#But theyre gonna come up in Wind and Shadow eventually

[bonefall]

If Pinestar was the Mi of his kits, why didn’t he try to take any of them with him when he left? Like Brightsky keeping some of her litter. He knew how the clans were, he was specifically leaving to get away from it, why did he choose to leave his children behind?

It wasn't a choice. Brightsky gave birth in the home she bolted to; Pinestar wasn't going to be allowed to take his children unless he snuck out with them.

He wishes he did something, when he sees what became of his son. But he tried to be brave when he left, announcing that he would not be coming back, and where he would be going.

He thought that was the right thing to do. Unfortunately, no one else appreciated it the way he hoped they would.

If he DID though, ThunderClan would not have allowed that. They see it as kidnapping. Being Mi doesn't mean you're allowed to do literally anything you want, especially if you do have a Ba involved.

In cases of handoffs (surrogacy, secret halfclan kits being given to their other parent, etc) it's actually SUPER important you do it before 1 moon, so you can pass the disappearance off as a fading kit. There are no funerals thrown for fading kits besides the Mi and any Ba quietly burying the body, so this is the time where you smuggle the baby out.

So you need all the Ba on board with such a handoff, in addition. Cloudtail is an example of that actually! When Brightheart surrogates, he is fully aware of how many are ACTUALLY faders and who is receiving their child.

Tigerkit was like 3-ish moons when Pinestar hit da bricks, unfortunately there wasn't a way he could take him along... plus it wouldn't quite make sense with how he was having nightmares about murdering his son.

#Tiger remembers his father #Not super well but. He does remember him. #I think it hurts him when he realizes he's doing something for his own kits that come from those warm early memories #Like the lullabies. Pinestar liked to sing for him. He remembers how good it felt to be cuddled into a warm chest #And feel how a song can bloom into a purr #ALSO I am still thinking about the Bright surrogates btw #I just hit a snag because I realized that a big problem in shadow and wind is-- #--the lack of parents to take such kits #Because my rules against incest apply completely equally to adopted kids too #So it wouldn't actually help if they were adopted vs biokits if the tree is still a tumbleweed #Does that make sense? #So the Bright surrogates aren't actually there to help me with the tree. It's that I want to do it for the character reasons #Because it really shows how approachable and connected Bright and Cloud are #And how respected and loved they are even outside their own Clan #But yeah if you've been waiting on that detail that's where Im currently at lmao #But theyre gonna come up in Wind and Shadow eventually #And im thinking about giving those cut thunderclan warriors as grandkids in other clans too #Clan culture #Pinestar’s Crusade

[kendrixtermina]

Thoughts re: antagonists

Fair warning: I will be treating “Rhea is an antagonist” as an axiom here to base further discussion on it, if you disagree with that premise then this post isnt for you but im not gonna go into details about proving/arguing it here. 

So on the surface Fodlan appears like your standards issue medieval fantasy setting governed by the rulers of the three countries, but it’s actually a sort of post-apocalyptic leftover of a world where advanced technology once existed, a bit like those legends or pseudoscientific theories about a grand, but sinful civilization before the biblical great flood or Atlantis. Man Grey Proud, wiped out by divine punishment yadda yadda resulting in a setting with two main antagonistic forces that have control and shaped the current state of Fodlans politics through the centuries and have been locked in a costly eternal war:

There’s the remaining Agarthans who want to destroy the surface dwelling civilization AND the Nabateans to rule the surface themselves (which makes them enemies of the church) and there’s Rhea who effectively rules Fodlan from the shadows to the extent that she’s basically arranged the three countries so that her base is in the middle, since the ruling class takes its legitimacy from the church and she makes sure to indoctrinate them when theyre young. 

