#(by very lengthy i mean kinda massive)

[dmclemblems]

an extremely lengthy and massive deduction of Hopes Claude, feat. Faerghus politics and why Hopes Claude saw a slippery slide with its water on full blast and jumped on it without his summer Heroes alt or his swimsuit, causing all kinds of pain and suffering and grief, brought to you by i have nothing else to do except play more Hopes anyway.

so as some of you probably know I’m not a fan of Hopes Claude, but it does prove to me some things: Claude would only ever side with Edelgard in a world where he lacked proper knowledge about Fodlan.

the only chance in the entire world that he would even somewhat align with her goals is a world where he didn’t know what the fuck he was even actually getting himself into, was too young (19 versus 23), and had no idea how to handle foreign politics.

in a world where he does understand Fodlan, is not too young and is far more knowledge about the land’s politics, he sides with Dimitri (AM and intended to do so in all other routes) and does not want Rhea dead.

people are arguing that Claude entertained the idea of Rhea being dead in Houses; however, this only happened very briefly and during an earlier time in the Academy arc. He was 17/18, had not been in the Academy for a whole year yet, and was still extremely iffy and lacked knowledge about Fodlan’s politics and how the Church was part of them.

in a world where Claude grew into adulthood in Fodlan and was able to learn its culture and customs, he also understood that killing Rhea was not the answer and that no amount of bloodshed was going to solve the greater levels of problems.

it’s also worth noting that his trust in Dimitri between both games proves these points. in Hopes, we’re basically dealing with a stunted Fodlan growth Claude who was taken in by Edelgard’s bullshit because he was stressed out and tired of playing defensive against the Empire. he basically surrendered to her by making an alliance with her and just took her concepts about the Church and ran with them because he was tired.

he didn’t have the same trust in Dimitri because he didn’t know him as well, which is shown when he says he doesn’t understand what’s going on in  Dimitri’s head, versus in AM where he very, extremely understands Dimitri’s mindset to the most sensitive aspects of Dimitri’s behavior. how did he know that Byleth could talk to Dimitri and get him to listen? how did he know that Dimitri clung to the dead in the ways that he did? he knew those things because he knew Dimitri significantly better.

I see people saying that not having Byleth with Claude was why he ended up like this. that’s completely incorrect as proven by all three other routes in Houses. the main factor was his lack of being at the Academy for a full year and being able to have five years instead of two to learn and understand Fodlan’s political landscape.

the issue with Claude in Hopes is that he was basically thrown into a defensive war way sooner than he could handle. remember, Claude came from a life where he was a target for assassination repeatedly since for as long as he had any memories. he’s coming from a bad personal environment. on its own Almyra isn’t as bad as people in Fodlan see it as, but Claude’s own life was pretty terrible. couple that with literally running away from home without a word (only his mother knew about it as confirmed in Hopes with both Shahid and their father having no idea where he went and his father being distraught about it enough that he didn’t care that Shahid was causing mayhem in Fodlan) and the fact that he ran away to Fodlan and only had a few months at the Academy before things got messy enough that Rhea had to send everyone home.

then, take him running away from that horrible environment he lived in and couple it with the fact that he had two years there before Edelgard forced him into a war when he and the other lords of the Alliance did nothing whatsoever to her. he had, say, a total of two and a half years tops to get used to Fodlan before he got forced into a defensive war as a 19 year old. on top of that, whether or not you like Shez as a character, it’s not untrue that Shez is the one who planted the idea of overthrowing the Alliance into his head. even though they talked about it at the roundtable, Lorenz stated it was a VERY long discussion and from the sounds of it, it took a whole shit ton of convincing for Claude to be able to become its singular leader.

all of that culminated in what was essentially Claude’s bad ending, leading to him wanting to overthrow Fodlan and “take it for himself”, which as we know is nothing like Claude in Houses. imo all of these factors basically drove Claude to his worst mindset, where he would literally trap their supposed allies (Randolph’s army) and leave them to die, then only a bit more time passing before he declares war on the entirety of Fodlan.

not only is he basically exactly the same as Edelgard by this point, with both of them waging war on every single political power on the continent outside their own country, but Dimitri is the only one who wants nothing to do with it and is just trying to fix his own country while having to deal with the Church pressuring him (Rhea more specifically, because Seteth is far more mellow in his approach. Rhea is more along the lines of “we have to defeat them and kill these heathens” and Seteth is more along the lines of just wanting to make sure Rhea, Flayn and the Church are safe). Dimitri ends up with pressure on every single possible side: the Church, the Empire, the Alliance, and the civil wars in Faerghus that Cornelia and Rufus effectively caused. and, well, on top of all that, he’s got TWS to deal with, so... imo Claude really helped cause a bad ending/future for Fodlan by doing this. he’s basically assisted in helping destroy Fodlan.

what I’m saying is that TWS basically has Edelgard and Claude dancing on strings and helping them completely rip Fodlan apart. a younger version of Claude with less emotional attachment to Fodlan and less understanding of its inner workings is basically no better than Edelgard in being perfect bait for TWS to use and abuse.

tbh, TWS might have actually succeeded in wiping out Fodlan entirely if not for Faerghus and how loyal and emotional its leaders are. while the Alliance and Empire are having a vicious war that leads to Claude descending into the mess we saw in Hopes, Dimitri is stuck between dealing with the Empire and Cornelia, gets captured and is about to give up his life so his people don’t get killed (because Cornelia was using them as mass hostages essentially and was going to kill as many of his people as possible with TWS’ weaponry).

the only reason that didn’t happen is because Felix, who is in charge of the army in Dimitri’s absence, and everyone assisting him drop what they’re doing in the war, leave the defenses to Miklan and head out to save Dimitri. in GW/SB we don’t hear much from the Kingdom because for a chunk of chapters they’re dealing with their own issues, which also reduces the time Claude is exposed to seeing what Faerghus is like and learning that things are not as bad in Fodlan as Edelgard made them out to be. Faerghus is forced to be wrapped up in their own affairs and have no communication with the outside world because they have no chance to be.

the Faerghus part of Claude’s lack of knowledge that was extremely important and what Claude needed to know but didn’t that caused him to go down a slippery slope he couldn’t come back from:

“oh no crests and the system have taken over fodlan aaaaa” Faerghus has been trying to solve that for years and has been steadily and peacefully working to manage that, and it’s very clearly expressed in this game. while they were doing this in Houses too, it was less clear just how deeply into the subject they were going with it within their own leaders/powers. not only does Sylvain’s support with Dimitri discuss very in depth that they’ve been working on it and are still trying to in the middle of a war because it means so much to them, but the fact that Dimitri hired a non-Crest bearer to be a commander in his army is enough proof that they’ve made progress.

now while there was a minor shitshow of boo hoo how could you hire a former bandit as a commander, that had nothing to do with Crests! people were more concerned that Dimitri wasn’t being careful enough in who he hired because of background and history, but Dimitri’s decision was actually, wait for it, the correct answer. hiring someone who was disinherited for not bearing a Crest as a commander in his army was the proof that he hired based on strength, merit and potential. he also was willing to give people second chances and the only people who were aware of this internal concern were people more closely related to the Faerghus Four’s territory.

Seteth, in particular, has a good deal of faith in Miklan’s abilities as expressed at camp in chapter eight. as an outsider to the drama the Faerghus Four know about, all Seteth (the second highest power in the entirety of the Church system) is seeing is a non-Crest bearer with potential and capability leading a unit and being loyal to Dimtiri. while Miklan prefers to act like he’s not really all that loyal and had no choice (as discussed when Miklan is officially established as part of the army and at camp), he could have turned tail and left (especially during chapter nine), but he decided to lay down his life for this and died with more or less a smile/smirk, indicating he was satisfied with his decision and didn’t lament his fate the way he did in Houses when Dimitri didn’t have the chance to save him.

what this means for Claude is that there was an entire mess going on in Faerghus all that time that he was struggling and starting to question how to handle the war on his end. everything Claude lost all faith in was happening elsewhere in Fodlan, and had he had the time at the Academy to see what it was like there, he would have had more time to realize that Dimitri (and thus the future of Faerghus) was someone who was going to turn the Crest system on its absolute head if given the time to do so (and Sylvain is very much a pioneer in fixing that system in BOTH games, which again circles back to Miklan in part of why Sylvain is so deeply part of that change).

tbh I think the biggest loss for Claude here is that he didn’t get to meet Miklan and find out that Dimitri had given him such a prominent station in the Faerghus army (and mind you, his absolute trust and Sylvain’s. they left a good chunk of trust in the soldiers left to handle the Empire when they had to rescue Dimitri, which means they all also trusted they wouldn’t be turned on and have anyone betray them for the Empire). that would have been the first crack in his concerns with the Crest system and would have led him with his more curious nature to look more into what was going on in the Faerghus army, and thus, destroying any perception he had that the Crest system was really destroying Fodlan.

ultimately yeah, you could say the Crest system had become an issue... but if Claude had more time to realize people were working on it, peacefully and without bloodshed, he would have sided with those people instead of becoming a huge warmonger, equal to the scale of Edelgard.

what I’m saying is that yeah, I don’t like how Claude turned out in GW/SB, but I can see where it came from and how fucked up it made him that he didn’t spend that time at the Academy. again, Byleth being by Claude’s side had zero bearing on Claude’s maturity. in AM Byleth was never with Claude, but Claude ceded the Alliance to Dimitri and trusted him to care for Fodlan and Claude’s people while giving him the Alliance’s most important possession (Failnaught). he didn’t need Byleth at his side to mature. he needed time and understanding. Byleth did help somewhat by being there because he knew Byleth for a whole year, knew Byleth’s influence on Dimitri on a personal scale in AM (proven in AM chapter 19), and because Byleth naturally had a large part in the turn of events, but Byleth was not a singular reason for Claude to go in one direction or another.

you know at this point im more inclined to say tl;dr miklan’s appointment as a commander in the army could’ve saved fodlan’s future if claude had only met him and learned about his background because claude’s perception of the crest system and edelgard’s nonsense would've been shattered in a heartbeat.

so you know what, i think im gonna say tl;dr dimitri and miklan should’ve been the real mvps but we were robbed because miklan deserved so much more having finally turned his life around no thanks to matthias

...real tl;dr tho, hopes claude (particularly non AG) is literally bad ending claude while houses claude (AM/VW) is good ending claude (CF ending claude varies between dead claude and status unknown claude bc we don’t really learn what happened with him after the game. we just know he went back to Almyra and not if he ever bothered forging relations with an Edelgard conquered Fodlan). ss ending claude is just a big ol’ ??? but i’d assume things worked out in the end bc byleth took over as the leader of fodlan in ss which is exactly what happened in vw so if vw led to good ending claude, i assume ss did too.

#Three Houses #Three Hopes #Three Hopes Spoilers #what this is: A Very Lengthy Post About Two Claudes #(by very lengthy i mean kinda massive) #what this also is: a comprehensive look into why Edelgard and Claude's motives in Hopes are a total failure #what this also also is: why is Claude had had more exposure to Faerghus' politics that he NEVER signed on with Edelgard's war #and THEN made his own war so there were basically two mass declarations of war going at once #and mind you the fact that Claude declared war on Faerghus too further proved that Claude didn't even have basic knowledge of Dimitri #getting cozy with Faerghus would have allowed him to properly assess the Church and talks things out with them #and if that failed he would be able to take it from there but with the help of the lords from Faerghus #and with that he would've had security in that if Rhea tried to harm him that Dimitri could intervene #what I'm saying is that a Claude who didn't have enough time in Fodlan after coming there from his own life in Almyra #is a Claude who was emotionally and politically stunted in his growth in Fodlan and expressed stress and confusion very often #what this also also also is: Faerghus was handling the Crest system anyway and Edelgard ruined everything #and Claude got swept up in Edelgard's bullshit in Hopes #honestly I think the tl;dr of this is that Miklan is kind of the center of proof that Faerghus was doing the right thing #and that Faerghus was the most progressive nation in Fodlan. they were just doing it quietly and internally #and they couldn't have changed anything outside of Faerghus without first fixing Faerghus itself #also I rly hate the whole ''THE CHURCH IS BAD" concept bc like wtf did Seteth and Flayn ever do to y'all... #I hate how so many characters boil down whatever Rhea does to being the fault of EVERYONE in the Church #as if they all knew about everything/had a say in everything bc even Seteth wasn't privy to what happened with Byleth in Houses #even if characters hate Rhea there's no reason to blame the entirety of the Church for that #you'd think people would realize that's discrimination but even a lot of fans just go along with it. siiiigh

[nicolesainz]

Focus on me (MM 7)

Mason Mount x f!reader

A/n: I have to give credits to my bff willow @landooscar for sending me that Mason gif on the Manchester United chair where his thighs are spread. You will see later on what l mean. For now thank her and I hope you enjoy the story.

Summary: Mason loves to fool around. But isn't really a fan of you giving your attention to other boys. So he decides not to play nice with you and give you a taste of your own medicine.

Warnings: minors dni, 18+, smut content, teasing, thigh riding, praise kink

"Hey babe? Can you come down and help me with something for a moment?”

Mason got no response. He allowed himself to finish preparing dinner for a few minutes, before he called me once again.

“Hello? Y/N? Can you help me down here, love?”

I could practically hear him but in that moment I was too focused on the Tv screen and too pumped to remove my eyes from it.

Footsteps were echoing through the corridor that was close to our bedroom. There was a soft knock on the door, as Mason thought that I was probably sleeping.

“Darling, are you awake?”

He said so softly and calmly. Gosh, how can one not fall in love with this man.

I went up to him and opened the door, trying to hide the grin I had on my face. Mason raised his eyebrows suspiciously, wondering what I may be doing alone.

“Why weren’t you coming downstairs to help me? I need some cooking advice from your mother but she won’t respond my calls”

I blinked. I couldn’t respond. It’s not like I was doing anything weird or unfaithful, but it wasn’t my finest moment. I think all girls have celebrity crushes, even when they have boyfriends. Right?

“I, uh, I was watching F1’s qualifying. It just finished.”

That was partially true.

“Righttt. And who got pole? Can I see?”

He approached the TV and he saw that it had been paused to a very particular moment that the director had filmed.

On the screen, there was Carlos Sainz, slicking through his long black hair, whilst waving at the cameraman. See? I told you. Not my finest moment.

“Babe, that’s Carlos. Why did you pause at that moment?”

Now that was the moment I blinked even more. Unable to respond. How do you exactly tell your boyfriend of three years that recently buzzed his hair, that you were admiring another man’s haircut.

It was kinda weird, but I had no shame. Maybe a little.

Mason scratched his head as he was waiting for my response, when he actually realized why I had paused the livestream. He felt his shirt hair and then looked at Carlos’s lengthy hairstyle.

“It’s the hair innit?”

His face dropped massively. I’m not going to lie, I’m not the biggest fan of buzzcuts but it fit Mason beautifully. I was though an even bigger fan of his prince-like hairstyle. My god, the way my fingers would tangle around, was mesmerizing.

“Why didn’t you tell me that you didn’t want me to buzz my hair this short? I would have picked another hairstyle”

“Masey, it’s your hair. I’m not one to judge or say anything. I love every single one of your hairstyles. Nothing changes just because you have shorter or longer hair.”

“But apparently you’re a fan of long hairstyles”

“It’s practically in many ways”

I was hinting at the time we were having sex on the couch and as Mason was about to fall, I pulled him from his hair and pulled his body against mine, still keeping the connection.

“That was very hot babe”

I felt bad that he had to see such a weak moment of mine. I love Mason no matter what. I don’t care about his looks. I only care about the person he is. The hair is the last thing I pay attention too.

“I’m so sorry Mase. This doesn’t mean anything. This is silly, I shouldn’t have done that, I don’t even know why I did.”

He wasn’t responding.

“Do you maybe want me to leave for a few hours and come back? I’ll go to my mom and pick up that recipe you want”

Instead of saying anything, he turned off the Tv, and sat on the bed, with his thighs kneeling in front of my eyes.

Before doing that he removed his shorts and shirt, revealing once again his Greek god like built body, full of beautiful drawn tattoos. My weakness being the champions league one on his rib cage.

“I need you to come close baby”

He said stiffly, in a more manly manner than the one he usually has. His Adam’s apple was sitting on the center of his neck and vile thoughts of me kissing this spot entered my brain.

I approached the bed, only to be dragged by Mason on top of his thighs. In mere seconds I was left shirtless, gifting him what he was asking for. His girlfriend bra-less and in the most vulnerable position ever.

“I’m the only man that’s allowed to make your tits hard. Are we clear about that?”

I simply nodded, as my eyes were wandering around his toned muscles on his shoulders and hardened errection. I didn’t know where to look.

“You’ll do as I say, right princess?”

“Y-es”

I replied weakly

“Ride my thigh. I want you to ride me until I feel your cum running down it. Until your pussy is stretched to its limits but you beg for more”

I was left speechless. I don’t know how we went from him wanting to cook, to making me cum out of nowhere. But I liked it.

I started rubbing myself on his thigh as his hands were holding my ass firmly and his lips had attacked mine, removing the oxygen from my system.

Moving up and down, I was feeling the heat on my pussy and Mason’s thigh trembling and pushing itself upwards, close to my clit. His fingers were sliding from the back of my ass, to under my panties and at first softly caressing my wet folds.

As his lips moved downwards to my neck, leaving endless marks in a certain pattern I couldn’t really understand, my pussy came face to face with his knee that was almost deep inside me. Like his fingers. The pace kept rising and more moans were escaping my lips.

“You’re mine. Solely mine”

“Your neck, your lips, your pussy. All mine”

“You’re the only man you’re allowed to admire. No one else”

I had reached the point were Mason’s thigh was covered in my cum and he moved me to the left one, repeating the same thing but never removing his fingers from my clit.

