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youarejesting · 3 years

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Jinnie

[MASTERLIST] Beta: @hoebii Pairing: Jin x Reader Genre: Fantasy, Romance, Comedy, Mystery, Angst, Adventure. Rating: All Words: 11.3k

Summary: Jin is a genie, who as folklore warns trick humans, to get their souls. He twists their words and taunts around into actual wishes to be used against them if it is phrased properly. But as a law student you are careful with your words and beat him at his own game.

Stepping out of 5330LAW ‘Wrongful Conviction: Journeys to Freedom’ you rubbed your temples, trying to ease the pain coursing behind them. It was like your brain had just been filled with wood chips and the sharp edges were trying to dig their way back out. How could learning hurt you so bad? There were so many dates, legislations, different clauses, and terms that you had to memorize- BUT, you forced yourself to move your thought process along.That would all have to wait.

You would rather not think ever again, so you rushed off to the little convenience store where you spent the night scanning products and taking money. You were like a robot repeating a script over and over.

“Welcome” “Can I help you?” “Just these items today?” “That will be twelve forty, on the card?” “Whenever you are ready” “Have a nice day”

It was easy. You happily lost yourself in those mundane tasks whilst standing there and growing bored. Suppressing a yawn, you cleaned the floors, tidied, and restocked the shelves. Eagerly counting down the final hour until you could go home and take a nap. While cleaning you had cut your hand on the plastic shelf display, quickly purchasing an antiseptic cream to cover the injury, it was the only thing that stood out about your shift today. Or so you thought.

Counting the till slowly you allowed for a few last-minute customers to come in and purchase what they needed. Most paid by the card so it wouldn’t ruin your count. They bought alcohol and snacks and other little things one might need. When it was finally time to close up, you headed around the counter walking towards the door ready to flip the sign from OPEN to CLOSED. As well as turning off the little neon ‘OPEN’ sign on the window.

Leaning down you reached for the plug, fingers so close to the switch ready to turn it off, you stretched down a little more, smiling triumphantly when you flicked the switch when the bell above the door rang a man ran in painting. “Excuse me miss,”

Ah! This is why you didn’t close off the till until the door was locked, allowing people to buy things last minute, if they needed something urgently. The amount of single parents who need baby wipes that barge into the store last minute was more than you could count.

“Good evening Sir, What can I help you with?”

“Please take this and make a wish?” He spoke, voice panicked as he kept nervously looking over his shoulder, “It is the lamp of a genie, it will grant you one wish, but you have to use it now”

Without a chance to refuse, the lamp was thrust into your hands. You stared at the beautiful gold and ruby lamp. This looked expensive and you wanted to refuse but the man had already started hiding behind the fridges. There was a bright flash of light coming from the street as a figure appeared outside on the sidewalk. The figure was quick, pushing open the door and practically gliding across the room where he grabbed the man.

You heard the man scream and you couldn’t help but run away in fear. You got into your car shaking, throwing everything on the passenger seat. Your breathing was shallow and erratic as you drove away as fast as you could, the adrenaline quickening your reflexes and keeping you alert to the road ahead.

When you got to your apartments, you scooped everything into your arms and ran up the stairs and along the corridor until you reached your door, your breathing wasn’t coming any easier and the pain in your chest was so sharp you felt like you were going to pass out. Fumbling with keys trying to find the right one for the door, the next-door neighbor started shouting about the ruckus you were making running in the hallways. It wasn’t until you were successfully inside the safety of your home that your breathing slowed down. That’s when you noticed the fancy lamp in your hands.

It looked like real gold, it looked like real jewels, did the man steal it and try to hide it with you, did the other man that showed up kill him. There were so many questions and you didn’t know what to do, so you ran out to the hall and threw it down the garbage shoot, hoping no one came for you.

Sleep didn’t come easy, you felt like there was someone on your balcony or someone walking down the hall, and every time you closed your eyes you saw this horrible-looking man. His eyes were dark and his skin was like Ash. Though you hadn’t seen any specific features your mind conjured the creepiest man; with a pointed hooked nose and a narrow protruding chin. You had seen his hands which were boney and each finger bent a little oddly like they weren’t natural human joints.

Deciding around midnight to study and use the time not sleeping wisely, you were well into the third chapter of the night when you finally dozed off, the textbook still opened.. Waking the next morning to a call you jerked awake, heart racing from the fright. Still adorning your uniform, you lunge across the floor to your bag where you heard your phone ringing. It was a stupid ringtone. From the floor you could see the gold lamp gleaming on the kitchen tiles and remembered the events of that night. Looking at the phone you saw the caller ID and groaned. It was your boss and you did not want to work. It was your first day off in two weeks and you were wanting to do some cleaning school work and chill out.

That and any thought regarding the shop had the barely repressed memories clawing at the edges of your mind. You had decided it was obviously a prank and two people were joking around. Reluctantly you cleared your throat before answering, sitting up straight and rubbing the sleep from your eyes.

“Hello, this is Y/n speaking,” You said politely and waited to hear what the store owner had to say with your fingers crossed. He was a nice guy and you knew it was stressful for him to have to fill shifts as the younger employees tended to take multiple days off in a week but you were really in need of this free day.

“Hey Y/n, it is Choi,” He said his voice seemed a little stressed but also slightly amused and you felt your shoulders slacken, “I was wondering if you could see me this morning in about half an hour?”

“Of course, I will be there in fifteen minutes,” You replied, getting changed and retying your hair in a bun before racing out the door. You drove to the shop and began planning your chores for the day. When you get home you would have to do your laundry and then sit and try to get a start on more assignments and essays. You were feeling really productive after reading from your textbook last night.

The boss wasn’t asking you to work today so it must be about something else, you frowned pulling into a parking space outside the store. What if he is going to fire you? No, you were one of the best and most experienced, also the only one he trusts to lock up the shop.

The shop.

Oh hell. Last night you left those two wannabe psychopaths in the store, they could have stolen anything. If you were fired today you were going to have a breakdown. What if that weird guy had actually killed the other man, he had seemed so panicked and you just locked them in and left.

Taking a deep breath you stepped out of the car and strode into the store, bracing yourself for the worst, like to see the cash register ripped from the counter and snacks and shelves raided for free products. What you didn’t expect was the man to be sitting at a table being served coffee from the boss.

He was handsome. He was looking at the owner who was talking adamantly about compensating for something, the bell on the door had alerted the young handsome man of your arrival, his eyes flickering to you. They were so beautiful, a dark caramel and his lips pulled up into a soft smirk as he looked you over. He took a sip of his coffee to repress the smile and you looked away feeling your heart speeding up and your face flushing.

