#no sense of natural laws of physics at all just whatever magic needed to do to keep him safe was his normal

[nextstopparis]

i really like the hc that magic loved arthur and protected him until merlin came into the picture but very specifically bc it means his idea of like. the laws of physics and How Nature Works would be completely warped. the reason why all those miraculously falling branches didnt raise any questions? its been happening to him his entire life

#like sorry. the headcanon that magic loved arthur is so very dear to me. its So So dear to me #that it looked out for him? literally made him and was fond of him bc of that? #like thats crazy. i Love It. anyway #i also like the idea of people being like ‘WHAT THE FUCK’ and hes just like. um? thats normal? #no sense of natural laws of physics at all just whatever magic needed to do to keep him safe was his normal #bbc merlin #arthur pendragon

[ask-the-prose]

Hey guys! It’s Pax, your local worldbuilding gremlin! Today, I want to tell y’all about the strategy that changed the way I create worlds for the better:

The Rule of Cool

What is it?

Why, it’s your excuse to have giant, unwieldy, anime-inspired swords in your high fantasy epic, a la The Way of Kings! The thing that gave us lightsabers and laser guns and the Force! That thing that inspired the Flow of the Interdependency, the Darkling of the Grishaverse, the Golds of Red Rising, and the dragons of Middle Earth!

It’s your best tool as a worldbuilder, the one that gives you creative freedom without weighing you down with gritty, sometimes thematically-reductive realism.

To paraphrase, the Rule of Cool is exactly what it sounds like: 

Make something that looks and sounds cool, and then build the world around it to justify its existence.

How do I do that, though?

The vague concept itself sounds simple, but one of the things we all love/hate about worldbuilding is that it’s just as complicated as we make it. So, to make it a bit less intimidating, let’s take a quick look at what the process might look like on a relatively small scale!

Let’s say we’re inspired by an image that we find and think is cool - in this case, it’s intricate knives that are, for all intents and purposes, pretty useless as far as knives go. We want a character in our fantasy world to use these as weapons, because that sounds awesome! But these knives are fragile, or unwieldy, or expensive, so… how can it make sense in context?

Let’s lean on a fantasy classic for at least one of those problems - magic weapons! They don’t abide by the laws of physics, because the weapon is enchanted, or the metal itself is strengthened by inherent magical properties.

Now the question becomes where is the magic coming from, and how did our character get a hold of them? (Another optional question: Are they expensive or particularly deadly because of the magic, or is it so mundane in-context that you will find people using them to prepare food?)

This is where the thread can start to fray. As every answered question gives rise to several more, if you’re not careful you can end up with entire encyclopedias worth of information for a thing that, right now, isn’t actually all that important to the story you’re trying to tell.

You can take this particular issue a few different ways, though the most common are to either stop following the chain of questions once it leaves the scope of your work, or change your story to follow that thread. Maybe your story isn’t about the knife, it’s about how they use it to topple a corrupt overlord, and all you really need is a couple throw away lines about it being deceptively dainty. Or, maybe, your story is about the knife, and how it was gifted to your protagonist by someone important to them, and it’s imbued with more power than they knew, and now they have to unveil that mystery, and–

What I’m trying to say is, well…

Only build as much as you need.

The one failing of the Rule of Cool is that, in an attempt to justify the incredible images and impossible physics of one scene in your mind, you can end up building so much more than will ever be used. It can become a test of self-restraint quite quickly - even writing out this post, I got carried away on tangents that will never see your dashboard.

So, unless you’re like me and perfectly fine with thrusting an entire universe to explore one story at a time on yourself, don’t be afraid to stop after those crucial few questions are answered! You don’t need to know every minuscule detail of your world to start experiencing it in whatever way you do. In fact, worldbuilding often comes up naturally as the story progresses (though that’s worthy of another post entirely).

Moral of the story: Do what’s cool first, and justify it later. Your readers/players will thank you for an epic world with that added bit of quasi-realistic depth, and it will only ever require as much effort as you want to give!

#writeblr #writblr #writers of tumblr #writing advice #writing tips #worldbuilding #worldbuilding advice #fantasy #scifi #fantasy worldbuilding #scifi worldbuilding #plotting #ttrpg #creative counsel commune #pax gives advice #the rule of cool

[msmoonfire]

Easy Candlework 101 - All you must know

So you wanna use candles, right?! Keep reading for more juice.❤

Hey guys, today I'm sharing with you the most essential info & rules to achieve effective candlework in your everyday life. I'll try to keep it as concise and simple as possible & hope this post helps you maximize the outcome of your rituals!

Little disclaimer: by *ritual* I mean the sole purpose you're using the candle for. Your commitment and intent IS THE RITUAL. Not necessarily related to a session featuring other magic tools and formal spellwork.

To make sure you're using the best candle for your intent, check each specific correspondence here below. Focus on your goal and consider for how long are you going to use the candle. Practice makes perfect! *PLEASE STAY SAFE WHILE HANDLING CANDLES, FIRES AND MATCHES. BE EXTRA CAREFUL, DON'T LEAVE CANDLES UNATTENDED.*

Thank you loves, xox msmoonfire IG: msmoonfire

1. When to light a candle.

Candles should be used ONLY IN MOMENTS OF NEED, STRUGGLE AND WEAKNESS. Using a candle in moments where it's not necessary is INEFFECTIVE. You can't use them as an "additional" or "supportive" ritual for what is already perfectly fine. Save yourself some money and stop wasting candles for non-honorable purposes. Fire energy is proud and very strong, it doesn't like just to be a useless "accessory" in your space. Do not offend it.

Each time you light a candle, there must be a serious reason why.

2. What candle do I choose?

Size, height, duration, color and scent all depend on your needs.

Maxi votive candles (40h+ duration) - Use if you're stuck in a situation that'll take long weeks or even an entire month to come to an end: you can light it every night for 2-3 hours until you achieve your goals.

Big candles (30h+ duration) - Use if you're stuck in a situation that'll take about 15 days to come to an end: you can light it every night for 2-3 hours until you achieve your goals.

Medium candles (20-26h duration) - Use if you're stuck in a situation that'll take between 1 week and 10 days to come to an end: you can light it every night for 2-3 hours until you achieve your goals.

Mini candles (2-4h duration) - Use if you're invoking the help of fire energy for just a 1-day matter, use tealights and small candles. Let it burn until the flame expires by itself, do not suppress it.

BARE CANDLE: it's the candle alone, you decide what type of candle holder goes underneath. Plates, flat coasters & ashtrays are recommended. Very effective in small sizes. Use if you don't need extra protection and for shortest term rituals (1-2 days). When larger, it can be placed inside a lantern or vase (read VASE C. or LANTERN). Can't be lit in social settings, indoor only. This type of candle supports the presence of other flames.

JAR CANDLE: Jarred candle or jar containing a candle, includes a jar cap. The cap is very useful for suppressing the flame gently; this type is recommended for long term rituals that require you to light up and extinguish the candle every night. Excellent for patience, perseverance, affection and self-help. Can be lit in social settings ALONE, without the interference of other candles.

LANTERN: whatever candle you decide to place inside a lantern. Best effective for welcoming GUIDANCE, spirituality, PEACE, HOPE and INSPIRATION. DON'T USE for anything related to sadness/negativity/confusion, this candle WON'T HELP YOU SOLVE PROBLEMS. Can only be lit in private or familiar settings, both outdoor and indoor. This type of candle supports the presence of other bare flames at a reasonable distance.

VASE CANDLE: candle poured or placed inside a vase holder. Vase candles don't have a cap, they're open on top. Best suitable for pyromancy/flame reading, social relationships, deep spellwork and protection (the taller the vase/the darker the color of the vase, the stronger the protection). By far the most powerful yet sensitive of all, can't be lit in social settings. Indoor only. This type of candle DOES NOT support the presence of other flames.

ROUND/FLOATING CANDLE: has round edges, made to float on water during a relaxing bath or just for atmosphere in a pond. They interact well with water energy, best suitable for emotions, mystery and for any sort of healing ritual. Can be lit in social settings but most effective in private, both indoor and outdoor. This type of candle supports the presence of other "twin" flames.

CLASSIC THIN & TALL CANDLE (candelabra): typical slender candle, excellent for spirituality, enlightment, ambition, special occasions and wealth. Being a tall candle, it strives towards a higher dimention and energy. Can be lit in social settings, indoor only. Supports the presence of other flames. Best effective if colored (non-white).

3. What color should I pick?

White: neutral wishes, positive energy within ourselves, light-hearted thoughts, purity, weather, anything home-related, balance, equality, winter.

Black: deep issues, overcoming fears and disorders, difficult problems of any sort, protection, investigation, inner strength, vision, tension, explicit clarity, negative energy to fight off.

Indigo, Purple: spirituality, beliefs, transformation, rebirth, higher knowledge, research, prayers, emotional connection, meditation, strong neutral energy that needs to be channeled upwards.

Blue: motivation, logic, control, consistency, physical movement, gaps and lacks of any sort, donations, masculine energy, males, assertiveness, addiction, prizes, charts, competitiveness, law.

Lilac, light blue, turquoise, periwinkle etc.: freedom, exploration, travel, serenity, peace of mind, good will, big steps, dreams, mood improvement, healing, positive energy that needs to expand, summer.

Light/Dark grey: must use this color only in case you run out of candles or have a minor neutral doubt. It's the weakest, most vulnerable color of all. Its absolute neutrality can be affected by negativity.

Yellows: your own relationship with nature outdoor, vitality, the arts, music, musical instruments, games, service, help, encouragement, small steps, new life, newborns, babies, spring.

Oranges: boldness, personality, social relationships, respect, parties, breaking control, breaking the rules, breaking patterns, decision making, negative energy from other people that needs to be sent back to the source, breakups.

Browns: formalities, work environment, stability, assets, tasks, stasis, milestones, practicalities, buildings, construction, neutral energy that has to stay fixed and stored inside your own body and possessions, long term memory, autumn.

Greens: environment, plants, progress, accountability, sustainability, food, sports, animals, crafts, strong neutral energy that is essential for our survival, common sense, empathy, inspiration.

Pinks (antique, candy, dust...): Love, collaboration, confessions, talks/chats, sex, behavioral changes, patience, understanding, menstrual cycle, labor, delivery, reception, friendships, courage, gossip, feminine energy, females, intuition.

Reds: passions (hobbies, competitions, dreams, jobs), determination, fury, anger, negative energy that needs to be balanced out, high pressure, stress, beauty, glamour, taboos, speed, war, drama, devastation, destruction, short term memory.

Fuchsia: anything moral, ethic thoughts, human rights, philosophy, heightened sensitivity/intuition, humanitarian propaganda, originality, demonstrations, collectivity, unity, deep conversations, study, culture, open mind.

Gold: = Yellow + all things money-related and sunshine.

Silver: loneliness, cozy environment, cold temper, sacred space, the outer space, modernity, modern style, metals, fish, any measure of time, time, clocks, watches, anything cold/frozen/precious/eternal.

Bronze: similar to brown + the past, hearth, wood, the 4 seasons, strength, warm environment, anything cooked/boiling hot/old/seasoned, spices, resistance, hospitality, endurance, restoration, recycling, maintenance.

#candles #candle #fire #fire energy #candle work #spellwork #love spell #spells #protection spell #bos #book of shadows #ritual #rituals #pagan witch #pagan #witch #paganism #wicca #witchblr #witches #magick #magic #witchythings #witchery #witchcraft #cottage witch #fire spell #energy work #witches of tumblr #witches of instagram

[loudstan]

Epiphany (Pt. 12)

A collection of  NCT werewolf AU stories.

Doyoung (pt.1) (pt.2) (pt. 3) (pt. 4) (pt. 5) (pt. 6) (pt. 7) (pt. 8) (pt. 9) (pt. 10) (pt. 11) (pt. 12)

Summary: The wolf population kept decreasing and those who were left had a hard time trying to fit  into society. Sure, people didn’t consider them as dangerous as vampires, but wolves could still sense some hostility every time they did as much as go for a walk in a public place. Thanks to wolves’ natural magical abilities, NCT (one of the remaining packs) found a safe place among witches in a town where no one knew their secret, allowing some members to finally get a job, study and interact with others without fear of being rejected.Life seems to finally be peaceful for them… except that wolves have needs, and one of those needs is finding their mate.

Pairing: Werewolf! Doyoung x Witch! female reader

Warnings: future smut

"Don’t be silly, Y/n,” he cooed, licking his lips. “It won’t work if you’re lying to yourself. That’s why magic is so useful. Now be a good girl and tell me one thing: do you have feelings for me?”

You stared into each other’s eyes for what seemed like an eternity.

Did you have feelings for him? You could always see how attractive he was; you were not blind. But did you like, like him? Was it maybe more than just liking?

“Well?” he was growing impatient, his nails digging into the fabric of the couch.

Just imagining those nails against your skin made you squirm on top of him and you discovered you were sitting on a very prominent bulge.

“A-ah,” you gasped. “You’re hard.”

“Yeah, no shit y/n,” he gritted trying hard not to arch his back to the feeling.

You pressed yourself harder against him and he hissed. Whatever he had asked before was long forgotten, all you could think about now was how right it felt to be together like this.

Like it was the most natural thing to do, your hands found the hem of his shirt and started pulling at the material to take it off, causing his hands to immediately grab yours to fight back.

“Whyyyy?” you whined childishly, still pulling at his shirt.

“Not until we talk!”

God he was so stubborn. Hesitantly you let go and cleared your throat.

“I don’t know,” you finally said.

“You don’t know...?”

“I don’t know if I have feelings for you.”

You waited for a few seconds, giving him some time in case he wanted to say something too. When he just stared at you dumbfounded, so you tried to continue what you started but he once again resisted.

“No, y/n! We won’t do anything if you’re not sure.”

“Well, none of us was sure that time in the teacher’s resthroom.”

“That’s why I’m trying to do things right this time!”

“But I need-” you stopped yourself mid sentence. What did you need? You didn’t even understand your own actions.

Suddenly you heard Doyoung chuckle.

“I’ll tell you what’s going on. Your body knows I’m in heat, and because you’re my mate,” he stressed the last word with a sharp thrust of his hips, eliciting a soft moan from you, “you want to give yourself to me.”

You did. For some reason you couldn’t explain, you wanted him to have you. And you wanted to have all of him.

“That would be unfair if the bond was forcing you to feel this way, right?” he continued sitting up slowly and elegantly. “ But you took a full moon potion and you still want to sit on my cock, which means you’ve wanted me since the beginning.”

He stopped barely an inch away from your lips. “You little brat.”

You could have melted if it was physically possible. Instead, you tried to kiss him only for him to lie back down with a teasing smile.

“What?” he asked.

“Um...Are we really not…? you know…” you asked incredulously. He was a young werewolf in heat and his mate was sitting on him. He surely wanted to fuck you, right?

“Of course I do. And you’re saying your thoughts out loud again,” he explained.

“Then why don’t you?! I promise I’ll think about what I feel and give you a proper answer later, but please get me off.”

You could see his eyes getting darker at your plea.

“I’ll tell you what, y/n. I won’t stop you if you want to get off. Do anything you want.”

As if on cue, your hands went for his shirt again, this time finding no resistance and successfully taking it off.

There he lay half naked, face flushed and eyes full of lust waiting for your next move. You felt like something was off, but pushed that thought away along with your own shirt.

He gasped in surprise when he saw you weren’t wearing a bra, squirming and sitting up slightly, his mouth hanging open, salivating… but then he took a deep breath in, and lay back down, his hands resting over his head.

You felt a wave of insecurity invade you. Didn’t he like what he saw?

You analysed him. He was breathing heavily and his eyes,shining a red more intense than anything you had seen before, were fixed on your chest. Looking into his eyes, you placed your hands on your breasts, fondling them delicately. Automatically, he let out a needy groan and bit his lower lip, which pleased you almost as much as the twitch of his member under you.

