meals he gets, the laughter and music that swirls around him.

Michael could have killed him for the things Ryan did.

Instead, he lives in a singing citadel and slowly learns the name of the other people who tend the orchard, letting them invite him along to their trips to the mead district and ask him of home.

Home is such a strange concept. Was it Corpus Christi? Was it the battlefield, the war? Was it the little camps he pitched with his brothers and sisters in arms? Was it a deep, dreamless sleep that ended in a freezing wet chill? Was it the world that revered him from his title to his iconic visage?

None of those ring true. And Oestret Roethe doesn't either. 

Sometimes, Ryan wishes he could speak to Michael, to ask him what his home is.

But that would be more than he deserved, wouldn't it?

[callmearcturus]

i just finished re-reading the hunters initiative trilogy as a complete piece (lovely long read on a french beach), and it's still so good. i have some questions if you're up for it, about what Mogar did when he destroyed the Bifrost (or tried?) and what Narvaroth's motivations were when having sex with Captain America. Wanted to say anyway, i love it a lot still.

Oh god, I'm glad it still stands up. I always get worried when I go back to look at OFN. I don't think the quality differential is too high, but it always worries me, nonetheless. Like, why the fuck did I write OFN in present tense? WHY.

As for your questions!

The Bifrost thing is explained when you put Narvaroth and Michael's stories together. Basically, Mogar's job was to defeat any invaders into the realm. He was NOT allowed to venture outside the realm because his powers were so great, they were considered the amaranthine equivalent of the nuclear option. But Narvaroth cajoled Mogar into going and meeting an amassing attack force on the enemy's end of the Bifrost so they could take them out before they were ready to strike. They went through and started hammering on the Bifrost gate on that side, which would strand the enemy there. And the Burning King felt that happening and that's how Mogar got banished. For reckless short-sightedness.

The Narvaroth-Ryan thing is complicated. Narvaroth is disgusted by humans in general, but Ryan is... yanno, Ryan. If he wasn't so easily led astray, he would have been a good partner in crime for Narvaroth. So if there is any human that Narvaroth "likes" (too strong of a word), it's Ryan.

What Narvaroth was trying to do in that chapter was deal with his suffocating envy of Michael and Gavin. He was trying to egg up Ryan. It didn't work, though, because as Michael said: he (and by extension Narvaroth) are pretty young by amaranthine standards. They shouldn't be able to produce eggs. Michael was able to because he's adapted to Earth willingly and thus the sympathetic biology effect has sped up his metabolism/lifespan to more closely match Gavin's.

The entire point of that scene was to show that Narvaroth was still a fucking child. He wasn't able to do what Michael did because he's not grown up, he refuses to adapt to his new planet, and so he's not advanced to the stage Michael has.

I hope that explains that!

[callmearcturus]

A gift from Dex was one of the few upsides of the day.

[callmearcturus]

I'm reading your BWOA DVD commentary and I just got to the part where you mention Geoff would sit in an amaranthine biker bar and shoot the shit and it occurred to me to wonder how people would react to his tattoos. Since the arm tattoos Michael has seem genetic to the royals, would people mistake Geoff for some type of royalty? Or would there be a lot of curious inquisition, since his are so intricate and not geometric? Questions, questions.

No, because the royal family's tattoos are plainly readable to amaranths and Geoff would not be. BUT they would definitely ask him about them as he displays them to prominently and tattoos are used as much for record as personal expression on OR. It would be great uwu.

[callmearcturus]

I have another art question on BWOA, but also just because I'm curious, do the Burning King and Queen Jinx have similar birth marks/tattoos as Michael, with the lines and spirals, or are they different in any significant way? I know Michael briefly explained why they look as they do but I have to ask just to be sure. (silently cursing my decision to draw the royals both with sleeveless outfits).

They do have the tattoos, definitely. The King in particular would have a very very long record. I am unsure if its on their arms. The history of the King might be a full panel of ancient amaranthine writing on his back, perhaps. It's not necessarily their arms.

[callmearcturus]

I don't think I'll ever stop being fascinated by the idea of Oestret Roethe, but whenever I try and envision it as a world beyond the Citadel my mind draws a blank. What is it like? Does it have transitioning seasons like Earth, moons of its own; what is the colour of the sky by day? I won't go into things like indigenous flora and fauna, cause I wouldn't know where to start beyond the palette differences. I'm also curious about settlements beyond the Citadel, but my characters are maxed oops :x

/insert Astronomy 101 wank

Okay, so one of the things about planets is that the whole seasons and differing climates thing is not actually the norm. Many planets do or would theoretically only have one or two major topographic regions. I think of OR like that. I think it's a breadbasket world that is hilly with vast mountain regions, but is extremely verdant. That allows less focus on agriculture and more focus on developing other parts of society. (The theory goes that civilizations become possible with the invent of agriculture because it frees up people to do things other than hunt/gather.)

I am loathe to set much in stone about the celestial bodies around it because I could get it wrong. But, small moons, more than one, circling around. I think there is a binary star system with the suns either:

1. the suns so close they appear to be one body to the untrained eye, or

2. one nearby sun that provides most of the vital heat to OR with another very distance sun that appears as a bright spot in the night sky.

The atmosphere would have a different composition than Earth's. Clearer, for one, to allow the midday starscape seen by the Bifrost bridge...

I am unsure beyond that! 8)