He was very handsome, unlike anyone you had ever seen. Better than any idol, he didn’t look human and you were feeling the adrenaline starting to pump through your veins, your fight or flight was prompted last time by the man’s scream and you had run away. However, this time was different. Your flight was to just freeze up and pretend you were dead like a possum.

“Ah, you are here,” Choi smiled and walked over to you and led you out the back of the shop where he had a small office/staff room which was beside a small bathroom. The boss walked you inside and explained that you had accidentally locked the handsome young man inside alone for the entire night. “We are lucky he is an honest man who said he didn’t touch anything all night but sat and waited for someone to come and open the store.

“He what?” You said, confused this man had been locked in because he was trying to kill another man, did you forget, maybe it was lack of sleep that made you see things. You had heard that stress and not enough sleep leads to hallucinations. Had you thought it all up and locked an innocent man in the shop?

No. If he was truly innocent he wouldn’t look at you like that, like he knew you, like he knew how much he scared you, like he knew you were confused about the other man and where he had gone. He knew what he was doing. You didn’t trust him and he left a sour taste in your mouth.

The boss told you, that they were lucky he wasn’t pressing charges and that he was thankful you were not hurt, “I thought that maybe this man had done something to you last night, the closing was in shambles”

“Yeah, I think lack of sleep got to me,” You admitted your cheeks flushing in embarrassment, if this was all in your head, you must be in need of a long night’s rest. You looked at the old man and touched his shoulder, “Thank you for thinking of me, I am so sorry this happened, I will go apologize to the customer and head home and rest.”

“Wait, did you check the footage?” You asked the owner, his old eyes looked up at you as he rubbed his face, pushing his wrinkles around his face with equally pruney fingers. You almost cringed at how stretchy his skin looked.

“I can bring it up,” He said and brought up the footage from last night. You could see the door open but there was no one there and you were surprised that you were looking and talking to no one. That was suspicious, had you actually imagined it all and locked up some poor young man last night?

Walking through the aisles you saw him leaning back in the seat and you sighed, “Are you okay? I am so sorry, that I had locked you in, I haven’t been sleeping well and I think I had a moment when I started seeing things. I thought you were a murderer and was killing someone, that’s why I locked the door and ran.”

The young man threw his head back and laughed, you almost spat your drink at him. What was that laugh? It was dorky and sounded like a broken squeaky toy, you couldn’t help but laugh as well in surprise.

“That explains why you ran and locked me in,” He wiped his nonexistent tears from his laughing and smiled at you, his teeth looked so white and perfect it made you feel self-conscious. He touched your arm and your breath hitched, “I am sorry, I frightened you, but I promise you, you can check the footage, I was the only one who came in last night.”

“No, it wasn’t your fault” You blushed again laughing and shaking your head, “I must have gone crazy”

You were happy that he didn’t seem angry at all, if anything he seemed really charming, he brushed his fingers along your arm soothingly. “You do look like you need some sleep, Would you like me to drive you home?”

“Uh... no, it’s okay” You waved your hands in protest, “Thank you for thinking of me, but I think I will be fine”

He took your hands in both of his and leaned in, you were struggling to breathe, why was this brunette bombshell so forward, “If there is anything you need, I am happy to help or even just listen. He reached behind his back and brought his hand back with a card and grinned, “My card, call if you ever get scared, or when you are tired. Imagination can make you see the scariest things.”

He held out the card and you noticed his fingers were bent strangely and you starred, “Ah, it’s a medical condition, they are called swan neck fingers, they are pretty weird aren’t they?”

“No sorry, I was just thinking about what I saw last night, you aren’t what I remember but then again I was so scared I think I imagined you more like a monster.” You laughed and he rubbed the back of his neck with a small laugh.

“Speaking of last night, have you seen a small watering can, it was a shiny yellow metal and had red polka dots on it.” He smiled but this was different, heavier, his eyes weighed you down, it was like you were being squished and your heart thumped in your chest as if repeating a mantra. Run, Run, Run.

“A watering can?” You asked leaning away from him in your seat but the back stopped you from going as far as you wanted, “I don’t remember a watering can, I am sorry, But I can keep an eye out for it.”

His grin split huge and unnatural and you knew. You knew that he knew. You were lying to him. He could tell and he liked it, he licked his lips watching you get out of your seat and talk about your pending chores calling you.

As you walked out of the shop you could feel his gaze on you and tried to stop yourself from shivering. You failed and when you opened the car door you looked at the window and saw him laughing.

You could practically hear the squeaky sound that didn’t fit the refined face. You drove home, stopping in the underground parking lot you looked at the business card he had given you and scoffed, scrunching the paper and throwing it onto the floor.

You froze there was a feeling like someone was watching you and from the corner of your eye you saw something in the rearview mirror and when you looked up you thought you saw his clothes pass the back of the car but when you turned you saw the old man from the apartment next door was there knocking on the window.

“The bins are for average household garbage only, not furniture, not metals or glass, I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t fill the garbage with your cheap metal figurine. That and last night it hit the walls of the disposal shoot on the way down making a clatter, try to keep it down.”

“Sorry, Mr Choi, I had a bad night last night, I was almost killed at work, I was scared” You admitted trying to get his sympathy, he faltered and nodded before walking away, leaving the conversation as it was.

You were standing there with the lamp in your hands and with a frown you hurried into the elevator and into your apartment. From the safety of your home, the tension in your shoulders relaxed. Taking out a pen and paper, before quickly jotting down the evidence and the memories you had. You knew it wasn’t a plausible case and wouldn’t stand in court. The evidence against you would tear your whole case into pieces and it made you mad.

You took the crumpled business card from your pocket and opened it reading the name “Kim Seokjin,” You started an online search of the name and the business but nothing appeared, you decided to ring him. Taking your phone from your pocket you hesitated to dial the numbers, getting up you punched in the numbers with determination wilting when it came to pressing the green call button.

“Come on, he is just a guy, albeit really attractive and charming and probably a murder psycho who probably eats people” You were shaking something about calling him made you nervous, and amongst your arguing, you had accidentally bumped the call button. Placing the phone up to your ear it began speaking.

“Sorry. The number you have dialed is no longer available. Please check the number and try again.”

“Oh thank gosh,” You sighed relieved only to squeal and throw your phone in response to a sharp knock at the door. You stood there frozen in fear as the knock occurred again. Slowly shuffled over quietly, your socks muting each step as you peered outside through the peephole. When you looked you squealed again clutching your chest. Two very familiar faces were almost pressed to the door staring back at you a little distorted. Throwing the door open you practically shrieked.

“Kim Namsoon don’t you dare do that again I almost had a heart attack, Yoonji you should know better, get in here.” You grabbed them by the jackets and pulled the two girls inside, they chuckled brandishing a bag of snacks. It wasn’t long before you were revealing all the little details of the incident that occured in the shop. You told them everything that happened hypothetically of course.