I let out a squeak as Mason hit my G-spot, earning a soft laugh from him. His lips were now occupied with my nipples and bouncing breasts, whilst mine were kissing his collarbone and nails were dug deep into his back.

“You’re the only one Mase”

“I’m yours. Body and soul”

Mason let out a frustrating moan, before we both orgasmed at the same time.

“You complete me baby. I love you, Y/N”

“I love you too Mase. You’re my boyfriend and the only for me”

Let’s just say that at night we barely did anything but hug and make love to each other.

#mason mount fanfic #mason mount #mason mount x you #mason mount x reader #mason mount x y/n

[rawliverandgoronspice]

Okay so this has been on my mind for awhile and I wanted to get my thoughts out there. Regarding the topic of Rauru and Ganons relationship, I feel like rauru has kinda been bashed? people seem think that rauru in memory 6 (I believe) had a bit of a god complex, and that he was disrespectful. I feel as if rauru kinda had a right to act the way he did.

Rauru had wanted to become Allie’s with the gerudo. Not necessarily because he wants them to serve him but more for resources. Or more likely knowing Ganon he was attacking hyrule. The reason why I suspect this is because during the molduga incident rauru and Sonia seem to be very familiar with theses types of attacks. So it’s likely Ganon had ordered monster attacks on them before. Likely the attacks were getting to much for rauru and Sonia to handle; on top of establishing hyrule, rauru sent out messages for Ganon to join the kingdom in order to stop the attacks. Or another reasoning is that the gerudo were likely suffering. Ganon has been shown to not always prioritize his people. And knowing from past games the gerudo desert doesn’t have much resources. We can kinda see this in Totk they seem to only have hydromelon and voltfruit (I highly doubt that the gerudo had men at the time bringing them food from hyrules fields). If you’ve talked to rauru on the sky islands you’ll know that rauru is actually a very sweet and sympathetic guy, so I believe this could be a possibility.

Moving forward to raurus attitude during their meeting.Now rauru wasn’t exactly the nicest during the meeting, but I don’t really blame him. Rauru probably annoyed that ganon has been ignoring his letters and putting his people in danger. Also Ganon was very sketchy during that entire meeting and was rude in his tone.

Why did Ganon bow? Ganon and rauru are not equal, yes they are both kings but rauru has massive amounts of power and has a much larger land mass. (and zonia are kinda gods) but I don’t think the reasoning for Ganon bowing is because he less than or non equal to rauru. More like he was apologizing and giving rauru respect for the countless times he’s ignored him or tried to kill him.

More of raurus tone in the meeting Again I think he was really fed up with Ganon and rauru seems very non confrontational (he apologizes in the sky islands that the constructs attack link, and ask link not to be angry because they can’t understand) rauru likely wanted it to get into ganons mind not to attack the kingdom again because rauru had a lot of Allie’s and power and will attack Ganon if he pulls a stunt.

Ganon vs the gerudo. This part is a little off topic but, lots believe rauru is low key kinda racist towards the gerudo. But if this was true why was gerudo sage working with rauru? I don’t think that the way rauru acts is how he acts to all gerudo. The sage of lighting very obviously doesn’t like Ganon. The reasoning  could be my first point. And later on after the imprisoning war the gerudo still stuck with hyrules side.

That’s all I have for right now, sorry if it’s all jumbled up I tried to make it coherent. Anyways I appreciate you for reading this :3

-🔺

Hi, thanks for the lengthy ask!! I'm sorry for the lengthy answer this beckoned, but I think this conversation is pretty important --even beyond Zelda and this specific case. We're talking themes and tropes and framing!!!!

I will try to reply to all of this in a way that kind of threads through several layers of why people have been bashing Rauru, me included. I will try my best to explain why I dislike this character, and try to parse out why I am this miffed by Tears of the Kingdom's storyline overall.

The long story short is: I don't dislike Rauru as a person (I mean, I also would tbh), I dislike him because of what he represents.

I think the waters did muddy a little in the "discourse" recently, and it's a good thing to take a step back and re-explain where I'm coming from (me personally, not going to speak for anyone but me here).

Also, before jumping in: this is not a condamnation on anyone who enjoys this story or these characters, nothing is unproblematic, it's fine, everybody does what they want, all of the things. I like the game and I keep playing the game in spite of being harshly critical of the ideas pushed forward. Also: it's fine to digest this and come back later (or not at all) if that feels like a lot, or if some of these ideas don't immediately click. But it's also partially why I think it's important: this game is aimed at a young audience, and one who might not have all of the keys to decipher what's going on, which is why I think it's quite irresponsible (which is the charitable interpretation) on Nintendo's part.

Anyway. Too many words underneath the cut.

The Story

So, first of all, I want to say that I believe you completely and fully read the situation as Nintendo intended it to be read. This is the text of the game (aka, the story taken at face value). You picked up on every single safeguard put into place to have Rauru and Sonia act in the most justifiable way possible, and have Ganondorf, on the other hand, act as a duplicitous, power-hungry and downright insane as they could have made him. In the reality of their universe, and only taking into account what is given to us through the narrative, trusting it comes from a neutral place and isn't influenced by anything, everything you said is 100% correct.

Rauru and Sonia WERE acting in self-defense, and were even kind not to turn their incommensurable power against the invading army.

The kingdom Rauru built as a demigod IS a paradise and they WERE very generous to invite neighboring nations to bask in their wealth and its technological and natural blessings (and the results of their extensive mining and why are there killer robots everywhere if this world was such a peaceful paradise uhh let's not ponder about this too much). That Ganondorf was too prideful and envious to accept IS a sin that rests solely with him.

Rauru IS a brave hero that sacrificed himself to seal the invader that killed his beloved wife.

Every single Sage IS extraordinarily devoted to protect both Rauru's lineage and their own lands, and gleefully pass down that duty to their ancestors --all thanks to Zelda, heir of that blessed royal line who returned to the past and made them promise to fight alongside Link to seal the Evil once more.

The gerudo WERE (apparently) oppressed, as they decided to fight under Rauru's authority freely (so against their own chief??) and, also, must make amends for having put Ganondorf in this world in the first place? ( I think we are already starting to see some contradictions --were you always victims or did you start this conflict in the first place? what is your place in all of this? why don't we ever get to know?)

This IS the story of Tears of the Kingdom. A story of a great sacrifice that happened in the golden mythical past (confirmed as unquestionable truth through the archeology motif), done by benevolent godly figures of royal blood and immense power they would never abuse, giving their everything to bring Light into a broken world corrupted by the degeneracy of Evil, echoed by the devotion of nations who swore fealty to that divine being and must now renew their vow in the present to defend their lands and Hyrule at any cost. Also, the impossible and magnificient suffering of the princess, whose tears lead to a trail of truth into the very land, informs the current population about why they're fighting now; she's at once a hero of the past and a martyr in the present, completely incapable of acting on her own, carrying with her the blade that will slay the crushing and violent sway of Evil for good and bring eternal peace into the land (Evil who uses her own appearance to cause chaos and violence against her own people --the blasphemy!!). The title of the game reflects this too: the Tears of the Kingdom are hers. Zelda is the kingdom here, and her pain/the pain of that mythical past is what is centered.

Also Ganondorf IS green so it's not racist okay let's stop right here and unpack all of this mess, because BOY oh boy oh boy oh boy.

oh boy.

The History

Now comes the time to point out the obvious, but that bears being repeated: this is a fictional story. It's a story crafted by a very powerful game company set in Japan. It's a story crafted by a huge number of people, who debated for years how to best tell it, why, and what for. Every single choice made in the narrative is purposeful, has been weighted against other options, and was picked over what could have been virtually anything else. Again, I want to state that I don't know if any single person took these decisions, probably not entirely, and it's even possible Nintendo didn't realize (I doubt it heavily tbh, but I'm sure there are people in the team that didn't get it or didn't see the issue), but a certain kind of story was crafted in the end, and it's the one we got.

One word that has been tossed around a lot as far as TotK's story goes is ✨ imperialism ✨, and I want to pause and take a second to analyse exactly what we mean by that and why I think it's painfully relevant here (and, honestly, I think another word would be very very relevant here also, but it's the kind of word you keep for after you're done with your argumentation not to scare off the unconvinced audience --but, to anyone who reads and might have picked it up already, yeah.)

In our real world of Earth 2023™, we have seen quite the number of extraordinarily powerful nations becoming gradually larger, engulfing neighbors, breaking apart, and leaving the buds of new future empires behind them. Hell, there's a number of them existing right now, even if they don't call themselves empires and don't have literal emperors at their head anymore (though Japan does, and it is important here). Of course, no nation, especially nations striving for expansion, worldwide legitimacy in culture and power, and their own understanding of "greatness", would ever call themselves anything but enlightened and justified. After all, the Roman Empire brings aqueducts and infrastructure to the lands they conquer, China unifies disparaging regions struggling under constant barbaric attacks, France and Spain converts local populations of the "New World" and save their souls from eternal damnation (wow thanks guysss), the British Empire brings industrial revolution uhhh everywhere please don't ask what was the cost, Africa sure loves everybody ripping their culture and lands apart and were so super glad to receive whatever "civilization" is supposed to mean when their literal people were being pillaged away to keep on building said empires using their blood as mortar, the URSS protects neighboring nations from the Evil Capital/West, fascists want to purge the world of anything they consider impure, the US brings freedom to the world and the whole world is grateful forever!!!

Everyone always has an excuse, and everyone is always kind of semi-mandated by God (in the largest possible sense; divine responsibility would perhaps be more appropriate, it's kind of the idea that with great power comes responsibility, while defining what responsibility means and inflicting their conclusions to conquered lands to squeeze even more value out of them) to do whatever the hell they want to others, claim their lands, their bodies, their minds, their culture --and demand gratefulness on top of it all to avoid having to feel bad.

There is a large body of fictional works that are dedicated to boister the image of the Empire. Every single empire has a number of them; their goal is often to mythologize, in some form or another, the story of their expansion. It often flattens every nuance, paints the actions of the empire as the natural order of the world and its opposition as morally malignant, their leaders are charismatic, benevolent, powerful and self-sacrificial. Often, it invokes previous empires to cast the current one as inheriting a grace that was tragically lost and must be restored through war, hard work, and healthy natality --I'll dip into the forbidden comparaison but Nazi Germany loved its greek myths of Sparta and Athens (and modern day fascists still do), or the Napoleon Wars so they could retell the story of their own empire by invoking a legacy of moral diligence and ethnical greatness being restored. But the pattern is often very similar: we used to be Great, a tragic event due to both external invasion and internal corruption precipitated our golden age into chaos and degeneracy, and now we must fight off current day corruption to restore the Glory of the old times we lost --all of this under the benevolent gaze of our leaders, whose mission is a direct or indirect intervention of divinity into mortal lives. It is righteous and glorious to fight/die for the nation (and its leaders) and protect it from the uncivilized, who are inhuman and exist solely to trick us, corrupt us, attack us and assimilate/destroy us.

Are we starting to notice some similarities here :) :) :)

The Narrative

There's two conversations running in parallel here.

The first one is the least important in my opinion, even though it's the one we tend to focus on a lot as theorists/enthusiasts/enjoyers of media: is Rauru oppressing the gerudos, and does that inform Ganondorf's actions?

Honestly? Textually? Probably not.

There are arguments to be made (and that deserve to be made) about the insane power imbalance, there are a lot of suspicious aspects that deserve to be picked apart like the address and deference of Ganondorf towards Rauru, the whole mining thing that I don't see being discussed much but could be a huge part of it --there are ancient mines in the gerudo region after all; since when? what's the history here?-- the strange masks the Sages are to wear when Zelda, as a direct descendant, isn't wearing any, etc etc. Lots of other posts have been made about the million tiny red flags that litter the game, but I think that if we take the game at face value, they barely matter. I would love them to have been placed with intent (and they maybe were as a desperate attempt by an employee trying to inject grayness back in the equation and if that's the case I SEE YOU random gamedev and I love you and you did the best you could <3), but to me that's more a case of wishful fan thinking (including mine tbh) that any concrete argument that the story is secretely about Rauru being imperialist and this costing him everything. There are some hints of a more nuanced world (the Horned God, the Bargainers, that some NPCs are invested in monsters are creatures worthy of study and awe --tho almost all of them ridiculed in some form), but these demand that you go out of your way to collect them and make the connection yourself. Can this even qualify as subtext? As in: the story under the story? As much as I wish this was the case, I don't think so. We can't make the case that it's a simple story for children that isn't trying to say anything grand while also demanding people to make insane mental gymnastics on their own, without any help on the game's part, for it not to be a blatant endorsement of imperialist thinking.

(especially not the kind of game that repeats 3 different times back to back that Sidon didn't talk to Yona because he was afraid to lose her like he lost Mipha --honestly what's up with this writing I don't get it, BotW didn't act like its players' brain was this unplugged, ANYWAY)

The story is about Ganondorf being duplicitous and monstrous and destroying the beautiful kingdom of the past, and us preserving our modern day kingdom from its corrupting influence by recruiting allies and friends in that fight. We are given a plethora of situations that paint him as inhumanely cruel and chaotic, and none that breath even the suggestion of a critique towards our heroes. He's evil: we must stop him.

Now comes the second conversation, and one I think is more important: is this entire storyline built off imperialist tropes that were created to oppress and exploit marginalized populations in real life while justifying the violence inflincted upon them?

In my opinion, yes. Undeniably so.

I am not so much invested in Rauru being racist towards Ganondorf; I am invested in the real life Nintendo videogame being racist towards the idea that Ganondorf represents: the scary foreigner that will lead to the fall of civilization if we let him in.

(and perhaps this was Rauru's hubris all along: to believe he could let a scary (male) foreigner in and then trust him to remain docile.... a little too much. And then he reaped what he sowed.

checkmate liberal.

This makes an uncomfortable amount of sense and I kinda hate having made the connection tbh)

This is especially true when it's the second time around that this exact storyline is represented, and I believe it to be much more insidious this time around --because now, gerudos are our friendssss and feel great shame and personal responsibility towards that aspect of them that once rebelled. Meanwhile in OoT, a majority of them were onboard with Ganondorf as their leader and explicitely did not want to be assimilated in the kindgom (Nabooru being specifically painted as one of the exceptions). I go more in depth about all of this in this pre-TotK post about gerudo culture. We had plenty of conversations about orientalism and islamophobic representation in videogames since; it was A Thing at the time, the turn of the century was particularly egregious in that regard. But It's not 1998 anymore, and I personally believe it's pretty inexcusable to rethread that same ground beat by beat without batting an eye at any of its implications (especially since they have done better since; even Twilight Princess, who gave him very little grace overall, dared to criticize hylians through Midna, Zelda and even Zant --and Wind Waker towed the line rather beautifully between the part of him that was human and the part that was monstrous, and the tragedy of these two cancelling each other out constantly). I was expecting much, much better than what we got --I didn't even dare to imagine they would just double-down on that aspect and make a worse version of Ocarina of Time to reintroduce the character.

This is also partially why I'm so uncomfortable with the green skin situation: can you imagine how this scene would have felt like, with the single brown-skinned guy having a central role in the game kneeling in front of a white old man with a droopy mustache (which was Rauru's first iteration in the series, and the one I always keep in mind when having these conversations) and his blonde wife, and Zelda being "hmmm he's evil for sure"? And then he 100% is, with no justification or reason beyond an urge to consume the entire world --even this, which is not uninteresting, remaining completely unexplored in a 150+ hour open-world game that decided to focus on everything under the sun EXCEPT Ganondorf's motivations and his relationship to his own people? Can you imagine how obvious of a racist caricature Ganondorf would have been just by keeping his skin a normal brown (not to pretend he's not already super coded as Foreign in every possible way)? The man is intimidating, uncomfortable to be around, he's greedy and power-hungry, he's insane, he comes for our lands and our women and oppresses his own and also corrupts everything through either infiltration or literal disease. Also he's uhhh the Devil, for good measure.

As much as we can rationalize and embrace these parts of who he is as fans, there's no ignoring how icky this entire situation really is.

So, to tie everything together.

There are three readings of this game competing in my head.

The first one is: the textual interpretation. Rauru is self-sacrificial and a victim, Zelda is deeply brave and an icon of the empire's longevity and deep-rooted history, Ganondorf is utterly inhuman and must be destroyed at all costs. What the game says it is --and what it is.

The second one is: the critical interpretation. That this story sounds awfully convenient for the prosperity of the Empire (here the empire being Hyrule), paints Zelda, the current leader, in a weird fanficky way by literally sending her back to the past with her super cool ancestors and allowing a military victory in the present while also being a martyr to the cause and being much more of a symbol than a person, and nobody even bats a fucking eye in the direction that Hyrule might have been questionable in any way --everyone is so happy to be a vassal, see? Let's not unpack why the king of the zoras prefered hiding himself than facing the consequences of what would happen if Zelda really did attack him out of the blue (this plot point is insane, but its potential is too good so therefore it's illegal and immediately dropped). Let's not unpack the absolute insane amount of abuse false Zelda gets away with by virtue of acting as the princess of a sacred bloodline (but she's nice, right? because that's how you want to make a sure a ruler won't hurt you: praying they will be nice). There are enough red flags to doubt this world, its reality, the complexity of these people's inner lives. The rejection of the notion that any sort of flaw or problem could exist within the system makes it borderline dystopian in my opinion (especially when compared with BotW's Hyrule, which had problems who led to its own downfall and were the fault of nobody but their own actions as Ganon is portrayed more as a natural event than an actual, malicious person), and this is the first reason why I don't like Rauru: the entire world revolves around this goat-kangaroo-furry man's chiseled navel. Everyone is, quite literally, a faceless tool in the glorious and tragic story of his lost empire (or they're women here to become sacrificial objects serving the fights of men; or they're Ganondorf, who's a non-person and an antagonistic object lacking any interiority or humanity, and the narrative being completely uninterested in that), and only his bloodline and his vision for the future really matters. Not that Rauru thinks like this --but the game does. And so, it's hard for me not to see him as either the most narcissistic person ever if we accept him as the narrator of this story, or a flat propaganda machine built for an even greater cause (Hyrule, the Empire).