So he did like what he saw.

Satisfied, you lay on top of him, the warmth of his bare chest caressing your own as you sucked on his neck and moved your hips harshly against his. The little sounds that escaped him made you crazy for more, if only he wasn’t trying so hard to control himself.

“What 's wrong, Doyoung?” you asked, starting to feel frustrated at his lack of response. “Don’t you want to touch me?”

“Of course I-nngh! I do.”

“Then why don’t you do it? Are you afraid you’ll hurt me? I’m not that fragile.”

“Sure you aren’t. But I pro-oh! I promised not to touch you.”

You halted your movements, ready to laugh at how he wanted to be a gentleman during the worst possible moment. “That was when you thought I didn’t want you. Fuck that.”

“Is that so? I- I wouldn’t know, since you haven’t exactly told me how you feel,” he gritted, and when you saw the evil glint in his eyes you understood everything.

He wasn’t being a gentleman. He was teasing you.

He wouldn’t do shit until you admit your feelings for him.

Two law students waiting for the other to give in first.

Both equally stubborn.

Who would win?

You pretended to think hard about it, sitting up and letting your hand travel down to palm him over his sweatpants. “Oh, you’re right. I guess you can’t do anything to me, hmm? But you said you wouldn’t stop me if I wanted to get off, right?”

He was visibly shivering by now, scratching on the couch and arching his back.

“Right?” you asked again. You pulled his pants down a little along with his boxers, grabbing his length shamelessly and pumping rhythmically.

He moaned out loud and his hands flew towards your hips, stopping an inch away from your skin. With difficulty he placed his hands back on the couch and thrusted into your hand.

He glared at you like he wanted to either kill you, or fuck you into next week. Instead, he nodded at your question.

“I see,” you said.

You stood up and he whined at the loss of warmth and stimulation, but he interrupted his own protest when he saw you taking your shorts and underwear off.

“So you’re okay with this?” you asked

In awe, he nodded and you wasted no time.

You straddled him again and with no warning you pumped his length a couple of times, lined yourself up and started to sink down.

#doyoung #doyoung smut #kim doyoung #nct doyoung #nct drabbles #nct imagines #nct scenarios #nct smut

[esotheria-sims]

Now that the family’s financial and living situations had become more or less stable, Gabriel could dedicate more time to honing his magical skills.

(Lore incoming!)

Living in The Bay was doing wonders for his powers. The inherently magical nature of the town allowed him to bend the laws of physics more easily than ever before: spellcasting came so much more… naturally here, almost like the very fabric of reality was more mutable somehow. And indeed, from the very moment he set foot on Wyvern’s Bay ground, Gabriel could feel the arcane forces that fuelled magic tugging and pulling at his senses, potent and almost tangible. After all, it was hardly a coincidence that his magical aura - a trait normally possessed only by the oldest and most powerful amongst their kind - had manifested right upon his arrival to The Bay.

Indeed, the benefits of living in Wyvern’s Bay for a warlock were many, but relying on raw power alone wasn’t enough. Just like any other skill, magic needed to be practised and perfected. And so Gabriel did, diligently.

Marcus too was honing his skills, just not of the magical sort. Delighted to discover that the new house had a drafting table, he was practically glued to the thing day and night, drawing and sketching away. He was bound to come into his powers soon, himself (Gabriel was sure that he’d inherited the gift) - but so far it hadn’t happened, all magic-boosting effects aside.

If Gabriel was to be honest with himself, he found it mildly concerning; not full-on worrying, since late bloomers weren’t an all that uncommon phenomenon among witches… but still. He’d heard of cases where a young witch or warlock would have their coming into powers delayed due to a traumatic event or a major change - could this have been the case with Marcus as well? He was at a delicate age when his mother passed away, and their move to Wyvern’s Bay did happen under rather dramatic circumstances, as well... Perhaps all this might have played a role, or perhaps he just needed a bit more time.

Whatever the case, Gabriel wasn’t going to push the issue; the last thing he wanted was for his son to feel pressured into doing things he was not yet ready for. If all else failed, there were special rituals that could be performed to help unleash his powers; Gabriel would be looking them up, just in case.

#sims 2 #ts2 #sims #gameplay #bacc #wyverns bay #wb gameplay #wyverns bay extras #blackbird #blackbird week 3 #gabriel blackbird #marcus blackbird #Abandoned Apothecary #mine

[bunchofstraydogs]

Dazai Osamu character breakdown as I understand him

Meaning that this might be inaccurate and your opinion and visage of him might differ from mine, which is just fine. We perceive the world and the people around us through our experiences and expectations. I'm curious to know how you guys see a complex character like Dazai, just please respect everyone's opinions.

Warning: Manga plot mentions, s2 spoilers, BEAST light novel spoilers, Dazai Osamu

Dazai Osamu was introduced into the scene of Bungou Stray Dogs at 14 when Mori found him.

Even at that young age, Dazai had suicidal tendencies and had been wrapped in bandages similarly as he is in the present. Already dealing with too much trauma for a child his age, the fire is fuelled as he was forced to bear witness to the death of the Port Mafia boss at the hands of Mori, the person that took him under his wing. To use him; which was becoming very apparent to Osamu if he hadn't been aware since the start. Now, I'm not saying that death of the previous boss left a particular scar on Samu, he even agrees with it and is something he himself would have done. But that that is the scene that bore fruit of the following quotes:

"Or could it be that you're afraid, Mori-san? That one day i will slit your throat and take over as the boss?"

followed by

"Everyone seems suspicious to those who have an axe to grind."

This tells us right away that he can tell what type of person you are just from the way you perceive your surroundings, which is logical, but not something many think too deep into.

Even less who have their evaluations of others on point like he does. And he has to, since Dazai's plan is always to understand his allies, his enemies, possible allies and possible enemies. He also takes into account important neutral parties that can still, in one way or another, affect the outcome of his plans or decide to align with one side out of common interest. After comes realising the main goals, along with side achievements (just in case some of those maim his allies or ruin the future plans he made) of every party. Taking in their morals and motivation, and being familiar with the ground the confrontation will happen on, he now has the view of the whole chess board and it's pieces in his head. He moves his allies in the right places, knowing how they'll react in the situation to come, and awaits the enemies with open fire arms. He was tought to think like that. At all times. Mori made sure of it. You know how specialists never really stop thinking in their areas of expertise, like doctors, for example, will naturally notice people's posture and look for scoliosis or whatever? How your foot hits the floor, if you're walking straight, your knees and shoulders, etc. Same for Dazai. His brain maps out person's expressions, reactions, choices, personality, etc. in great detail. I'm pretty sure he has eidetic memory, if his conversations in manga with Fyodor are anything to go by.

Another thing his brain does is think of worst possible outcomes.

Not in a fear of what if things go wrong, but as a possible route. He uses it to determine how big of a threat the opposing force is and what steps they'll have to take to achieve that. Knowing that, he'll know how to intercept them. Also, like everything else, it's not something he can control since we're talking about thought process here and that's just how his brain works. Can't magically turn that off. It's especially annoying to him when he's genuinely enjoying himself with, let's say, ADA members and then his brain goes brrr.

•"A lot happened recently and we're a torn in many people's eyes." *Tanizaki and Atsushi drinking punch* "There's a possibility, while a small one, about 8% at this very moment, but as time goes on will increase, that an organisation outside of Yokohama decided we're an unavoidable threat and poisoned the drinks. Don't drink that. Nothing will happen, they'll wake up tomorrow in pristine condition don't drink th-"

Yeah, i feel bad for him too.

He has PTSD and insomnia, besides the hectic brain,

so he's not getting proper amount of rest. Actually, he drinks almost every night by himself at home. Pretty sure it's canon as well, because if you search for a picture of him in his room, you'll see him surrounded by multiple bottles. Two of the PTSD symptoms are hallucinations and night terrors (no, that is not the same as a nightmare). What people usually do is use opium to cause hallucinations in a safe environment so that there's little chance of them happening uncontrolled. He's probably using alcohol to numb himself while he's reminiscing, since if he does still have hallucinations after years having passed by (which isn't impossible), they're probably few and far between. Not saying there's no chance he isn't using opium. He would know where to get what he needs, after all.

Osamu's haunted by his own actions as well, not just by trauma caused to him.

At an uncountable amount of occasions, he found himself looking into a mirror and not really comprehending his image. It was like dissociation. Looking through a fog at what's supposed to be your carbon copy, but not knowing all of your features perfectly, so whatever you're seeing could only be an impostor, yet you're not sure because that would take comprehending physical proof of your life to the fullest and how it works and he just... can't. He can but he doesn't want to. He already knows he's despicable and broken, doesn't really feel the need to see just how much. He can't, for all his perfect memory, remember the faces of the people he has killed. He hadn't even seen all of them, but he was responsible for their demise. Causing havoc and misfortune in general through other crimes besides murder as well. We've seen his expression when he listened in on Atsushi talking to Kyouka over the earpiece how the 35 deaths don't matter anymore. He knows they do and he knows that the change of heart won't justify what he's they've done. Ango thought him to value each life. But he also knows that even murderers can change and become good. Oda did that. It's also what's keeping him in the agency.

When Oda died, his last words mentioned that Dazai doesn't care about good or bad and that was correct for Dazai Osamu back then. I genuinely think that his present self does mind the difference.

He believes in necessary evil and will do dark shit to get the good outcome he's envisioned.

He doesn't separate outlaws and lawful people, however.

He knows that generally speaking, the line is thin and easy to cross and that many were born or forced into the situations they are. Those that fight the life thrown at them are an exception, not a rule. That's also why he likes Atsushi, probably the main reason. The boy has every right to hate the world and yet. Dazai is envious, he doesn't really have the same capacity.

I want now to talk about why does Dazai Osamu do what Dazai Osamu does.

The reason he attempts suicide, joined the mafia, made friends at all, is because for all his intelligence and observations, ability to understand others, he doesn't really understand himself.

He doesn't understand his worth. He doesn't understand his purpose. In all of that confusion, he finds no reason to live. He laughs but can't get the high, he bruises but can't fully heal. In all of the things people find happiness in he can't feel joy from. He is emotionally stunted. He thinks too logically. He doesn't understand actions out of emotions because to him, it doesn't make sense. Emotions cloud your mind and when you're not thinking straight, you make mistakes. Plain and simple. He just accepts it, that most people simply cannot control themselves and prefer lashing out instead of methodical approach. All the better for him, he has leverage. Even when he does act on impulse, which is incredibly rare and not as explosive and dramatic, his brain rationalises it as to why his actions were a good way to go. And if his reaction was one that bore fruit, than it was a tactical one.

"If you place yourself somewhere close to raw emotions, where you're exposed to raw violence and death, instinct and desire, you can brush against man's true nature. I though that way i could find a reason to live somehow."

From this, i can tell that he was hoping that, in a situation where he's pushed far enough, he'd realise what's important to him, what he wants to protect or destroy, what's one thing he wouldn't want to leave unsettled before dying. What is that one thing he'd regret dying before achieving? What should he fight death for. What is worth living on for? To him, it doesn't matter if that something is good or evil as long as he gets to keep it in his life.

It seems he hadn't found it exactly, but is satisfied with what he has for now, in the agency, to just keep going. But he still tries to commit suicide, hoping that one day, when the clear picture of the world around him is fading away, when he's becoming light headed from the lack of oxygen, when he's loosing control over his body and thoughts don't seem to flow well, there will be one thing, anyone, screaming at him to fight it. New day new chances. It didn't happen today, better luck tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomo-.

Now, like Mori, Dazai feels the need to, at all times, be in control of the situation. Including people.

That means no one, but perhaps Ranpo due to his own abnormal intellect, is aware of their own role. They know their mission, but they're not expecting to be given that particular one because they'll come across an obstacle they would react to in a way that would satisfy Osamu's plans.

Dazai Osamu is more of a chemist, than a chess player, if you ask me.

Throwing different people into the mix, under different conditions at different times and is noting down their reactions in safe surrounding if possible, so that when the time calls for it, he'll be able to make a perfect concoction for the predicament. A chemist and his substances; A chess player and his pawns; A puppeteer and his puppets. Now, Dazai is meticulous and never rash, but like everyone else (except effin Lovecraft what is he even) he's only human and he bleeds when he falls down and humans aren't perfect. He isn't always right. That means he makes mistakes. The issue with big shot players that control the board is that, when they fall down, everyone on their side crashes and burns as well. So the day Dazai fucks up everyone else will follow because of lack of insight on their part that's completely out of their control. All it takes is for him to underestimate or overestimate one person and chaos ensues. There is no such thing as happy little accidents small mistakes for someone like him. I have crippling anxiety and a sole thought that one hiccup could blow up in everyone's face... damn. I would try committing suicide myself. But it's his fault, he brought upon himself an obligation and pressure like that. To be fair, it was Mori that drilled that type of thinking where no one should know what you plan because they can't ruin what they don't know If they turn against you, they can't stop you.

For his own sake, and everyone else's, Dazai needs to learn how to show his cards and share the burden.

Again, going back to the emotionally stunted guy that has commitment issues (where he either can't commit or can't let go) trope.

He never outright does something good for someone where people would acknowledge it, he uses his underhanded tactics here as well.

He casually makes himself look like a bad guy, an asshole, to conveniently move attention from the inner turmoil a person is struggling with to a present problem at hand that they can fix and let their frustrations out on. But he hopes that, one day, someone just might notice his intentions for what they are and do the unspeakable- see through him.

"I'm a very private person. You don't ask, i don't tell."

Yes, and your whole existence is just a huge cry for help. He wants to be asked. He's begging for attention. A specific type of attention. One that will see him without making him feel imposed on. One that will understand his sins without making a big deal out of it. Accept him as a person he is, makes him feel like one as well. Makes him feel alive. Makes him feel... period.

The day he finds that thing is the day he completely turns his life around and fully dedicates to it. It's where the part of not being able to let go commitment issue ensues.

Since Oda's death he's been secretly keeping an eye out on possible ways to bring him back. If you've read Beast AU you know that when Dazai gets his hands on the book, he'll create a universe where Oda doesn't die. Should he find an ability user that can bring back the dead, just tell him what it will take, he's ready to destroy his own soul for it and if that isn't enough, well, he'll have no hesitation ruining theirs. After all, BEAST!Dazai Osamu never actually met Odasaku, he just had the memories he'd gotten from his canon self and that was enough for him to do everything he did.

He's incredibly selfish and has a weird come in but the door is a wall dynamic he rolls with in his self imposed solitude.

It's like the walls of the space in my brain are ugly and terrifying, so i closed off the entrance to keep myself in. I'm doing you a favour but please break the wall down and tell me it's okay to come out i don't want to be here-

Happy little thoughts woah woah yeah~

That's what i got from what I've seen of him. I may have missed some things, some things might prove to be wrong as the series progress further, but yeah.

There is, however, one more thing i want to put out here. Since Dazai was already like this before Mori found him, that begs to question as to why? What happened to him?

Now, since the characters are based on real people, is it crazy to say that Dazai Osamu has had a horrible childhood because of his father? Real life Dazai was terrified of his dad and was very intimidated by him. He always tried to stay in his good graces out of fear of punishment. Neither of his parents felt like a parent to him, actually. His father didn't care and his mother was often ill, but did care for him when she could. Both of them died eventually.

This could be the plot Kafka based Dazai's background on, but we'll have to wait and see.

#dazai osamu #bungou stray dogs #bsd #meta #dazai osamu headcanon #dazai osamu headcanons #hc #hcs #psychoanalysis

[little-mad]

Downsides of Thievery Pt. 1

~ Next Part ~

“Maybe stealing from an interdimensional diplomat wasn’t my greatest idea,” Gavin thought to himself from his current position in a jail cell.

He’d been hesitant about the job right away. Stealing from humans was one thing, but stealing from alteons was on a whole new level. However, the payment the client had offered Gavin had been too tantalizing to refuse. Who knew it was bad to be greedy?