“Easy, if I was handed a lamp from a random guy on the street and told to make a wish, I would make a wish?” Yoonji shrugged.

“Well, that depends. Hypothetically, if genies were real you have a few options classic folklore genies or djinn’s are beings who snatch souls, they claim they can grant a wish but say you said I want to be rich for as long as I live, then they will hand you money and kill you instantly because you were rich until the moment you died which means that was all of your life.”

You nodded glad that Namsoon was smart and well versed in all different genres of books fiction and otherwise. She twirled her hair thinking.

“Your choice of words would have to be specific otherwise they can use different interpretations of the words and bend the wish to their benefit. You ask for a million dollars, they might give you Monopoly money.”

“I see, that would be annoying” Yoonji huffed, arms crossing over her chest as she began thinking over her wish if she had a genie.

“Also not to say they wouldn’t make your life miserable with your wishes, you ask to be popular or the centre of attention and you will never have a moment of peace, even the wishes they do well are so over the top it is torture”

“How would you trick a genie, while still getting the reward?”

“You would have to think of a really good wish.” Namsoon said with a small sigh, “but I don’t know how you would do it.”

The three of you watched a few movies and devoured an almost embarrassing amount of snacks. You managed to finish all your washing and after lunch Namsoon and Yoonji decided to leave you for your school work. Waving them off at the door, you had decided that whatever happened last night was all in your head. The coffee table doubled as your work area, so it needed to be cleaned before you could even think about studying. Amongst the rubbish you saw Yoonji’s headphones.

A Lazy knock at the door made you smile, that would be her. Scooping the treasured device of one of your closest friends and heading to the door. “I got them, I know you can’t live without them Yoo~oooooooou”

You physically jumped back at the sight of him standing there, your body locking up. Yet he smiled as if it meant nothing. As if he was just standing at a bus stop, not like he had somehow found out where you lived got through the security system of the apartment block and found your door.

“Ah hello,” You breathed the words like you were deflating.

“Good evening, Miss y/n, how are you this evening?” His smile brightened flashing his shiny Colgate grin, he gave you no time to think as he reached out, was this the end. You scrunch your eyes but felt him touch your hair, peeking an eye open he took a piece of fluff from your hair. He looked at it between his fingers for a moment before blowing it away.

Something woke in you as you slammed the door in his face and locked it. Backing away nervously, you decided to call the police. You turned your back on the door and ran for your phone instead slamming nose first into a broad chest. There he was, in your house, your safe place from the world. You flailed back, tripping over nothing and falling onto your behind.

“How did you get in?” You accused from the floor

He smiled striding over and squatting beside you, holding out his hand. “Your friends let me in,” you shivered. How did he know they were your friends. This guy was beautiful but he was starting to scare you. There was something about his calm nonchalant way of his words that made it seem worse.

“Okay, is there something you needed? Or can I get back to my work now.” You asked ignoring his helping hand, you stood up and turned to him crossing your arms across your chest. You saw him still in the same position, hand outstretched, his smile had fallen and his face was dark. He didn’t like how you ignored his hospitality you could tell as his eye twitched in annoyance, and his fingers curled up.

Standing he brushed his hands on his pants and gave you another sweet smile, “Is there anything you need?”

“What if there is nothing I need?” You asked defensively, trying to get him to tell you why he was here, was he a genie from the strange lamp you had been given the other night or were you going crazy and he was just a murderer. Whatever it is, you wanted him to leave you alone.

“Everyone needs something, you’re humans, you always need something.” He scoffed and you pointed at him with an Aha!

“So you admit you aren’t human?” You accused, watching him walk over towards your kitchen and sit atop the bench throwing one leg over the other and intertwining his fingers together atop his lap.

His smirk grew again in that creepy way, “what would o be if not a human?”

“You are a genie aren’t you?”

“Gold star human, Genie is one of my names but I go by Jin J-I-N” He spelt it with his finger and the letters appeared in a pink font, like something in the harry potter movie, his name didn’t form any pseudonyms. Instead he batted the word away and it disappeared in a light pink dust. “What can I do for you, human? You can wish for anything. Choose carefully, I can get you anything you have ever desired. But I have limitations, You only get three wishes and you can’t wish for more. Other than that, have fun.”

“Wait that’s it?” You asked confused and he looked taken aback that you weren’t jumping on the chance to make wishes.

“What do you mean?” He scoffed jumping down from the bench, “Yes that is it, but why are you worried about the conditions when you just have to make a wish. I can make you beautiful or rich or have everyone love you, you just have to clearly say ‘I wish’ before you ask”

“I don’t want that,” You walked away and sat on the couch turning on the tv, “I am already beautiful and I make enough money, and I am nice so the right people like me.”

“Look you have to wish for three things and then I can move on,” He said, standing in front of the television and you sighed.

“But what is the catch, what do you get in return for granting wishes?” You asked him curious and he looked away for a moment before heading over to you in quick strides dropping to his knees and holding your hands while you leaned back on the couch stunned by his sudden forwardness.

“This is my job,” He said sincerely and you knew he was hiding a major clause in his deal.

“I will think about the deal, and I will call you when the time comes” You said with “Close the door on the way out”

“Fine! Where is my lamp?” Jin asked, you didn’t let your eyes stray from the television as you answered.

“You mean the metal teapot thing, I threw it down the garbage disposal, Why?” You feigned shock, “Oh no, was it really gold and rubies?”

“Yes it is real,” He exclaimed horrified, you held your ground knowing the real thing was in your dresser, but you weren’t going to tell him that. He seemed to try to calm himself down asking in a clipped tone, “Where is it?”

“I told you I threw it out, it would be crushed into scrap metal by now the bins are emptied overnight.” He looked like he was going to scream, his body flailing as he began shouting in a language you didn’t understand, whilst pacing smoke literally poured from his ears. “How was I supposed to know, just lay down on the couch”

He huffed, reluctantly crossing the room and flopping onto the couch, practically kicking you off when he outstretched his long legs. You decided to forfeit the cushioned seat and slide onto the floor, losing yourself in you studies. Admittedly it was difficult to relax having a stranger in your house lounging on your couch behind you. But, you were more interested in observing him, so you feigned indifference and let him watch television.

Part way through your essay you heard a growl tensing once more, you had almost forgotten he was there. Turning to the offending noise, you heard it again, locating the sound to Jin’s stomach, “are you hungry?”