The result is a world thats rife with instability, inequality, xenophobia caused by isolationism, obsession with bloodlines etc. all side effects of maintaining church power, none of which is doing much to keep the Agarthans in check - they deposed the last emperor and assasinated the last king, have agents in Rhea’s own base and Rhea’s too busy lashing out against random revolts brought on by her incompetent rule to investigate and weed out the real enemy

You have Rhea representing “nothing changes”/ eternal stagnation of Fodlan’s sucky state as it is, Lawful Evil or a “rule the world” villain whereas you have the Agarthans who just plain want to destroy the order of Fodlan so they can rule it,  Chaotic Evil or “destroy the world” villains - We see what Cornelia and Arundel do in the territories they get a hold of, they just squeeze the peasants for their last tax dollar, do forced labor, institute tyrannical and capricious rule... etc suggesting that if they won the people would basically end up as livestock. 

Clearly that’s worse; Rhea’s world sucks but you can still kinda live in it and she will be nice to you if you stay on her good side. But she doesn’t see humans as capable or deserving of governing themselves either. (whereas all three lords basically end up giving the commoners varying degrees of political participation)

They’re even represented as Black (Liberation Army with Agarthan stragglers) and White (Church under rhea) on the map for the chapter introductions whereas the other factions get colors (Empire - Red, Kingdom - Blue, Alliance - yellow, resistance army/reformed church - silver/purple)

The Agarthans are fun conceptually in what they imply for the setting but as characters they don’t get much dimensionality but I don’t think they need to be _ I too used to think pure evil was boring, then I lived through 2016 et al and due to endless frustration with the remaining politicians got to appreciate that the revelant thing about pure evil isn’t the evildoers themselves but how you manage dealing with them in a world with complex webs and balances of power, conflicting self interests etc basically no unambiguos “pure good” everyone can agree on . Pure evil is ultimately an abstraction every evil person likely got evil somehow and could theoretically turn good - but many of them won’t and we still have to deal with it. And that’s the point here - what will the good and neutral people do about it? Will they fall for the traps play the games and be turned against each other? 

Often dysfunctional systems happen not so much because there are evil people (there are always evil people) but because the good and neutral people are too busy bickering to stop them even though the good want to do good and the neutral should at least want to protect their own interests from the villains.

Generally Chaotic Evil tends to be sorta more interesting because it’s the cooler villains/creatures or it’s someone lashing out, whereas lawful evil tends to be crotchery old men and kind of pathetic (See Harry Potter for example) and are often engaged with as sorta younger person rebelling against crotchery old people.

But that also comes with the idea that Lawful Evil is Not You. You can easily see your capacity for destruction as you all get mad and have negative emotions but we all like to think we wouldn’t fall prey to blindly following authority... though studies repeatedly show that ppl overestimate themselves. 

So Rhea is interesting in that she and her most uncompromising followers are semi sympathetic thoroughly examined version of Lawful Evil. (Sympathetic enough that they let you subject her to “love redeems” if you want to, though her S support still acknowledges that she used to be a villain, deceive everyone and used to care nothing for byleth until very recently - You don’t need to marry, say,  Dimitri so that he starts acting responsibly. heck, you could run off with any of his best friends!)  Ppl who are especially susceptible to authority often do so because they feel scared,  view the world as dangerous and sort of never fully made that transition from child to adolescent and subsequently young adult where you stop doing what your parents tell you and start making your own experiences. They’re scared of the unfamiliar and want a strong parent figure to swoop in and protect them and tell them what to think. 

Rhea describes herself as the “last” Child of Sothis meaning she was the youngest, she might’ve been relatively young when the massacre happened (at least by Nabatean standards). She probably survived only cause she hid in fear or because her brothers protected her. 

Eventually she raised an army, got allies and dethroned Nemesis and his ilk, effectively ending up as one of the leaders of her country. The people probably loved her alot after all she got rid of the murdery bandit king - seeing as he has a general might makes right attitude and wasnt above massacring a whole clans worth of innocents for power, he was prolly not a good ruler to live under. 