“Shit,” he grumbled under his breath. How was he supposed to know the diplomat would have some weird magical artifact thing that could detect and identify trespassers? That was just unfair. Gavin was a good thief, so good that he’d managed to make a career out of it. If he had been caught due to his own ineptitude maybe he wouldn’t be so peeved. But this was just a matter of not having enough information. Thus making it unfair.

Prison was something every criminal feared, but it was also something every criminal prepared for in some sense. If Gavin was headed for prison, he might not be so worried. Sure it would suck, but at least he felt sure his undeniable charms would make him friends in no time. But Gavin wasn’t headed for prison--no, he was being extradited to the alteon dimension.

Gavin shivered at the thought. Despite having stolen from one, he had never actually seen an alteon in person. Pictures and videos could only do so much, at least that’s what people said. Apparently the true gravity of an alteon’s massive size couldn’t be understood until you saw one in real life.

Not only would Gavin quite literally be put in the hands of an alteon, but he would also be getting taken to a completely different dimension that only a few very important humans had ever visited before. Maybe he should’ve felt special.

Were the circumstances different, Gavin might’ve even felt excited for the adventure. His work had taken him all over the world, it would be thrilling to get to see a whole new one. However, he had a feeling he wouldn’t exactly be getting the grand tour.

It was at that moment that Gavin began to hear footsteps approaching his cell. A few moments later, two business-suit clad federal agents appeared. Gavin scrambled to his feet and took several unconscious steps towards the back wall. The key jangling in one of the agents’ hands told him exactly what time it was.

“Your ride is here,” the female agent announced, a slight smirk playing at the corner of her lips.

Gavin scowled.

The key carrying agent swiftly unlocked the door and beckoned for Gavin to exit the cell. “Come on, we don’t have all day,” he stated impatiently.

“Aren’t you going to cuff me or something?” Gavin questioned, taking note of the fact that neither agent had brought handcuffs with them.

The woman’s smirk grew but she remained silent. “The alteon won’t need cuffs to restrain you,” the man responded.

Gavin instantly felt the pit of fear in his stomach grow. Horrible images of himself trapped in gigantic hands were invading his mind. Being given over to the alteons meant that his civil rights would be essentially irrelevant. Unless alteons had laws protecting humans, which he doubted, then they could do pretty much whatever they wanted with him. Gavin swallowed hard.

“A-actually, I’m okay staying here…” he stammered. God, he hated how pathetic he sounded. Gavin’s line of work required a lot of guts, and while a healthy dose of caution was always good, he had never considered himself to be cowardly in any sense of the word. But now...well now he felt like the biggest fraidy cat in the whole world.

The male agent gave Gavin what almost seemed like a sympathetic look. “Sorry, but that’s not an option,” he said, once again making a beckoning motion with his hand.

“Dad was right. I should’ve become a doctor,” Gavin thought miserably to himself as he very reluctantly exited his cell.

The trip up from the cell block to the roof of the building pretty much felt like a march to death. Federal employees stared unabashedly at the man practically being sacrificed to giants. Some wore looks of pity, while others had smug expressions on their faces, as if to say “serves him right.” Were Gavin in a better mood he probably would have scowled at the nosy jerks, or at least stuck his tongue out at them. But as things were, he was in no mood.

~

Rael sighed as he shifted his feet impatiently. It didn’t elude him that every human in the vicinity stiffened at his movement. He refrained from rolling his eyes. It was irritating how the humans constantly acted so skittish all the time, as if he would suddenly go on some sort of rampage.

“Why did they have to give me this assignment?” Rael mentally groaned.

Unlike many of the members of the Imperial Guard, he hadn’t joined with some idiotic fantasy of glorious duels and honorable battlescars. Rael joined because he knew it was the easiest way to elevate his station. Plus standing guard at the palace was easy work that he was perfectly content with. That’s why he had been less than pleased when he'd been informed he would have to venture to the human dimension to retrieve some human criminal.

Prior to today, Rael had only seen a human once, it had been from a distance and only for a second as they were being escorted into the palace. Therefore, he’d had no personal reason to dislike humans. It was just that from everything he had heard about them, they sounded so...annoying. And so far, his experiences with them today had proven that to be fairly accurate.

Rael suppressed a sigh as he glanced around. Thankfully the building he’d been told to go to was at the edge of a human city, meaning he wouldn’t have to put up with civilians gawking at him. The federal agents gathered on the roof in front of him were bad enough.

The stories about how giant being in the human realm would make you feel rang true. Rael felt positively colossal next to people who looked to be barely taller than his fingers. Not to mention the building he was standing beside, which appeared to be three stories, reached no higher than his knees. “Humans are lucky our imperialistic urges died a century ago,” Rael thought. Taking over the human realm would no doubt be a piece of cake, even with their supposed technological advancements.

“Sir!” Rael’s attention was caught by the shout of one of the humans standing on the roof below. He looked down to see the speaker was the woman who appeared to be in charge. “We apologize for the wait, the prisoner is being brought up now,” she announced. It was almost amusing, the way they had to yell for their tiny voices to even be perceived by him.

“Good,” Rael responded simply, electing not to mention the fact that the prisoner should’ve been ready and waiting for him when he arrived.

After a few minutes, Rael caught sight of the door on the roof entrance swing open. Three humans stepped out. The two dressed similarly to all the other federal agents practically had to drag the third one out. It was difficult for Rael to see from so far away, but the odd one out appeared to be a young man. He had light skin, a crop of messy brown hair, and appeared to be quite slim.

Rael raised a single eyebrow. “This is the prisoner?” he questioned as he eyed the man. He didn’t look like much, which was applicable to pretty much all humans, but Rael found it hard to believe that this one could’ve successfully stolen from an alteon.

“Yes, sir!” replied the woman in charge. “His name is Gavin Stone, he’s believed to be associated with many high profile robberies,” she explained.

Rael spared the human called “Gavin Stone” one last look before giving a shrug and reaching for the miniature iron cage attached to his belt.

The cage, which had been especially made for this occasion, was quite simple in its construction. The thing didn’t even have a lock because the latch to open the door was too big for a human’s miniscule hands to manage. It would do perfectly for keeping the criminal contained throughout the duration of the trip back to the palace.

The moment Gavin had laid eyes on the alteon, his body had practically separated from his mind. Physically, he was moving forward with the guidance of his two escorts, but his mind was still struggling to process the impossibly large person looming above him.

If the alteon’s size wasn’t strange enough, the guy looked like he’d stepped right out of a Renaissance Fair or something. His skin was a soft brown color, and he had long black hair that was tied into a loose ponytail behind him. His eyes were a striking teal color that stood out against his angular features. As for his clothing, he looked to be wearing what appeared to be some kind of light leather armor over top of a forest green tunic. Oh yeah, and then there was the fact that he had pointy elf ears.

Gavin had known the alteon dimension was almost medieval in nature, and he’d known the alteons had pointy ears, but it was still so damn bizarre to see in person.

As Gavin was in the middle of gaping, the giant began to move. He flinched at the action, and he noticed everyone else on the rooftop tense up as well. Clearly nobody was comfortable around this--this thing! “How can they hand me over to that?!”

It wasn’t until he had been practically shoved to the edge of the roof that Gavin’s brain caught up with what his body had been doing. Frantically he looked around him. All of the agents, including his former escorts, had backed away from the edge of the building closest to the alteon. This left Gavin stranded, with a giant man a mere few feet away.

With a hard gulp, Gavin tilted his head back to look up at the creature who was about to snatch him away. Those teal eyes were glancing down at him, and in his hand was a cage the perfect size for holding a stupid human who really should’ve just become a damn doctor.

#so yeah...i've got some new ocs #get ready for some juicy fearplay in this sucker #g/t #giant/tiny #g/t writing #g/t story #g/t community #my writing #oc: Gavin Stone #oc: Rael #g/t fearplay

[ktheist]

muses. familiar!cat-shifter!yoongi x witch!reader

83.“My friends get so annoyed by how much I talk sometimes.”

x

“i thought witches don’t have friends.” yoongi scratches his arm, opening the fridge and checking out what little sustenance you have in it.

not much.

“and i thought familiars are supposed to indulge in their masters needs and wants,” hands on your hips you look at him with knitted brows and a pout.

but exactly five heartbeats later, you hear your phone buzzing and you’re hurrying to grab your bag, “i’ll be back!”

a second after the door closes shut, your head pops back in, the sulking pout now gone and in its place, the most brilliant smile and brightest twinkle in your eyes, “let’s have chicken for dinner! i left the money on the counter so you can order it and we can eat together.”

and then you’re gone.

min yoongi grumbles, eyes burning holes in the fifty dollar note lying on the white countertop.

‘did she think i’m broke or something?’

well, yoongi was quite literally homeless and living on tree branches in the deepest part of south korea’s reserves. but he was only living there because his last witch died from greed.

take over the world. become queen of every species on earth.

that sort of greed.

but you?

this 20-something year old pays - well, the humans like to call it tuition fee - to be a slave to an education that isn’t even beneficial to witches.

huh.

yoongi feels sorry for your bodiless ancestors who got burned at the stakes. if they had graves, they would be turning in them but they don’t because they took the risk to learn and practice witchcraft even if it was forbidden in their times.

now you’ve got all the reasons to learn - humans got so stupid that they stopped believing in anything besides logic - but you’re using him to predict what’s going to come out in your tests.

x

“ugh, my tailbone’s about to liquidize from having to sit in that exam hall for five freaking hours.” mina grumbles, stretching her arms over her head.

“okay, but why the fuck do we have to write a 10 page essay on why plato think our end goal is happiness?” soyeon’s scrunches her nose, as if physically cringing at the remembrance of it.

“isn’t that like, a statement? weren’t we supposed to talk about rousseau?” nayeon’s brows knit together in utter confusion.

“shit.” you’d expect soyeon to be cursing but it’s mina.

after a series of mina freaking out and the rest of you trying to calm her down by saying whatever possible answer they discussed could very well be wrong because nobody recalled hearing the professor mention who this rousseau scholar-guy.

except you.

and it wasn’t the professor who mentioned it.

it was the grumpy shapeshifting cat you’ve taken in who also happens to have futuristic premonitions.

almost as if they could hear your thoughts, soyeon turns to you, “we should’ve trusted ___’s instincts.”

technically, you were doing some reading on rousseau’s natural law theory when the girls sneaked up on you and scared your literal soul out of your body. they were surprised that you were even studying so you passingly mentioned having a strong, unquestionable feeling that he’s going to make an appearance in finals.

“you girls should’ve listened to me,” you cheekily proclaim, hands on your hips and chin tilted so high up, you can almost see the sun.

“oh great finals goddess, please tell us what you think will come out for criminal procedures,” mina gets on her knees without a care in the world and starts praying for you.

it wasn’t hard to stroke your ego and your friends know that better than anyone. so you tell them what they want to know on a pretense of ‘just predictions! don’t put all your eggs in one basket. i might be wrong!’

“yoongi, i’m home,” you singsong, swinging the door open only to have your shoulders sag at the lack of a certain black haired grump who would usually be sleeping on the couch and grumble for you to ‘shut up, i’m taking a nap.’

“huh, he’s not here.” you kick off your shoes and pad over to your room only to have your heart flutter at the sight of a cat snugly curled up in your bed.

“yoongi!” you squeal, dropping your bag and books on the floor before bounding over to the bed and gathering the slumbering feline in your arms.

the cat’s golden slits seem to appear on guard until they soften at the sight of you. he yawns widely as he stretches in your arms.

“i’m home, yoongi.” this time, your voice is barely above whisper, hand scratching his furry body as you lay on your bed, staring at the ceiling.

“you were right about rousseau and now my friends think i have some sixth sense,” you prattle on while the weight on your chest starts curling himself up - you have no strand of doubt that if you just looked down, the black feline will be snoring away as if he doesn’t have a single ounce of care for your story-telling.

not that yoongi’s ever showed an interest in your life besides the magic that you happen to bottle up and exploded the day he was walking around in seoul out of boredom.

you’re not sure when you fell asleep, but you wake up to the sound of ‘here’s your chicken’ and a ‘thanks’ before the door clicks shut.

“was that the chicken?” groggy but hungry, you march over the kitchen where yoongi - now in his human form - is taking out the boxes with your favorite swicy chicken restaurant symbol from the plastic bag.

“with the way you were snoring, i didn’t think i should order dinner at all,” he says nonchalantly.

“i-i don’t snore!” you almost scream, cheeks heating up.

“uh-huh,” there it is again, the nonchalant tone that almost drives you up the wall. then he turns to face you, index finger tapping the corner of his mouth, “you’ve got some drool there.”

almost as if possessed by a chaotic spirit, you trudge to the bathroom, slamming the door behind you in your haste. your reflection stares back at you with bed hair pointing everywhere and alarmed, round eyes as you wipe the corner of your mouth with the back of your hand only to notice nothing there. you repeat the motion once again and true enough, not a smidge of drool is present.

“that lying-!” you huff, marching back to the kitchen with one objective in mind.

“lying isn’t very nice, yoongi,” you say, barely putting a lid on the boiling anger.

“being too trustful isn’t very witch-like either.” he counters, a swicy chicken in hand and bright red sauce in the corner of his mouth.

“i curse you into a monkey!” you scream, index finger pointed in his direction.

but instead of the black haired familiar morphing and turning into the animal you cursed him into, he continues eating without even batting an eye.

“what- but-” you look at your hand and then back at him, “i cursed you!”

“you can’t curse your own familiar.” he finally says halfway into your quarter-ish life crisis, “now sit down and eat before your stomach starts grumbling too.”

you huff in bashful frustration. face too hot to even look at yoongi in eye but you’re too hungry to throw another fit.

believe it or not, this is just one of your routine in your daily life - him teasing you, completely nonchalantly and you getting worked up over it and end up making a fool out of yourself.

in a few hours, you’ll end up forgetting it ever happens and end up cuddling the cat that’s curled up on your pillow. you’ve just finished revising another topic of your next exam.

the next time you wake up, it’s to grown sized male snuggling into your chest, his arm slung over your back and your leg wedged between his. there’s not so much as a hair’s breadth between you.

“y-yoongi,” you stammer out, unable to think properly.

but when the aforementioned man simply groans and nuzzles his face in between your boobs, your cheeks hit up and your hand ends up swinging in the air before it hits its target.

his cheek.

now he sports a red handprint on his porcelain skin as he goes around, making coffee for himself while you diligently study at your desk. it’s some time in the afternoon that a furry ball leaps into your lap and kneads your thighs with his little paws before curling into a ball.

“aren’t you so cute?” your heart flutters at the adorable little fur ball, hand scratching the underside of his neck and giggling at how he’s purring in appreciation.

you end up dropping your apple pencil and shutting off your ipad. carrying the clingy furball in your arms, you plop down your bed.

“ugh, my back feels like it’s gonna crumble off like biscuit crumbs,” you lament, not caring if the sentence makes no sense.

but before you can think of any other sentence that makes no absolute sense, you feel the weight on your stomach shift, the furball you were caressing now turning into a lump of skull with actual human hair as it holds itself up and places its forehead on yours.

“how is it that you willingly take me to bed when i’m a cat and slap me in the face like i’m some pervert when i’m my human form?” this time, you know he’s teasing you because he’s smirking like he’s amused.

“it’s different because you were a cat!” you thank merlin that your voice comes out strong and certain.

“i’m still me no matter what form i take though,” his hand is warm on your thigh. his breath fans your skin, “still a man.”

“it’s different,” you know you sound meek compared to when you started out.

but your face is hot and your heart is palpitating inside your chest. all of a sudden you feel too shy to even look at him. so you cast your gaze to the side. relief floods your system when he lifts his head from yours. but it’s short-lived. teeth bite on the delicate skin of your neck. not enough to hurt but enough to incite a surprised yelp from you.

and a swing of your hand.

that’s how yoongi ends up with another red handprint on his other cheek. the first one is barely disappearing.

and you, with a hickey on your neck that you don’t know what to explain to your friends tomorrow when you meet them for the exam.

but one good thing comes out of it. after the slap, a rope materializes and wraps itself around yoongi. it’s pure magic and not even he can undo it.