“I’m fine,” he mumbled, watching what seemed like the fourteenth episode of ‘Say yes to the dress’ there must be a marathon or something. You faintly remember him complaining during the previous episodes about people not just saying what they wanted, giving death glares into the back of your head “It is your dress not theirs. Ughhh… just say what you want so the people can get on with their jobs”

“I’m going to make something to eat,” you had said it loud enough that you hoped it would peak his interest and he would accompany you for a meal. But he didn’t seem to move an inch, it wasn’t until you had added the seasoning to the ramen purposefully leaving the lid off so you could lure him away from the Television.

It worked. Strolling in casually as he could muster but you knew from the sound of his stomach and the tilt of his nose in the air your kitchen skills had done the job.

“Cheese Ramen and steak?” You asked, showing him the food cooking and his lips which had been parted in awe closed with a swipe of his tongue and he swallowed heavily before looking up at you. “It’s okay to say you are hungry, I will feed you”

His ears were turning red and you grinned, “Look go grab some plates from that cupboard there,” you used your leg; sticking it out in the direction, your foot tapping against the lower cupboard, just left of the sink, “and bring them over to the bench.”

Your apartment was small and you loved it. In your kitchen everything was within reaching distance and being able to touch both walls was claustrophobic to some, but comforting to you. That and there were only six tiles on the floor that needed to be cleaned. You had never thought your kitchen was small until Jin stepped into the kitchen, You turned slightly to watch him as he slid past the bench, your hand casually stirring the ramen making the noodles had all separated.

With his eyes looking into yours, he went to step around you, his chest pressed to yours and you blushed eyes faltering and looking at his wide chest. He grabbed out the plates and began his journey back and you turned to face the stove not wishing to be face to face with the handsome features again.

You felt his clothes brush yours as he slipped past and placed the items on the bench. Letting out a breath you began serving the dinner and he licked his lips once more. “It looks good, huh?”

“Yeah, thank you,” JIn smiled and looked up, “Maybe I can repay you, you could wish for a grand house?”

“No thanks, that’s too much, I live alone that would be too lonely,” You laughed sitting at the tiny table, “But I would like to discuss your clauses and limits.”

“Of course, what can I tell you?” He asked curiously

“You killed that man didn’t you,” You didn’t look up from your plate not wanting to appear judgemental, who knew this was what he had to do, it never meant he enjoyed it.

“Hey, I didn’t kill him,” He said and you knew the meaning, he may not see it as killing but taking payment for the wish. You watched his expression as he ate and looked at the suit he had been wearing when you met.

The two of you ate in silence, and you raised an eyebrow, “Do you have any other clothes, or do you roam around in formal attire?”

“I have more clothes in my lamp, but I feel as though now I will have to go see someone about making me another, I need it for strangers to pick up and use” He frowned, “You wouldn’t happen to know where I could get another lamp made?”

“Can’t you just magic yourself one?” You expressed your confusion, pouring him some juice and he laughed while taking the beverage.

“No, I can’t really perform wishes on myself, I live to serve until my debt is paid. I can do tiny things but nothing like that,” He laughed dryly, you were curious as to what his debt was.

“What is your debt?” You spoke concerned as you gave Jin the other half of your steak he had been eyeing, was it because he looked so nervous to ask for more food or was it a bribe to get information from him? You liked to think it was your professionalism taking over to get information but deep down you knew it was the look in his eyes.

“It’s just something that I stupidly accepted from the beginning that I regret,” He blushed eating the steak you had given to him, you took your plate and glass to the sink and began slowly washing the plates and pots.

“So, you don’t have any other clothes?” You asked him, you knew it would be best to pull back on the questioning until you two had a better bond, there were many ways for you to get the information you wanted. You had to appear like a trustworthy friend, give him the freedom to confide in you with even the smallest things without judgement and then perhaps he would tell you what you would like to hear.

“Only what I am wearing,” He sighed, “Are you sure they have taken my lamp? The thing is wherever my lamp is I am bound to it, my master holds the lamp and calls me and I appear to grant them a wish.”

“Listen, you want people to pick you up, you have to modernize, no one uses lamps anymore, let’s look around and maybe I can buy you some sort of replacement that will work similarly,” you started, “But for now, we have two hours until the department store closes and I was wondering if you wanted me to buy you some pj’s for tonight. I can’t afford a lot but, I can get you something that isn’t this suit to sleep in.”

Grabbing your bag and coat the two of you ventured out, it was along the way that you picked up some ice cream as dessert, the two of you talked and laughed until you reached the department store. Guiding Jin through the store, he seemed to get distracted or lost in the sea of people easily. Reaching out you took his hand and guided him through until you reached the menswear section. You found him some pajamas, blue button up with an Alpaca on the front that said ‘Adventure? Al-Pack-a my bags’. It made him laugh and you giggled, you loved when he laughed, it was so silly.

You had to purchase them, it would have been a crime if you hadn’t. You had him try on the tops, so you could compensate for his shoulders and when you decided on a size you headed on and grabbed him a toothbrush and more things to get him through the night. It was a last minute decision to get him a plain white shirt and black lounge pants. With all the things in hand you started heading home.

Once home he went for a shower and came out dressed and giggling in his pajamas, he looked youthful with his hair done. He was a smart businessman with it slicked back but done he was so boyish. Shaking these thoughts you went for a shower drying your hair and stepping out in your silk camisole and shorts. You saw him tucked into your bed and you blushed, “Uh Jin, that is my bed?”

“Oh, I am sorry, I just saw a bed and assumed it was where I was staying, I forgot,” Jin sat up and went to get out of the bed and you raised your hand.

“It is a queen sized bed, I am sure we can share it without any troubles.” You got in beside him, and he settled awkwardly, now a little unsure of the situation. “Unless you are uncomfortable, I have to sleep. I have classes in the morning okay?”

“Okay, I will sleep too,” the two of you turned in opposite directions, in an effort to forget the others' presence.

It was easier said than done, the two of you shuffled around all night trying to will yourselves unconscious and yet there was no forgetting the others presence. In the dark it consumed you, the warmth from his body so close to yours made your heart race, he was handsome and you barely knew him. Your feet accidentally brushed and you retracted them muttering a sorry in the cool night air.

“‘S okay,” Jin said under his breath, the gravel in his voice told you just how tired he was as well, it made you laugh, you were both suffering in each other's company. Picking up your pillow you moved it to the end of the bed and slept the opposite way. “What are you doing?”

“It was awkward so I thought instead of laying side by side and neither of us getting sleep, we could just top and tail and then it would be like a sleep over and not so weird,” You smiled, “but since we are both still awake we can talk until we fall asleep”

“What do we talk about?” He said rolling over and looking at you from the top of the bed, “I have never had a sleepover?”