 She felt she had to live up to the mission left behind by their mother (as Seteth said they view themselves as the protectors of Fodlan) but she still acts as if she were that scared helpless little girl.  She never got the memo that she’s in power and privilege now because sometimes that’s kinda how the mind works. So as she started getting increasingly tyranical she saw it all as “protecting herself” or “doing the will of her mother”. You can see how she got to be that way and follow that progression on an emotional level

She views herself not as the leader that she is, but solely as Sothis’ representative holding down the fort till she returns, and doesn’t enjoy being a leader indeed many things like tea quotes, advice box letters, higher order supports etc. imply that she kinda hates it and finds it lonesome. 

Which also makes her a contrast for the main characters but in different ways - Claude and Edelgard (incidentally the ones who actively oppose her and find out at least some of what her deal is) are very independent, self-reliant and self-determined even at a young age, and even though they have experienced comparable crap, especially Edelgard. Meanwhile Dimitri actually had a lot in common with her in terms of backstory and character flaws and going overboard/hitting the wrong target in pursuit of initially justified revenge and tending toward black and white thinking. You kinda see why they join up in CF -  though he has tons more responsibility, empathy and self-awareness even as his very worst and in his own route he eventually winds up doing pretty much the exact opposite as hes strictly against imposing anything on people and ends up letting them have some say in how he governs them

#Archbishop rhea #seiros #fe3h #fire emblem: three houses #fire emblem three houses

[ninzied]

another kind of goodbye

for @carry-the-sky. happy birthday, my friend! have a little post-cancellation kastle fic.

It’s three months, give or take, when Frank lets himself think about her again. Really think about her. Not in the passing kind of way, where he’s walking down some street and sees a bouquet of gardenias, like the kind he’d almost gotten her instead of the roses that day. Or when he’s sipping on coffee, and Karen’s face flashes like a mirage at him across the cheap Formica table – blonde hair almost white under the shit diner lighting, but those eyes still so blue as she told him he would never lie to her.

So – okay, so he thinks about her. He thinks about her.

(He wonders if she—)

Frank eventually makes his way back to the city again, after. Another day, another job. Madani thinks he’s meant for something greater than this – than picking off these scum-of-the-earth kinds of assholes that litter the streets of a place like New York.

He can’t believe that he was meant for greater, but. Sometimes, he does wonder. If a part of him – whatever part of him that’s not still buried deep down in the ground with his family – was meant to come back here. To walk these streets and feel the pull of her, always, even when that’s all he can afford to feel.

He tells himself that has to be enough.

He’s been laying low, since his return. Coughed up some cash for a three-hundred-square-footer in Brooklyn, but he crosses the bridge to the city most days, maybe even finds his way to Hell’s Kitchen from time to time too. It’s risky, he knows. If Murdock catches wind of him, they’d be lucky to walk away from each other in one piece. And Karen…

There’d be a different kind of hell to pay, if Karen ever found out.

His phone gives a single buzz in his pocket as he’s hunkering his way down 47th, and he stops in his tracks, nearly colliding with an elderly woman in the middle of the sidewalk.

“Excuse me!” she says in a shrill voice, bag clutched tight to her chest.

“Apologies, ma’am,” he nods as she makes a show of putting as much distance between them as possible, and then he fishes his phone out, hesitating for one absurd moment before glancing down at the screen.

Back in town yet, Castle?

He barks out a laugh. Chrissakes, Madani.

His phone buzzes again.

I have a job for you, if you’re still interested.

“Still,” mutters Frank, with a scoffing shake of his head. He thinks he admires her perseverance, but Madani’s gotta know she’s only wasting her breath.

He cuts south down 10th, toward Lincoln Tunnel. It’s a brisk day, and the wind on his face feels sharper than usual, considering he hasn’t bled much there in a while. He jams his hands deeper into his pockets, ignoring the insistent drone of Madani’s follow-up call.

He’s got a date with a park bench on the wrong side of town, and if he closes his eyes, he can pretend it’s the same bridge overlooking the water, and when he opens them again Karen’ll be there, waiting for him.

