Zane is being so sweet with P.I.X.A.L. Trying to connect with her, humbly joking at his own expense about what she said earlier, expressing his gratitude for her help...
And P.I.X.A.L. is completely oblivious to all of it.
(mother/wife is used in a gender-neutral way here)
Idea of the Legions and their Primarchs having some kind of social symbiotic connection. If members of the Legion like you, others are more likely to treat you decently, give you more grace or at least ignore you. The more that like you, the more effective it is. The degree of affection/regard is also a factor. If one greatly enjoys your company, then most find you tolerable. If a decent number find you decent, then most will let things slide that they otherwise wouldn't.
This has an effect on the Primarch to a lesser degree. A lot of Space Marines need to like you to have a noticeable effect on them.
If a Primarch regards you in a positive light, then the Legion as a whole is affected. It varies from Astartes to Astartes, some will be polite (or their version of polite) while others will be downright friendly.
The effect is not immediate, it's more of a bleed effect. Those closer to the Primarch/Astartes, who spend more time in their company, are more affected/affected quicker. The more time you spend around them, the more thorough effect. It does take time, though.
The nature of the relationship, and how they regard you effects them as well. If most of the Legion considers you a dear friend, or like a little sibling? Then the Legion and Primarch as a whole are more indulgent, and more protective of you.
If the Primarch loves you? Adores you? Then the Legion (eventually) sees you as their mother, or at least someone of importance to protect and care for... in their own way. That way may be keeping their distance, or ignoring you, because the Primarch doesn't trust/like their sons, but they will linger around the edges of wherever you are. But those who have a good relationship with their Legion? Congrats you are now surrounded by Astartes all the time. You almost never have a moment to yourself, or even around other humans.
They need to keep you safe. They need to take care of you. Even a single kind word, a greeting, a smile, makes their day. They are happy their Legion Mother is with them, and the Primarch is happy their sons adore their mother, his wife, his love.
This effect on the Legion can also be dependent on your actions. If you don't do much, just do your job/tasks (whatever they may be, if you even have a job with them) and keep your distance; you're more an idol, a symbol, something to be admired and protected but rarely interacted with.
If you interact with them regularly. If you actively help them, if you talk them up to others, if you defend them? (verbally or otherwise) then congrats you are never leaving them. They will forever protect you, almost coddle you (depending on which Legion), and want to keep you safe and happy at all times.
And the Primarch? Encourages that. Even if he doesn't like/trust his sons, he acknowledges the advantages of his Legions regard of you. Loves that no matter where you are, he always knows where you are, what you're doing, that you're safe and well cared for. Loves how much his sons love you. (In extreme cases this could alter how he sees his own Legion, positive or negative) Or at least sees how useful it is.
Round and round it goes. Like feeds like, love feed love, until the entirety of the Legion and their father can't live without you. They will burn worlds to keep you warm.
hi again 0v0 thank you for answering the last ask i love your Thoughts. also i have a few more 👉👈
- rocky with hypokinetic catatonic episodes which grace learns to tell from a regular sleep state (since he would get "stuck" in a non-sleeping position/ not tell him "im sleeping now you gotta watch me" before freezing up) but he still sits next to rocky during those times like he's watching over him. (and most of the time ends up rambling mainly about scientific concepts/ ideas bc he knows rocky's still aware of everything despite being unresponsive)
- (this is based on my own brief psychotic episode) during their first week together on the hail mary rocky is like "oh btw. you have 🎶 on your ship" (<- eridian word that ryland figures out means bugs/ roaches) and ryland is like WHAT. HOW??
have a great day ^_^
ohhhh my god rocky with hypokenetic catatonia your brain is so huge. and grace talking to him throughout it so he's knows he's not alone and he's okay........ohhh I'm putting that in a paint spinner in my brain. that's so good. and I wonder if grace would have been really worried the first time it happened (assuming rocky didn't tell him), especially if he froze up in a position that made him look conscious, because he didn't know what was wrong or why rocky wouldn't respond to him and rocky just had to sit there and wait. ohhh that's so so so compelling your brain is beautiful.
and oh god bug infestation. and presumably grace would think "well he can hear the entire ship, his word is better than mine on this..." while still trying to figure out how the hell they got on the ship and survived the journey to tau ceti.
mk, red son, nezha, tang, and ao lie with a s/o who has prophetic dreams PLEASE
- 🐍
~Various reactions to a prophetic s/o~
(GN)
⁂Mk⁂
-He thinks it’s a little odd, how you would sometimes stare at the scene in front of you with squinted eyes that widened in recognition.