“Wait really,” You sat up and frowned, he sat up mimicking your posture unsure if he was in trouble. “So at sleepovers, you talk about everything, like the people you like, and you play games and paint each others nails and braid hair”

“And this happens at every sleep over,” He said looking at his nails, your smile broke your face as you switched on the lamp and ran from the room, he called your name in concern and when you ran back into the room arms filled with snacks you saw Jin on his knees looking like a scared child who heard a bump in the night.

You ate snacks and painted his nails, he didn’t know what colour to choose, so you gave him a ballet pink, something cute but still subtle. “Okay, when I was thirteen I fell out of tree and got this scar on my temple, that was three stitches”

He tilted your head to see the faint scar and traced the line with his finger, he listened intrigued about your stories and soon the two of you fell asleep. The next morning your alarm sounded and you realised you were going to be late for class. You raced around getting dressed, thankful you had gotten him a white shirt, you told him to wear it and his suit pants and blazer.

He stepped out looking breathtakingly handsome, with little effort. You gestured for him to follow and began traveling down the hall, he was smart but unsure. He made up for his confusion with the modern world with his ability to lie and conjure up needed items and documents.

“We are taking the bus, do you have a ticket?” He nodded, brandishing a paper ticket, out of nowhere making you smile. He followed you on the bus and when you sat down he sat beside you, for a second you hadn’t expected it and you forgot you were babysitting some other worldly being.

“So, what are your classes?” He asked trying to strike up a conversation, or just genuinely curious you explained you were in a law degree, it took little time to reach the auditorium and you thanked the heavens today for only lectures, anyone could sit in on a lecture.

Halfway through the lecture your stomachs were growling, you handed Seokjin some money and you asked him to get you both something to eat. “Where from?”

Sighing you took back the money, “we will have to wait for the lecture to be over,” He pouted at the thought of not getting fed and rubbed his tummy, a little uncomfortable.

For whatever reason you felt pity, and searched your bag, for any snacks you might have left in the bottom just in case, finding a small granola bar, you handed it over for him.

He opened it happy and when he was done he heard your stomach growl and he felt a little guilty that he didn’t share. He thought you were a bit strange. Every human he met was always quick to make their wishes, money, fame, looks, the three most common things but you were the first person that made him wait. You were the first person to give instead of take, you worried about him and took care of him, reveling in his happiness.

He offered you money and a big house last night and you didn’t want it, he wondered if there was something wrong with you. After the lectures you went to lunch, Jin sat down at the table as you ordered burgers and drinks and a plate of fries to share. Sitting across from Jin, you watched him look around at the other patrons in the neighboring tables eating burgers and chips and you smiled cheekily behind your book.

“I didn’t have much money so i just got chips to share and a drink” you lied without moving your face from behind the book.

“Ah, that is okay, I can give you money if you ask for it” He assured you

“I don’t want money?” you waved his statement aside.

“What do you want, if you could have anything in the world?” He asked

“If I could have anything in the world, I would want to work hard for it, not make a wish, it is a waste to just have something, if I have everything I ever wanted what is the point of living” you saw the food coming towards the table and closed your book. “What’s the point of reading a book if you know the end, what’s so special about happiness if that’s all you feel, it just becomes boring.”

“What’s the point of being a genie if all you do is grant wishes and never get to live a little, you have to admit sleep overs were pretty fun huh?” You continued your lecture knowingly as the plates were placed down. “What’s the point of life if there aren't surprises to make it fun?”

He was smiling hard at the food, a little bit bashful about being tricked, he was starting to understand your point of view but he thought, this couldn’t be possible, you couldn't be the only human in the world who thought this way, could you? Then again you were the only one Jin had the pleasure of meeting and yes it was a pleasure to meet someone who actually cared about him for once.

Your phone rang, your friends were asking to come meet you at the uni and you were quick to answer and agree. You were too invested in your food that you didn’t even think about the man across from you and your friends heading your way.

“Hey, Y/n,” Yoonji and Namsoon took seats on either side of the table before looking at Jin, they turned back to you, their mouths open. You were not a professional lip reader, but your best guess of the words they were relaying were.

‘Oh my gosh, he is so hot! Is he single? What is his name? What are you doing eating with a man this gorgeous?’ Namsoon gushed over the handsome man.

You blushed, swallowing down some soda, so you could explain. “Hey, this is my friend Kim Seokjin, he and I met at work,” not a total lie, “and we became friends”

“Oh what do you do?” Namsoon asked curiously

“Yeah, do you go to Uni?” Yoonji searched the menu not phased by his beauty. His ears went red and he looked at you for help.

“Hold that thought, go order and then we can talk,” You waved them away, laughing as they went to order obediently. “Life is full of surprises Jin, live your life today, as if you were normal, just bend the truth a little, you could say you're an entrepreneur or a life coach because you make people's wishes come true.”

“I am excellent at charming people and making up stories, don’t worry,” He sat back in his chair putting one leg over the other, “Sit back and watch the master at work”

“I haven’t even started my assignments yet,” Yoonji said walking back to the table and flopping into her chair. “I was too busy sleeping”

“Okay we are back, as we were saying, what do you do for a living?”

“I am a life coach, I make people's wishes come true, help them figure out their life and make things happen” He smiled “It’s a pretty rewarding job.”

“That sounds interesting,” Namsoon smiled “So what do you do outside of work?”

“The usual sleep, eat, watch tv, I slept over Y/n’s last night and it was fun, we stayed up a little too late, so we had to rush to get dressed and get to the lectures, we didn’t even eat breakfast we were that late” He said with a smile at you that was proud at his skills of charming the girls.

“He slept over,” Namsoon hissed at you, “You had this man in your bed last night?”

You were bright red and you tried to settle them down, but it was useless and better yet, Jin was just sitting there smug, which didn’t help the image he had painted in their heads.

“You know, good on you, you haven’t been with a guy for a very long time,” Yoonji smiled

“It’s really not like that,” You blushed, waving your hands in denial, “um Yoonji these are your headphones you left them at my house”

“Oh yeah no wonder I didn’t get any study done,” she smiled softly as you put your bag over your shoulder. “You got work?”

“Yeah I have to go or I will be late,” you sighed taking one last sip of your beverage.

“We will clean it up you go,” they sat giggling as you and Jin left from the small fast food restaurant.

“Ah, Jin why did you say that?” You hissed at him, “I thought you said you were a master at charming people”

“What did I do wrong? They loved me”

“They thought you and I did things last night, not just sleeping” you said and he blushed, his ears, cheeks, and neck turning bright red.

“Oh.”