And then, the third one: that Nintendo would put out a game that is so deeply embedded in imperialist and orientalist language and tropes, so invested in its traditional and patriarchal values, so uncurious about the Other and so critical of it while refusing to look inward, is not neutral (yes even if the game is super fun and has other great qualities, I do believe this game is a monumental achievement in game/level design and in optimization/tech art while also being a trainwreck in quest and narrative design). This rethoric is not neutral, especially when addressed at the West at large --especially right now, with such a global uptick in traditionalist values overall, and Japan not exactly being spared. I won't pretend to be knowledgeable enough about Japanese history and culture to pick up all the little nuances of what is going on here, but I know enough to recognize that such stories do play out a certain understanding of this country's history, its fears and its difficulties to reconcile with its own (very recent) past as a colonialist empire --both the terrors it unleashed on others and the terrors that were unleashed upon it as it was dismantled. Instead of exploring that subject, every potential for nuance and conversation and self-criticism is slammed shut immediately, often at the cost of their own characters and the depth of their quest design/writing. The unearthed past agrees with its current understanding of itself; there is nothing discovered that leads to being questioned and reconsidered. Everything wrong is the fault of a single, corrupting entity that can be identified as Foreign and Other. There is a literal Heaven (zonai and civilized, Rauru's) and Hell (monstrous and corroding, Ganon's). None of this is neutral. Especially when infused in a game targeted for a young audience lacking context.

So I hope this very verbose answer helped a little to parse out what is being criticized at which level! Thank you for giving your thoughts, and I hope mine were clarifying to a degree.

I understand it can get a little confusing; but a lot of the urge not to take this scene at face value is born from the knowledge that nothing is ever that simple in real life, that these sort of self-serving narratives often hide horrific amounts of systemic harm underneath its perfectly curated presentation, and that, well. Some Zelda fans, especially the older generations that were invested in these characters and their re-imagining, expected Nintendo to be less..... like this.

And the wake-up call stings a little more than we would have liked.

(again obligatory disclaimer that I'm not saying TotK is Bad or should be Cancelled or that you're Bad for liking it --but it's still important to explicitly talk about how themes like these are being utterly glossed over when I don't think they would have been if they'd come out of a new IP, and not with the huge nostalgia cloud that envelops The Legend of Zelda and has people being extremely uncomfortable at criticizing the ideas the series can sometimes champion --though the series never veered in that direction nearly as hard before in my opinion)

#asks #thoughts #totk #totk spoilers #totk critical #tloz #ganondorf #rauru #gerudo #gerudos #oot #critical analysis #imperialism #cw discussion of racism #this was a LONG one and I hope it was somewhat clear #I wish I had more concrete examples of imperial narrative in storytelling from when a specific empire was in power #all the ones I have come from the 20th century #or from the Roman Empire #(or maybe crusade texts?) #never thought I'd realize I lack imperialist propaganda culture but WELP

[civilight-eterna]

Fanfic Writing Questions

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

Looks like 17, incidentally my lucky number!

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

204,980 so far!

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Right now, Arknights. If Ex Astris gets any more content though I'll probably lunge for it again. I'm also always open to writing Vocaloid stuff even though I'm a little embarrassed looking back at some of my earlier works. I don't write for RWBY or Danganronpa anymore. I've been kinda hurt by people in those fandoms and I'm baby (or was baby) so it kinda killed my heart for it.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos? 1. From Hell to the Moon - 953 kudos My gigantic Touko/Komaru fic from back when Ultra Despair Girls had me in an absolute chokehold. I still love them but I kinda fell off from updating because I got a lot of comments like 'ughh i'm so sad this will never get updated' and the pressure got to me. 2. Between the Li[n]es - 425 kudos Another one I left on a massive cliffhanger for Danganronpa V3, my Miu/Kokichi/K1-B0 fic. I appreciate the support it received so much. I do enjoy writing robot sex. I fell off of updating because I made a friend in the fandom that kinned Kokichi pretty hard and seemed to feel like he was a much 'softer boi' than the way I wrote him and implied that my Kokichi was OOC and even though I didn't really believe it...well, you become your actions, so, by kind of, tolerating their interpretation it kind of neutered my own. We haven't talked in years. Sometimes I think about writing a quickie update chapter but I'm too into my other writing. As one comment put it: "came to nut, stayed for the feels", so I felt pretty damn good about the naughty scenes in this one. One of the more vulgar things I've published.

3. Other Side - 288 kudos My first fic for the RWBY fandom! I wrote it right after the Weiss trailer came out and we knew nothing, so a lot of the story is nothing like how the characters act now. I look back on it pretty fondly because it got me out of a pretty bad writing rut, but it's kinda bittersweet because I've moved on from RWBY. Still a sucker for Ruby/Weiss and I was overjoyed when Ice Queendom came out and gave them some spotlight. 4. Amor fati - 188 kudos My beloved golden child chenmiya fic. It makes me so happy to see this one climbing high into the list even though it's the most recent. A lot of tender love and care went into writing this and reading this is the key to my heart. Nothing excites me more than comments on this or any of my other chenmiya fics. It's basically my love letter to the ship. 5. Secondhand Smoke - 177 kudos One of my early entries into the ~problematic yuri~ genre from when Cinder/Ruby from RWBY had me by the throat. I got a lot of much-appreciated appreciation for writing these two and I remember this being the year that a bunch of my artist friends drew me Cinder/Ruby for my birthday! I'd never had anything like that happen before and I felt so loved.

5. Do you respond to comments? Sometimes! If you leave a lengthy comment I try to at least pop in and cry about how much it means to me haha.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? Sour Grapes, easily. But is anyone surprised?

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? Definitely dodecatheon meadia. If ever I've written something I can consider to have a true fairytale ending, this is the one. This one really healed my heart too! I felt like I had a real fire under me while writing it and these girls have deeply affected me. I don't want to say too too much about it since some people are very likely still finishing the game. But it's also a new feeling to be the first fic in a tag!

8. Do you get hate on fics? Thankfully not really.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind? Yeah, I sure do, almost exclusively-but I tend to have myself in this hostage situation of, "please make a 50k-100k epic to perfectly justify the characters having sex" that I occasionally escape containment from. I've gotten a little better at just laying the foundations quickly and getting to what I like to write, but it can still be a struggle because I get a little perfectionist with it. Which is funny because to me the 'perfect' smut doesn't exist, and it's made 'perfect' through the imperfections. I think the little bumps and hiccups and misunderstandings along the way are a lot more compelling to me than having everything go without a hitch, but there's definitely exceptions and different circumstances! Like when that's a big part of the story-like a character really really in control for another character's safety. When I write robot sex or medfet there tends to be a bit more detail about the safety side of things because I like to take the reader through the experience of safety too. I never turn right to the camera and go 'and now the safe way to do it is x' but I rely on the characters to express their expertise to each other, and their reassurance, and for the trust of the other character to speak for itself. haha, i rambled.

this is why for the lin/chen/amiya bondage i'm working on writing that i have a notebook with several pages of questions that lin goes through before tying people up. things like 'if you start to cry, does that mean you need to stop, or is that just what you need?'

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

Not really, the only one I've kind of written was the Ex Astris/Arknights one in dodecatheon meadia, based lightly off the fact that the games did a collab and I wanted to acknowledge them with the outfits of those girls from another world that they didn't quite get to know.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen? Oh, just once. But it was SO long ago and the person was pretty young I think and they were ashamed and took it down right away, so live and let live.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? Some kind folks translated Sour Grapes into Chinese! I asked them for a link to where it ended up but I don't think they totally understood what I was asking. I was flattered nonetheless.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? No, I haven't. I do a lot of rping though still, though less publicly than I used to. I think if I co-wrote anything and published it it would have to be with @lanymme because she's my most trusted peer! When we talk about writing things and whenever she gives me feedback, she is so kind and spirited about it in a way that pushes me to do my best. Her encouragement is truly so earnest and even though I can be a little protective of my writing she has a really nice way about her of discussing how to make it stronger without making me ever feel like I'm not 'enough' as an author. I can't overstate how much I value her companionship; as an editor and a good friend and just lovely person overall. And when she leaves huge comments on my fics spotting all the little painstaking details I put in and mentioning them-what better satisfaction can there be as a writer? I always intend to do the same back but I am always just so floored and wiped out by the quality of her writing that I atomize before I can form cohesive thoughts. It just makes it all the more impressive that she can put together a fucking. bibliography of the story's moments and her reactions. So lanymme I hope you know how much I adore your style. /)///(\

14. What's your all time favorite ship? Chenmiya. I sort of felt inklings of it all throughout the beginning of the story and then chapters 7 and 8 sealed my coffin shut. Amiya sort of represents, I think, the idealism that Ch'en had wanted to believe in growing up. The world was really cruel and Ch'en adapted in her own ways, but she...rejects Amiya a bit because I feel like in her heart she can't let herself get too attached. She knows-or thinks she knows-that Amiya will lose hope and she'll feel that heartbreak all over. But slowly, her optimism and continued efforts to just...keep going, in a world that is cold, a world that shows her cruelty-it reaches Ch'en. And even though Ch'en puts up her front at first, Amiya's ultra-high empathy helps her understand who Ch'en really is, and she has the maturity to not begrudge her for the way she's processed things up to the events of chapter 7 and 8. As she puts it, "I saw the color of her heart", when talking about how Ch'en interacted with the kids in the slums that didn't have anyone else. And then she launches a rescue for Ch'en, and ends up so linked up with her memories and emotions that she just like. Becomes the other half of her soul in that fight. Amiya arrives with her optimism and hopes on the sheer chance that Ch'en is still alive and still needs her help and goes up the tower alone to find her and she does even against all odds. She talks about how she wants to cry when she sees her. In Ch'en's hour of need, Amiya arrives carrying the hopes of what she wanted to be herself, and they fight a battle where they are alone, saving each other, promising each other that they can do it, and they come out alive.

There are so, so so many more details about them. Ch'en's wishes for Amiya to call her by first name in a closer way, the way that Amiya shyly, obstinately continues to add some form of honorific for her. The way Ch'en inherited her abusive father's rhetoric and echoed his lines to Amiya to try to get her to distance herself from her in the beginning, only to apologize at the top of the tower and tell her she wishes she'd met her earlier.

But the main thing I always think about, at the top of the tower, is where black-snake-controlled Talulah puts Amiya in a prison of fire specifically to goad Ch'en. She wraps her in flames and says "I wonder how her melting flesh will smell"/something akin to that and Ch'en loses her mind and yells as her to "don't touch her!" and says "I'm the one you want, let her go!" etc., you know, all the good shit. So my interpretation of the scene is this: since the black snake can't make Talulah do something she doesn't actually want to do, I've always felt that the feelings behind that scene were of Talulah wanting someone close to her to really, truly understand how it feels to lose someone you love, and she saw Amiya to Ch'en as being someone analogous to what Alina was to herself. I think even if you read Ch'en's feelings for Amiya as non-romantic, Amiya was still so so dearly important to her to make her react that way, and that the black snake being cruel enough to try to leverage their relationship to, ultimately, kill Ch'en, who was Talulah's last tether to not losing control of herself fully-was so outrageously heinous. Ch'en could have killed herself trying to get Amiya out, which would have been what the black snake wanted most of all, since it couldn't quite urge Talulah to kill Ch'en directly, and it would have done so by preying on both Talulah's love/sorrow for Alina and Ch'en's love for Amiya.

scrolling up and seeing the wall of text i wrote and. yeah. there's still so much more.

15. What's a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? Between the Li[e]s. Danganronpa fandom just hurts too much.

16. What are your writing strengths? Aside from dialogue, I think my other big strength is that I'm not afraid to write what I want even if and especially if it's fucked up. I also feel like another strength of mine is that the characters will take over for me, and get me to write them truly as they are without letting me change them. Even if that results in me writing things I'm very embarrassed and shy about writing.

17. What are your writing weaknesses? I lack discipline. I need to get myself consistently writing more, but it's hard for me to make time to do it.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

I don't tend to do more than a few phrases, and only then if it's a character's native language and I want them to call someone a cute nickname or something.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Princess Tutu. I was 13. it was the 4th of July. I was supposed to be in bed asleep. But I was using the string lights illumination to light up my journal and it was then for the very first time I felt the feeling of realizing that I could make anything happen that I wanted.

It was not very good at all! But I treasure the memories of having boundless energy to write with because I was just so excited to see something become real from something that had only till then been inside of me.

20. Favorite fic you've written?

dodecatheon meadia. maybe it's surprising because it's not one of my headliner chenmiya fics, but-it's a secret chenmiya fic if you squint!

and honestly even though the story of ex astris is a little patchy at times, by the end you feel just...gripped by the world building and by yan and vi in particular. so i remember writing for them, desperate to see the happiest ending i could make, weaving it in with the canon with as many of my favorite details as possible, and it felt so good. i wrote pretty much nonstop for a week straight and finished it. the feeling of just-DYING to write was burning under my skin after finishing the game and the satisfaction of finishing the fic was magical, even if it came with the usual...idk, 'fanfic post-partum' of sending your writing out into the world when it's all done.

tagging: @lanymme, @annierosaart, and anyone else who wants to do it!

#bunny talk #about me

[raisin-shell]

Hello, if, it's not too much trouble can you do male version of FAVE SEX POSITION Head Connan's

Of course it’s not too much trouble nonnie. Let’s get into it.

NSFW/SMUT/Language/18+/male reader

As we all know Leonardo is the man in charge. He’s the end all to be all. The leader. But just because he’s leader an alpha male does not make. Leonardo likes to be dominated by his male lovers. And there are several kinks to add to this… one it’s a chance for him to be told what to do and two he’s completely out of control of the situation. Both are highly stimulating and arousing to the typically abrupt leader. That being said his favorite position is reverse cowboy. It allows his partner the deepest penetration all while giving his mate complete control. Naturally his wrists will be bound or held and he is to only bounce or move when his mate tells him he can do so. Limber doesn’t begin to describe this origami swan like mating display but his partner sure enjoys it.

If being a top had a mascot, it would be Raph. Because if you think this beefy hunk of massive muscles isn’t metro af, you got another thing coming. There’s nothing more Raph loves than muscles and men have the biggest for their form. So much admiration for their form, as well his own, turned into a desire that stoked a fire deep within his belly. His favorite position is… you guessed it. From behind. Because as we all know Raph is also an ass man. He has to feel dominant and has to feel in control at all times. This feeds into his wavering ego.

Oooohhhh Donnie boy. Where do I even start? Let’s look at what we know I mean he is very experimental in most things he does. Pretty sure that stems over into his sex life. Literally ANY position is up for grabs with this guy. Although I will say that Don Bon is particularly fond of fellatio and having his lengthy tail stroked along with a good blow job never hurt anyone. Top or bottom can go either way.

Mikey cakes is a more one on one, mono a mono kinda guy if you haven’t figured that out. He’s not afraid to get in your face, perhaps a little too much into your personal space. So expect this guy to enjoy what he likes to call “stuff the duck” aka missionary. Like Raph, Mikey also likes to top. He’ll have those knees touching your chest with his icy blue eyes a mere breath from yours faster than he can eat a pizza.

#teenage mutant ninja turtles #tmnt bayverse #tmnt raphael #tmnt leonardo #tmnt #bayverse #tmnt 2016 #tmnt donatello #tmnt michelangelo #answered asks

[sacramentonewsjournal]

Sutton Stracke Will By no means Be Erikas Good friend Shades RHOBH

Credit score: Milla Cochran/startraksphoto, Nancy Rivera/Bauergriffin.com / MEGA Sutton Stracke and Erika Jayne appeared to show over a brand new leaf amid filming on the twelfth season of The Actual Housewives of Beverly Hills. However is their truce for actual? After the most recent episode of the Bravo actuality sequence noticed Sutton supporting Erika at her Fairly Mess hair extension occasion and welcoming her into her dwelling for an off-the-cuff Popeyes lunch on silver platters, the place they appeared to make progress of their efforts to grasp one another higher, Sutton defined why she determined to attend the hair occasion regardless of the shortage of assist for her personal enterprise. “Once I got here into this group of girls, I actually got here in after my divorce. It had been a couple of years, and it took me some time to select myself up, and I used to be impressed by this group of girls. Everybody had a enterprise, was working, and we had been all supporting one another. It was very inspiring, and I remembered that, and I believed, ‘I’m going to Erika’s hair extension occasion, even when there’s a beef.’ As a result of it’s the fitting factor to do,” Sutton revealed on the September 28 episode of the RHOBH: After Present. Whereas Sutton made the choice to assist Erika, she identified that the assist wasn’t reciprocated on the Cashmere & Caviar occasion she held at her namesake boutique final 12 months. As RHOBH followers could have observed, solely Garcelle Beauvais and Crystal Kung-Minkoff had been seen on the bash. “I did a really massive factor this 12 months with my cashmere line and I didn’t have the entire girls’ assist. I didn’t. And [Garcelle] didn’t have the entire assist for [her] e-book,” Sutton famous. Nonetheless, she welcomed Erika into her dwelling for a sit-down meal, and Erika felt that her efforts to place their troubled previous behind them had been well-received. “I went there with an open coronary heart and we tried to attach and I went over with an open coronary heart and an open thoughts,” she confirmed. “I’ve to maneuver on with my life and I’ve to maneuver on with the relationships that I’ve on this group of girls. I don’t know what will occur however actually in my coronary heart of hearts, I need peace. I need decision,” Erika continued of her intentions with Sutton and different members of the RHOBH forged. “A variety of hurtful issues have been mentioned between the 2 of us. I’m a fighter. I combat again, however I don’t need this, I don’t search this kind of animosity. I need peace inside my life and inside this group of girls.” However after Erika acknowledged that she’ll must “see how lengthy it lasts” between herself and Sutton, Sutton made it clear she’s removed from prepared for a friendship with Erika. “I can’t let it go and I don’t belief her,” she acknowledged. “You strive having somebody say that they performed you after which name you a horrible title. How do you progress on from that ever? Do I take pleasure in her generally… Like, her firm is kinda humorous. I don’t want her hurt. However she’s not a pal… She by no means can be.” The Actual Housewives of Beverly Hills season 12 airs Wednesdays at 8/7c on Bravo. Originally published at Sacramento News Journal

#Sacramento News Journal

[hermannsthumb]

I have a fun prompt I've been thinking about I hope you have time for one day! When Newt and Hermann meet actually things go really really well and they even get together. It's just they bicker so much and have huge science-based arguments that everyone assumed they must have hated each other on sight.

sure thing! i had fun with this one

----

"So," Newt says. "I was talking to Tendo today."