-It was about 2 months into your relationship that he finally broke and asked why you did that.
-When you revealed to him you had prophetic dreams, this man was vibrating in absolute wonder at your ‘ability’. It took a long time to calm him down, Mk laughing sheepishly when you had to forcibly put a hand over his mouth to stop the stream of questions.
-From then on out, he would always keep more of an eye out for those reactions, but would still ask you each morning what your dream was and how you felt.
-Overall, he’s excitable but accepts it very easily. He just finds his partner so cool~
❊Red son❊
-He’s curious, why you seemed to do a double take at seemingly random points of your time together. A date? You were looking around with wide eyes. A new fight appearing in the media? You look tired, blinking at the screen slowly before sighing.
-Admittedly, he is slightly worried at how it seems to affect your health. How some mornings you’ll wake up in a cold sweat, or others when you’ll struggle to wake up- the dream having you in a vice grip. And when it does finally let you awaken, it still takes you several minutes to fully get yourself into the present world and not a dream.
-He finally asks about it when you don’t seem surprised when something had gone wrong, despite the both of you trying to make sure it didn’t.
-When you told him of your prophetic dreams, it all clicked. Every instance where you just seemed to know what was going to happen, seemed to have Deja vu, all of it was explained.
-Of course, he wanted to know the extent of it immediately. How many do you get? How frequent? How much do you remember? Do you even remember them or do you realize as it’s happening that you’ve dreamed of it before?
-The list goes on, truly.
-You ended up throwing a pillow at him to shut him up, promising to answer to the best of your ability if he would calm down and get you something to write in. He obliged, of course.
-So from that day on, he would continue as normal for the most part. Of course, Red son still made sure to pay attention to how you reacted when something would happen.
-In the end, nothing much changes. He has new information to study, yes, but his partner is still his partner~
❁Nezha❁
-Nezha worries, about how you would often blankly stare at a scene before sighing. About how you would sometimes wake up gasping, then looking upon a battle months later with a terrified realization.
-Whatever it was, it worried the prince how it affected you so deeply. He was your boyfriend, your lover, and even when the two of you were still friends he fretted over if you remembered to eat and keep yourself hydrated.
-So many times, he would wake to see you in distress- no doubt in another alarming dream. He tried the best he could to comfort your sleeping body, and most times it worked.
-Eventually, he approached you one day while you were comfortable, pleading if you knew why these happened or what they were. When you answered that it was just prophetic dreams, he stared at you blankly.
-The poor celestial had no clue what that was. Nezha didn’t do common mortal knowledge.
-You ended up having to explain it to him, after laughing of course. Much to his embarrassment.
-After understanding from you, and of course doing his own research, he stuck closer to you than before. Seeing if you recognized a situation, seeing if trouble sprouted.
-Of course, he didn’t treat you as if you were fragile! You were still the same person. All that had changed was his amount of knowledge about you.
-With this, you still bet he curls around you almost protectively whenever you two turn in for the night. He tries to keep the night terrors away from his blossom~
✎Tang✎
-He was clueless, mainly. Sure, sometimes he’d catch you staring at something like you’ve seen it before, but he never really put two and two together.
-Don’t get him wrong- he was very smart, just in a different category. He studied mythology and history like scripture, anything outside of that was out of his league.
-However, even though he wasn’t the smartest when it came to conditions, Tang still picked up how distressed you would be when something happened. So one day, during a normal dinner, he asked you why you seemed to do that sometimes. Why you just look like you’ve already seen a situation despite it being the first time happening.
-You, of course, answered him. You had prophetic dreams, so sometimes you would dream of something that happens and realize it as the situation is happening that you had already seen it before.
-He didn’t know of it, but accepted the information easily enough. Nodding and thanking you for the information before continuing to eat.