“Yeah, oh is right” you sighed dragging him to your house where you rushed to dress for work you told him to wait at home, “help yourself to water and up to three snacks in the cupboard no more okay, watch tv, it’s a tiny shift I will make dinner when I get home”

He nodded, “okay, water and only three snacks”

You patted his head and grinned “you are such a good listener, such a good young man”

“I feel like either I’m a dog or you're an old woman,” he poked your side playfully as you pulled your hair up into a ponytail.

“I will be home soon,” you left and headed to your car and drove to work, you were serving customers when the lady next door came in.

“Good evening, how is business in the bakery,” you grinned cheekily, as you got her usual order ready. A cold bottle of iced tea and kimbap.

“Not great, I haven’t sold half the stock,” she sighed, “I have so many items left.”

“Do you have an apple pie, or a strawberry shortcake?” You queried wanting to help the woman and also eat something sweet.

“We have everything mini’s and family sized?” She sighed, opening the iced tea and drinking slowly. At the mention of family size you thought of Jin and wondered what he might like.

“I have a friend but I don’t know what he would like in ways of sweets?” You thought allowed, “but if you have something nice I would be happy to get us something to eat after dinner”

“I have just the thing,” she declared running off faster than you had ever seen her, she came back with a white box wrapped in the stores signature blue ribbon and she smiled taking only half the payment for it as she wanted you to have the cake for free but your pressed to at least pay for the ingredients.

You carried the cake to the car and drove home, nervous to see him. You took the elevator and practiced what you wanted to say, “it’s just something the lady next door was throwing out, no that’s too like iffy, I get this all the time it’s no big deal, no that’s too indifferent and sounds a bit unhealthy”

The elevator doors opened revealing the hall filled with your neighbours and a thin blanket of smoke. Walking towards your apartment heart sinking as you saw everyone gathered at your door pushing your way inside to see a mess, there was smoke in the air and the smoke alarms were disabled.

Putting the cake on the bench you began cleaning up thanking the neighbours for their help and concern.

“What happened?” You asked angrily, “why were you cooking—”

“I tried to cook ramen, you made it last night so I tried to do the same,” he coughed and rubbed at his smoke strained eyes. “Are you mad?”

“I am a little mad not because you almost burnt the house down, because you could have been hurt, life is full of surprises, remember and this one is one of the bad ones, but we learn and we grow from them. Now, are you okay? You seem to have inhaled a bit of smoke.”

“I’m okay, I promise” he said “I really am sorry, it’s just I have never cooked before, I wanted to surprise you with dinner”

“Well let’s sit on the balcony and have dessert instead?” You smiled and you opened the cake to see a love heart red velvet cake and you laughed. “The lady at the bakery heard I was buying a cake for you and she picked this one”

“It’s tasty” he hummed, “being a human is hard, I wish I had my lamp”

“I think you are doing wonderfully, remember the bad times make the good times good”

You sat in silence devouring a cake together and the two of you reentered the apartment and started cleaning the kitchen until it was spotless. “I will need to buy a new noodle pot”

“You could always wish for one,” he suggested, and then upon thinking shook his head “actually that’s a silly wish, don’t wish for that”

You were surprised he said that he had been trying to get you to wish for anything since you met, but this was the first time he told you not to wish for something.

After everything was cleaned you ordered in and ate, Seokjin’s obsession with ‘Say yes to the dress’ was becoming unhealthy. It was during the fourth episode that your eyes got heavy and you thought, maybe it wouldn’t be a problem to rest your head on Jin’s chest. He wrapped his arm around you and the two of you stretched out.

You woke the next day and was happy that you didn’t have work but you had assignments and you had to return a book to the library. Leaving Jin at home once more you swapped the book before taking a detour to the mall and getting a new sweater and pants for him. Walking inside you handed him the bag with a small smile, “I saw these and thought you might like it, try them on and see if they fit?”

He put on the sweater and pants and you felt your heart flutter, he looked really handsome. His hair was a little askew from pulling the sweater over his head, so you told him to sit on the couch running your fingers through his hair in order to style it. It seemed all this achieved was you getting lost in his handsome features, staring up at you without even trying to charm you. You messed his hair up, unable to stand how he made you feel, he whined “what’s wrong?”

“You look weird” You huffed, and crossed your arms, looking away with a pout.

“What do you mean? I am handsome!” He said in disbelief.

“That’s the problem, it’s hard to look at you when you’re that handsome, it makes my heart race” you admitted “if only I could just become immune, get used to it until it doesn’t bother me”

“You can look at me all you want, I don’t mind,” he said innocently, “but is this what you call life’s surprises, is it not good to see a beautiful face”

“It is nice,” I admitted, “it just makes me nervous”

Knee deep in assignments you realised you had been devoting too much of your time and attention to Jin. It was time to get to work, you had your books, snacks and drinks at your side and it was time to tackle the ethics of law assignment worth half your grade.

Telling Jin to entertain himself, he nodded immediately flicking through the channels frowning when his favourite wedding dress reality show wasn’t playing. You eventually picked a show for him when you heard the intro to keeping up with the kardashians. He didn’t need to learn about that just yet.

Halfway through your assignment, he saw an ad for the bite market. A market place full of food stalls where you can try all different delicious foods. Once he saw the ad he began begging you to go, he wanted to try the tornado potatoes and the crepes they had shown cooking deliciously on the TV.

“Can we go please?” He asked rolling around on the floor and shaking you as you wrote. It wasn’t until he was sitting across from you and grabbed your cheeks bringing your face to his that you decided to take a break from your work.

“You were saying?” You said as he held your face in his hands.

“Uh, yeah sorry, I got distracted,” he blinked letting your face go, and looking at his hands as if they had burnt him. “Can we go to the bite market”

“Okay, let me get dressed, put on your coat and shoes” Stepping into your room, you changed into a beautiful red dress, it was one you bought online one year because you wanted the classic red dress for a romantic date, but turns out you had no one to wear it for. Until today.

The dress hugged your curves and smoothed you out paired with heels. It gave your legs a longer appearance and your butt a more prominent appearance. You let your hair out doing a quick brush and style and some quick make up, a little eye shadow and a rosey lip stain. Topping it off with a dash of perfume you were feeling elegant and beautiful.

You nervously stepped out into the living room and saw him handsome as ever dressed and ready with his shoes on. He looked at you, his mouth falling open and his hand immediately trying to flatten his hair in nervousness.

“Life’s surprises, is this a good one?” You grinned cheekily

“Yes, but I am not used to it, it makes me nervous” he patted his chest as if trying to ease indigestion. You grabbed your purse and headed out to the bite market, Jin’s eyes lit up like it was Christmas you could see the sparkle in his eyes as they reflected the fairy lights between the stalls. The place looked magical and had everything you could think of.