…

His closest call comes with, of all people, the lawyer. Not Red – the other one. Franklin Nelson.

Frank’s emerging with coffee two storefronts down just as another door opens, and he’s cursing himself for not seeing the signs when out tumbles Nelson with his back turned, adjusting his tie against the wind.

“Foggy bear, wait!” someone else is laughing, and a blonde lady steps out to chase after him, slinging a purse over her shoulder and reaching with her other hand to link around his elbow.

“I told him this was gonna make me late for work,” grumbles Nelson, but without any heat to the words. “Dad’s surprise party isn’t until tomorrow, don’t know why this couldn’t have waited – oh, crap, I forgot I told Karen I’d pick up some coffee—”

Nelson’s about-facing sharply, girlfriend following closely behind. He doesn’t appear to notice Frank crouched down in a corner by the 7-Eleven, hood obscuring half his face as he trains his eyes on the ground by their feet. The girl unearths some coins from her bag as they pass, clinking them onto the lid of Frank’s coffee cup without seeming to hear his low mutter of thanks.

He’s leapt up the moment he hears the door latch shut, brushing the coins into his palm as he goes.

He leaves them with a guy camped out by the train stop, a dog lifting her head from their blankets to blink sleepy eyes up at Frank, and he walks away harder, takes the steps two at a time and wishes – God he wishes—

…

Another text from Madani.

He shuts his phone off. Goes back to retrieve it ten seconds later from the trash can that he’d dumped it in, wiping it down and scowling as her message pops up on the screen.

Castle – offer still stands, FYI.

“You should call her back,” advises a man huddled down by the newsstands next to him. His face is like leather, worn down and weathered with age, with living. “Apologize for whatever it is that you did, so you don’t end up out here like me.”

“Already there,” Frank tells him, turning the phone over and over in his hand. Madani’s message lights up again each time, flashing and flashing until he sees it like a burn through his retinas even when the phone’s no longer facing him.

“Damn. That’s a damn shame.” The guy shifts, scratching at a spot on his back. “Maybe shouldn’t’ve stayed away from her for so long.”

Frank shakes his head, uttering a short, incredulous laugh. “Well, maybe I got my reasons, yeah? You think about that?”

“Doesn’t matter what I think,” shrugs the guy. “Does she think they’re any good? These reasons of yours?”

Frank turns away, jaw working furiously.

“Yeah.” The guy shouldn’t have any right to sound as smug as he does, and yet. “Yeah, I didn’t think so.”

…

He’s got no place in coming here. He knows it. He knows it, but he thinks it was always meant to be this way, him circling back around to her, even after everything that he’s done to push her away. Maybe a part of him had never left. And the rest is just – there, hovering right at the edge of some sharp realization, that he could try to be whole again if he simply took that first step. And a part of Karen must at least sense that. It’s why she’d never really given up on him, before.

It doesn’t change how I feel about you.

Frank wonders if she’d forgive him this time. If he’d even want her to.

It wouldn’t be anything close to what he deserves, that’s for goddamn sure.

He gazes up at her fire escape, counts the number of steps it would take just to be able to reach that bottom rung from his vantage point across the street. Her shades are drawn, the lines of them blurred out in the dim orange light. On one corner of the windowsill, wedged up against the glass, there’s a small stack of books. On the other, a vase. From this angle, the shadows folded into the fabric of her curtains look almost like flower stems.

Frank squints, and the stems disappear.

…

There’s about a week in between, where he feels himself inching closer to something, each time he drops by her block. He never goes farther than the patch of sidewalk across from her building, but it’s getting harder not to just careen over the ledge.

More than anything, he wishes he knew, in those moments obscured in half-darkness, whether he’s come to look for that after she’d spoke of, or if he’s come to say goodbye.