Across the mess table, Hermann hums in feigned interest. Newt knows it's feigned 'cause Hermann doesn't stop either thing he's doing: using his left hand to wind noodles around a fork, and using his right hand to scribble away a series of lengthy equations on the back of a paper napkin. His full attention has been hopping between both for about ten minutes now—no room for Newt to slip in there. He's testing his limits enough as it. Half of the last equation ended up scratched into the tabletop, and the last time he lifted his fork to his mouth, it was empty. And then he swallowed anyway. Newt kinda loves the guy.

"Yeah," Newt says, deciding to continue like Hermann responded the way he was actually supposed to respond, which would've been something along the lines of what an utterly fascinating story, Newton, do tell me more. I love hearing you talk, Newton. How marvelously smart you are, Newton, and how melodic and breathtaking your voice is. Now watch me bite down on an empty fork again. "Kinda funny. He was asking how we met."

Hermann finally looks up at Newt suspiciously over the rims of his glasses, which are slipping slowly down his nose. He stills them with the tip of his index finger before they land in his dinner. "Why?"

"I don't know, man," Newt says. "He just was. It was like, small talk, you wouldn't get it. He dropped by the lab when you were out this morning to let me know that there was extra space if we wanted it. Like, lab space." Hermann resumes scratching an equation into the table absently. Newt rolls his eyes. "As in, we could have separate labs if we wanted now."

Hermann knits his eyebrows together. "Separate laboratories?"

When Newt and Hermann first started at the Hong Kong Shatterdome, the k-scientist team was pre-existing and significantly bigger, and anyone who joined on later—like, you know, them—basically got shoved in wherever they fit. For Newt and Hermann, that happened to be Laboratory Space D, Basement Level 1 (the only basement level), along with a former marine biologist who was killed on a research excursion a month later when a kaiju made unexpected landfall, like, right on top of their chosen shelter. Bad luck. Anyway, Newt's known about the existence of other Hong Kong Shatterdome lab spaces in the vague and absent sort of way that you would an urban legend, but (similarly so) he never thought he and Hermann would actually ever lay eyes on one. And then Tendo stopped by to dangle it in front of Newt on a stick.

"The other labs were being used as storage for ages after everyone else—" Newt searches for a word tasteful enough to encapsulate got stomped by a kaiju and wised up and decided to live out what are probably our last few days before the world ends with their families instead of alone in a military bunker. "—left. Anyway, Tendo told me they've been going through shit like crazy this month, I think to see if they can salvage any old tech, and that the other labs are basically totally emptied out now. We just have to ask and they're ours."

Hermann sets down both his pen and fork, twisting his mouth contemplatively. He finally loses the battle against gravity with his glasses, and they miss his plate by an inch, swinging back on their chain and bouncing harmlessly against his chest instead. Newt briefly wonders if getting a chain for his own glasses would save them from their frequent fatal falls into kaiju organ cavities and buckets of non-neutralized kaiju blood, but decides not even the money he'd save on replacement pairs would make a fashion faux pas like that worth it. "You know I don't much fancy the basement," Hermann says.

"Your joints," Newt agrees. The damp of the basement sets Hermann's joint pain off frequently, something Hermann talks about just as frequently. Newt's not really a fan of the basement either, though for different reasons—he would kill to get some windows and natural, non-fluorescent light in there. Sun lamps can only do so much. He's pretty sure he'd fucking glow if he stepped outside right now. Also, it's cold down here.

"And it might be nice to be closer to LOCCENT, in case of an emergency," Hermann continues. "And closer to—oh, hang on. What has this got to do with us?"

"Huh?"

"How we met," Hermann says. "You said, that Tendo asked—"

"Oh," Newt says. It's his turn to play coy. He stirs his chopsticks through his own dinner, accidentally flicking a piece of tofu to the table. It lands on top of Hermann's etched equations. Hermann scowls, because that's how their routine goes: Newt gets Hermann's stuff dirty, and Hermann gets mad. "Well. It was just that Tendo was like you can finally be out of each other's hair, how the hell did you guys get stuck together anyway when you obviously can't stand each other, that kind of stuff."

"Ah," Hermann says.

"And I said that it was because we knew each other before," Newt says, "and that we transferred here together. And that's when he asked."

"And what did you say?" Hermann says.

"That we used to correspond professionally," Newt says, "and met at a conference way back in 2017." He adds, with a grin, "Also professionally."

This was technically true. Newt and Hermann did write to each other, professionally, and they did meet at a conference, professionally, but what went down after a long and public shouting match in the events hall of a very nice hotel—in Hermann's room, five floors up in that very nice hotel—was not very professional. The events of the week that followed—spent, intermittently, between Hermann's hotel room, several coffee shops, a bench under a tree in Newt's favorite park, a rotation sushi restaurant, brushing knees shyly on the tram, and, finally, clasping hands on the staircase of Newt's apartment and gazing deeply into each other's eyes—weren't very professional, either, but Newt likes to think that they were very romantic. Rom-com level shit. Newt revealed none of this to Tendo, who referred to the 2017 conference as that Infamous Day for the rest of their conversation. "Well, it was professional," Hermann sniffs.

But he reaches across the table, and, very timidly, crosses his pinkie over top of Newt's. It's the most blatant form of PDA Hermann ever willingly engages Newt in. Newt thinks if he ever tried to touch two fingers at once in anywhere but the lab, or God forbid, hold his whole hand, Hermann's ears might start emitting steam like something out of a cartoon. "It might be nice," he says again.

Laboratory Space D, Basement Level 1, is unique—Newt knows—in that Newt and Hermann's quarters are connected to it directly. None of the other labs have that luxury (and Newt has a feeling it's because Lab Space D wasn't actually intended as a lab space). He remembers being told that when they were shoved into it. Yeah, you have the darkest and tiniest lab space on base, but your rooms are right there! When Newt wants to go to Hermann's room, or if he's in Hermann's room and needs a sweatshirt or something from his own, he just has to step the three feet between their two doors. Moving labs could throw a wrench in that—they might be asked to move quarters, too, and might be shuttled to opposite sides of the Shatterdome, and though they could just bite the bullet and request couple's quarters already, it's nice to have their own spaces when they need it. That would never work. And, well, besides—the lab, their lab, feels like home to them at this point. Newt shrugs.

"On the other hand," Hermann says, and he taps Newt's pinkie lightly, "I quite like how things are. I can live with the damp, really."

"We can get a dehumidifier," Newt offers.

Hermann nods, and he gives Newt the barest hint of a smile.

Their monthly delivery of lab supplies—whatever they can afford with their shoestring budget, which, these days, mostly means chalk, rubber gloves, and nice instant ramen—comes three weeks later. Newt wouldn't exactly call the Shatterdome delivery guy a friend, seeing as he has yet to divulge his name to Newt (and also Newt's pretty sure he has a thing for Hermann, since he always seems to wait until Hermann is in the lab to stroll by with his package trolley and always calls him Dr. Gottlieb with big stupid heart eyes, oh, Dr. Gottlieb, that new sweater looks soooo nice on you!, so anyway, that makes him Newt's rival by default), but he, at least, recognizes and acknowledges Newt at this point. That's more than Newt can say for most people on the base. After his usual greeting to the two of them (hey, Newt, oh, hellllooo, Dr. Gottlieb, did you do something new with your hair?), he starts to unload their packages, also like usual.

"I was surprised to see that you guys are still down here," he tells Newt, not like usual. "Tendo mentioned something about you getting your own labs."

"He did?" Newt says, meaning to frown, but grinning instead. It's kind of fun to be the subject of gossip. He pulls off his gloves and tosses them in the trash to help with their supplies—the dehumidifier he requested should be in there, and it's fancy and definitely on the bigger side.

"Yeah," their delivery guy continues. He hands Newt a fuckin' massive brick of a package. Hermann's stupid chalk. The amount that Hermann tears through in a month really is astounding: Newt has a private theory that Hermann is an undercover space alien from a planet where chalk constitutes all of the primary food groups, and he secretly sneaks out here and eats it in the dead of night when Newt is asleep. "Anyway, sorry I'm late," the delivery guy says, as Newt imagines Hermann crunching on a piece of chalk like a carrot stick, "I went to all the other labs first."

"No worries, dude," Newt says. "Sorry for the confusion."

He lugs the package over to Hermann's desk, and drops it down on the only spot not over-cluttered with papers and books. Hermann complains about Newt's messiness a lot for a guy who is just as bad, if not worse. "Need any now?" Newt asks Hermann.

Hermann, scribbling away at his chalkboard, grunts. Newt decides that's a no.

"Hard at work, Dr. Gottlieb?" the delivery guy says, practically fluttering his eyelashes.

Another grunt. Newt snorts.

"I thought you guys would've moved right away," the delivery guy (obviously disappointed at Hermann's lack of attention) tells Newt. "Tendo mentioned you've been stuck together for a while, ever since some sort of dramatic confrontation at a conference ten years ago." he adds eagerly, "Did you really get thrown out? I don't know how you haven't killed each other yet."

"It's taken a lot of hard work," Newt says. Yeah, the whole being-ejected-from-the-conference-and-barred-from-all-future-ones-forever thing is technically true too, but everyone there was too stuffy and serious for Newt's fun vibes anyway, so he thinks it's their loss. The most important part of the scientific breakthrough process, Newt frequently thinks, was having someone there to challenge you and push back at you. Sometimes loudly. And in public. In the conference hall of a very expensive hotel, in front of all of your scientific peers, some hotel security guards, and a poor graduate student who made the mistake of asking you and your penpal-colleague for your joint opinion on something and got caught in the crosshairs. Besides—out of everyone at that stupid conference, Newt and Hermann were the only ones snapped up by the PPDC, so it's doubly their loss. "And, yeah, we got thrown out. Me and Hermann fight a lot, but we always make up eventually. It's no big deal. It's, like, our thing."

"Make up?"

Newt waggles his eyebrows and doesn't elaborate. The making up part is the best part of arguing with Hermann, honestly, but he's not about to go giving private details about stuff like that to his rival.

By the time Hermann finally descends his ladder, three hours have passed, and Newt is frowning over an email he's just gotten from Shatterdome HR. Hermann will probably see it in a second when he checks his own email—it was sent to both of them, after all—but Newt waves him over to his desk anyway. "Look," he says.

He draws out the spare chair he keeps by his desk (for Hermann), and Hermann drops into it gratefully, propping his cane up against the arm. Then Hermann pushes his glasses up onto his nose and scans the email with a frown of his own. Newt reads it aloud for him anyway. "'Subject: Quarters Reassignment,'" he says. "Dear Drs. Geiszler and Gottlieb: It has recently come to our attention that you will be transferring to Laboratories A&B. Should you wish to transfer quarters as well, you will find the necessary paperwork..."

"By Jove," Hermann groans, and pulls his glasses off again, smudging a bit of chalk on his cheek, "can't they just leave us alone?"

Newt laughs. "I'll tell them we're not interested. Wait, listen to this bit at the end: Congratulations—this must be a relief! Guess they were getting your complaint forms after all, Hermann." Both Newt and Hermann had long-since assumed that any and all official complaint forms stamped with a k-sci lab return address are filed right into the garbage. It's never deterred Hermann from sending them in, though.

"Hmph," Hermann says.

Newt carefully rolls his shirtcuff back down to his wrist and uses it to rub off Hermann's chalk smudge. When it's gone, or at least, mostly gone, he brushes his fingers back through Hermann's short hair. Hermann's eyelids flutter shut, and as he leans into Newt's touch, his creased forehead smooths just a little. "Mm. You're lovely," he murmurs. "We really ought to tell them we're married. It's gone on long enough."

"I guess," Newt says. "But it's kind of funny, isn't it?"

#newmann #maria's fanfiction tag #Anonymous

[yjwhatif]

in the comics, Bart once got shot in the knee point-blank and had to get a prosthetic knee (accelerated healing doesn't always mean healing CORRECTLY). everything surrounding it wasn't very good writing and it didn't really actively effect Bart in any way it felt it should've (was rarely brought up not long after), and anyways i bring this up because i'm worried an injury of equivalent severity will happen to Bart in YJ, and i don't think this show would brush that kinda thing under the rug

Ooh if they did do something like that, it would be really interesting to see. Bart has always been so reliant on his accelerated healing to justify his maybe not being as careful as he probably should be, so to see it actually cause him permanent physical damage which needs external medical treatment would likely have a massive impact on him. Not only could it affect his physical mobility as he’d potentially need to retrain himself to use his speed in a way which comfortably works with the prosthetic - something which would take time and patience - a quality not so heavily practiced by speedsters. It would also have a big effect on his mind - realising he’s not invincible, maybe second guessing himself and becoming more cautious, or maybe he’d find himself getting frustrated more often as he struggles to come to terms with the changes that are now apart of him. Depending on how extensive the injury - how would he respond to the prospect of potentially never being able to run again - or at the very least, not at the high speeds he’s used to? What is a speedster if they can’t run? Who are they if they can’t be who they’ve always been? These are ideas I would be so fascinated to see the show explore - not just from the perspective of the person injured, but also the people who surround them and how one change can have a ripple effect which cascades a lot further than is potentially realised.

We’ve seen characters thriving and comfortable at the other side of a major physical change - but we haven’t really explored the lengthy journey one must go through to get to that point of comfort and acceptance… I guess we sorta have with Vic’s journey in S3 but that’s no reason to not explore another’s journey with a different experience.

So ye, I’d love to see something like this explored in depth and I think Bart would be the perfect character portray it through…

LB

#thanks anon! #ask box #my response #bart allen #kid flash #yj #young justice #young justice phantoms

[felassan]

Zero To Play podcast episode: John Epler, Narrative Director at BioWare

In the most recent episode of Zero To Play podcast the guest was John Epler, Narrative Director on DA4. He talked about narrative games, how they fit inside an industry leaning towards games as a service, his experience being at BioWare for almost 14 years, and advice that he has for aspiring devs who want to create memorable, impactful and transformative moments in games.

The episode summary read as follows:

In this episode John brings his 13+ year experience being at BioWare and working on titles like Mass Effect & Dragon Age: Inquisition to explain how he believes storytelling will evolve and develop through the medium of games.

He shares some of his favorite moments and why he thinks games are the most powerful and interesting medium to be exploring in this generation.

It’s a good and interesting interview, so worth checking out if you can! You can listen to it here or on Spotify.

This post contains some notes on what was talked about in the episode, in case a text format is better for anyone (for example folks that can’t listen to it due to accessibility reasons). It’s under a cut due to length.

A bit of paraphrasing.

The average dev stays with a game company/studio for about 5 years. John joined BioWare right after the EA acquisition happened.

[on going into Trespasser] “Myself and the Lead Writer Patrick Weekes both knew that we needed to wrap up at least this part of the Inquisitor’s story, and set up where we want to go next with the franchise, with the IP. We learned a lot of lessons from DAI itself. DAI was a game with a lot of exploration and open-world content, and while we stand by that (I still think it was the right call for the game), one of the pieces of feedback we got from the fans was that they really wanted some more directed storytelling. Jaws of Hakkon was more of a continuation of open-world, more free-from exploration and free-form design. Trespasser was our opportunity to tell a story in a much more linear and focused way. [this way of telling stories] really does help to be able to create that sense of pacing and emotional escalation. It’s a lot harder to do that when you’re mixing up storybeats with big, wide open-worlds. Trespasser was a project where everyone was kind of in sync, we were all building [towards] the same thing.” 

-

“There were [story]beats [in Trespasser] that I don't think we would have been able to get away with in basegame DAI, one of those being the - quite frankly - incredibly lengthy conversation you have with Solas at the end. Because by this point we knew that if someone is playing this DLC then they are in it - they’ve been in it for the last two DLCs, they’ve played through the entire game, they want something incredibly story-focused. And we were able to really dive deep into that, some of the deep lore, some of the narrative. This was one of the only conversations that I’d worked on which, due to limitations of the engine, we actually had to break into two different conversation styles because it was so massive. We also got opportunities to do some fun callbacks. One of my favorite ones was one Patrick suggested which was, ‘What if I [didn’t like Solas much and] spent the entire basegame telling Solas I didn't want to hear anything he had to say?’ So we had the option that if you never chose ‘Investigate’ or a dialogue option that implied that you wanted to hear him blather on, there was one dialogue option that you could pick which was basically ‘Solas, when have I ever wanted to hear any of the shit you have to say?’ And it just kind of wrapped up the conversation super quickly, and Solas looked exasperated. It was fun because it’s not the kind of thing you can necessarily do in the main game, but in a DLC which is entirely for those core fans, you have a lot more options as to what you can do.”