The two of you tried the foods and were having fun sharing a rather delicious crepe with fresh strawberries, You gave Jin the majority of the strawberries seeing how he eyed them, and he hummed “I love strawberries”

“Me too, they are delicious” you hummed happily, knowing he was happy was good enough for you, you wouldn’t tell him but this is what you would wish for just days of fun and new experiences and a friend to share it with.

“Then why did you give them all to me?” Jin was confused, and you laughed

“Because it made you happy, seeing you enjoy them was enough for me,” you wiped his chin of the sweet cream and laughed “they said there will be fireworks today,”

“Oh I like fireworks” he said and you kept walking and you bumped into a small group of older gentlemen. One of them turned and grabbed Jin by the collar, punching him so hard that he fell.

“Gentlemen I am so sorry that we bumped into you, how about you get something? On me” You handed them a fifty in a panic and they took it and turned to leave.

“You’re lucky your girlfriend is smart and beautiful, or we would have beaten you to a pulp, pretty boy” once they started walking away you walked to Jin.

You looked at him and pulled him to his feet, “are you okay?” You held his face and frowned, there was a small thin cut near his cheek bone maybe from the man's rings. “Why is it you still look handsome? Come with me,”

You went to the open field, Jin laying out his jacket and the two of you sat on top, you would have the perfect view of the fireworks. However, fireworks weren’t on your mind. You opened your bag and pulled out a small antiseptic cream and knelt in front of him. “This will help, I got it for my hand the other day at work, it helps soothe the cut and keep it from getting infected”

He quietly let you pull his face gently closer, “are you okay, it must have been scary?”

“You stepped in front of me, what if you got hurt?” He asked, wincing as you dabbed the medicine on the cut “you also gave them your money?”

“If it’s for a friend it doesn’t count, I would give them one hundred dollars to stop you from getting beaten” you blew a stream of cool air onto the affected area the whistles and pops of the fireworks bursting in the sky behind you. But you didn’t turn around, stuck looking at Jin, like a magnet.

You hesitated, starting to turn away, “Ah the fireworks are my favouri—” Jin grabbed your cheeks in his large warm hands and pulled you in for a kiss. A delicious twang in the pit of your stomach accompanied by the fluttering in your chest. The kiss was beautiful and like a fire burning up a match, the two of you came alive. Your hands diving into his hair as the kiss deepened and you felt him hum happily the sound rumbling his chest.

You fell apart a mere inch panting and you swallowed, trying to form words. “We shouldn’t miss the fireworks,” you scrambled to sit beside him and the two of you watched silently. Had you done the wrong thing.

“Thank you,” he said softly, you weren’t entirely sure what he was thankful for, but you were happy anyway.

The two of you headed home flushed from the cold wind on your cheeks, but your car heater was working to warm you both back up. You arrived at the underground parking and headed towards the staircase when you heard your phone ring.

“Hello?” You answered into the device

“Y/n, it’s your father. He is in hospital, he really needs surgery but I was wondering if I could borrow some money from you? We will pay you back” your mother said her voice cracking with intense emotions.

“Which hospital? I will come straight over.” You asked, heading back to the car and Jin looked confused. “Go upstairs you know the pincode for the door and rest I will be home as soon as I can”

He nodded and followed your instruction retreating upstairs, you drove to the hospital and you got there and spoke with the doctor and your mother. Taking your savings and asking for a loan double the amount, you were able to pay for the surgery but it had left you in debt.

You waited until the surgeon stepped out to tell you how everything went and put your mind at ease before driving home knowing there wasn’t anything more you could do at the hospital. Jin was waiting on the couch looking nervous and you sat beside him on the couch.

Throwing your arm over your eyes and laying your head back on the couch, you let your tears flow. You didn’t know what you were saying when you turned Jin cheeks wet, “What would I get if I wished for money right now?”

“What happened to lifes’ surprises?” he teased, wiping the tears from your face with his thumbs, he pressed down as he rubbed them away as if they were personally offending him. His voice sounded scared and desperate, “The bad days make the good days good remember?”

“I don’t know, but, I will just have to make it work” You said crying into his chest until you were about to pass out and he scooped you into his arms and carried you to your bed where he tucked you in.

“If I asked, would you promise me to never make a wish?” He whispered, pressing a kiss to your head, you had woken when he moved you but you didn’t want him to know that.

You fell asleep soon after, emotionally exhausted, waking only to the sound of the front door closing. Looking beside you and stretching out your arm, the sheets were cold and empty. Jin was gone. You ran out of bed and out the door.

You raced down the stairs but when you arrived he was disappearing on your doorstep, you paused panting feeling a weird sense of sadness you let him go heading back to the elevator the doors closed and you stared at the floor. The doors opened and you shuffled back to your apartment and sighed stepping inside.

There was a note in the drawer where the lamp had been.

To y/n,

I have always felt the presence of my lamp and found it on the first day, but out of curiosity about your intentions I stayed and over time I found myself enjoying the experiences you gave me. I admit my feelings began to grow from you being my client to being my friend. I realized I didn’t want to hurt you, I didn’t want you to use this wish and end your life. Your life's better off without me, don’t ruin it, never trust anyone who says they are a genie, they will screw you over and take your soul as payment. I couldn’t stay. I don’t want to take you from this world. You and your fathers debts will get easier, you can get through this without me.

The handsome,

Jin

You saw wet spots blooming on the paper before you realized you were crying. He had just made the decision to leave for you, because you were now his friend. That is a boat load of crap, friends don’t kiss friends the way he did the night you were watching the fireworks. What were you supposed to do now? With him by your side you felt like you could take on the world, now you just felt your tiny apartment was too big.

Things weren’t easy, you were working twice as hard trying to pay the loan repayments. It had been three months since Jin had left and you just woke up at 10, the late shift and uni were kicking your butt. Dragging your feet you headed down the elevator in his pajamas to get the mail. Collecting the mail and heading back upstairs. You curiously opened the bank statement regarding how much you still owe when you saw your loan was already halved. There had been another account paying your debt as well. Your mother would send you half of the money to your personal account and you would pay the full amount, but who was this third party?

Your heart skipped a beat thinking it could be Jin, but you knew you couldn’t jump to conclusions. He had left and wouldn’t be bothered to do something like this. Looking at the statement it read in store payment at your local branch at the same time on the same day of the week.

12:30 Wednesday.

You looked at the clock, it was almost noon, you threw on your coat and shoes before running out the door. You rushed to the bank, racing inside. There he was standing in line in the pants and sweater you had bought for him. You were frozen in the doorway as he approached the woman at the counter.

“Back again?” the woman asked, “The same amount today?”

“Yes please,” He grinned. He handed over the cash and yawned,

“Have you been working the late shift again?” He looked tired, the dark under his eyes was a little scary, the woman gave him the receipt and he turned heading to the door. The very door where you were standing, his eyes met yours and he faltered, stopping.