Then, one day he spots flowers in her window, for the first time since—

(They’re pale white against the cream of her curtains, their stems dark slivers of green, and he imagines them pricking the pad of his thumb, drawing up a spot of blood.)

Frank takes a deep breath.

…

She doesn’t look surprised to see him when she opens the door, swinging it back two-thirds of the way before stopping. Her lips are pressed tightly together, like there’s too much to say, or maybe there’s things that she can’t, either way he can’t read her and he thinks she’s never terrified him more.

Frank drops his gaze, mouth moving soundlessly until the words grind their way out. “How’d you know I was here, Karen?”

He’s not sure what kind of answer he’s expecting. That Nelson had grown a real pair of eyes, or that Red had managed to ferret him out of his lurking somehow. Or maybe Karen really just hadn’t known at all, and those flowers were never for him.

What Karen says instead is, “Dinah and I grab a beer together, sometimes.”

“That right?” he asks, trying to lay out an image of this in his mind. It sits strangely there, stumping him for a moment, and some of his bewilderment must show on his face because Karen’s mouth almost turns up in a smile before flattening again.

She leans away from the doorjamb, waving her hand in a worn-looking gesture before letting it drop to her side. “Besides, you…haven’t exactly been subtle, in your haunting of Hell’s Kitchen.”

He doesn’t know what to say to that, other than a gruff, “’S’what dead men do, Karen,” as she folds her arms and sighs at him.

“You sure you’re not just losing your touch, Frank?” She steps into the doorway, whether to move closer to him or to block him out of her apartment, he can’t tell. “Or was it because you wanted me to know but couldn’t tell me to my face?”

His eyes snap up to hers, twitching slightly under the sharp weight of her gaze. He shakes his head, wishing he could just ask her, What do you want from me, Karen? but they’re long past that now, and if he can’t find his own way to answer her, then.

God, he really doesn’t deserve this woman.

“I think I—” He shifts his body and tries again. “I think I needed to figure some things out. Karen. I was waiting 'til I felt like I was ready, and I don’t think I’ll ever be that.” But I’m here, he wants to say, but I’m here.

“Yeah.” Karen’s nodding, hair falling into her face, and she brushes it back, resting her chin in her palm for a moment. “I know that, Frank.” All of the fight in her seems to have ebbed slowly back, and he resists the urge to reach out and shake the storm back into motion, to make her understand she doesn’t get to let him off the hook so easy.

The look she gives him now is softer, but he knows. Fight’s not done. May never be done. And he knows this because he knows he’ll never stop fighting for her.

She’s stepped back into the door, letting it swing open further. She doesn’t invite him in, but she’s quirked an eyebrow up at him, biting her lip with another deep sigh and a shake of her head.

“You, uh.” Frank glances back and forth at their surroundings, doesn’t quite meet her eye. Tries to lighten his tone through the gruffness as he asks her, “So, you wanted to see me?”

Her voice is soft, forbearing, with a hint of gentle knowing behind it. “You didn’t?”

She’s holding back the clear start of a smile from him this time, and Frank. Christ. It’s taking everything in him not to step toward her, to—

Karen tilts her chin at him, the motion loosening another wave of blonde hair, and he can’t remember anymore why he was trying so hard to stand back from all this. He’s moving, swaying forward until she’s just an arm’s length away, and there’s something almost teasing about the way she relaxes her shoulder into the door as she watches him.

“You back to kill some people, Frank?”

He feels a corner of his mouth turn up. This girl. He licks his lips, lets out a quiet sort of laugh. “That was the plan, yeah.”

Karen gazes up at him, unblinking. “Have you?”

“I was—” Frank has to look away for a moment, finally turning back when he can. His eyes are steady, boring into hers, voice low and full with meaning. “I was. Working on it.”

Karen nods. Doesn’t speak for long seconds, and he measures them out in heartbeats, chest tightening hard enough it feels like it might break when she asks him, very carefully, “Still?”

Frank steps closer, close enough to feel the way her breath shakes with a small sigh, how her body moves away from the door to meet him.