“stop teasing me,” you start, sitting on the chair with your legs crossed.

“start treating me like i’m a man even in my cat form and i’ll consider that,” he counters.

at that, you lift an eyebrow, all of a sudden feeling a rush of confidence, “start acting like a man in your human form then.”

that’s when yoongi looks at you like you’ve challenged his essence. his existence.

“untie me and i’ll show you what a man is, master,” he challenges back.

it’s the word ‘master’ that gets your stomach fluttering with butterflies.

“you have two heads but you’re using the useless one to interpret what ‘a man’ means?” eyebrows rising to the ceiling, you pretend to be surprised.

“you’re a witch but you don’t even know how to use a spell,” he shrugs, reverted to his nonchalant self.

and that’s what irks you the most. how he acts like it has nothing to do with him but rubs your lacking in your face.

“lay down.” you order and his body is sent flying backwards, barely missing the wall in his abrupt descent.

yoongi groans, gathering himself once again.

“see, i know you can’t go against my words,” you say, triumphant.

“how did you find out?” he strains his neck, trying to look at you now that he’s laying down.

“the way you always did what i asked and last night, you ordered the chicken anyway even though i was sleeping and i could’ve slept through the entire night.” those were suspicions - you only confirmed it when you gave him the direct order.

“fine, you win,” he announces, barely caring about the argument.

“good.” you nod, mentally willing the rope to untie itself. but nothing happens.

you try again.

and again.

and again.

“can i please be released?” yoongi finally says after one too many mental tries.

“uh, wait,” you push yourself off the chair and tread over to manually undo the knot that keeps the rope tightly wrapped around yoongi.

“you can’t do it with magic?” comes the million dollar question.

you sigh, dejected, “i think i need to be angry - or feel strongly about something to get my magic to work.”

that’s what happened when yoongi met you. overstressed and barely focusing on your surroundings, you ended up getting run over someone who was on a bike. everything just kept going wrong. you ended up bawling your eyes out on the sidewalk - the man who ran over you started panicking thinking he broke a bone.

“i’m cool now though.” you shrug, easily dismissing the dejection and whatever that upset you before.

the rope comes undone and yoongi shimmies himself out. but before you can do anything, his hand shoots out, wrapping around your wrist and pulling you down until your knee digs into the mattress in between his legs, your faces too close. if he’d just tilt his head, his lips would easily brush yours.

“yoongi,” you warn but he shushes you.

“try getting the rope to move with magic,” he instructs, voice uncharacteristically soft and soothing.

you take a deep breath, eyes trained on the rope lying around him whilst trying to ignore the millimeter distance between your faces.

you move your index finger and the rope lifts itself up. you motion to the left with your finger and the rope gradually slithers through the air in the direction you’re pointing.

“it’s working,” you almost squeal, beaming.

and in your excitement, you seek yoongi’s gaze, only to see the rope crashing against the ground in your periphery.

“good,” a smile plays on his lips.

all of a sudden, you’re out of breath, the perpetrator also being the cause of the rush of blood to your face.

thanks.

the words doesn’t really get passed your lips because his feel feather-light but his fingertips on your cheek is calloused but grounding. that’s how you know this isn’t just some dream.

then he pulls all of you down. the sudden shift of motion illicit a gasp out of you. but the shock stricken state is short lived. you find yourself breathing in his musky woody scent.

he leans down, kissing the delicate spot on your neck that makes your heart wretch inside your chest.

“yoongi, maybe we should take it slow and practice some other time?” you suggest and he chuckles, the sound ringing in your ear like a blissful melody.

“i’m not doing this for a practice run,” he confesses ever so casually, “i took on the form of a cat because you told me about the one you have back home. but you got too familiar with it that you forgot about me.”

he licks your flesh like a cat would. it’s supposed to be an innocent, cat-like gesture but something about the way his male body is hovering over you makes the fibers in your system go on panic mode. you wish the bed would open up and swallow you whole but you’re not powerful enough for that.

yet.

“i’m upset,” he sulkily says and sinks his teeth into your skin.

x

the fading redness on his left cheek where you first slap him is rosier than ever after your third slap landing on that one.

“when are you gonna let me go?” his voice echoes in the silence.

you turn around to see the man sitting cross-legged on your bed with his hands on his sides, the rope tightly wrapped around him. after he bit you, the rope ended shooting up and around him, as if it had a mind of its own and sought to protect you by disabling your neck-biting familiar.

oh, you sport similar hickey on the other side of your neck now too.

“hmm,” you tilt your head in contemplation, “after my last exam?”

“that’s like, in a week,” he grunts, “how am i gonna bathe? and eat?”

“you have two heads, yoongi. figure it out.” you shrug and turn back to your books and ipad.

x

note. this was requested by an anonymous as part of my drabble game.

#bts scenarios #yoongi scenarios #bts fanfic #yoongi fanfic #yoongi fic #bts fic #yoongi x you #yoongi x reader #bts x reader #bts x you #bts smut #yoongi smut #bts fluff #yoongi fluff #drabble game 1 #excerpt from a fic i'll never write

[imagine-loki]

Omega Mine

TITLE: Omega Mine

CHAPTER NO./ONE SHOT: 1/?

AUTHOR: nekoamamori

ORIGINAL IMAGINE: Loosely based on: Imagine Loki discovers the Avengers have an omega who has healing powers living with them. He’s an Alpha and he wants her, badly. 

RATING: M (eventually ) 

NOTES/WARNINGS:  Also on AO3 click here

“Nope, nope, fuck no.  Why do all these companies suck?” You grumbled to yourself as you scrolled through job posting after job posting on your laptop.  You were sitting on your bed absently eating a slice of pizza in your pajamas while you searched.   You were hunting through the job listings looking for a company in search of an Omega.  

That wasn’t at all atypical. Businesses that employed a lot of Alphas needed Omegas on staff to help keep the balance and the peace.  Betas could only do so much against volatile Alpha tempers.  

It wasn’t that you didn’t like your current job, but it just wasn’t the right fit.  You’d worked at a few different companies since you’d graduated from college.  The companies were all glad to have you around, but none of them had felt like the right fit.  That was also typical.  It took a few tries to find Alphas who really fit and felt like safety and home.  It took longer to find such Alphas in an environment where you could use your degree or your magic, or something that made you more than just a typical Omega.  

It could take forever or absolutely no time at all to find the Alpha.  The one who was your mate and meant to be your love.  

You hadn’t had any luck finding your Alpha yet, just as you hadn’t found the right company to work for.  You’d temped a couple places as an admin, even though it wasn’t anything to do with your degree.  You were now working again as an assistant and getting pretty tired of all omega jobs only being assistants or menial labor.  There was nothing of substance.  That made sense.  Usually, Omegas couldn’t hold higher level positions.  Alphas ruled and Omegas were cared for, by nature and by nurture.  On the other hand, Omegas were the balance for an Alpha’s temper.  They cared for the heart of the people, while the Alphas cared for the physical safety.

Any of the castes could marry any of the others and Omegas finally had some rights in the US, but the world was still highly unfair toward your caste.  Omegas couldn’t own a house, for instance, or rent an apartment in your name.  You could earn money and have a bank account of your own, thanks to the laws that had passed, but a lot of the world was still stuck in the old ways of thinking Omegas nothing more than pets.  Or glorified sex slaves.  Thankfully, things were changing slowly, but surely.

You lived in an Omega-house with other unclaimed Omega girls and walked every day to the office nearby where you worked.  There was a Beta who acted as house mother as it was determined that Omegas couldn’t be trusted to care for themselves, so you weren’t allowed to live on your own.   Despite that you were a college grad with a job. 

It was either the Omega-house or still living with your Father.  And that wasn’t an option.  Not after you’d finally escaped to go to college at one of the universities that had accepted Omega students.  

There was a knock on your door.  You weren’t expecting anyone, but that didn’t mean one of the other Omega girls didn’t want to come visit, or the Beta coming to check on you.  “Coming!” You called and set your piece of pizza back on the plate, wiping your hands quickly as you got to your feet.  You padded silently over to the door, your steps light, despite the interruption.  You opened the door to see the Beta on the other side.  Your new house mother.  “Hello, Beta Ann,” you greeted her politely.  She was new and stuffy and still old-school enough that she wanted to be addressed by her title every time anyone spoke to her.  

She gave you a warm matronly smile.  It was a bit condescending.  “Hello, dear,” she always spoke down to the Omegas, as if you couldn’t understand what she was saying.  “I received your message that you wish to look for a new position?” She made it a question.  It was her job to help you find something.  Sometimes she could have better connections than the websites that the Omegas could access.

You nodded eagerly.  “Yes, ma’am,” you replied politely.  She really was stuffy and old schooled, but if she could help you… you’d be polite. “It isn’t that I dislike my position.  It’s just… not the right fit,” you explained quickly, hoping she would understand.  

She nodded sympathetically and looked over the clipboard she was carrying. “You’ve been in that position six months, I see.  Yes, that’s plenty of time to realize it’s not the right fit,” she agreed.  She looked up at you again.  “I was actually going to speak with you regardless.  A position crossed my desk that I thought you would be a good fit for, given your abilities,”

You perked up at that.  A position for your abilities?  Your skills?  Not just because you were an Omega?  “Really? What position?” You asked eagerly. You tried not to appear too eager.  That would be impolite.  It was a tentative balance.  

“There is a group who is looking for an Omega.  It’s a live-in position.  All room and board is covered on top of a generous salary.  They are specifically looking for someone with medical background and your healing abilities are very appealing to them,”

Medical background and healing?  

And a proper home?

It sounded absolutely perfect.  

“I’m definitely interested, ma’am,” you told her brightly. 

She nodded her agreement.  “Very good, dear.  I’ll let them know and set up the interview for you.  I’m sure it will just be a formality,”

Most Omega interviews were.  The Alphas in charge didn’t need to interview, not really.  They just needed to catch your scent or psychic scent and determine if you would fit in with their tempers and soothe their needs.  

“Thank you, ma’am,” you told her politely.  She gave you another condescending smile before she left you to set things up.

*

A few days later, you found yourself in front of your mirror adjusting your suit’s jacket for the billionth time before your interview.  The suit looked good on you, and professional.  Though you still knew that you had that Omega air about you. An Alpha or Beta could identify you on scent, on sight, even without the collar around your neck.

All Omegas were required to wear a collar once they presented as an Omega.  Puppies (children) presented their secondary gender, their caste, officially toward the end of puberty, usually around 16 or 17 years old.  There were usually signs before that of what a puppy would be when they matured and you’d heard that there was a test that puppies could take now to determine what they would present as.  

The collar you wore was the generic collar every Omega wore until they were claimed by an Alpha.  It was silver and plain, thin, not heavy at all, but you would never forget it was there, not since the day it had been locked on.  Only an Alpha could remove it.  And only your Alpha would, when you were claimed and mated, only to put his or her own collar on in its place. It was still a holdover from the old laws.  You’d never gotten a good answer as to why.  You always got some bullshit reason about knowing who to protect.  Omegas were more rare than Alphas or Betas, so you weren’t surprised the law hadn’t changed.

There was nothing you could do about it.  And it wasn’t ugly.  But it did single you out as an unclaimed Omega.  Especially at your age.  There was no specific age to find your Alpha, but most Omegas you knew your own age were already claimed.   

You knew it made you a target.  You could be claimed against your will, mated against you will, if you didn’t already have an Alpha.  That didn’t mean you were going to settle.

That was also why the company was sending a car to pick you up for your interview.  Beta Ann had said that a Beta security guard from the company to escort you safely to and from the interview.  

You made sure you had your phone in your purse as well as your resume before you headed out of the house.  You said goodbye to Beta Ann and only left once the Beta security guard, a many named Happy of all things, rang the bell to collect you.  

Your eyes widened when you saw the limo that was waiting to take you to the interview.  What the hell kind of company was this?  The information hadn’t been passed along to you. You didn’t know of Beta Ann knew or not.  She didn’t deem it important enough information to tell you if she did know.  

Happy opened the limo’s door for you and you thanked him softly and politely as you took the seat inside.  He gave you the warm smile everyone gave Omegas.  They couldn’t help it.  Your presence was soothing to everyone.  He shut the door behind you and got in the driver’s seat.  Soon you were driving through the city, toward the city center.  You watched out the window with interest, curious as to where this company could be.  What this company could be.

You didn’t know what you were expecting.  

Whatever it was, it wasn’t your limo stopping at the VIP parking in front of the Avengers’ tower.  It wasn’t the press that were staked out to catch pictures of the superheroes and anyone who came to visit the tower.  It wasn’t Happy parking in that VIP section and coming around to open your door again for you.

The Avengers.

You were interviewing for the Avengers.

You couldn’t believe your luck.  This really was the perfect opportunity. 

You understood immediately that this was a test.  

An Omega who couldn’t handle the press, couldn’t handle the surprise of showing up at the tower, who broke down at any little uncertainty or surprise, wasn’t an Omega that would work out for the team and wouldn’t be what they needed.

Desperately in your soul, you knew that this was what you needed and you vowed to do anything in your power to make sure you got this job. 

#Loki #Lover #Submitted fic #submission #Omega mine #chapter 1 #nekoamamori

[thedivinedemom]

An AU of DC with a mass crossover of PS4 properties.

Provisional name: Players Searching for Detectable Changes (Get the pun?)

The setup:

This is the future of DC, a world where the old guard has slowly withdrawn and the newer generations have risen to the occasion. The original Titans in particular, most of which have formed the new Justice League while many other, very similar teams had started to form across the world. One of which was a resurgence of the Teen Titans, led by an older and purified Raven. She wanted to make the Teen Titans something akin as it was for her, a place to belong and learn to use one's powers.

The first 'class' of such individuals include:

Stargirl (of the now-disbanded JSA and still getting used to the Starrod)

Blue Beetle III (Freshly attached to his alien symbiote and freaking out a bit)

Robin V (to work on his anger issues, mostly at the new Batman's request)

Kaldur (a half Atlantean half metahuman who is struggling with his identity and the surface world, Aquaman feels a kinship for the boy seeing their similarities)

Static Shock (a promising new hero but little experience working outside his city or in groups)

Mary Marvel (she's... she's going through alot. Fresh from a coma, her brother is distant as he acts as the new Wizard, and she may be, sorta kinda, being corrupted by Black Adam's gifted power)

The team was rough and there was plenty of head butting (Mostly between Stargirl and Robin/Damian as one is almost the unanimous leader while the other thinks he should be) but they were getting there. They were more of a clean up crew for the Justice League, they did more than the "kiddie missions" that the Outsiders didn't do, and they meant more than the PR grab that was the International team. Though they didn't seem to amount to more than that. They still did their best, pushing past the silent ridicule, as they went about their missions.

This may be why tempers were so high that day.

One day, outside a little city by the name of Weller's Point, the prisoner transport for the villain Plasmus had an "accident". Released and awakened the creature went on a rampage, heading ever closer to the populated area. Luckily, the mentor of the New Teen Titans could teleport. The new team did fairly well in the fight, though they did struggle a bit as Plasmus was not a being where simple brute force would work. It made the fight tricky and more than a bit... messy.

Messy enough that juvenile and emotionally compromised Mary Marvel lashed out against the downed villain but was stopped by her teammates... things escalated from there. Restraint turned blows and the whole team struggled to stop their powerhouse without hurting her. The ones who do the best are Raven, Stargirl, Blue Beetle, and oddly Static.

While both of the former could use their abilities to restrain her to a very effective degree Static was actively draining her of strength, or at least of the electic aura she was radiating and blasting with. Frustrated, done with the situation, and a bit petty Mary launched her largest attack yet by saying her magical word.