John has an understanding of games as an interactive medium.

“Choice of combat, choice of mechanics, all of that does have an impact on the storytelling and on the narrative that you’re trying to put through. A lot of storytelling in games is trying to make sure that the - there’s a phrase, ludonarrative dissonance - [for example, say] I’m making a game where I’m trying to make the player feel powerful. How do you [do that?] [...] In games, this is kind of the challenge. Interactivity is so key to it. [...] It’s a lot harder [compared to characters in film] to put the player in a situation that they are going to lose, because as soon as you take away that autonomy, you’re taking away some of that interactivity. [...] If as a player I'm making you feel strong and powerful, and then I pull you into a cutscene and suddenly you’re losing the fight, you’re losing what’s going. That is a much different sensation, that is something movies can get away with that games can’t.”

-

“What are [players/our audience] actually meaning when they say that they ‘want choice’? I think that in a lot of cases we conflate that with ‘Oh, they want to make a big decision that changes the world’. But in a lot of cases what players want is the game to react to what they’re doing and the choices that they’re making in a way that feels organic and natural. I think this is something CD Projekt Red and the Telltale games did really well - of making it clear when the game is actually going to pay attention to what you said or did, so that when you see it later you’re like ‘Oh right yeah, I made that choice, the game said it was going to remember it, and it remembered, this is cool’.

And it doesn't always mean completely changing the course of events. The Telltale writers, as they got on through the games, they realized that the better way to address choice - and something we’ve done too - is, if we make the game have three endings, four or five - like DAO had an absolute massive amount of ways that it could turn out. How do you pay that off if you want to do a sequel? There's basically two choices. One is that you make an incredibly short game because you have to account for these very different branches, OR you collapse them and say ‘Sorry, this is what we’re going with’. And I don't think either of those are necessarily satisfying. For me it’s about making the players feel like their time and the choices they made have been respected. More than anything else that's the key, it comes down to understanding your fanbase, what it is they’re looking for, what it is they’re asking for, because there is that desire for choice, reactivity, consequences. And it’s something that BioWare, that we’re especially sensitive to because it’s always been a big pillar of the games we make. It’s just about understanding what this actually means from a practical standpoint and how you execute on that in a way that makes your fans feel satisfied, while still not writing yourself an impossible check to cash, because, you know, you can react to anything, but if you have a game that ends in three separate ways, you have to go with one of those two options and neither of them is going to be intensely satisfying to the player.”

-

“A phrase I’ve been using is, what I'm describing as - the half life of quantum. ‘Quantum’ is what we say when it could be like, one of six different things. The half life of this is how long before you actually resolve that down to a single point. Like, provide the player with that reactivity, but collapse those into a way that you can proceed forward. This is 100% a lesson learned from Dragon Age, for all the games. ‘Ok, what do we do with this? Holy shit, that is huge, how are we actually going to pay that off?’ Reactivity, but without putting yourself in an impossible-to-win situation [from a story/writing standpoint].”

-

“More than anything else, the advice I would give [to aspiring devs] is, come up with some fundamental pillars of your story and of your design. There's a misunderstanding that we plan out the exact story for years in advance. We know what we want to get to, we kinda know how we’re going to get there, and a lot of it is just making sure that you have those pillars and those razors. So as you go through development and find, ‘Oh this piece is not working, this piece is clunking’, you’ll always have principles that you can go back to. What is important about this story? Does the piece that isn't working satisfy any of those things? If no, then we have to change it or get rid of it.”

-

[more advice] “Don’t be afraid to fail (I say fail here as a good thing). Don't be afraid to put something out there and have it absolutely torn to shreds. Feedback is your best friend, having people that you trust to provide that feedback. If I were building a big epic narrative, a big epic franchise, [I’d advise that you] start with your principles and the core of what you want to do, and then just start putting out ideas. ‘Here’s my idea for this story’. It’s easier for me, I'm inheriting a lot of work that's already been done, a lot of ground that's already laid - I have a Lead Writer that has been doing this longer than I have, PW is fantastic. But for myself, it’s just been a lot of like, okay, taking this stuff that's already been built, and making sure that I know what we want to do with whatever the next project is. It sounds overly reductive and overly simplistic, but it really is about just having a really strong sense of what is important to your franchise, what’s important to your brand. If you’re coming up with a new IP, it’s a little trickier. You need to spend some time thinking: what’s the tone, what’s the setting, what kind of story do we want to tell.”

-

[more advice] Don’t be afraid to heavily reference existing media [as actual razors, internally]. But that's not something you ever want to have go out to the public, because people go like ‘Oh, you’re just being derivative’. It’s like no, we’re just leaning on cultural touchstones that people know, so that when you’re communicating with people outside your discipline, or with people above you like executives, they can at least get a sense like, ‘Oh I kinda get what you’re doing, okay that makes sense’, versus ‘Let me first of all explain the entire history of the world’. My experience with executives is that they don't have time for that and justifiably so. But if I tell them we’re doing X but with Y and Z it’s like, ‘Ok cool, we get that’. [...] It’s a tiered approach. You have levels of detail that you provide to different people based on what they need to know. You yourself may need to know the history of these characters and how they relate to each other and the thousands of years of history for that, but the person building combat probably doesn't need all that detail and just needs to know ‘What am I working with, how do these characters fight.”

-

“A razor is a statement that you use to slice away what doesn't fit. The narrative razor for Trespasser was, I can’t remember exactly, we were basically trying to go for the Avengers meets Indiana Jones, Winter Soldier. Avengers meets Winter Soldier. [a razor is] a statement that you take all the content [by], ‘Okay, does this actually fit this statement? No? Okay, get rid of it’. It’s about focusing your game. Cutting away the ideas that don't really fit is how you avoid scope-loading and people crunching, and how you keep your project focused.

Trespasser was an intensely-focused DLC, in that it focused on basically two main core things, Solas and the fate of the Inquisition. Everything kind of wrapped into those two razors. As we were going through content, we had stuff like - I said this at a GDC presentation in 2016 - the Qunari are farming lyrium to make Qunari templars. And then we looked at it like, how does that apply to either razor? It doesn't, it doesn't fit either one of them. So we simplified it to, ‘Okay, what actually makes this work in the context of what we’re building?’. [a razor is] a statement that you use to slice off what doesn't fit into the game that you’re building. It can be painful, but having strong razors means that it never comes across as a personal thing.”

Narrative does not mean story.

Two of his least favorite mechanics in games [not including Stalker and DayZ] are weight limits and weapon degradation.

On games as a service:

Interviewer/host: “Talking about games as a service, it’s definitely something that is talked about a lot in gaming in terms of the most successful games. With Dragon Age, putting DLCs out is kind of maybe that same influence, but games that are launched and then iterated on and updated and pushed with content every month, like Fortnite, Riot Games, League of Legends, Valorant etc, that's kind of I feel where the trend of games are trying to go and make the most of those interactions between other people, to make replayability possible and easier. How do you see narrative, do you see it being forgotten with this increase of games as a service? [...] Do you see that as a positive part of narrative in games or do you think there’s still work to be done in that space?”

John: “[...] The place we start to see some confusion, a lot of people think it’s one or the other, but to me, it’s another way, another option for telling stories that by their nature have to be different. I think that's where you need to be, again, very cognizant of what you’re building and of the genre you’re working in, because a story that works for a more traditional box product is not necessarily the kind of story that would work for a games as a service product. [...] Games as a service, understanding what the cadence is that you’re planning to deliver to and what kinds of stories best fit that cadence - some games are better at it than others.

One game that did a pretty decent job of it is Destiny 2, through patches. Final Fantasy 14 is another example, they do a lot of their storytelling between the big expansion releases as part of their free patches. They always know that they have - I think, five big patches? - between each expansion, and they’ve structured their stories to fit into that very specific five-act structure. If they tried to do it weekly or bi-weekly it would be a very different experience. I think there’s always room for narrative. It’s about knowing that there are different lessons to learn and not being afraid to learn those lessons, as opposed to trying to fit the traditional box product square-peg narrative into a live service round hole. And that’s why you need to have a strong vision and why you need to have somebody at the Director level who understands and plays the kinds of games that you’re building, so they kind of understand what works and what doesn't - ‘This type of story worked really well for this game, and I'm not saying you should copy it, but you should at least be willing to learn those lessons and not reinvent the wheel every time.’

We’ve been making games for a long time now, there’s lots of lessons to learn, we should be trying to learn from them and not trying to like, change everything every single time.”

-

[on length of narrative] “In a lot of cases you know how long your game should be and the hardest part is sticking to that. [...] There is always a worry that fans are going to see a number and be like ‘That’s not big enough or that’s not long enough.’ I do think that there is sometimes a lack of confidence in what you're building, and a desire to make it shorter or longer, but I think at the core, the people building [a] game know how long it’s going to take to tell this story that they want to tell. I say this specifically for narrative, but even stuff like progression, you know how long you want it to take. For myself, I will always take a short but well-executed game over a long game that feels that it has a lot of [useless/boring] padding. It’s about identifying the kind of game you’re building. Open-world games are always going to be bigger and longer than more linear games. Being confident in that number and recognizing when you’re adding time and space for no other purpose than just to make that number on the back of the box longer [is important]. Fans don’t love that, they can see right through that.”

-

“It was nice to see the amount of hard work that went into DAI rewarded by the press [with the Game of the Year award]. There are definitely parts of it that didn't land that we wish we could have done differently, but it was a project that felt like we were all pulling in the same direction and when we started getting that positive feedback, it was definitely a sense of relief. Especially because a lot of us had been on DA2, and while we were proud of that project, it obviously didn't get the reception that we wanted at that time.

[when they were watching DAI’s release and tracking its reception] We’re keeping a running tally, like ‘Okay, this is really looking like we did something special here’. I’m proud of every project that I’ve worked on but DAI is definitely one that I’m especially proud of.” 

-

“Part of the advantage to being at a company for as long as I have, I've worked with a lot of the other people [responsible for things in other departments like art, writing, audio etc], so while there is that anxiety like ‘I reeeally hope that this works out’, I know it’s going to, because I know that everyone who is doing these roles, like our Animation Director, our Audio Director, Levels, all those other people on the project know what they’re doing and they know their shit better than I could ever hope to. So I’m just kind of standing here like ‘Hey y’all this is what we need’, and it’s coming in. And when it does come in, when you see the pieces together - I think for myself, on DAI, the moment that I first finally started feeling like it was really all coming together was, one of our music designers, going into one of the moments at the end of Redcliffe, doing the music/audio pass, and me finally seeing this scene that I’d been staring at and banging my head against for months - turn into something that actually conveyed emotion, that actually was something that I was excited for our fans to get to see and get to experience. That’s always a special feeling.”

Cinematics is one of the last things to come in, which means that audio is always waiting for them to come in: “They always did an amazing job with very little time, I will never not praise our audio and music designers.”

“Patrick Weekes is the Lead Writer, which means ultimately PW is responsible for the writing side of the game. As Narrative Director, I’m there to offer, to basically take the vision of the project and interpret the part that focuses on narrative and then provide that to my team - because I work with writing, cinematics, level designers and everyone - I’m there to be like ‘Hey this is the narrative we want to achieve’, which sometimes involves getting involved in the story side of things. But a lot of that is PW’s job as Lead Writer, they’ve been doing it for a long time, they’ve been in the industry longer than I have. It’s a really good working relationship. We worked together when I was in cinematics and they were in writing, we worked together on the Iron Bull, then we were both leads on Trespasser, so we have a trust.

I think what’s been really helpful is that they know that if I tell them something’s not working, it’s not coming from ‘I wanna do it my way, you better just do it my way because I’m the boss’, it’s coming from ‘This is something I think we need to do for the project’. And vice versa, if they push back on me about something, I know it’s not coming from ‘Screw you I'm the Lead Writer, I make the decisions’, they’re saying it because this is an actual concern. I do writing, I’m a writer on the project too but I will fully admit PW is a way better writer than I am, so I'm comfortable leaning on them for that stuff, and then I’m the person who can provide that ‘Okay, we know that gameplay is providing this, we know levels is providing this, let’s shift the priorities'.

It’s also about knowing, being able to take that back from any one discipline and say ‘Okay, what is the right decision for the project as a whole’, and sometimes that means telling PW something that they may not think is their favorite thing to do, but they will listen because they trust me and I trust them. I don't know how it works at other studios, there are places where Narrative Director is also the Lead Writer, or where there is Narrative Director and Lead Writer is the highest authority on narrative that exists, but it’s worked for us again because we have that lengthy experience. It would be interesting to see how it would work if we didn’t know each other for a while before this. It’s largely a relationship of trusting each other to know our areas of expertise and also just understanding what’s important to the narrative vision of the project.”

When they did Tevinter Nights it was ‘extracurricular’ work: “It was fun, I got to do some writing, I got published, which was really fun”.

[source]

[☕ found this post or blog interesting or useful? my ko-fi is here if you feel inclined. thank you 🙏]

#dragon age 4 #the dread wolf rises #da4 #dragon age #bioware #video games #solas #long post #longpost

[ofbloodandbullets]

So it’s recently come to my attention that not everyone in the world has actually watched The Old Guard (WHO KNEW?!) so I’m going to try and do some info dumps about the world, the general canon and Andy’s history, personality, powers etc.  This will ... probably get kinda lengthy. 

Also: MAJOR MAJOR SPOILERS FOR COMICS & MOVIE.

The first thing you need to know is that for the main part, the history and the world that TOG takes place in is the exact same one as the real history of the world.  It’s set in modern day, though the plot points stretch back to 7k+ years ago.  It’s also important to note that there is a lot of historical inaccuracies and some things in canon that conflict themselves so it’s best to just take it all with a grain of salt and just go with what works best for your particular preferences etc. 

The main difference between reality and TOG is that in TOG there are a very minute like .00000000002% of the population that are immortals.  Now, it’s important to note that these people can die but they resurrect pretty close to immediately after they die no matter the amount of damage done.  Now it can take some time to fully heal or reform, depending on how extensive the trauma (being blown to bits or burned etc. will take longer to fix but there’s no amount of damage that we know of that can actually keep them dead).  

There are times when, for reasons unknown to the characters in character (or to us as readers  of the comics / viewers of the movie etc) that the immortality just stops.  There’ll just be a time that they suffer injuries that just don’t heal, and they die.  There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to this, be it age, number of times they’ve died, whatever.  Now, I have my own entirely headcanon and personal preference based theory which you can find HERE but it’s totally just a random idea that I had that I liked to explain the loss of Andy’s immortality in the movie (that doesn’t happen in the comics) and lets me say that she regains her immortality post canon so that I can nudge things back in the direction of the comics for post movie plots and so on.

Andy is, as far as we know, and as far as she knows, the oldest (human) immortal, coming in at around 7,000 years old.  She was born into a tribe, the Scythia (hence what she’s generally called: Andromache the Scythian).  A nomadic warrior tribe that I headcanon to be a matriarchy, Andy was betrayed by the ‘queen mother’ when she was sixteen and killed in battle because the leader feared that Andy posed a danger to her continuing rule.  This person was practically a mother to Andy and it was a horrific betrayal.  What was almost as shocking to Andy was the fact that she got back up again after being literally stabbed in the back and killed.

In the vein of trying to thwart prophecies making them happen, Andy killed the matriarch and took her placce ruling the tribe, eventually becoming a God King to her people and ruling over them for hundreds of years until her loneliness absolutely overwhelmed her and one day she just vanished.

At some point after this, she began to dream of a woman, feeling a pull towards this stranger that she couldn’t begin to explain.  After dozens, maybe hundreds of years, she managed to track down the woman in question (Noriko in the comics, Quynh in the movie) and realized that they’d been dreaming of each other.  (In the comics she meets Lykon before Quynh/Noriko, whom she had also been dreaming of).  

Now, the connection between these immortals isn’t explained in canon, and for a long time, Andy, Lykon, Noriko (and eventually Joe, Nicky, Book) thought they were the only ones but there is a scene in the second set of comics that implies that there are other ‘packs’ of immortals.  I headcanon that it’s a ‘like calls to like’ / kind of Sense8 simpatico type thing - like minded souls drawn to each other, which is why Andy and the others didn’t know about the other immortals, but again, that’s just entirely my thoughts on the matter. 

Lykon is the first to succumb to the loss of immortality, a short couple hundreds years after he and Andy find each other.   He dies on a battlefield, one that he and Quynh/Noriko and Andy fought on like a hundred/thousand before, champions for the abused etc.  Skip forward a couple hundred years again and enter Joe & Nicky, a Knight and a Muslim warrior who kill each other on the battlefield only to both wake up and spend (an unspecified amount of time) hunting and killing each other before eventually Andy & Quynh/Noriko find them.  In time, Joe & Nicky realize that they love each other.   (Important to note that Quynh/Noriko and Andy were also lovers).  In the movie, when the first major surge of witch hunts began, Quynh/Noriko and Andy go to help the women that stood accused, only to be captured and accused of witchcraft themselves.  After being hung, drowned, burned at the stake and coming back to life every time, the witch hunters settled on locking Quynh into an iron coffin and dropping her into the ocean.  (In the comics, Noriko is lost at sea during a massive storm that had thrown their ship entirely off course with Andy having no clue where they actually were at the time.) 

Joe & Nicky arrive in time to rescue Andy, but Noriko is already gone and despite spending decades tracking down every person even remotely involved in the so called ‘investigation’ into the women’s inquisition and punishment, Andy wasn’t able to find anything about where Quynh could be. 

Cue angst & depression & guilt for ages after.

The trio still steps in over the following decades, trying to help prevent the worst of atrocities, but Andy quickly begins to spiral into an, at best apathetic, at worst, entirely distant and withdrawn mindset and steadily begins to lose hope that they’re actually making any difference at all.