-Tang secretly does research on the subject when you go to bed, staying up and reading any and all he can find on the topic. He wants to understand what it is so he can truly understand what it entails. How it affects you, how it works, how frequent it is, ect.
-You find him passed out at his desk in the morning, surrounded by various notes. A crammer through and through, it seems.
-Although he’s confused, he tries his best to understand his s/o’s ability as thoroughly as he can~
❣Ao lie❣
-Ao lie doesn’t really mind your odd looks and spacey moments. I mean, he would be the last to judge, wouldn’t he? He doesn’t like to be so serious all the time, so he is typically very playful.
-He does, however, care about the fact that these moments seem to be affecting your sleep. He doesn’t like the fact that you would stay up for days just to avoid dreaming.
-He asked about what made sleep so undesirable to you, what you saw that you would be willing to harm yourself just to avoid them.
-Prophetic dreams, you explained. You told him you really didn’t like the visions, just wanting normal dreams.
-He didn’t fully get it, not really. Not with his limited knowledge on how mortals operated.
-He still offered comfort to you, even surrounding you in blankets when it was time for you to sleep.
-It didn’t stop them, that wasn’t how that worked, but he was told they made you just a bit more grounded when you woke up from a particularly deep one.
-He may not know the full extent, but he’s willing to help and love you however he can~
I've been thinking a lot about Valancy's interiority and her Stirling-era personality because I have a fanfiction plot issue to solve, so for this read-though I want to try to focus on what the text tells us about how Valancy feels vs. how she behaves. Once I run out of queued 2024 posts I might pick the color analysis back up as well, because I had fun with that.
So right off the bat, we are told that Valancy feels despair because she is twenty-nine, unmarried, and unhappy about it. We are also told, or at least it is heavily implied, that the reason she is upset about it differs from the reason the people around her are unhappy about it. Deerwood and the Stirlings have simply relegated her to someone who failed to get a man, which feels very transactional. The unhappiness is because she failed to hit an expected milestone and achieve something material. A husband is a thing you have, like a nice dress or a well-kept house.
Valancy, meanwhile, wants capital-r Romance. She wants to be desired by someone, even if that person ends up being someone she doesn't actually end up wanting to marry. So already we see the fundamental disconnect between Valancy, who wants emotional fulfillment, and her family/community, who want material things and tangible status symbols.
"The thought of her mother’s expression made Valancy laugh—for she had a sense of humour nobody in her clan suspected. For that matter, there were a good many things about Valancy that nobody suspected."
vs.
"Valancy did not persist. Valancy never persisted. She was afraid to. Her mother could not brook opposition. Mrs. Stirling would sulk for days if offended, with the airs of an insulted duchess."
Valancy can only be herself in the privacy of her own room and her own head. So the only version of her people know is the one she is allowed to present, which makes people assume that that is the real her, which in turn further reinforces the need for her to play at being the person they think she is.
"I don’t say Valancy deliberately murdered these lovers as she outgrew them. One simply faded away as another came. Things are very convenient in this respect in Blue Castles."
I pulled this line out last time I read this book too, but it's probably one of my favorite lines in the whole book. I love little author asides like this.
The whole description of the picnic is a veritable slough of "things Valancy will do" versus "things Valancy will want to do". They all pretty much boil down to "Valancy wants to throw things but instead she will listen politely and stay quiet, just like always." Fear is such a palpable theme in this part of the book. Why does Valancy not do the things she wants? Because she is afraid. She is afraid of both emotional and material consequences, and she has nowhere else to go. If Uncle Benjamin writes her out of his will and her mother never speaks to her again, Valancy has no choice but to live with it. Her life now is awful, but it could always get worse and that's terrifying.
But we join her on a day when she has finally hit her limit. She's not rebelling openly, certainly not, but she is planning to do something she wants, something that she knows will upset her family. She will get another library book, which her mother already disapproves of, and then she will go see a doctor without permission, which is a betrayal of the whole Stirling family. As the text puts it:
"But Valancy, between the devil of disloyalty to clan and the deep sea of fuss and clatter and advice, thought she would take a chance with the devil."