SHAZAM.

Virgil did what he did best, he handled that lightning as it came crashing down towards Mary and the Titans restraining her. Well, he tried. The bolt was just too powerful, too unlike anything he had ever encountered. He could not handle it and it was dissipating, if anything it clung to him or tried to jump towards the girl. He had to get rid of it and he had to get rid of it quickly, safely too if he could help it.

He shoved it into the ground, into the power lines. He did it as carefully as he could, trying to prevent overload or flashover as guided the charge into the power grid.

What happened next was a combination of a few things. 1. The Mystic and transformative properties of the Lightning, 2. It is effectively being filtered through a bang baby, 3. The kryptonite power plant owned by, provided by, and operated by Lexcorp.

This interaction, this new charge, cycling through the power grid interacted strangely with a number of devices but none more so than PlayStation 4s and the devices connected to them. This new electricity changed things, literally. It brought fantasy into reality.

Whatever game was loaded into became a part of our reality in a small way. Sometimes TVs, Controllers, and even the system changed to reflect items from the game but the bigger change came with the Players. If a person was playing their console during the surge then they would become a metahuman with abilities based on the playable character they were playing.

The city, the county even, was now flooded by an abundance of metahumans and items of varying power of devastation. Static felt horrible.

He couldn't help but compare what has happened here to what happened in Dakota City but on a wider scale. And this time it was his fault. His sense of responsibility wouldn't, couldn't, let that stand. He had to fix his mistake and his team was dragged along for the ride.

The story to follow is a mix of Final Crisis and Kingdom Come with a bit of the Young Justice cartoon in events and themes, a few twists and likely a bit lighter in tone but to the DC geeks this should give a rough idea… Maybe a bit of Marvel's Civil War but hopefully not the rushed knee-jerk mess that that ended up being.

But it's here that I start having issues with my planning. One part in worry as outside the set up we start to follow the perspective of OCs (something rarely smiled upon) and another part in wondering which OC to focus on.

Now, one thing I love in fiction is progressive powers and the conflict escalating from the different paths people take in said progression. In that vein, I have a pair of protags in mind as well.

The main two/co-protagonists:

The Lawkeeper- a cop before the change and now a member of a task force made up largely of those affected by the surge. A gamer, a man of color, and a believer of the spirit of the law. He doesn't always get along with his fellow officers but he believes in what the blue does. He believes that an organized response is what is best.

His abilities are based on those of Jesse Fades of Control. Meaning he has tremendous psychic potential but he needs 3 things to reach his full potential.

1.Items to bond to so he can generate these psychic abilities. Jesse's used altered items of her universe to get thematic abilities from them (ex: a safe to generate a shield, a carousel horse for a dash ability, ect). Here he can use items generated by the surge.

2. A patron/partner entity to help guide, give insights, and empower. It also let's the user enforce reality, basically becoming an anti reality warper.

3. A bonded morph weapon or a weapon to come to his hand when called.

The knight- a recent college graduate who instantly decided to go the route of the caped hero. She, after figuring out how to get her powers to work, instantly went the route of a caped crusader. Going out to the streets, saving lives, stopping instances of surge item abuse, and (in the humble opinion of the local Police Department) getting in the way of operations. In her opinion they were taking too long to get things done.

Her abilities are based on those of Prince Noctis of Final Fantasy XV. This means she has tremendous physical and magical potential but like the above she has a number of check marks needed to gain access to the character's full power.

1. A gem/crystal to draw power from.

2. 13 magical weapons to boost strength. The generated game weapons will do and I have most picked out in a way that likely would help the plot progress.

3. The blessing of 5-6 gods.

4. A power ring of some king to channel all this power.

I keep debating the two above as I do like the idea of both of them climbing in power and clashing over conflicting ideals of what to do with their power. At the same time, I think that just smooshing aspects of both into one (which is actually where they started, a single character) and play off the different ideologies of how best to help people from within her friend group and precinct along with internal conflict. Maybe have the one be a fellow officer they butt heads with because of the... precarious nature

Another OC I was thinking on, keeping with the theme of what to do when you have power, is a thief who played Persona 5. Like both of the above they would be crippled in their ability to use their abilities without a way to fake the connection to. In this case, without the Mementos App, they would need an item that could affect or enter the hearts of others. Luckily, more unlucky really, there are plenty of items floating around that can do just that. Namely Keyblades.

Most other Players are an odd mix but most are variations of the Shooter build. Peak physical humans who heal quickly and often have bullet time. But there are enough other variations to cause trouble. Demigods of unreal strength, men and women who can easily tap into a patron for powers from the outside, 2 variations of spider powers, cat eyed men and women who can cast magic with simple gestures, and so much more. But the real issue was the first two, the demigods without a parent to protect them and those easily connected to a divine source.

The disembodied New Gods of Apocalypse were very happy with those groups. For how bad this can be please look at what happened to Mary Marvel in canon Final Crisis.

Thoughts and opinions would be appreciated.

#dc community #fanfiction #dc fanfic #dc fandom #playstation #mass crossover #orginal character #dc fanfiction #dc fanfiction idea #outline

[k7l4d4]

Plane Shift: The Boiling Isles, Brief Character Portfolio

Hello all, today I am going to go into some measure of detail for the characters in this crossover between the Owl House and Dungeons and Dragons 5e. Everybody clap your hands!!

Now, to give a little heads up, the way this portfolio is set up is based on the following Format:

Character Name

Defining Quote/Motto

Alignment Inclinations

Favored Classes/Known Classes

Brief Profile

Okay, now that the format is listed, time to get into the nitty gritty!

Luz Noceda

“Limits? What are those!”

Chaotic Good/Neutral Good

Primary Class: Wizard, Subclass: Order of Scribes. Secondary Class: Artificer, Subclass: Battle Smith. Tertiary Classes: Paladin, Rogue, and Bard.

The young daughter of the famed Plane Warden and Cleric, Camila Noceda, Luz has always had her head in the clouds, longing for adventure and friendship. Upon entering the Adventurer’s Academy, she proceeded to rock the very foundation of Plana and adventuring by choosing not one, not two, but FIVE classes to train in! She would’ve tried them all, but was talked out of it when they professors made it clear it would be physically impossible for her to take them all, and that the number she had selected would push her to greatest of limits. Luz lives life without limits or regret, and while her extremely impulsive nature has resulted in a rather poor social life, she is greatly beloved among the street dwellers and lower ranks of local organizations and groups of her home.

Amity Blight

“Perfection is impossible. That’s why we seek it.”

Lawful Good/Neutral Good

Primary Class: Warlock, Subclass: Undetermined. Secondary Class: Artificer.

The youngest child of the affluent Blight Family, recently displaced from her home dimension, Amity holds herself to a strict standard of decorum. Her methodical nature, dedication to study, and respect for authority has made her a divisive figure within the Adventurer’s Academy, as while her new instructors find her dedication admirable, they also worry it will disallow her from living a healthy and happy life. Amity regularly runs afoul of Luz, but the human girl’s friendly nature, genuine endearment, and appreciation for magic and learning has served as a bonding bridge between the two. Hints of something deeper within her heart grow clearer all the while.

Willow Park

“Nature is a blessing to us all. We have a duty to care for it, and each other.”

Neutral Good/Chaotic Good

Primary Class: Druid, Subclass: Undetermined. Secondary Class: Barbarian.

The only child of the Park family, Willow is a quiet, gentle child all around, but within her lurks a frightening power over nature itself that constantly threatens to break free if not for her ironclad self-control, and kind nature. Once friends with Amity Blight, circumstances forced a rift between them, and she holds that pain as a torch within her heart, always wary of letting it burn her down to nothing but unwilling to let go. Willow’s incredible connection with Plants has made her a rare talent among the Druid classes, and she is constantly called to demonstrate her power before her new peers, much to her delight.

Augustus “Gus” Porter

“So much to learn! So much to experience!”

Neutral Good/Chaotic Good

Primary Class: Wizard, Subclass: Undetermined. Secondary Class: Bard.

A young prodigy who skipped several grades in his home dimension, Gus is still an outstanding figure when it comes to both technical skill and application of magic. Excitable, kind if somewhat insensitive on occasion, and with a fierce need to prove himself, Gus often finds himself in difficult situations, both socially and dangerously, but he never allows it to affect his optimism. He’s rapidly built a bond with Luz over their shared passion and energy, not to mention his excitement over befriending “an actual real-life human!”

Boscha Triplet

“I saved the day! Why? Because I’m a Star of Course!”

Lawful Neutral

Primary Class: Monk, Subclass: Undetermined. Secondary Class: Artificer.

An athletic star with an incredible ego, Boscha is by all accounts an unpleasant individual, yet since coming to Plana, she’s gradually shown signs of a more vulnerable personality, one she vehemently denies and buries within herself, much to the chagrin of others. While she initially chose Monk as a joke, thinking it of a blow-off course or something similar, the relentless physical training, and the brutally humiliating smackdown dealt on her first day have served to motivate her to continue and succeed in the Class she chose, if only out of pure spite. The philosophical aspects of Monk training seem to go over her head, yet her friends and foes alike have noted her occasionally seem to verge on saying something mean or crude, only to stop herself and stare off in contemplation.

Skara Levine

“Just go with the rhythm. Everything will work out, right?”

Lawful Neutral

Primary Class: Bard, Subclass: Undetermined. Secondary Class: Sorcerer.

A young girl who lived at the top, Skara had many halmarks of being a potential problem child, often being easily lead and influenced by those deemed her friends, Skara is typically very sweet and outgoing, but for all her social butterfly moments, they are undercut by her poor interpersonal skills, frequently stumbling onto sensitive topics without any inclination she understood why she shouldn’t bring them up. She is a paradox, being both kind and cruel, nice and mean, in equal measures, the parallel nature of her behavior often befuddles those around her. She’s recently begun stating that she hears things suddenly when no one is around.

Emira Blight

“Don’t worry, I can handle this on my own.”

Chaotic Good/Chaotic Neutral

Primary Class: Rogue, Subclass: Undetermined. Secondary Class: Fighter.

The oldest daughter of the Blight family, Emira is a mischievous girl with a fondness for mayhem. Nonetheless, she cares for her family and friends, even if her methods occasionally leave much to be desired. Of the Blight Children, Emira is the most independent, often resentful of any perceived restrictions, but calm enough to find workarounds rather than lash out. She frequently professes that looks forward to the day she can live her own life, and enjoys teasing her sister along with her brother.

Edric Blight

“We got this, we just got to stick together.”

Chaotic Good/Chaotic Neutral

Primary Class: Rogue, Subclass: Undetermined. Secondary Class: Bard.

The lone son of the Blight family, Edric is Emira’s twin, and is in many ways both her equal and her mirror. While sharing her sense of mischief and love of tricks, Edric is far more flighty and whimsical, often hyper-fixating on animals and whatever shiny thing catches his eye, often projecting a childish air about him. He is the most insecure of the Blight siblings, though he hides it well, and dreads the idea of being alone, particularly from his twin.

Viney Arkswood

“Animals are our friends. They have just as much capacity for good as we do.”

Chaotic Good

Primary Class: Ranger, Subclass: Undetermined. Secondary Class: Druid.

One of three students sentenced to the Detention Track for their mixing of magical disciplines, Viney has a caring heart and a love of people and animals that manifested in a rather strange way, in that she attempted, and technically succeeded, in training her pet griffin to be a nursing assistant. Viney is genuinely unsure if she wishes to return, with the lone benefit in her mind being to see her parents again.

Jerbo Underslack

“I might be nervous, but that doesn’t make me incompetent.”

Chaotic Good/Chaotic Neutral

Primary Class: Cleric, Subclass: Nature Domain. Secondary Class: Druid.

One of the three Detention Track students, Jerbo’s love of plants and his fondness for the idea of loyal aides combined in his creation of plant monsters that trashed the gardens of his school. Jerbo is the most suspicious and leery of his friends, often being slow to trust and even slower to act, he nonetheless is a kind soul, and used his admittance into the Adventurer’s Academy to try and kind some new meaning in his life.

Barcus Howsberry

“Your soul glimmers with the joy of a newfound toy in the arms of a lonely child.”

Chaotic Good

Primary Class: Wizard, Subclass: Undetermined. Secondary Class: Artificer.

Last and oddest of the three Detention Track students, Barcus’ unusual body and strange speech make him truly bizarre, and his cryptic demeanor doesn’t help. Barcus enjoys both the art of Potions and Prediction, and frequently seeks to join the two. Upon arrival, and confirmation that yes he is a sapient being, Barcus was checked by Camila, and was determined to have a hereditary curse bound to his being, and when offered to have it removed, his comfort with his form initially made him refuse, only to be told that the speech impediment and oddness of his form would destroy any chance of him being able to integrate into society, causing him to compromise and have the curse suppressed instead.

Camila Noceda

“To bring goodness and love in this world means I can rest easy, knowing I left it in the hands of those I love.”

Lawful Good

Primary Class: Cleric, Subclass: Life Domain. Secondary Class: None.

Mother of Luz Noceda, Camila is the current Plane Warden of Plana, being entrusted with guarding the city from extraplanar threats and to help guide and aid those lost between realms. Camila is a loving soul, but the strain of her job has worn on her over the years, with the sole reprieve being her precious daughter. Camila often adopts a motherly role for the displaced children now in her care, offering both advice when needed, and discipline as necessary. Camila also frequently aids and offers advice to the adults now sharing her living space, hoping to help them adjust to their situation.

Edalyn Clawthorne

“I’m the most powerful witch in the Isles, but it never meant a thing until I found someone to use that power for.”

Chaotic Good

Primary Class: Sorcerer, Subclass: Undetermined. Secondary Class: Wizard.

Fiercest Wild Witch to grace the Boiling Isles since Belos’ ascension, Eda marches to the beat of her own drum, no exceptions, but she still holds a beautiful heart for those she cares for, and people in general, no matter how much she denies it. Eda was genuinely shocked to learn that Camila could, and did, heal her curse, effectively if not easily, and feels a deep sense of obligation towards the woman a a result, not to mention her all around soft spot for Camila’s daughter. Eda genuinely has no desire to return to the Isles at this point, beyond maybe a chance to reconcile with her mother and retrieve Hooty and all her stuff.

Lilith Clawthorne

“I am far from perfect, and have made many mistakes. This is the least I can do.”

Lawful Good/Lawful Neutral

Primary Class: Paladin, Subclass: Undetermined. Secondary Class: Wizard.

Lilith Clawthorne, elder sister to Eda, means well, but is both painfully naive and far too trusting for one her age, as well as disturbingly childish and immature. For all that though, Lilith holds a good heart and thrives in a structured and ordered environment and system. When she received the knowledge that Eda’s curse had been cured, Lilith was nearly left catatonic, as the curing of Eda rendered all her efforts meaningless and her life without true purpose. When Eda bluntly stated that even with her curse cured she will NEVER join a coven, Lilith forced herself to accept it, no matter how much it hurt. Since that day, Lilith has attempted to find a new direction in life, and to help others as best she can.

Odalia Blight

“Like it or not, one’s word is their bond.”

Lawful Neutral/Lawful Evil

Primary Class: Wizard, Subclass: Undetermined. Secondary Class: Bard.

Matriarch of the Blight family, and a near-Karen level individual, Odalia is both incredibly goal-oriented and driven by a desire to succeed. Domineering and controlling, Odalia exerts a highly unhealthy and toxic level of influence over her childrens’ lives, though she does truly love them. Odalia enjoys having the upper hand, and will do anything to allow her children and family to not only survive but thrive, and is very much fond of disproportionate retribution against her enemies.

Alador Blight

“This could prove interesting.”

Lawful Neutral/Lawful Evil

Primary Class: Artificer, Subclass: Undetermined. Secondary Class: Rogue.