Skip ahead a century or two and enter Book; a Russian conscript who had been forced into the fight after being convicted of forgery.  Hung for desertion, Book spend days dying over and over again as he hung there, unable to attempt an escape until the troops finally packed up and moved on.   He and Andy, Nicky and Joe meet up and Book kinda reluctantly joins their little group.  It’s revealed that Book dreams, still, of Noriko/Quynh and while he can’t tell where hse is, dreams of her still dying, drowning on the floor of the ocean over and over and over like she had been for the last hundred or two years.  

Book returns at some point to his mortal family which ended in disaster when his last remaining son was dying of cancer, cursing and screaming at Book for ‘choosing not to save him’ by making him immortal too, even though it’s something Book had no ability to transfer or make happen.  Between his nightmares, losing his son and a number of other factors, Book decides he wants to end it all but no matter what he tries, doesn’t die and stay dead.

Eventually he’s approached by a pharmaceutical company that has figured out what he is and wants to run tests on him to see if they can unlock his healing / immortality for other people.  Merrick’s company works in league with an ex CIA agent whose wife died of a horrific terminal disease who hopes that they can find a way to keep anyone else from dying if they don’t have to.    Initially it was just supposed to be him, but he’d set up a display to stream for proof of what he was / they were and the corp decided they wanted all of the immortals.   Book ends up betraying the team, and he and the others end up locked up and tested on / killed / experimented on etc.  

There’s another character introduced in the meantime, the first new immortals in centuries, an American soldier named Niles.  There’s a lot more that goes on here, but the main point is that in the movie, Andy stops healing from her wounds shortly after she tracks down Nile and is put into incredible amounts of danger when Merrick (the leader of the pharmaceutical company) captures Andy, Joe, Book, Nicky.  Book is devastated, Nicky and Joe are furious, Andy’s just tired.

Eventually, Andy and the others break free with Niles’ help, destroy the lab they were originally held in etc and set out to try and hunt down any other proof, lab results, anything that Merrick got his hands on during the tests.

The group meets and settles on a hundred year exile for Booker (which I think is one of the stupidest things - like, the man’s clearly desperate and depressed and lonely and mentally unstable so by all means let’s isolate him for a fully century) and at the end of the movie we see him stumbling home to his apartment six months later to find Quynh standing in his apartment, pouring and drinking a glass of water which is a whole power move considering how many millions of times she died by drowning.

In the comics, Quynh/Noriko was driven entirely mad and to the point of wanting vengeance against Andy for abandoning her and spends a while gaslighting Andy and torturing her physically and emotionally and what not until she manages to isolate Andy from the other immortals and scoops in to ‘rescue’ Andy.  IDK what they’re going to adapt this to in the second movie, 

Again, via the link posted above, my Andy slowly begins to regain her immortality (again, IDK what they’re going to do with the next movie).  

Uhhhh yeah.  So I .. think that’s the majority of what you need to know for canon info about Andy.  THIS is also an important PSA regarding my Andy’s history & her longest lasting relationship that has nothing to do with canon at all but that is part of Andy’s bg in every verse, even if it never comes into play.

#CHARACTER INFO. #BIO. #HEADCANON. ( do not reblog. )

[some-stars]

Fic writer questionnaire! Tagged by @deputychairman, thank you!

1) How many works do you have on AO3?

65....just waiting for 69 so i can celebrate

2) What's your total AO3 word count?

288,609

3) How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

okay, so, there's a lot so we're gonna collapse some. So, 16: The Witcher (games and show), Supernatural, Dark Angel, Glee, Stargate (both SG1 and SGA), MCU, Vampire Diaries, Teen Wolf, due South, DC (comics and movies), House of Leaves, Sense8, Harry Potter, Les Miserables (book), Doctor Who, and X-Men movies. Oh, and I wrote a lot of NSYNC RPF back in the day but you will never see it. (Unless you literally read it back then and remember one and want to reread it, I’m not ashamed of them if you were also in the pit with me. If that is the case feel free to ask.)

4) What are your top 5 fics by kudos?  

all some children do is work: this one surprised me, i did NOT think there was this kind of appetite for almost-gen turned-into-a-kid fic, but i do really like the fic itself so i'm contented with its acclaim

method: i mean, it's fake dating, written back when there wasn't much non-modern-AU fake dating in witcher fandom (possibly there still isn't?) so, not surprised

Emergency Pants: this is the one that the Claw chose back in 2012 bc i had written very pornographic tony/bruce about a month after Avengers came out so there was a big appetite for it. i don't much care for it these days except i do still think the tony voice is good

warm you like the sunshine: deeply unsurprised this one is popular (and it's one of my own fics that i reread a lot), it's extremely tender BDSM with a juggernaut pairing, that gets the readers

As often as from thee I go: honestly kinda surprised about this one, which is just a 2500 word confection i wrote for my own satisfaction, but it does have explicit sex and jaskier crying about his feelings so maybe it makes sense

5) Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

I almost always do, but usually just with "Thanks!" unless it's a detailed or lengthy comment.

6) What's the fic you've written with the angstiest ending?

"Long black night, morning frost" (Les Miserables) for absolute certain. One of the very few fics I've written with an outright unhappy and pessimistic ending (although I found it very cathartic to write). For Witcher fics, "Kind" and "go ask alice" are about as sad as I get.

7) What's the fic you've written with the happiest ending?

Almost all of them, honestly. There's a point in happiness of endings where you really can't distinguish degrees. Probably the most--not saccharine, but distinctly Happy Ending-ish is either "Water like a stone" or "Darling, if you only knew," which to my eternal shame are both Glee fics. In terms of Witcher fics...it's still hard to pick! I think the kidfic trilogy ended very, very happily; I think "If you live through this with me" ended TOO happily.

8) Do you write crossovers? If so what is the craziest one you've written?

I do not, and I don't read them, at least not since the days of the late 90s/early 2000s when I once read a really good Highlander/X-Files crossover (oh, and Martha's cosmic horror fic where Stargate and Angel and I think something else all cross over but it feels quite natural and right). I don't like fusions, either, most of the time.

9) Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Never! In 20 years! I've been extremely lucky.

10) Do you write smut? If so what kind?

ahahahahahahahhaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

yes...yes you could say i write smut. on occasion. you know, when the urge comes on me. i write mostly kink or at least kink-adjacent fic, but i've done some vanilla scenes too, and i write m/m and m/f and (occasionally) f/f. fun fact, my only rimming scene to date was in a f/f/f threesome!

11) Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of.

12) Have you ever had a fic translated?

I think so? I can't remember, honestly, which sounds dreadful but like...I don't READ the translation, because I am sadly monolingual, but I get a burst of delight when someone asks to do it (or to make a podfic).

13) Have you ever co-written a fic before?

I have tried--me and a friend once got like 12k deep into a co-written Tiger and Bunny fic--but it doesn't really work out for me. I am a massive control freak when it comes to writing and absolutely miserable to work with. (Although I wasn't so bad back when we wrote the T&B fic, we just sort of never got around to finishing it. Which is sad, because it was GREAT.)

14) What's your all time favorite ship?

Max/Alec from Dark Angel. I shipped it when I only started watching DA for Jensen's episodes, I shipped it when I fell in love with Max, I shipped it when I frantically hand-wrote notes about the fic I wanted to write, I ship it right now as I'm typing, I will ship it in my grave. Also it's not a het ship bc neither of them are heterosexual, thank you very much.

15) What's a WIP that you want to finish but don't think you ever will?

I only post finished fics, but in terms of things I haven't posted, I still think my "For A Good Time Call" fem!jaskier/yennefer(/geralt) AU would have been truly incredible. If you haven't watched that movie go watch it immediately so you can share this beautiful idea with me.

16) What are your writing strengths?

Ohhh, this and the next one are hard, because I truly don't know. Well, besides "porn." I am genuinely good at porn, which is HILARIOUS considering how many more sex scenes I've written than participated in. But overall, I have so much angst and neurosis and tenuous self-worth tied up in writing, I'm a very bad judge of my own skills. Also, it depends on the fandom! In some fandoms I'm good at dialogue, in others not so much. In some fandoms I'm good at pastiching the tone of the source and in others...Not So Much.

17) What are your writing weaknesses?

If I had to pick a weakness, though, I'd say concrete imagery/detail. Like, the things that characters are physically doing either out of emotional reaction or just, they're doing something in that scene. Dialogue is usually easier (not sure if it comes out better, but it's easier).

18) What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?  

I used to be mildly annoyed at it but! Now! On AO3! You can put a footnote by the French or whatever, so the reader can jump down to read a translation and then jump right back up. I now feel that if you choose to include dialogue (or any words) in another language from the rest of the story, this is the only acceptable method.

19) What was the first fandom you wrote for?

I remember vaguely in 1996 or so writing a couple pages of Kit whump for the Young Wizards books. I wrote some execrable nonsense in X-Files, but in my defense I had just turned 13. I don't THINK I wrote anything for Star Trek, which was my first fandom. Oh, and I attempted to write fic for Homicide, which I watched in 7th and 8th grade and lied about my age to get onto the good mailing lists (they were actually the bad, racist mailing lists, I would later realize, but again I was 13).

20) What's your favorite fic you've written?

Sorry to disappoint anyone who follows me for Witcher content, but it's either "The absolute absurdity of end-series items" (House of Leaves) or "A quite unlosable game" (Dark Angel). They are both Big Idea fics, and I feel like in both of them I got the Idea across brilliantly, and I'm truly proud of them and think they're the best things I've ever made. (In terms of Witcher fic, it's the kidfic trilogy for sure.)

I am not going to tag anyone because that always makes me mildly anxious, but if you read this and you want to do it you can say you were tagged by me! :D? :D?

#meme

[empty-dream]

Just read FGO Salem

FUCKING FINALLY.

Me, a Sanson big fan: My skin is cleared, my crops are watered. This is basically his spotlight. I can ask for no more. The guy is a doctor, good with kids, very level-headed, can cook, and have a massive chunk of guilt issues. It’s not apparent at first but at the climax, it’s obvious that all along he’s trying so hard to atone for his past as an executioner. So putting him here in this chapter about sins, executions, and redemption is really fitting. 

Once I thought Robin showed up in the main story a bit too many times. Now I get why he’s in Salem. He is BIG MOOD™. All his cussings at the irrationality of the entire singularity are gold. His attitude naturally clashes with the rigidity of Salem. And his dynamic with Sanson is really fun.

Mata Hari is really is big sister for everyone, but mostly to Robin and Sanson lol. The part where she is executed and her sad past is played… Sanson yelling her real name as she’s hanged just makes it more painful.

Circe is really fun. I already expected it as much but wew. Now I want to see her interaction with Medea. As the Queen Witch™ , she is goat. The party couldn’t have survived for that long if she wasn’t there.

Queen of Sheba’s mixture of wisdom and recklessness is intriguing. And the part where she bonds with Mata Hari and timidly asks her to tell all about Solomon as a human in Chaldea is really endearing and bittersweet. I wish they could have met again… Also like Circe, goat.

I have no idea why Nezha is in here, but her friendship with Abigail is so cute. The way she is evil detector and very earnest to a fault is endearing too. Come to think of it, she does show up a lot too, huh, considering LB3&4 iirc.

I like that from the day the trailer dropped, we all knew that girl is Abigail Williams, the most (in)famous kid who incited the Salem Witch Trial. But how she’s played here, it’s interesting. I like that she’s a very pure, kind little girl who doesn’t mean harm, but that very purity leads her to accuse people. In the end, she knows she is as sinful as everyone else in Salem, and the only way she believes to help them all is to inflict punishments as redemption. Very pure, but very dangerous as a result.

Nobody would have guessed Lavinia and the Whateleys are also cast in Salem singularity. Like, literally cast in. Lavinia’s relationship with Abigail and Sanson is really nice. Even though she’s so awkward, she truly does care for them. LAVINIA WHEN DW??

It’s so weird tho to see the Chaldea crews in their usual get-ups, which are decidedly very not puritan-y. It clashes with the more realistic villagers. I know, cuz budget and all. It’s just funny that Tituba is a slave in a very traditional puritan village, and she dresses like *that*. Also kinda spoiling the fact from early on that she isn’t really ordinary after all. Thankfully the manga handles the costume aspects.

Ngl it’s lengthy. I don’t play the game, so I just sat down and stared at the screen for total 8 hrs. (Thank god for speed controller). Tipping my hat to the actual players, Idk how your phones survived that.

I don’t think this is what people hail as best EoR chapter, and no comment from me either cuz I haven’t read the other EoR chapters. But ever since the EoR trailer popped out, this singularity grabbed most of my attention. Cuz Salem with trial is, uh, a very well-known messed up case.

And the game story actually fulfilled my expectation. How dark it is from the get-go. The cruelty of people as they start accusing each other in their faith-covered paranoia. Before it is a cosmic horror story, it is a horror story of humanity. It is exactly what I imagine witch hunts and overly religious environment would be like.

I love the way the tension and creepiness building up, but at times I felt it was a liiiitle bit too long. And I was expecting the climax to be longer tho. I just wanted the moral conclusion of the core story - the endless searching of redemption for sins in the past -  to be elaborated more. I mean, atonement in a twisted way is an interesting concept for me.

I don’t know much about Lovecraft lores, but I admit having such an unknown variable completely outside what we’re used to in Nasuverse is really exciting. Raum is creative, I’ll admit that. For people who played the JP version first time, this should have been a very big moment.

Meteo Hoshizora I owe you my life.

When Robin yells “LA MORT EST L'ESPOIR” near the end I just

#fate grand order #random saying #type moon #epic of remnant

[themarauderstheoutsidersandpeggy]

Hey! Can you do a thing in which all the voldy shit never happened and everyone lives happily (Peter drifts away from them because ugh I don't like reading about him). Basically Sirius' kids are with Harry and reader is Sirius' wife. Reader is pretty chill and all up for pranks. They have twins together of Harry's age. In second year when Harry, ron, and twins go to Hogwarts by car,James, Sirius, and reader send howlers telling them DAMN YOU DID A GOOD PRANK RIGHT THERE.

dude I don’t like writing about peter so it’s fine lmao (also with no voldemort the sorcerers stone wouldn’t really have been an issue so when I say their first year happened fine that’s what I mean lmao)(also I know that the concept of howlers is that the letter just yells what you write but I like the idea of James and Sirius just butting in and ruining it so there you go)

--

Being the wife of Sirius Black, the master of chaos, came with lots and lots of headaches. You’d known him since you were in school together, and he never disappointed when it came to pranks. Whether that meant (probable) arson, or just a simple dungbomb in someone’s water glass, something was always up with that man, and you’re not sure why you thought his children would be any different.

Sirius had definitely raised them on mischief, as did James with Harry, so you were quite nervous sending them off to school together. Your twins and Harry would definitely wreak havoc on the school, you just prayed you wouldn’t have to pay for property damage. 

Their first year went by relatively smoothly. Of course, there were the occasional detentions, letters written home about the strange spells that your children had used, probably taught to them by their fathers. As always. The worst thing that had happened that year was that your two little monsters, along with James’ troublemaker, had managed to jinx Hagrid’s (already massive) pumpkins to be ten times their size, which proved to be an issue, as the grounds had then been constantly covered in either giant pumpkins, or their remains, for a month. 

You’d sent them off to the Weasleys’ house, thanking Molly for taking care of your children until the school year began. Harry went along as well, leaving you, Sirius, James, Remus, and Lily alone in your homes, finally able to breathe for a moment. 

It was now almost eleven o’clock on the first of September, and you wondered how your kids were doing, probably already buying out the sweets from the trolley. You hoped that they’d help out some lost first-years, or prove helpful to their professors as they now knew how the school worked. 

The clock struck eleven and you sighed, peering over at Sirius who was lazily flicking his wand around the air where he sat, sending a flurry of snowflakes gliding down from the air and into his hair. You giggled, standing and walking over to his chair, feeling the cold flakes land on your head and tickle the back of your neck. Sirius grinned, watching as a snowflake landed on your nose and laughing when you scrunched your face up in discomfort. He flicked the snowflake off, leaning in to kiss you before a loud crack was heard and your heads both jerked to the side.

There stood Molly and Arthur Weasley, slightly disheveled, and frowning deeply. 

“Molly? Arthur? What’s wrong, what is it?” Your heart began beating in your chest, envisioning a freak accident involving your twins or Harry.

“Our car is gone, and none of your kids made it onto the platform.” Arthur mumbled, eyes wide with worry and alarm.

“What?!”

--

To say that you’d been worried would have been an understatement. Your children were missing, you had no idea what to do. You hadn’t slept at all that night, and you had written the school a very lengthy letter, begging them for updates if they had any. You know that Lily had done the same, having apparated to their home just after Molly and Arthur had left.

So, when you received an owl with a letter clutched in its beak, the Hogwart’s wax seal brightly stamped on the front, your heart leapt in your chest. There was hope.

You tore the letter open, nearly tearing the parchment inside in your haste. Sirius grabbed your hands, steadying them and taking the letter from you. He began reading out loud.

‘Sirius and Y/N,

Your children are safe. They arrived here last night, not on the train, but by flying car, and though they crashed several times, including into the whomping willow, they seem to have escaped unscathed. I will never understand how they do it. I have decided to reject the idea of expulsion, they did go above and beyond to make sure that they got to school, even if it was slightly destructive. We’ve sent word to the Potters, as well as the Weasleys. I hope you weren’t too worried, 

Sincerely,

Minerva.’

You felt yourself breathe a sigh of relief, though white hot anger flared in your system only moments after. 

“They stole the car!” You looked up at your husband, mouth falling open as you watched him laugh.

“Sirius! This is not funny, they could have been killed! And ‘Grand Theft Auto: Twelve-Year-Olds’?! Sirius, what are we going to do with them?!”