His hand is inches from hers, but he doesn’t reach for her. Not yet.

She waits, gaze searching. He gives the barest shake of his head, and a single word, gravel-filled, a promise. “No.”

Something cracks open in her expression, and it means everything to him, her head ducking away as though she can’t have him looking too closely at the way she's biting back that smile of hers, and he thinks – he thinks he wants to make her do it again, and again, for as long as she will have him.

“Would you like to come in, Frank?”

He takes her hand in his this time, feeling the pull of her as he steps across the threshold, door shutting firmly behind them, and it feels like coming home.

#kastle #kastleff #kastle ff #kastlenetwork #kastledaily #happy belated birthday haley!!!!!! #sorry for the unpolishedness #i may go back and edit it up a bit later lol #but i wanted to have something for you because you've been so lovely and welcoming! #i can't thank you enough!

[xanams]

livebloggingandreblogging replied to your post “finally doin some au planning in google drive…”

what... KIND of AU? C:

HOO BOY OKAY WELL

a readmore bc this is gonna get LONG, i’ll share what i can without getting TOO spoiler-y (and also big thanks to @imaginative-spirit for helping me to get a lot of these details smoothed out is2g)

i have this au where sora only has kairi with him while growing up on the islands (she still arrives in the same way as in canon), but there’s no riku there. kairi doesn’t really remember anything about her life before the islands, but she’s talked with sora plenty of times about the horrible nightmares she knows she used to have, that just seemed to stop completely when she arrived. sora’s had pretty bad nightmares as a child himself, so he understands.

anyway, the islands still fall to darkness, as they always do, so far im thinking that xehanort’s heartless tries to tempt sora to open the door due to the lack of riku, maybe telling him that they can find out what happened to kairi by going through, and facing it together. but then the heartless attack, sora has no keyblade in sight, and they target kairi... he gets in the way and protects her, but unfortunately loses his heart.

meanwhile, riku is a dreameater who spends most of his time roaming the sleeping worlds, practising magic and using his keyblade when he’s bored, or playing with other dreameaters. (he has those dreameater wings he can get from linking with other dreameaters in ddd btw because i lOVE THOSE). he’s looking for something to do one day, and decides to test out a little dark magic out of sheer curiosity... only to wind up in the realm of darkness.

of course, riku MASSIVELY freaks out. he’s not meant to be there, he vaguely knows about heartless but he’d never dealt with them before, and he desperately wants to get home again. so he puts up the best fight he can, keyblade in hand, and begins to look for a way out.... only to come across a small shadow that doesnt seem to hold the same hostility as the others.

heartless sora’s kinda like he is in kh1, he has just enough sapience left in him to not end up entirely mindless, driven on by his need to find kairi and check she’s safe. he can’t really talk, which results in a bit of a communication barrier ofc, but ultimately he seems to decide he likes riku and starts taggin along with him. riku’s not too sure what to think of sora, but he’s not tried to attack him or anything so it’s fine, he guesses... the lack of talking isnt too bad either, riku’s used to nonverbal communication with other dreameaters, so he’s used to it.

riku’s presence kinda allows sora to get more of himself back, as time goes on. once theyre both a bit more comfortable with each other, he’s able to take on a bit more a humanised form and looks like antiform. he’s also VERY soft /w riku, he likes to hang off him a lot and sunggles up to him at every chance he gets. riku brings him back to the sleeping worlds with him and eventually learns about sora’s want to find his friend again. so uhh... yeah. they end up looking for kairi together, and become closer as time goes on.

roxas is also gonna be involved in this, and likely a lot of the radiant garden folk, but im still ironing out those details.

okay im adding this summary to the doc now as well esjfghfd

#livebloggingandreblogging #reply #i hope this is coherent im trying to just relay everything i've established over the past few days #theres a lot of riku related stuff i left out but if this actually becomes a fic i want it to be revealed in there :3c #dreameater au