Patriarch of the Blight family, and all around bizarre individual, Alador cares for little in his life aside from his inventions, his wife, and his children, in that order. Often dazed and easily distracted, Alador is highly curious and constantly seeks new inspiration for his devices and creations, no matter how dangerous the circumstances. He cares little for his wife’s antics and schemes, but in no way does he find them unacceptable, he often acts as a stabilizing influence upon her, and is perfectly fine with calling her out on her behavior when she genuinely goes too far.

Hieronymus Bump

“Dedication and Focus are important, but true passion and joy for what you do makes all the difference.”

Neutral Good/Lawful Good

Primary Class: Wizard, Subclass: Undetermined. Secondary Class: None.

Principal to the famed, some would say infamous, Hexside School of Magic and Demonics, Principal Bump loves to teach and help others learn, and is perfectly willing to play the system to ensure he can do so. While he genuinely loves all his students and wishes them to succeed, he is willing to admit he is old-fashioned to a certain extent and can have trouble keeping his views on a topic unbiased, and can occasionally act in unethical ways if it means finding a solution to a problem, though he does not enjoy such measures. He aids Camila in searching for a way to return home for him and his fellows, and often acts as a reasonable authority figure for the students who came with them.

#the owl house #owl house au #owl house crossover #dungeons and dragons #dungeons and dragons crossover #dungeons and dragons au #luz noceda #camila noceda #amity blight #alador blight #edric blight #emira blight #odalia blight #eda clawthorne #lilith clawthorne #willow park #gus porter #boscha the owl house #skara the owl house #principal bump #viney the owl house #jerbo the owl house #barcus the owl house

[something-very-special]

Impressions

I know I’m way behind on progression through Replicant (insofar as anybody can be ‘way behind’ in the sense of playing a video game for personal entertainment), buuuut I figured I’d share a few thoughts.

Presently I’m doing sidequest mop-up post-Barren Temple, for reference:

So just to get this overall out of the way, I am legitimately fascinated by the differences between NIER and Replicant. This is something I picked up on when I played RepliCant to grab footage for my LP, but given my extremely limited understanding of Japanese all I could get was the tone between characters and to my unpracticed ear they sounded pretty different. I always assumed that Weiss was somehow even more condescending to Brother and hah hah, wow. Even kind of expecting the dialogue and delivery differences I was not prepared for some of the dialogue and delivery differences. Weiss just straight-up insulting BroNier on the regular, not even doing sarcastic eye-rolls like he does with Papa. I don’t remember the exact line that set me off but somewhere in the Barren Temple I was just laughing my ass off at how much of a dick Weiss is.

Thought the ‘miracles’ conversation in the Junk Heap was interesting, too. I remember Papa Nier telling Weiss to stuff it because ‘those kids need a miracle’ and Weiss kind of backs down-- obviously doesn’t believe it, but he knows better than to push. And Brother tries but Weiss is just not having this optimism bullshit. Little things, but the tenor of the relationship is definitely different.

One of the more interesting aspects early on is the way the Lunar Tear is treated. Obviously I don’t know if this was part of the original game or a script adjustment, but Brother talking about the Tear as a source of money as opposed to Father saying it can grant wishes was interesting. Maybe it was to justify that Kaine just has a whole necklace of the damn things and therefore it’s rare but not literally magic, but it always sounded like it was just meant to be taken as a myth to me anyway. Then again, it’s established in the Grimoire that Brother has a fixation specifically on making money so he can support himself and Yonah (versus Papa Nier, who has obviously already established himself as an adult rather than a kid still figuring things out and hoping that enough money will solve all their problems).

Where the dialogue doesn’t diverge is interesting, too. Mostly I’m talking about the scene after defeating Hook. I always found Papa Nier exclaiming “You’re going to live, Kaine!” and “Yes, we’re friends now!” to be obvious holdovers from a younger protagonist just goddamn hilarious when Papa Nier is saying them. They’re still really funny with Brother Nier but just remembering Papa Nier doing the exact same delivery in his deep, manly voice just re-elevated the whole scene into comedy gold.

All of that is really why I was interested in getting the game so already my money is well spent. But there’s some other stuff:

They butchered the OST! ...or so people keep telling me on Youtube. I admit I do think the re-orchestrations is largely inferior to the original (although there are some that are at least as good in a different way, and whatever they did to The Lost Forest -- which was one of my least favorite tracks in the original -- I really enjoy) but I wouldn’t call it a butchering and I highly suspect that if I didn’t have the eleven years of the original OST and its association within the game itself I wouldn’t bat an eye, it still all sounds great.

Also, a weird observation, but I found that the soundtrack sounds much better coming out of the TV speakers than through headphones. I’m not sure if somehow it was optimized for play through external speakers, or maybe just not hearing the added orchestration right up against my eardrums, but when I went to the Lost Shrine with headphones on I was admittedly disappointed, but going to it again and listening through the TV it worked significantly better.

(I’m not sure if this is necessarily a factor, but the booklet in the White Snow edition mentions that the new soundtrack was all studio mixed rather than having the individual tracks layered. While I don’t think that would have an impact on music quality it almost definitely makes a difference in the way it’s produced.)

I miss chest-thrusting to double jump Movement overall feels much more refined and polished. It’s not as slick as Automata, but it definitely feels like a natural evolution of the original game, and as an apologist for NIER’s combat I can appreciate that. A little more responsive, I appreciate being able to move while casting magic, and it still has a bit of a crunch behind weapon impact (although I wish it felt a bit heavier).

But goodness I miss the stupid animation for double-jumping. I mean sure, an aerial somersault is a classic indication of a double jump, but I just loved that Nier would chest-thrust so hard he would break the laws of physics and ascend higher.

It also feels a bit like the aerial dodge was nerfed for movement purposes? I really don’t feel as much horizontal thrust to get a running start after diving off the Library balcony.

Fully voiced? Fully voiced?! I knew this was happening but I totally forgot until the NPC villagers started talking to me! Some of the incidental deliveries are a bit awkward, but as somebody whose glasses prescription is a decade out of date I appreciate this immensely.

The item guy in Seafront just being from the goddamn Bronx is a thing of beauty.

BroNier does fit into the Village better. One of the little details I love in the game is that each bit of civilization has its own style. The maps aren’t large enough to really convey how long travel takes, but the different styles between the Village and Seafront just kind of helped to ‘place’ the characters in a really neat, subtle way (Emil’s sash identifies him as ‘belonging to’ Seafront, which is actually pertinent when you get that sidequest where you find the letter from his science-mom in town! I assume she always wore a kicky sash when she went to work in the underground child torture bunker.)

Facade obviously also has their own style, but it’s... hard not to appreciate.

Papa Nier’s dress doesn’t really ‘place’ him anywhere, which doesn’t feel weird for the main character, and I feel like it’s implied that he isn’t really from the Village in a meaningful way anyway and kind of drifted in at some point after Yonah had been born. But younger Brother Nier is actually wearing the local fashion and it’s a neat little detail that I didn’t appreciate back when I played PS3 RepliCant. (Probably because I didn’t bother talking to any NPCs what with not being able to read the dialogue, so I never really had him standing next to anybody for long enough to process.) Older Brother Nier takes on a very different outfit that winds up displacing him from the rest of the Village (and any other towns), which is a pretty nice visual metaphor, too.

I have a confession to make. I still enjoy fishing in this game.

Yeah I said it. I’ll say it again too-- I like the fishing minigame. I happily blitzed through the Fisherman’s available Gambits, and then just caught five sharks while I was hanging out, and then also caught the sandfish ahead of time, and also wound up with a half-ton giant catfish (??!?) trying to remember where the black bass are located.

Cart me away.

Related but I laughed far too hard when the fisherman says “the WESTERN beach”. I wonder why they changed that line. I just can’t imagine.

And those seals. Always a delight to go to early Seafront and just plant yourself between a couple of seals. Watch the ocean. Listen to the music and the waves. Watch the seals lazily roll around and make cute seal barks.

The most depressing thing about the timeskip is losing those seals.

My garden--! The gardening timeskip exploit was fixed due to a difference in PS4 architecture. :/ I know there’s still an exploit involving time zones but I didn’t go in knowing that and I was horrified when I adjusted the system clock only to find my crops weren’t growing. Is Legendary Gardener still a trophy? Fffffuuuuu

My BARREN TEMPLE. The Barren Temple is, to me, a legitimately funny dungeon, between Sechs getting himself abducted, Kaine getting herself abducted and Nier and Weiss just sighing in resignation, and the whole concept of the rules-based challenges. And the adjustment they made to the Prince’s dialogue before you meet him is so good-- the original felt a little disjointed and felt like it ended with the Prince being confused. It was still funny, but here Weiss just gives zero fucks about insulting the Prince (and presumably knows that’s exactly who he’s talking to) and it’s just great.

And I say all of that because I just died laughing when I got to the infamous Racing Wolf room and saw they outlawed evasion.

Evasion works differently in this game anyway so you wouldn’t have really been able to do the same trick before (dodge roll; in the original release you would dodge roll forward by tapping the button, but a default evasion has you backstep. Of course you could arrange BroNier to face away from the trap and then evade, but it would be significantly dicier, and I feel like the pattern on the shots was awkward enough that you wouldn’t have an opening in the second row (and probably would’ve have dodged your ass right into the bullets anyway). But just that they acknowledged the trick and then flipped you off with it was amazing. Aggravating? My amusement far outweighed my frustration since the Defend trick was still solid.

It also felt like more rooms outlawed jumping? That I can’t corroborate (I was really focusing on whether they did something to Racing Wolf, which is of course the most traumatic of the rooms) but I feel like it wasn’t as easy to cheese some of those rooms as it had been previously.

Dark Blast is amazing. Cheesed the shit out of the actual ‘Evasive Mouse’ room, though. I remember having some difficulties when the miniboss shows up since you can’t dodge out of the way of his lava pillar attack, but I just circle-strafed with Dark Blast and he died comically quickly.

This is actually more relevant to the magic as a whole, but in the time since I first played NIER (so... probably the time I fifth played NIER) I learned more about the little intracacies of the magic system. Like, really little intricacies, like how you can use magic with just a button tap and it actually has different effects... like Dark Blast dealing significantly more damage. It’s not as easy as just holding down the button and getting the multi-shot off the charge, but for a single enemy like that just rapid-fire tapping the button chews through the lifebar.

This tap strategy is really appreciated for Dark Hand (forward thrust punch) and Dark Lance (which is even better thanks to the game’s lock-assist-- a much appreciated quality-of-life adjustment), and I look forward to getting Dark Execution because of its fast activation feature (spreading the lances in a forward cone in front of you, extremely useful for crowd control when you can’t afford to wait for Execution to charge up).

Fragile Delivery still sucks. I don’t know why I had such a terrible time with the first Fragile Delivery but I broke that... Ming vase or whatever you’re delivering half a dozen times. Send that guy a steel rug instead, Guard #3, he is not worth whatever piece of art you had me destroy six times.

And the game still holds up. This is probably a ‘needless to say’ thing but yeah, this is still a great game. I always have a little bit of apprehension going back to something I loved just in case there’s a rose-colored effect going on. Not that I really expected that to happen with this game (I’ve played NIER recently enough that I didn’t think nostalgia would blind me) but, you know, always a possibility.

(That and that the remaster would be... perhaps of dubious quality. It happens.)

Nope! Still engaging. Still charming. I’m always impressed to go back to this game with all the knowledge of its inevitable misery and remember that it’s also just plain funny. NIER is one of those games that’s just like I remember it but better every time I go back to it.

I’m so glad that Automata did well enough to spur greater interest in this game. It really didn’t get the chance it deserved back in 2010 and now it’s topping some of the sales charts. That’s fantastic.

Just... fantastic.

#NIER #NieR Replicant #Musings #Now I just need Threads of Fate remastered and my life is complete #SE don't do that I know you'll ruin it

[bigskydreaming]

I don’t often muse upon PJO, but when I do, its random as hell. 

Anyway, tonight’s thought (singular, also: derogatory, as in very possibly a mistake) is about exploring aspects of the Greek gods that are extrapolations of like, what they’d be like in the modern world instead of just in terms of their ancient myths.....and how that might widen the scope of their demigod children and their powers.

Like take Hephaestus for instance. God of the forge and fire, of invention and artifice......now widen the scope on those things through the lens of the modern age.....might he also be considered the god of modern science, not just in terms of things like engineering and technology, but also physics, chemistry? Or would those things fall more under Athena’s purview......unless you separated them into finer divisions. Like, you could consider Athena’s overview of knowledge and wisdom to make her the goddess of science and higher learning or whatever in general........OR you could separate it like.....Hephaestus is the god of natural or physical sciences like physics and chemistry, and Athena is the goddess of not just wisdom and tactics but things like psychology, computer sciences, etc.

Or OR get Dionysus up in there too, and make it like Hephaestus is the god of chemistry, of chemical reactions and the like, Athena is the goddess of physics, of the most full and complete understanding of the physical universe via things like the unified field theory and its comprising forces of electromagnetism, strong and weak nuclear force, etc, and then Dionysus the god of biology, hmmmm.....

Cuz imagine then, demigod children of Hephaestus, where instead of pyrokinesis, some get powers like transmuting elements.......oh man, the things you could do with that??? Not just lead into gold but they’d be terrors in battle because they could transmute the very air someone breathes into chlorine gas, blood into acid, flesh into stone. Or using that power defensively, making them able to keep guns from firing by dampening the chemical reaction that comes from igniting gunpowder, or just knocking someone out or putting them to sleep by just tanking their metabolic reactions. Mingling magic with modern know-how and creating their own version of truth serums by turning the water someone drinks into something akin to sodium pentathol when just brushing their fingers against someone’s glass, or rendering all drugs or toxins that might have been slipped into their drink null and void by transmuting them into harmless H20. 

(I know that Luke was mentioned briefly as being good at making potions aka alchemy due to being a son of Hermes, but frankly, transmutation as a mastery of the periodic table makes waaaaay more sense for Hephaestus’ kids, I’m just saying. And plus the Greeks didn’t so much consider Hermes an actual god of alchemy as they more just kinda viewed him as their god of all things miscellaneous and tended to lump anything they didn’t have particularly strong feelings about and/or a grasp of under his umbrella. Hermes was really just the patron god of being random as fuck and oh great gods of Olympus I have no idea what I want to do with my life, give me a sign. Hermes: poofs into existence on their shoulder and says SOUNDS LIKE YOU NEED TO GO BE GAY AND DO CRIME YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST, DIVINE MANDATE, LETS GOOOOOOO).

Give children of Athena more practical applications for being heirs to her wisdom, knowledge and strategic acumen by also giving her dominion in the modern age over humanity’s quest to better understand the universe we live in and all its rules, the ins and outs of the laws that govern reality itself.......thus Annabeth and others’ potential acumen for magic being here not the end result of them stepping on Hecate and her kids’ toes, but rather more a function of making them the embodiment of ‘magic is just sufficiently advanced technology’ as they - via an innate and heightened understanding of the very nature of the physical universe - find holes in the fabric of space and time that let them slip from Point A to Point B as easily as crossing the street, play tricks with gravity and relativity and things that leave others baffled and amazed and them just shrugging and being like its all in the wrist, dude, and also, the fact that our mom just GETS reality in a way that everyone else will still be playing catch-up to a thousand years from now.