“It’s fine! They’re okay, the school is okay, they’re not being expelled, everything is fine. It was a pretty good prank, don’t you think?”

“No!”

--

Now, each child involved knew that they’d be sent an angry letter from their parents. That was inevitable. But none of them had expected two bright red, smoking howlers to show up the next morning, like ticking time bombs sitting in front of their cereal.

“You go first, Ron.” Harry nudged Ron forward, wishing that he could avoid his own howler altogether.

Ron gulped, slitting the envelope open, though he threw it down on the table when the booming voice of Molly Weasley rang throughout the great hall.

‘Ronald Weasley! 

How dare you steal that car! Your father is facing an inquiry at work, and it’s entirely your fault! If you put another toe out of line, we’ll send you straight home! Oh, and Ginny dear, congratulations on making Gryffindor, your father and I are so proud.’ (I just had that mEmoRIZedGJNSKGN)

Ron was shaking as the envelope tore itself up, leaving only the one other remaining. Harry reached for it, peeling the envelope open and cringing when his mother’s voice began shouting.

‘You three are in big trouble! What in the world were you thinking? Poor Molly and Arthur were left without a car, and we were all worried sick!’

‘If you had done something like that from outside the safety of those walls, I guarantee that we would have-’ Remus’ voice was cut off midway through his sentence.

‘Son!’ Another voice made itself known over the letter, and the children recognized it as James’.

‘Son, I’m so proud of you. That was amazing! You’re on our level of genius now, I can’t believe you got there so young!’ 

‘And I can’t believe you all managed to escape unharmed! This is by far one of the best things I’ve ever seen, you have to fill us in on the details later-’ Sirius’ voice cut in, the sound full of happiness and pride for his children.

“Sirius no!’ Your voice was heard shrieking throughout the great hall before the letter self destructed, smoke and little bits of ashy paper flying everywhere. Harry snorted, shaking his head while envisioning the absolute chaos that must have been the creation of the Howler. 

From the staff table, Mcgonagall smirked, hiding her face behind a napkin as she shook her head, even after they’d graduated James Potter and Sirius Black were still creating mischief.

(This was kinda long and icky and I’m so sorry if it’s bad kjgdafnds I’m not doing great but I hope you still like it :’)   )

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#Sirius Black #sirius black fanfiction #sirius black headcanon #sirius black fic #sirius black x reader #Harry Potter night #marauders night #the marauders night #requests are open

[scottfuckingreed]

Love Drug - Jeff Atkins

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@anisiamoisa SAID: ‘I wanted to request a Jeff Atkins imagine where they take the love drug (season two episode 7 I think) with Clay, Hannah, Alex and Sheri. Maybe some smut too’

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Warnings!: Just some cute smutty shit really, and mentions of drug use!

-

Sometimes when being around someone, you start to feel exactly how they feel. In this case, being with Clay makes me anxious as hell. He’s walking with his hands twiddling through each other, and he’s made his body look incredibly small. “Are you alright Clay?” I giggle. By the look on his face, I’d say no. “I’m fine,” I look across to Hannah, who was walking the other side of him. She shrugs, which makes me laugh. “It’s okay to be nerv-” “it’s just that we don’t know where these drugs have come from. We could die!” He explodes as we get outside Jeff’s house. “I don’t think Jeff is tryna kill us Clay,” me and Hannah laugh along together. “If you die, at least you can haunt him,” I add, nudging him on the shoulder. “You are NOT helping!”

“There she is!” Jeff woo’s as I walk in. The ‘pointing’ makes me blush massively. Huge arms wrap themselves around my waist, pulling me in as close as he can. About three or four kisses get placed in several places on my face, before turning to Clay and Hannah. “Hey guys, welcome,” he says ‘normally’. “I see how it is; favouritism,” Clay mutters, which makes me laugh too much. “Oh Clay’s jealous!” The grip is removed from me, and I witness his arms wrap around Clay, lifting him up slightly. “Do you want one, Hannah?” He offers once he lets Clay’s feet touch the ground again. “I’m good, but thank you,” Jeff doesn’t care, and gives Hannah a hug anyway. I swear my boy is too pure for this world.

Once Sheri and Alex arrive, we sit in a circle-ish. Hannah sits next to Clay, then Alex, then Sheri, and Jeff sits between my legs. Playing with Jeff’s hair is honestly one of my favourite things. Once again, Clay is twiddling his thumbs. “Clay-” “isn’t sugar and caffeine a kind of high, right?” he blurts out. I watch Hannah out her hand over Clay’s, which makes his eyes widen. Seeing Clay all caught up with Hannah is so cute. He should honestly just go for it. But then again, this is Clay we’re on about. Never gonna happen. “Jenson, would I ever lead you astray?” I lock hands with Jeff, intertwining our fingers tightly together. He raises them. My heart melts more as he places a kiss on each of the backs of my hands. One on each. I smile to myself. He loosens his grip, letting my hand slid away as he stands up. Reaching into his pocket, he takes out a small clear bag with white pills in there. He passes on to each of us, leaving Clay till last. “This peer pressure.” He shakes his head. He takes the pill anyway, but you can see the clear uncertainty in his face. And his voice. And his everything really. “I’m not gonna force you Jenson,” Jeff sits back with me, but hints me to shuffle forwards instead. Once he places himself behind me, I decide this is my chance to take the comfiest seat there is... Jeff Atkins’ lap. “But it’ll be good for you.” In no more - or less - than a ‘three, two, one’, each of us had swallowed our drug. Clay hesitated, as if he was seeing if we were all gonna take it, but he took it nevertheless. And now we wait.

It was a fast turn around this time. I almost felt it as soon as I gulped it down. And now we sit laughing and giggling about shit that isn’t really funny. “You’re friends,” pause, “with Justin Foley.” Jeff cries in laughter to Alex. I’m not sure why it’s funny, but we all laugh along anyway. “He’s an asshole,” Alex shakes his head with a massive smile. “He is...” I look over to Sheri, who you can tell is thinking. “He’s kinda hot though?” I shake my head, which makes Jeff nudge me in the side. “You don’t think Foley’s hot?!” He gasps. I turn to him, locking eyes. I put each hand on either side of his face. Pause. And... “nope.” I say simply. He raises his eyebrows, as if it’s totally unbelievable that I don’t find him attractive. “But, no one compares to you, my love,” I cringily whisper into his ear. I feel his smile widen across his face. I turn to gaze into his eyes, face to face. “You two are disgustingly adorable,” Hannah throws a pillow our way.

We continue to laugh for what seems like a long time, but it’s actually only 10/15 minutes. The drug makes you just feel entirely positive. Like this is where you’re meant to be, right in this moment. I am with the right people in this basement. And I’ve hardly ever hung out with Sheri, or Alex, or Hannah. Clay though, Clay’s around a little bit. I get pulled out of my trance with a poke in my back. Fiercely, I snap my head around to face Jeff. “What are you thinking about?” He whispers, touching my face with his nose. Feeling his breath against my face sends my body in a whole other place. Somehow, even in my high state of mind, I swivel myself a bit too smoothly so I’m facing him. Now I’m straddled against his body. “About how cute your’s and Clay’s friendship is,” giggling, I bury my head into his shoulder. When he moves his hands across my body I feel the enhancement of that happy little pill. They cross from my thighs, to my hips, to waist in one very swift movement. That’s all. And it feels incredible. “He’s obsessed with me,” Clay’s voice sounds distant, although he’s just over 2 metres away. All I’m focussed on is the way Jeff’s hands feel on my body. I just want him close. Closer. “You love me though Jenson,” Jeff turns his head back to mine, and they are instantly practically touching. All I can seem to do is gaze into those beautiful eyes. If I was sober, I’d be cringing at myself. But I love this guy. “What are you thinking about now?” Shivers get sent down my spine by the whispers that flowed into my ear. A small smirk appears and disappears off his face. “You,” I smile, and blush, and try not to go into a giggle mess. “Me?” I bite my lip slightly and nod. “You’re too cute,” he kisses my cheek, then on my jawline, then once on my neck. And that’s all I needed. When our eyes lock once again, and our noses touch ever so slightly, I just can’t take it no more. I’m so in love with this guy. “I think we should-” is all I can say before he hops up, takes my hands, and we start walking upstairs.

Jeff walks into his bedroom first. I follow, pushing my entire body weight onto the door for it to close. It’s not heavy or anything. When I turn I see my beautiful boyfriend sat on the bed. I watch as his eyes scan my body from top to toe. My body sways as I walk towards him, and his gaze doesn’t change. “Stop! You’re making me embarrassed!” I push him on the shoulder. Soft hands embrace my still clothed hips. “You’re so beautiful,” whispering, he guides my body onto his, into a straddling position once again. My index finger goes to his lips, shushing him. The problem with pretty boy over here is he doesn’t shut up. So even when I shush him, he continues being absolutely fucking adorable. “I could look at you all day,” he shrugs. “Oh you could?” I question, pushing his chest down so he’s with his back against the bed. His hands proceed to smooth up and down my thighs as I’m leant over his with my clothes crotch on top of his. When they connect, Jeff’s face looks almost pleasured already. “You’re literally like a work of art,” he leans up to mutter into my ear. Before I can even reply, he rotates us so he’s on top. A kiss gets placed on my cheek. Another on my jawline. And another on my neck. A shockwave of pleasure gets sent through my body as I feel his tongue press against a very nice spot. Jeff knows my body better than I do. My hands go to the back of his neck. And then I realise that this isn’t what I want. Gently lifting his head, our eyes meet once again. Then I attach my lips onto his... finally.

Sometimes foreplay is a bit long. Sometimes it feels a little dirty. Sometimes you just wanna actually have a sensual moment. I wanna make love to my boyfriend. Especially in my cloud 9 state. His tongue glides along mine effortlessly. His hands smoothing from my waist to my hips to my thighs feels better than it ever has. Euphoria x100. In motion, he slips a hand to the front of my jeans, unbuttoning them and throwing them off. I giggle against his lips as they launch onto the floor. In a minuscule moment where his lips aren’t fix onto mine, I tug at the end of his tee. My hands magnetise onto the abs on his stomach with haste. The smile on Jeff’s face grows, but he presses his lips together in attempt to contain it. “What?” I whisper. “That kinda tickles,” my face: crimson.

In another supersonic action, my thong was on the floor. As was his joggers. All that remained between us was his boxers. And within seconds they had vanished too. “I love you,” I kiss him once. “So much,” I add, placing my lips against his in a lengthy kiss. You could hear it scream with passion and desire. Excitement rushed through my body as I finally feel his penis start to go inside me. My mouth widens to inhale a slightly deep breath of air. Having Jeff this close... I just know he’s mine. The pining kiss continued until he was fully inside. Eye to eye, nose to nose, I gaze up to him and smile. I get lost in the moment. This. This is perfection. There’s no place I’d rather be. No person I’d rather be with. This is it. Before anything, he stamps my forehead with a kiss. One, two, three. “You are so enthralling,” I look at him and frown with the biggest smile. “Enthral- what?” When I begin to giggle, he actually begins to blush. “Clay taught me it. It means, like, fascinating,” he explains. Which just makes my heart melt. I stick my bottom lip out in a sad motion. “What?” He nudges his nose against mine. “You’re just so cute,” I pin my lips back against his. Deep feelings of just pining for the godly specimen on top of me oozes through between the connection of our tongues.

My mouth widens as he begins to thrust himself out, and back in. He proceeds to place wet kisses against and around my lips. The heaviness of my breath correlates with the hand sliding up and down my thigh. Every touch sends an unexplainable feeling through my body. It must be the perfect blend of adrenaline, that love hormone and whatever the fuck drug I’m on. But I can’t focus on that. I can’t focus on anything but the fact that I’m in love with this boy. I’m making love to the boy that I love. The way he squeezes my thigh and my waist. I almost completely come undone when he lifts my right leg up slightly. “Fuck,” I moan against his tender lips. My fingers spread through his hair, pulling slightly more at every inch of pleasure pumping through my body. I know that I’m completely under his spell. I like it here.

I wrap my legs around his body more and more. Even though he’s as close as he can get, I’d try anything to get him closer. With every thrust I find myself not only a moaning mess, but falling for a boy that I’ve already fallen hard for. It’s like that excitement you get when you see a boy for the first time. And I don’t know what comes over me, but I flip us around so I end up being on top. My chest: flat against his. All I can do is smile cheekily. The thing with us is, we know each other. So I begin moving up and down on his manhood. Both of his hands go to my waist, guiding me at a steady pace. “Oh my god,” he rolls his eyes back. It’s nice to know I have some sort of hold on him, as back as that probably sounds. “You’re so beautiful,” kisses are placed all over my face, but mainly on my lips. Our tongues dance to the rhythm of our own beat. “Fuck Y/N,” this does it for me. His words send my body over the edge, pushing my insides to climax. As if it was in sync, Jeff reaches his too. I ride out both of our highs.

I throw myself down next to him. “You’re incredible, you know that?” He presses my body close to his. He feels like a dream. Or maybe it’s the very slightly delay of these drugs. Everything is just... more. “I think I just fell in love with you more,” he whisper into my ear. Every breath I cherish. “You’re so fucking cute, you know that?” Is what I find to respond with. I look up to him and see him thinking. The concentration on his face was quite full on. “I don’t think we should go back to the others,” when he turns his head, our eyes immediately lock. “Whyyyyyy?” I cock my leg up onto his abdomen, turning to face him fully. “I just wanna cuddle.” The beautiful Jeff Atkins.

#13 reasons why #13rw #smut #13 reasons why jeff #jeff atkins #Jeff Atkins x reader #Jeff x reader #Jeff smut #Jeff Atkins smut

[sacramentonewsjournal]

Sutton Stracke Will By no means Be Erikas Good friend Shades RHOBH

Credit score: Milla Cochran/startraksphoto, Nancy Rivera/Bauergriffin.com / MEGA Sutton Stracke and Erika Jayne appeared to show over a brand new leaf amid filming on the twelfth season of The Actual Housewives of Beverly Hills. However is their truce for actual? After the most recent episode of the Bravo actuality sequence noticed Sutton supporting Erika at her Fairly Mess hair extension occasion and welcoming her into her dwelling for an off-the-cuff Popeyes lunch on silver platters, the place they appeared to make progress of their efforts to grasp one another higher, Sutton defined why she determined to attend the hair occasion regardless of the shortage of assist for her personal enterprise. “Once I got here into this group of girls, I actually got here in after my divorce. It had been a couple of years, and it took me some time to select myself up, and I used to be impressed by this group of girls. Everybody had a enterprise, was working, and we had been all supporting one another. It was very inspiring, and I remembered that, and I believed, ‘I’m going to Erika’s hair extension occasion, even when there’s a beef.’ As a result of it’s the fitting factor to do,” Sutton revealed on the September 28 episode of the RHOBH: After Present. Whereas Sutton made the choice to assist Erika, she identified that the assist wasn’t reciprocated on the Cashmere & Caviar occasion she held at her namesake boutique final 12 months. As RHOBH followers could have observed, solely Garcelle Beauvais and Crystal Kung-Minkoff had been seen on the bash. “I did a really massive factor this 12 months with my cashmere line and I didn’t have the entire girls’ assist. I didn’t. And [Garcelle] didn’t have the entire assist for [her] e-book,” Sutton famous. Nonetheless, she welcomed Erika into her dwelling for a sit-down meal, and Erika felt that her efforts to place their troubled previous behind them had been well-received. “I went there with an open coronary heart and we tried to attach and I went over with an open coronary heart and an open thoughts,” she confirmed. “I’ve to maneuver on with my life and I’ve to maneuver on with the relationships that I’ve on this group of girls. I don’t know what will occur however actually in my coronary heart of hearts, I need peace. I need decision,” Erika continued of her intentions with Sutton and different members of the RHOBH forged. “A variety of hurtful issues have been mentioned between the 2 of us. I’m a fighter. I combat again, however I don’t need this, I don’t search this kind of animosity. I need peace inside my life and inside this group of girls.” However after Erika acknowledged that she’ll must “see how lengthy it lasts” between herself and Sutton, Sutton made it clear she’s removed from prepared for a friendship with Erika. “I can’t let it go and I don’t belief her,” she acknowledged. “You strive having somebody say that they performed you after which name you a horrible title. How do you progress on from that ever? Do I take pleasure in her generally… Like, her firm is kinda humorous. I don’t want her hurt. However she’s not a pal… She by no means can be.” The Actual Housewives of Beverly Hills season 12 airs Wednesdays at 8/7c on Bravo. Originally published at Sacramento News Journal

#Sacramento News Journal

[eagesoldartblog]

Heyooo I guess im posting fics to tumblr again- I hope you enjoy!!! Warning: detailed impalement, massive injuries, I mean MASSIVE, graphic descriptions of violence and near death experinces

Vivi’s Scar

“Hey Vivi,” She perks up, twisting her head away from her beach bag full of towels to Arthur, who was ... staring at her. He palms the back of his neck awkwardly, before pointing at her stomach, “so... sorry if this is weird but... what’s with the tattoo?”

“Tattoo?” Vivi says, raising an eyebrow, before she looks at her arms curiously, taking note of the small decals she dedicated to her two friends, “Which?”

“The one one your .. chest.”

“Huh?” Bewildered, Vivi looks down, before it hits her, “Ohh... I see what you mean.”

“Yea! I figured I - you know what, uh... what’s with it?” Arthur asks, brushing his hair back lamely and shifting on his feet as he comes closer to get a better look.

Vivi snickers, “it’s not a tattoo. It’s a scar.”

“... What?” Arthur lightly touches his own shoulder, which was scarred to hell and back itself, before looking at hers again.

“Yeah!” Vivi stretches her torso, and traces her finger down it, “don’t get me wrong, I get why you think that!”