Children of Dionysus (yes I know he barely has any shhh we’re not paying attention to the series we’re just musing on demigod powers here) who combine the godhood of grapes and revelry with loud music and laughter......the way music can help with plant growth, because music is essentially just VIBRATIONS and vibrations stimulate activity in plant cells in a variety of ways.....and thus similar to Mr. D’s tricks with controlling vines and rapidly growing plants, AND his ability to affect the psyches of others, which is described as inflicting or curing madness and I’m like ehhhh do we have to describe it thus though.....put all that in a pot, shake it, not stir, and abrakadabra, alakazam, other psychic pokemon random Psyduck shout-out and voila! ALL of that could be afixed to and made the end product of godly and demigodly control and manipulation of vibrations, cuz Dionysus is literally the god of just vibing in all its infinite forms.....and thus its all just about how vibrations affect plant life on a cellular level, how they can affect brain chemistry in a variety of ways, triggering a lot of the more primal centers/functions of the brain, etc. You kids are driving me crazy, he’d yell at his demigod kids, and they’re like umm wow, like ACK CHOO UGHLY, father, welcome to the 21st century, all we’re really doing is directly stimulating the prefrontal cortex of your cerebellum with our banging rock music, and its making you angy, what about it?

And speaking of actually, if we and by we I mean me cuz I am and its wheee, are theorizing about Athena’s brood getting to be all magical wunderkind whizkids with their scientific acumen and divine cheat-sheets for the physical universe, maybe Aphrodite and her kids could snatch up those psychology and psychiatry job titles instead. Love, desire, also things like obsession, hyper-fixation......is Cabin Mighty Aphrodite really just pheromone central or are its campers more like magical dopamine and serotonin factories just pumping out good vibes all around them, being like come hang out, its free brain juice. Like, imagine kids of Aphrodite who just by their mere presence could help the legions of ADHD demigods focus better, concentrate easier, get shit done because the goddess of passion and her children like....have the gift of helping people to more productively pursue their passions in ALL forms, not just the physical desires they hold for others but the passions they hold for arts and crafts and sports and y’know, saving the world on magical coming-of-age quests when their milkshakes bring all the monsters to the yard. 

And then Ares not just as a god of war and conflict, but of entropy....the tendency of the universe to trend towards disorder, randomness, uncertainty....the kind of things that so often incite or enflame conflict......but applied at large not just to interpersonal dynamics but to the world itself. With his children possessing demigod abilities that disrupt or weaken bonds, both in the form of emotional ties between allies and commitments towards various ideals or courses of action, but also the ability to PHYSICALLY weaken bonds, resulting in an enemy’s weapon falling apart at a touch, or increasing the instability or volatility of an object so it blows up akin to how Gambit of the X-Men’s powers work and can turn even playing cards into a weapon, etc, etc.

And don’t even get me started on Hermes! No, seriously, don’t. Mostly because I haven’t thought that one through yet and I got nothing. I mean I got some things but they are nebulous and have yet to spring forth fully formed from my head like Athena from the fuckhead of Zeus, that absolute fuckhead of legend and yore. In my defense though, I haven’t like, eaten any primordial goddesses of thought and memory, so.......like, idk, I’m taking the longer route here I guess.

[teabooksandsweets]

Pandorian Problems

It’s time for my occasional, that is sporadic, what I mean is unregularly-but-now-and-then-happening post about SSO, and also SsL, and even OSS, which you can interpret as meaning Old Star Stable or Original Star Stable, depending on whether you consider those games the old games, or the original games.

As not-exactly-usual, but certainly as often, my current concern is Pandoria. You might have guessed so from the title. And it’s about some problems, which you might have gathered as well.

I really wonder just how pink Pandoria is supposed to be in Star Stable Online. And I also wonder how much it’s supposed to be the “pink hell” (which it really isn���t, but I’m not sure of SSE understand that) as commonly called on here.

The “pink hell”

Is Pandoria pink in SSO? I wonder. We see it as a rather muted purple, with some pink sky and details, but not nearly as pink as it is in SsL. But then again, it is described as extremely pink in the Soul Riders books.

Now there’s three possibilities:

Pandoria looks the way it looks in SSO and that is meant by the pink description in the books, because that’s clearly pink enough.

Pandoria used to be extremely brightly pink but somehow got darker and more purple.

The part of Pandoria described in the books is also the part that appears in SsL and therefore bright pinkt, whereas the darker, purpler part of Pandoria we see in SSO is an entirely different part altogether.

We know for sure that it is a different part in SSO. The part with the Fripp statue, and the old temple-ish building, etc. is obviously in a different area of Pandoria. Why shouldn’t it look different in different places? It’s a whole planet (we’ll get to that later) and one might expect a planet to have different landscapes. But is it like that for sure? And if it’s the second possibility, then what turned it so dark? (The first would be easy to explain—just as the nights are rather light in SSO compared to OSS, for instance, it’s just made to be better for the players’ eyes.)

The “pink hell”

This is a fact: Pandoria is not Star Stable hell.

It definitely isn’t in Starshine Legacy, and it couldn’t logically be in Star Stable Online. Not only does hell imply something at least loosely based on the concept of hell, which it clearly isn’t, Pandoria is not even, as usually claimed, an evil place.

Pandoria is different. Pandoria is not some sort of underworld, or just a magic dimension, it is actually a planet that could be physically reached, if one had the necessary technology. Even though SSO strayed far from the canon of the old games, and even though the UFO has been ignored by SSE for years, the references to aliens on Jorvik have never really ceased, they were even mentioned in the most recent quests.

Pandoria can also be reached on a magical or spiritual sphere, it is “a place within all of use” (and of course, that could be a sort of internal heaven or hell of mind or soul, or whatever intended here) and its connection to the Soul Riders is on a different level than just some other planet in space.

But Pandoria is not evil. It is, essentially, a different place. It has a different atmosphere (literally, not meaning a different mood, but an actually different atmosphere) and its different sense of scale and realness, etc. is not due to being evil but being simply and plainly a planet that works differently than Earth.

The only definitely Pandorian creatures we ever met in the game (aside from the rays) are Fripp and Ydris. Ydris is a definite example of a being that isn’t intentionally evil, but in every sense alien to our world, and unable to really function in accordance with another world’s nature and physical (as well as, yes, moral) laws.

I know there’s many theories about Fripp actually being evil, maybe because his entire demeanor is so different from his portrayal in the old games and comics, but even those don’t make sense with an “officially” evil Pandoria. If Fripp were evil, then why should he and his followers claim that his home was basically hell? No, no matter if Fripp is good or bad (or different, as he clearly is!) it’s clear that Fripp loves Pandoria, that he longs for Pandoria and that he would never consider it a place of an evil nature.

(In fact, I am quite convinced that Fripp needs Pandoria, and that his exile has a terrible effect on his physical and mental state, and that in order to recover him he might actually need to go there, but that is a different matter.)

The evil in SSO—or supposed evil, for those who love the “the baddies are good and the goodies are bad” theories—came to Pandoria and to Earth/Jorvik from a different planet altogether. Garnok and his Generals are not Pandorian, and they have a terrible influence on Pandoria as well as on Jorvik.

And I have to say, a real problem for me is the effect Pandoria supposedly had on Anne. If it was actually Pandoria. For Evergray, it makes sense, as he is a normal man from Earth, and therefore in a place so physically against his nature, that he simply couldn’t endure in the atmosphere of another planet without long-term damage. (This, again, is why I honestly think that Fripp needs Pandoria, and that Ydris might not be too well of on Jorvik either.)

But Anne is the Sun of Pandoria. All Soulriders are connected to Pandoria, in some ways, deep down, from Pandoria, and so are their horses. But Anne belongs to Pandoria in a whole different way, she is essential to it, Pandoria needs Anne, and Anne naturally belongs there. Of course, she does have a human body, and maybe it was damaged by the atmosphere over a long time (although not nearly as badly as one might expect) and I personally think that DarkCore did much worse to her than the place itself.

But Anne is practically a goddess to Pandorian people. If Pandoria were a “pink hell” then Anne (and Lisa, and Linda, and Alex, and we—and the horses) were evil. Anne would be the Sun of Hell. Which she isn’t—obviously.

But Anne can be negatively effected by the harm done to Pandoria. And of course, physically she is a human of our Earth. That’s absolutely clear. She isn’t a Pandorian, in that sense. But she isn’t unconnected to it either.

Pandorian Problemsolving

I know that SSE have strayed fundamentally from the storyline of Starshine Legacy. But they still use some old pictures, reference old places and plots, and even mention the extraterrestial parts of the game. The observatories still play an important part (they even brought an astronomer and an alien together) and they never really made a clear cut from the old stories.

I don’t see why it should be difficult to put it all together. I mean—I made up all sorts of plausible, interwoven storylines to fill plotholes in the gap between SsL and OSS for an imaginary MMO set on Jorvik before SSO even existed, and before I knew what an MMO is, and I continued to do so after starting to play SSO and could still logically put a lot together with all the new storylines and inconsistancies brought into the game.

It is still perfectly possible for SSE to make sense of it all, to show Pandoria as it truly is—not good or bad, but different, and deeply connected to the Soul Riders—and fit in the old aspects of the stories with the new.

As for Fripp, I know many dislike him—but he, too, is a being of Pandoria, and his concern is to fight a very specific evil (that is, Garnok, and his followers) and to protect Jorvik as well as his actual home, without having much understanding for every personal sensitivity of every single human being he works with, and who belong to a species he simply cannot really understand.

Pandoria is dangerous, but it is also endangered, and the Soul Riders are partly beings of Pandoria, their souls are connected to Pandoria, and the common enemy is of an entirely different nature altogether. Pandoria really shouldn’t be portrayed as safe or cute, but also not as a sort of evil otherworld, but as a connected, but different place of great importance, and with deep connection to the story and its actors, including the good and the bad.

Ideas / Theories / Suggestions / Whatever

maybe Pandoria got darker because its sun was darkened

Garnok and his Generals are also from a different planet and also of a different nature than Earth and Pandoria and maybe that could be important for future storylines, except I don’t know how

Mario is an astronomer and Ydris is an alien and I want to see how that plays out in the future

does it make difference to travel to Pandoria by actual space travel rather than through portals/rifts, and if yes, how?

really, what about Fripp’s physical state, and what could bringing him to Pandoria (I know he’s in exile) or bringing him something from Pandoria do to him (e.g. food, medicine, whatever)

what about Pandorian people, more Pandorian people, especially horse people

I still wonder if those Pandorian horsepeople work like Egyptian gods—maybe they don’t have human bodies with horse heads, but can actually appear as humans or horses—who would be seperated into a human and a horse on Earth

#sso #star stable online #starshine legacy #ssl #original star stable #oss #thoughts

[petri808]

Sanjou no Ai

click to read from beginning

Bakudeku Au fic, final chapter

For the first few months of their new arrangement, the mated pair settled into a routine of sorts. Almost every night, the okami would return to the Shrine after nightfall and spend it with Izuku, but always left before the sun peaked over the horizon the following morning. It was okay for the time being since now Katsuki could take his time in re-educating the kitsune on the ways of a yokai. And there was so much that Izuku had no clue about. Until now, he only had the scant information left by the previous shrine keeper and the instinctual sides he couldn’t avoid. But even those had not gone without question because he didn’t always understand why he felt the way he felt or did the things he did. For instance, he thought he was ‘born’ to live a life in the shrine, but that wasn’t true at all. The god created them for purposes, such as the okami to protect the wolves and forest, the kitsune too had a similar role. Then at some point when the current shrine was built upon the mountain, the kitsune yokai pledged to help the humans. Generations later left the likes of Izuku in a role he didn’t even know why it existed but performed faithfully… until now.

The information left him semi-torn about his life. Should he continue to honor that treaty and stay at the shrine, or give into his instincts and become a free protector of the forest? It shouldn’t be such a difficult choice, but what brought on the anxiety fell more into could he do it? Could he learn to fend for himself? It was an internal battle that’s been raging from before he and Katsuki mated, but now took center stage. Of course, the okami assured his mate that he wouldn’t be alone. As the alpha it was his responsibility to provide for and protect his omega, especially if the kitsune became pregnant. And besides, Izuku needed to give himself more credit for his strength. Katsuki pointed out how the man had risked his life to save an injured wolf, did that not show how strong or brave he could be when needed? Izuku had no argument against such a statement.

Still, that didn’t calm his mind, if anything, new thoughts would come for Izuku to mill over. Okay fine, maybe he would be okay for himself, but what about with the pups Katsuki mentioned. He’d have to worry about protecting their lives. A family was just another topic he was trying to wrap his brain around. Like first off, they were both canines but not the same species. Again, it was the okami who reminded the kitsune of magic, that they don’t operate under the same laws of nature. Which didn’t really explain much at all, so he simply put it aside instead of continuing the conversation. Next, if they were to desire a family, Izuku definitely would need to leave the shrine. Katsuki wasn’t pressing him over the topic, but maybe it was those omegan features kicking in that made the kitsune think about it. Like some hormonal drive to reproduce because he certainly never felt such instincts before!

One night after another mellow round of love making, they lay there cuddled in Izuku’s bed.

“Kacchan,” the kitsune whispered with hesitation in his tone. “Why haven’t I become pregnant considering how often we do this?”

“Where the hell did this question come from?”

“I know it’s random… but, oh, I don’t know, it’s just something I been wondering about for a few weeks now.”

Katsuki’s turned Izuku around to face him. “If you really must know. I’ve been using magic to sterilize my seed because I know you’re not ready.”

That answer made the kitsune a little irritated. Shouldn’t such a decision be made by both of them, together?! Regardless of if he was ready or not. “That’s not fair.” Izuku pouted.

“Oh, and you saying you are? You know full well you cannot be working here and get pregnant. Look, you should be happy that I’m not pressuring you to leave this place immediately and take your place in my nest where you belong.”

“I don’t know what to do,” Izuku whimpered in toil.

Katsuki was digging down deep not to lose his patience right now, but after months of waiting could anyone blame him? He took a deep breath to control himself from growling. “I know you’re scared of being away from here, but I don’t know how many more ways I can say it, you don’t have to be. I’ll take care of you and our family when we have one. You just need to decide between the shrine and me.”

“Decide right now?”

“No. Now you sleep,” Katsuki bundled the kitsune against his body preferring to end the night for now and deal with it later. “But you will need to do it soon.”

But Izuku was no fool and could sense the irritation in his mate. He could tell Katsuki was just holding back from lashing out. “You’re not mad at me… are you?”

“I’m trying not to be. So, go to sleep.”

Izuku’s voice lowered, quivering in tone. “I know you just picked me because I’m the only yokai around, and I’m okay with that. I’m just sorry I’m so weak.”

That was the last straw. Izuku’s self-defeating aura and sadness was oozing out and pissing him off! Even though the alpha within him felt pained, it wasn’t enough to change Katsuki’s mind. He sat up with teeth partially bared and speaking through a gritted tone. “That’s bullshit! I could’ve left the area and found someone else if I’d wanted to! I told you, I picked you because I liked what I saw. Yeah, you ain’t physically strong like me, but you have your own strength, a kind of strength I’d never possess, and if you can’t recognize that, then… Argh! You need to figure shit out! The okami leapt to his feet. “I’m going home! When you’re ready to make a damn decision. You know where to find me!”

“Kacchan!” Izuku cried out as his mate transformed and bounded out of the dwelling, but it was too late. He’d screwed up big time all because he was such a weak fool! How did Katsuki ever see a strength in him? Where was it? Just look at him, he was small, skinny, and always nervous of making a mistake. His mate was right. He couldn’t see whatever it was that Katsuki saw in him.

Izuku curled up into a ball and pulled the blanket over his body as he wept openly. The omegan part of him was in so much pain… it called out for its mate, cried at the loss… oh, it hurt so much! Kami, it felt like someone had ripped his heart right out of his chest and stomped it into the ground. He’d never felt so much pain before and even though physically there was nothing wrong, his entire body was suffering. It ached, every bone, every fiber of his being a wave of numbness and throbbing all mixed together. This must be the bond, Izuku realized. Until now their bond had given nothing but pleasure and now it burned like the hottest fire from the sun.

“Kacchan…” he whimpered into the silent night air. The darkness consumed him inside and out. What to do… what to do… he needed Katsuki to breathe, to live or a broken bond would surely kill him.

He didn’t know at what point he’d fallen asleep, maybe from pure exhaustion, but the next thing Izuku knew he could see light filtering though the blanket. Morning had arrived and with it an absolutely shocking pain, twice the level of anguish as the night before. His mind was reeling, so fogged over from all the turmoil that he could barely move, barely function. “Kacchan!” He screamed out! Ready or not, it couldn’t go on like this. For all his fears and anxieties, the only thing he knew for certain, bond or not, was he needed Katsuki. He loved Katsuki. And so right then and there Izuku knew what he needed to do. It physically hurt to get up, but Izuku did his best to dress himself and stumble into the shrine. All these months he’d hidden any sign of changes. Now it was time to come clean. He couldn’t stay.

The priests were already up and about doing their daily chores like usual. So, while remaining cordial despite his slow, pained movements, Izuku searched for the elder to speak with. Elder priest Toshinori was a kind and caring man, over 80 years old by Izuku’s estimation and had been at this shrine for close to 60 years. Izuku cared a lot about the elder, like a surrogate grandfather figure who was always ready with wise words and guidance for any seeking it out. But he could tell this man’s younger years were hard and laborious. Though thin and aged now, his sinewy tanned skin and worn hands were a testament to a hard upbringing. Izuku often wondered if this is why Toshinori was wiser than many of the others that had passed through these grounds over the centuries. Many priests came from relatively stable but lower-ranking homes who wouldn’t see such a poor upbringing. This man lived and came with experiences to guide his beliefs in a wiser way.

He found the elder in the sanctum reading.

“Mr. Toshinori.”

“Ah, Izuku,” the man looked up from his book. “I was wondering when you might come to me.”

Izuku sat down in front of the man bowing low. “Mr. Toshinori, I don’t know how to say this properly, but I must leave the shrine.”

“I know, and I understand.”

“Wait, how did you know?!” Izuku sat up straight in confusion. “I-I was sure I’d hidden the okami well.”

Toshinori smiled. “For a time, you did, but I sensed changes in you, positive changes. You hid them well, but a sparkle in your eye as you looked at the forest, at times just a pause in your routine as you were deep in thought, smiling to yourself. I knew something was happening to you and I must say it was nice to see you so happy.”

Tears were gathering in Izuku’s eyes at how understanding the priest was being. The internal struggle slowly lessened inside. “I am,” the smile broke free. “He makes me feel so alive, but I’m torn to leave the shrine and everyone here.”

“Young Izuku, it is natural to leave the nest when it is time. This shrine is all you know, and the world can be a very scary place, but it is also part of life to go out into and find your true meaning.”

“Is that what happened to you?”

“In a way,” the man chuckled. “Your kind has served and protected this shrine well for a long time but at the expense of losing your very nature.”

“But I want to continue protecting this shrine! I love this place! I love this forest!”

The man leaned forward with a serious expression. “Izuku, would it be too impossible to achieve from outside of the shrine?”

Izuku quieted in thought for a moment before responding. “No, I suppose not.”

“Then the answer is you can still protect what you love and be with whom you love at the same time.”

“I… I never thought of it that way…” ‘Like how Katsuki had protected the offerings…’ “I can do that!” Izuku bowed again to the priest. “Thank you, Mr. Toshinori! I promise, I’ll still help at the shrine, but I will live in the forest from now on.”

Toshinori placed a hand on Izuku’s bowed head. “I trust you will, young Izuku. And do bring your family around someday, I’d like to meet them before I die.”

Izuku looked up with a blush. “O-Okay, I will!”

The air rushing past his face felt exhilarating in his kitsune form. It had been a while since he’d used the full fox body, but ever since he’d consciously made the decision to go to Katsuki, all the pain relaxed, and he wanted to find his mate as quickly as possible. Izuku couldn’t explain what this newly realized sense of freedom felt like, all he knew is he felt lighter. It might take some time to get used to it after being on such a regimented schedule all his life, but it was simply amazing.

He rushed straight for Katsuki’s den hoping his mate would be there, sending out his scent ahead as a calling card. Oh, how he wanted to just snuggle into the Okami’s thick beautiful fur! ‘Please be there!’ Izuku crooned and whined as the pull of their bond grew stronger and stronger. Katsuki must be close! His body could sense it, feel it as he arrived at the entrance to the cave. “Kacchan!” Izuku called out. Movement up ahead was picked up quickly by the kitsunes sensitivity’s hearing.

Finally, the large form of a wolf stood at the apex of the cavern and tunnel, and the happy tears Izuku had been holding back broke free. It was his mate. Soothing energy flowed out from the okami and wrapped the kitsune in a welcoming embrace.

Izuku whined and pressed forward into the okami’s welcoming embrace. “Kacchan, I’m home!”

#bakudeku #bkdk #bakudeku au #Bakugou katsuki #Midoriya izuku #kitsune midoriya #okami bakugou #alpha/omega #yokai au #katsudeku #bakudeku fan fic #bakudeku fan fiction #does contain smut

[fursasaida]

do you have sources or opinions about the uh. development of the idea of the 'veil between the worlds' stuff and how it relates to how we understand ... space and place? question brought to you by "i just read some fantasy fiction that royally hacked me off"

lmao did you know one of my big “i don’t work on this but i lowkey develop expertise in it as a hobby” things is fairy tales and folklore

Anyway, I don’t know very much about the history of the “veil” thing, but I am given to understand it originated with the Victorians. Google Scholar has been unforthcoming on this point, so while I do not have sources, I do have opinions! My opinions are these:

As previously discussed, most people in most places were not, until recently, of the opinion that the world is made of space and space is the universal extensive backdrop, the dimension in which things happen. Moreover, even if we more or less think the world is made of space semiconsciously and in our uses of language, it's not really how most people think most of the time, even in contexts where space in this sense (as opposed to "room") has been invented/internalized. Instead, the knowledge of the world was and is structured much more around places, routes, and regions (which are just a kind of place distinguished by being part of a larger whole). Places have insides and outsides. They are distinct from one another. (Although, as with regions, they can also nest or overlap; this isn't state territory or administrative boundaries we're talking about. Those are spatial artifacts.) Therefore, in a spaceless world, there is nothing contradictory about believing that there are, simply, places where magic is stronger or where the gods dwell or where time behaves differently, and so forth. Just because things aren't like that here means nothing about whether they're like that there. To be clear: I am not saying people in the past (or who practice such traditions today) had or have no sense of a visible/invisible, mundane/extraordinary, or material/immaterial divide. That, I think, is pretty truly universal, and simply a product of human cognition. We have myths in many cultures about a deep past when knowledge (or ignorance) was perfect and the world was immediate, young, more alive, partly because, for whatever reason, the way we experience reality includes the sense that there are some gaps in it, or a little too much room. ("A mystical experience" is basically--and across many traditions--an experience of the full immediacy we normally don't have.) However, places like Olympus or Tir-na-Nog or the realm of Ereshkigal are, still, places. You may not think you will find yourself in Hades or the land of the ancestors if you fall down a well,* but you can still think it is possible for someone to go there in a non-metaphorical sense. They may need extra steps or divine/magical assistance, but going is still going. You know, like people do in the stories.  And at the same time you can very easily accept that some extraordinary kinds of creatures or spirits really are here in this realm, and that their personalities and behaviors differ from place to place (animism, genius loci, some types of ancestor-honoring practices, etc).

(*Or in other words: to think you will end up in Hades if you fall down a well is actually to think about it spatially, or indeed geologically, as simply being what is found at a certain distance down. Why should Hades/Hell/etc, as a place, be under this well, all wells, any wells, just because it's under the Earth? These places have defined entrances, in the same way that you can walk up to a city wall as much as you like and this means nothing about whether you’ll get in if there’s no gate there.)

So I do think plenty of archaeologists, anthropologists, folklorists, etc. who study this kind of thing and look at the iconography or narratives as "obviously" portraying distinct realms in the sense of dimensions are unwittingly applying their commonsense, spatial sensibility to something that is much more ambiguous--because almost none of them have thought seriously about place as anything other than a location in space. They see a line or a boundary drawn and assume this means two existential dimensions, rather than two places. What now follows is basically the speculative explanation for how we got into this situation. It is based on a lot of things I know for sure, insofar as "for sure" can be known re: intellectual history; but I have not demonstrated a direct link, only surmised it. In Europe--more particularly, to my knowledge, in England, France, and Germany--space in our current sense really starts to get cemented in the 17th century. Notably, at the same time, people suddenly get interested in the scientific question of "the figure of the earth." It had long been known the Earth was round, of course, but suddenly it mattered to people what its precise shape could be. Is it a perfect sphere? An ellipsoid? What kind? What is the precise length of a degree of longitude? Is the Earth longer than it is wide or vice versa? This was the first time that intellectuals in these countries started seriously trying to reconcile the Biblical narrative of the Earth's formation with ~Science. They cared about this for some obvious reasons, like figuring out whether Newton or Descartes was right about the physics of motion, and testing Newton's gravitational theory; and there were practical reasons as well (the modern science of geodesy, which is what you need to make "accurate" maps for consolidating your state and conquering places, and to, say, build a railway, gets born as part of this). But they cared about it for another reason too. Namely: after the Thirty Years' War, there was a real sense of dislocation in Western Europe. This dislocation was religious, political, and social all at once. There was thus a serious need to realign political and social order with the cosmic order, and the Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution are significantly responses to this. Empirical knowledge (especially math) was to be the universal language that would allow people to communicate across differences rather than engaging in bloody warfare (they were quite explicit about this, especially Leibnitz, but if you know to look for it you can read it in Hobbes, Locke, Newton, Descartes...there was a reason they all suddenly got obsessed with reason), and the "Quest for the Figure of the Earth" was part of that. So was the emergence of geology a bit later, as the history of the earth becomes increasingly scientific rather than Biblical; the questions that created geology came out of these initial struggles to conceive of the Earth as a "natural" artifact to be known by science. This matters here because it means a redefinition of what the Earth is and what can happen there that is not just a matter of scientific debate but is fundamentally connected to social and political understandings of the world. In other words, it redefines what “the Earth” is as a place and in its cosmic place. One consequence of the new rational empiricism as a reaction to a war understood as being caused by religious ontological commitments and enthusiasms was a transformation in what counted as real. On the one hand, things that under the old Aristotelian paradigm were treated as real but imperceptible and therefore impossible to study (like magnetism) became newly study-able. In the Newtonian, empirical paradigm, you don't have to be able to say what something is or even what physical qualities it has; only to demonstrate its reliable and reproducible effects. On the other, things not observable in these terms become defined as unreal. At the same time, the shift from an Aristotelian to a Newtonian science is itself, precisely, a shift from a world explained by regions to a world explained by space. "Regions" here means places, but it also means directions like up and down. Aristotelian physics held that substances behaved in certain ways (like smoke rising and rocks falling) because it was in their essential nature to belong in different places. In other words, different areas of the world, as well as different substances, were ontologically different in real ways that had real effects. In modern empiricism, this is not at all the case. The laws of how things behave are universal laws. They are not about belonging, difference, and places/directions that have their own meanings and hierarchy; they are about forces interacting contingently. It's exactly Newton who formulates the idea of "absolute space" as an infinite and homogeneous, but insensible (like magnetism) extent over which things are distributed. Forces’ specific interactions may be locally different, but the forces are translocal and indeed universal, because they happen in the single homogeneous substrate that is space. So all of this percolates through various levels of society and fields of knowledge through the 18th century and into the 19th (and up to today). One effect is the redefinition of ghosts, fairies, elves, and so on as not real. It takes a very long time for this news to really reach everybody, though; I've read accounts of rural peasants in the British Isles and Ireland who still fully believed and practiced fairy lore into the 20th century. You also see some wobbles, like the famous hoax involving fairies and Yeats, in part because new technologies are making new things observable and therefore potentially “real” in the Newtonian terms. Thus Spiritualism, for example, was in many ways a practice of reliably producing observable effects of things that are not themselves observable; its attempt at credibility was pursued in Newtonian terms.

At the same time, after initial big achievements in geodesy, the figure of the earth keeps getting refined, details filled in, and so on. The same thing happens to the underground with geology. It similarly takes a while for this to really settle in; you have older formats like isolaria and cosmographic maps overlapping with properly spatial, cartographic mapping. (An isolarium is a world atlas that doesn't try to put all the pieces together but treats every landmass individually as an island. The islands tend to get filled in with what we would now consider fantastical stuff because the mapping enterprise, with isolaria, was all about places and their different characters; things did not have to be consistent, there was no homogeneous substrate. That fantastical stuff is part of what's called "cosmography.") So by the time you have people studying folklore in the 19th century, in these same countries and others, as part of nationalist projects and what have you, these educated elite types are likely to have accepted the following. 1) We know the shape and nature of the earth--not in every particular, but we know that physical conditions are basically the same everywhere--and 2) what is empirically unobservable is not real; and 3) space is a dimension, it is homogeneous, it is the dimension in which things that exist exist. (Plato is howling somewhere.) To be clear, #1 especially matters here because it means the idea that there might be places where things behave/occur abnormally gets ruled out. Long before the maps had actually been filled in, there were "no blank spaces" on them anymore. (Insofar as they ever did get filled in, that still hadn't happened by the turn of the 20th century. I actually have a personal theory about where the blanks are now, but that's a whole other digression.) Therefore, if you want to collect and make a fuss over stories about unreal beings and events occurring in places where the universal laws of physics and histories of geology do not seem to obtain, you cannot fit these beings, events, and settings into the world in which you understand yourself to live. There is quite literally nowhere to put them. They cannot exist in a physical, geodetic, geologic world of space; they cannot coexist with its elements. Let us now note that in the 19th century we also get the Spiritualist movement, which conjures up lots of ghosts and puts them behind a Veil. Ghosts in this framework are real, but they cannot be here. They can visit, but only by "piercing the veil." I therefore further surmise that, likely without being fully conscious or intentional about it, these folklorists and such had to assume that when people talk about a fairy court, etc., they are talking about another dimension, one different from the spatial dimension that we live in. (This is the same assumption the experts I was dumping on at the beginning make; this is what I mean about a commonsense spatial sensibility.) The language of "the veil" may well be influenced by Spiritualism, or may not; I think the "thin places" and "times when the veil is thinnest" stuff is even more recent than the Victorians, like mid-20th century. But what matters more IMO is that the two moves--what happens to ghosts in Spiritualism and what happens to fairies etc. in folklore--are parallel. They both get kicked out of here, they get made not part of "the world." The world is one place, and what is "not real" has no place in it. So in order to talk about interacting with those things that have no place here in the world, it becomes natural, maybe inevitable, to talk about what separates them from us. You need a barrier to explain why something that exists (if you believe it does) is not visible and testable all the time and everywhere, or to make sense of how other people could believe such a thing exists.

There is a very deep irony to all this, though. In making the world a single place with a single set of conditions and a single set of possibilities for what can happen and what can exist, right, we end up creating this “other realm” where all the other stuff is. In physics there is talk of a “quantum realm” exactly because the conditions, behaviors, objects, and so forth found there seem to behave differently from the “classical realm” of our experience. But "realm” is a very unstable and ambiguous word, not clearly spatial or placial. The irony is that what we have here is, still, in fact a discourse about two places. We just don’t even know that, because our formal thinking has become so spatialized. Thus the nature of the barrier between the two or how it could be possible for conditions to be so different in the “other realm” remains fundamentally mysterious--let alone what “crossing over” could possibly entail. Hence a metaphor like “the veil” becomes important and necessary not just to generate another place to put these unreal things, and not just to explain why these unreal things are not here in the real world/place, but also to paper over the basic absurdity of the whole premise. We have come full circle in that we are still basically talking about there being other places where things are different, but we have made it much more mysterious and confusing than it was (I believe) when it was just accepted that the world contains many places where things may be different.

#dieinct #space and place #waiting at the threshold #in this context i should note that this tag refers not to the threshold between two realms in the sense discussed #but to liminality in human life #but that is the fairies/folklore/etc tag