It’s a large scar full of texture, appearing like a fat slithering snake was making a large S. The edges appeared white while the rest of the body became discolored, edging on gray. It starts around her belly button and then curves up her right breast. It was more than obvious now that she wore a bikini since it revealed the full extent of it. The thought made her grin a little bit. “I got it when I was a kid. Don’t remember how though, if I’m honest.”

“How do you not remember getting a scar?”

She shrugs, “My mom told me that I went missing one day, and when I came back, I had this wacky scar and some broken limbs. Fun stuff!” She laughs lightly, as if it wasn’t a big deal, before she returns to double checking the bag for the sunscreen. 

Arthur appears around her shoulder, craning his neck to look at it. Vivi smirks, and grabs his wrist.

“Wanna touch it?”

“Ah-! I- huh?”

“I mean you keep staring at it! And I’ll tell you what, it does feel kinda weird.”

Arthur jerks his hand away and sputters, blushing lightly, “No-nonono, that’s- uh... it just looks like- I don’t know, a carving? Kinda like when you burn designs into wood.” 

”Pyrography?” Lewis offers, peaking into the room with a cooler. 

Arthur snaps his fingers and nods, “Yes! That. It looks... like that?”

Vivi snickers again, “well thank you for calling me a piece of art~”

“Oh, don’t flatter yourself.”

“How can I not?” Vivi bites her lip to avoid laughing more than she wanted to, “I know how much you two look at me~”

”Just as much as you look in the mirror?”

“Okay, fuck you, Lewis.”

The three laugh amongst themselves, Mystery couldn’t help but smile himself. Only for that smile to fade as he averts his gaze.

If only she knew.

-

The trees towered above her head, and the sweet earthy grass beckoned her in. Never willing to miss a chance on adventure, Vivi sprints through the canopy, with her trusty ‘sword’ in hand. It’s wooden bark has long since stripped away, but the stick was as sturdy as can be.

And to prove it, Vivi spots a spindly tree with a burl sticking out, and she wallops its side. The hefty crack vibrating through her arm and sending thrills down her back. How could it not? 

Vivi was a strong, powerful warrior, taking after a legacy of even more powerful warriors. A long list of samurai, rōnin, onna-musha, and yokai hunters. At the very highest, one of the most well known and revered, Mushi Yukino.

Vivi’s heart flutters, her stomach twists, as she imagines the woman, surrounded by hundreds of monsters and serpents, in between her and the legendary kitsune who she dominated and harnessed. So strong and powerful, the kitsune had no choice but to submit. They had to join the yukino family and protect her descendants!

Vivi giggles, abandoning the beaten tree and leaping through another bush. 

I’m going to be the next! Vivi laughs full heartedly, hooking her sword around a tree branch and swinging her feet as she lands. Taking off in a new direction.

As far away as possible from home. Okkasan and Otousan would be furious if they knew she went out this far. Vivi didn’t particularly care. It was her break from her studies, and her otousan let her have some time to play after a lengthy English lesson. 

But why would she just play in the court, when she could train in her natural element? 

A few mountains peak through the trees, and Vivi’s eyes crinkle as the scent of the caves and stones called to her. Only for her to dig her heel into the ground.

The mountain stands before her, tall and unyielding...  She can’t climb! Not yet... Vivi gulps apprehensively, stomach souring as her hands become clammy around her sword. Baba told her time and time again to be wary in the forests.

Pay respect, and it will respect you. But by all means, don’t go on your own.

Vivi shudders lightly, eyebrows furrowing. 

She’ll never become like the greatest monster Hunter of her family if she never learns to climb!

So...! She’ll just have to get over it!

Steeling herself, Vivi turns her head up and stares at the tree beside her.

It’s towering over her, with many branches sticking out from it. Surrounding the tree, was a few considerably smaller ones, with lush greens that nearly made it impossible to see through.

Perfect! She grins, and sets off through the bushes that also surround the tree. One bush was filled with many shiny scarlet berries. 

Vivi paid it no mind. She’s seen weirder.

-

Not far off, a white rabbit watches. The fur along its back prickling, ears straight and alert, and the urge to thump and scream intense. It leaps after her.

-

Balancing her sword against the bark, Vivi stares at the tree and bites her lip. Beads of sweat were already beginning to trace her forehead, even if it was near freezing. There were a few bumps and ridges that jut out. Looking stable. Then again... it could easily drop her if she puts too much trust in it...

Oh well! Vivi sucks in her breath and grasps one of the ridges. Much to her delight, it’s easy to hold onto, and she hurriedly grabs the next.

It scratches her palms and fingers. They're going to be really mad at her when they see her sore palms. Vivi puffs, shooing the thought away as she hooks her foot along the bark and pushes herself up. 

“I-I knew it! This isn’t so hard...!” Vivi hisses through her teeth, biceps trembling as she hangs there and traces her foot for a previous bump to stand on. Then again, and again, and Vivi could see the trees surrounding this one from a brand new angle the higher she got.

-

The rabbit runs faster. Squeaking now. Thumping their hind legs on the ground and jumping against the trees to leap faster and get to her quicker. Vivi doesn’t notice.

-

Vivi climbs another few steps, dragging her front against the harsh bark. It scraps against her harshly. Even if her sweater blocked her skin, pins and needles and a red rash undoubtedly began to form. Vivi shifts uncomfortably, eyebrows furrowing together. 

Is it a poison tree? Is that a thing? Vivi gulps, the sweat along her forehead dampening her hair and her hands became slick with that same anxiety. 

The higher and higher she got, the more the tree felt like it swayed. Vivi took a deep breath, and the tree seemed to breath with her, expanding outward until she was nearly hugging it. The hairs on the back of her neck began to stand. A gust of wind pushing past her. Vivi dared a look - and saw that she was now high in the air, above the other surrounding trees and bushes. A sense of terror grew in her stomach as her thoughts filled with the image and sensation of falling-!

“It’s fine... it’s fine...” she hums to herself, forcing her smile to stay put as she reaches for another ridge- one that’s curved and slanted in an odd way that she couldn’t describe at first. 

Just keep climbing. Just keep climbing…

She felt... small. Her limbs start to ache. The air around her seemed to thicken and no matter how much she gasped, the air refused to fill her lungs. None was getting in.

Was something watching her?

”VIVI!”

Otousan? Gasping, Vivi’s entire body seizes up. Her grip on the tree began to wane, but Vivi twists her head around to peer at the ground. The… really far ground... 

No one was there.. Maybe it was just her imagination...?

Ragged, Vivi slows her breathing, and looks back to her hands and the tree.

Only for the curved ridge she was preparing to latch onto pops open. 

Vivi’s heart stops.

An eye. A deep hole like-eye with something red glowing behind the ridges- the eyelids. 

Then several more eyes open. All the other bumps above her opening to reveal angry, intense eyes. 

Vivi didn’t make a sound. 

But that didn’t matter. A creaking, cracking whine fills her ears, all the branches moving like arms. She dares a look as something seems to move in front of her stomach. 

The bark expands- bubbles- in front of her body. A branch shoots out.

Stabbing through her feeble skin. Stabbing past her spine and tearing through her torso like a toothpick. It keeps growing. Despite being impaled, it keeps growing. Sending Vivi out to dangle by her ribs around the wooden arm. Her eyes sting, feeling escaping her as she watches it all in shock. 

The tree holds her at the branch's length. She could only stare in horror as the new branch’s base splinters and creaks. Cracking.

And it snaps off.

A scream fills the air as she and the branch fall.

It’s her own.

The trees spike past her like streamers and fireworks, and as Vivi suddenly slammed against something, they explode in an eruption of different light. All behind her own eyelids. Where tears stung and her body sat numbly.

Numb. For maybe a second. Before she tried to breathe and her lungs constricted around the branch lodged through her. The narrow, bloodsoaked tip had snapped on impact. Her body sagged down on the broken pieces. Shooting pins and needles in every muscle that wasn’t already screaming.

A slickness soaked her belly. Her arms. Vivi couldn’t move. Stuck with the large branch stabbed into her like a knife.

Her throat strains. Rips. She was still screaming. Even as her mouth filled with copper and blood.

Her vision goes dark. She didn’t stop crying.

-

The rabbit races over, a growl ripping from it’s too small body as a new form rips out of its fur. Large fluffy paws become vicious claws, and a pointed mouth of teeth snap threateningly as eight tails thrash out.

“You bastard!” Mystery barks, glaring at the tree mimic with fury burning in every part of him. 

It’s many eyes blink as it unroots it’s many decoy trees, becoming sharp appendages. The scarlet berry bush shifting to his underbelly.

“What?” It hisses, “Angry because I caught your prey? You should know better than to claim what you haven’t properly snatched. This territory is free for all of us to hun-“

Mystery growls, a scream building in his throat. The mimic’s leaves recoil. Before it has the chance to flare out fully and unleash its storm of pine  needles, -Mystery pounces. 

Lunging past the barrage of needles, Mystery dives directly into the berry bush with jagged teeth. Digging his teeth in despite the horrified resound of screeching from the mimic. Mystery clamps his jaw on the one part that mattered most. 

It’s heart.

Lurching back, mystery tears the heart from its roots. The mimic’s life force began to drain instantly into the soil, enriching it with blood. But Mystery doesn’t stop there. He clenches his teeth shut, and the fruity heart bursts down his throat, coating it in a sickly spicy flavor. 

The mimic falls quiet, eyes shutting, and with nothing left to keep it up, the tree whines and creaks.

Crashing down, unrooting the earth where the roots sat.

Spitting, Mystery sends one final curse, before quiet sobbing takes hold of his heart.

Horrified, Mystery holds his breath and rushes to Vivi’s side. 

The branch that impaled her was beginning to shrink and curl, but the gaping wound was immeasurable.

Guilt and pain overwhelms his mind. Several apologies drown  his mind. 

“No! Vivi my dear, can you hear me? Please if you can, hold on as long as possible.” He begs, scanning her small, frail body one more time.

The effects of her lineage were already taking effect. Ice particles flaking off her uncovered skin, and frost attempting to stop the flow of steaming blood. Vivi’s eyes were wide open, blackened and becoming blue. The last line of preserving herself, if she knew it or not.

Mystery grits his teeth, and a flicker of a memory fills his mind.

His only daughter.. It worked for her... Yes. Yes, perhaps this may work!

He swallows back the sickly bile, and Mystery twists his head around, teeth catching on one of his eight tails.

And just like the mimic’s heart- Mystery rips the tail from its socket. Despite the pain that already threatened to crumple him, he drapes it against Vivi’s chest.

Dropping his head low, he presses his muzzle to her head, and whispers.

”My dear, Vivi. I swore an oath to do everything I can to protect you. I know we are forbidden to meet, but I care for you like everyone that came previous. I will ensure your safety. That is a promise.”

Her irises begin to glow, deep icy pits shining with golden light.

”Allow me to grant you a second chance, abilities beyond your own. To heal, to hide, and to live. Allow me this, and I promise I’ll ensure you won’t need any more.”

He kisses her head. And her body glows.

-

Katsumi sweeps through the house within minutes, annoyance bubbling in her chest as she clenches her hand. In her grasp and tightly held against her chest, was her granddaughter’s scarf. In the process of being lengthened for her upcoming eleventh birthday.

And just like she feared. Vivi was nowhere to be found. Eyes and nose scrunching with a hate filled grimace, she marches back to the main entrance. 

“Can’t believe this,” she croaks, imagining her son’s face when she undoubtedly wallops him. “Letting her run outside on her own...! Why do I bother helping him when he throws it so far to the wayside..!” 

Her son and his wife, Clara, were out of the house and were searching.

Are they not aware of how she is? Always running amok and getting into trouble with the neighbors and disturbing the guardians and kami who linger.

She nearly growls as the sound of Clara’s wind chimes. The noise breaks her concentration and worsens her growing headache. 

Where on earth was Yatamo? Have they really not found her yet-

There’s a knock at the door. Katsumi freezes, her eyes widening as spiritual energy flows into the home. A familiar one too.

You...

Gripping her staff, Katsumi moves quick and steady, and if she willed it, frost would fill the windows to show that he wasn’t welcome.

But the chance that he has Vivi... she can’t risk it.

Swallowing, Katsumi grabs the doorknob and opens it.

Her glare immediately gives way to horror.

An elderly man in a kimono and haori stood before her. With thin arms and even thinner cheeks. Despite the frail appearance, he cradled Vivi close to his chest, with nothing but sorrow in his face.

His tail peaks out from between his feet, and he bows solemnly.

“I apologize for this meeting, Katsumi.”

“What have you done to her?” Katsumi lunges forward and unhooks Vivi from his grasp. Vivi’s entire body was coated in blood, her skin cold and cracking. “What did you do to her-?” Katsumi demands again, tears welling in her eyes as she glares accusingly at him. The kitsune frowns, and stands straight. 

“I swore an oath to protect my descendants-“

“She isn’t your descendant!” She says, stomping her foot against the ground and mustering all the hate she could. “I told you to leave, and never bother my family ever again. Now my mago is- why would you hurt her?”

“I didn’t. A mimic in the forests did, next to the mountains of Yamo-no-kami.” Katsumi‘s lips twitch, and she turns away from Mystery, instead examining Vivi’s body. Her torn clothing and her shallow breathing. 

“You did something to her.”

“I had to, Katsumi, the mimic tore through her with the intent to kill. It was either this, or her life.” 

Katsumi‘s shoulders begin to tremble, bitter tears slipping down her cheeks and onto Vivi’s neck.

“Leave... leave at once!” 

“I’m sorry. I didn’t want it to come to this.”

”Out!”

“As you wish.” 

The wind chimes trill, and the man’s footsteps lightly tap the porch until he vanished from sight.

The chill from the wind seeped in, but Katsumi didn’t tear her eyes away from Vivi as she rushed to the infirmary. The one place she hoped she would never have to utilize. Never this soon.

“Vivi.. why did you let this happen...!” Katsumi asks, but it was more to herself than to Vivi, who slept unconcerned for the sob rising in her grandmother's throat.

-

Her body... hurts. It hurts a lot. She could hardly feel it, but what she could feel ached.

Vivi’s eyes were shut tightly, and every breath made her shudder. Only for her body to ache more and more. 

There's murmuring around her, it’s... somewhat familiar... Okaasan and Otousan...

Maybe she just had a bad dream? Or.. something...

“Vivi, darling?” Okaasan says. 

Crap. They caught her... swallowing thickly, Vivi cracks an eye open. It’s easier than she expects, because the only light is a flickering candle that’s.. somewhere around her. Okaasan and otousan are there, whispering to one another. Immediately to her left, baba is lightly stroking her hair.

“How are you feeling Vivi?” Otousan leans close, cupping her cheek. Breath hitching, Vivi recoils from the pain. 

“Oh- I’m sorry, sweetheart.”

There’s a moment of silence, Vivi feels herself drifting in and out, laying her head back on the considerably more comfortable pillow than the... the ground. 

“Vivi,” Grandma says, voice raspier than usual, “we need you to stay awake. Your Ojisan is coming to visit.”

“...Oji Fumi?”

“Yes.”

“...why?”

The adults pause and share a silent glance, before looking down at her sadly. “You got hurt today, and your arm, leg, and ribs are broken. He’s going to come and patch you up.”

“O...okay...”

It hurts.. a lot. But maybe Fumihito will bring her some candy...? 

That would be nice.. the gummies are always nice...

-

The months have become chillier lately. Mystery sits on a tree branch, taking the form of a small bird, and he stares at the house quietly.

Since he brought Vivi home, almost none of the family members have left the house. Some have come and gone, many whom Mystery recognized, but Vivi hadn’t stepped outside once besides for a visit to a shrine. Where she hobbled around in crutches with her arm bound in bandages. 

Mystery remembered wincing, but he knew she was bound to be hurt regardless. It’s fortunate that it was just a few broken bones... It was fortunate that they kept her inside to heal. Who knew what sort of thing she could have done had she had the freedom to leave...

Yip!

Perking up, Mystery hops in place. Tempted to fly and scan the area for any dastardly foxes who may come about...

No. That wouldn’t be the case. Mystery made sure that no creature dared to harass his family... perhaps he’s just imagining things-?

There’s two more yips, and then a howl. 

His feathers ruffle as he launches himself into flight. Gliding toward the home urgently as the fox noises continued.

How is it possible- where is it coming from? Surely Katsumi wouldn’t allow a fox into the home, even if she was begged for it! So then-

Mystery lands on the roof, and quickly, he hops to the edge where the court yard was.

It was fairly sized, with a tree standing tall and filled with bird feeders and chimes. Decorations...

“-Yeah, I went to the Inari shrine for a blessing!”

Mystery would have gasped if he could, his eyes honing in on what was before him. Part of him wanted to pray it wasn’t real.

“...Is that really what you think? You’re weird!”

It was Vivi. 

She was sitting in a chair, her crutches stacked awkwardly beside her, and her leg wrapped in a cast.

No.. that wasn’t supposed to happen!

Her hands were blackened, the nails sharp.

She had fox ears, and a large puffy tail that was a brilliant white color, much like his own...

And before her, a small spirit that resembles a cat sat. The two making small talk.

She never spoke to spirits before... what is the meaning of this? Mystery hops anxiously, coming closer. The tail- the ears, they had to be fake. Yes. Stage make up put on her so that way she can play even while stuck inside-

Her ear twitches on its own. Mystery’s heart stops. Vivi twists her head and their eyes meet.

For a second she looks surprised, only for a smile to come across her now fox-like face.

Mystery turned and flew away as quickly as he could, just as she started to wave to him.

What has he done?

#mystery skulls animated #Vivi yukino #mystery the dog #vivis family #mystery skulls headcannons #Eage fanfic #eage fic #violence tw #blood tw #near death experience #the horrifying fear ofur computer doing something while u try to format hh