He didn’t know what to say but he looked down and grinned for a moment, “You look good,” Looking at your clothes you remembered you had been wearing his oversized blue alpaca pajamas.

“You need to fix what you have done to my house,” You hissed and he looked confused, as you grabbed him by the hand and led him down the street. “Everything is wrong, I don’t know what you did but I want you to fix it, I can’t believe you would do something like that and then just leave, like it’s some sort of joke or prank.”

“I swear I didn’t do anything,” He said quietly, he was confused, not remembering having done anything when he left. “What happened to your house?”

“See for yourself,” you pulled him into the elevator and pressed the number for your floor, you felt an overwhelming emotion building up but you tried to swallow it back down.

He followed you to the door and you opened it up and pushed him inside, not wanting to risk that he might disappear behind you. He looked around as you pressed your back to the now securely closed door your arms crossed. “I don’t understand, what did I do?”

“Like you can’t see, Look how big the living room is, and the kitchen is too spacious and here when we used to sit there was so little space our knees would touch and now it's huge” You dragged him into the bathroom, trying to hide the way your chest was shaking with every breath, “This bench is too empty, your things used to sit there and there was hardly any room. And, And the bed, I don’t know what you did to the bed but it’s too wide, I can barely touch both sides and not too mention its always cold, it was never cold when you were here”

He looked at you sadly and he reached up wiping the tears from your cheeks, “I have done nothing to the house” He tried to soothe you, clutching his shirt you had buried your face against him and cried. “You know I didn’t do anything to the house.

“You left me alone and I don’t like it,” You whimpered,

“I wish I could stay and be just like a normal human who can love you but I can’t because I am not human,”

“I wish you were a human” He froze, pulling away and holding your face, he seemed a little excited.

“Do you really mean that?” He asked and you nodded looking up at him. Jin moved away and opened the lamp, tipping everything out, clothes and shoes and a million other things and he granted your wish. He still held the lamp and he grinned, spinning it around his finger and said “We could pawn this for a fair bit of money, yeah.”

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autisticsupervillain · 3 years

Text

The Macabre Madame Megido

Here it is. My take on an Evil Aradia. Get cozy, it's a long one.

Oh, Aradia. Everyone's favorite chaos loving time goddess.

I'm going to have to take a different approach to Aradia then I did with John and Karkat. Out the three big bads I've created so far, Aradia has probably coped best with everything that has happened to her. She still has a lot of the same light in her eyes and she's able to accept her tragic past as a part of her. It certainly helps that the loved ones she's lost along the way came back to life, which is more than can be said about John and Karkat.

Simply digging open old wounds and then hammering in the nails in won't cut it this time. So, here's a different method...

After the creation of Earth C, Aradia distances herself from the rest of the cast somewhat. Not for any angsty reasons, mind you. It's just that, aside from Sollux, she isn't especially close to any of the people who made it to Earth C. Instead, she dedicates herself towards serving as a grim reaper of sorts. She seeks out the recently deceased in the dreambubbles and works to guide them through the afterlife, helping them come to grips with their death and work through their grief.

When she isn't doing that, she's hanging out with Sollux. Playing video games, talking shit, and making sure Sollux gets out of the house and doesn't waste away into his couch. It all settles into a nice little routine.

...Which she eventually gets bored of.

Aradia is an adventurer at heart. Yes, this happily ever after is nice. It's nice to finally live somewhere peaceful. It's nice to finally kick back and relax. It's so damn nice to not get yanked around by fate anymore. But, it's not in her nature to sit around and do nothing.

So, she grabs Sollux and drags him with her to the dreambubbles, intent on discovering her next adventure.

In time, she discovers it. Whispers echoing across Paradox Space of a mysterious artifact that reveals to its holder one absolute truth. That reveals one small part of how Paradox Space operates and puts its user one-step closer to absolute understanding of the nature of Paradox Space before vanishing to be found again by some other adventurer. They call it The Scroll of Secrets.

Aradia can't resist that challenge and Sollux knows damn well that he couldn't talk her down even if he wanted too.

Aradia and Sollux spend the next few years searching for this artifact. Investigating rumors, running into dead ends, and chasing desperate leads. In the end, it takes a bit of reasoning to figure out the truth. Aradia reasons that something that freely reveals cosmic secrets of that caliber would most likely belong to a Lord of Light, so they'd just have to find one and steal it from them. Sollux points out that stealing from someone who is both nigh-omniscient and nigh-omnipotent is likely to go horribly, but Aradia has an idea.

A Muse of Void would be the Masterclass that passively hides things. As such, even the barest influence of a Muse of Void should be enough to hide them from the Lord's sight, so long as he isn't actively looking for them. Just learning the name of a Muse should be influence enough to keep a Lord from seeing them and the only people who would know such a thing are the Horrorterrors. Lickily, Feferi is on good terms with the Horrorterrors and Sollux is on good terms with Feferi.

Aradia and Sollux track down Feferi in the dreambubbles and the three of them catch up. Aradia puts the whole quest thing on hold for awhile so they can catch up and spend some time together. Feferi admits to being weirdly nostalgic for questing with Sollux during their time in SGRUB and is quiet happy to help with their quest. Sollux and Aradia would also be happy to find a way to revive her afterwards, but Feferi asks them to hold on that idea. She's more useful to them dead then alive right now.

A few trolls against impossible odds, just like the good old days!

So, Feferi asks one of the Horrorterrors for the name of a Muse of Void and the three set of to steal from a Lord of Light. Sneak into the Lord's castle, steal the scroll, sneak out. Aradia had to stop herself from nabbing every ancient relic that wasn't nailed down.

The Scroll of Secrets shows the three a horrible truth.

Simply put, history is destined to repeat itself. There must always be a big bad. Some grand villain who will spread chaos across Paradox Space. A villain will rise, causes death and destruction, and will then be defeated by some underdog heroes.

As the scroll vanishes, Sollux grumbles about losing their hard earned happy ending. Feferi optimistically points out that they don't know when the next villain will rise. It could be long after they're all dead. Aradia suggests that they just look for some way to see into the future. That way they could see who the next villain was gonna be and plan accordingly.

While the Lord of Light would likely have something that would let them view the future, trying to steal from him again would be stupid. So, they instead decide to try their luck with his opposite. A Muse of Light would be able to grant them this level of precognition, the only issue was finding one. Luckily, Feferi had them covered. She just asked Horrorterrors to point them in the direction of the nearest Muse of Light.

The Muse is actually quite impressed that they managed to steal from a Lord of Light and finds Aradia to be quite the interesting conversational partner. She’s able to keep up with all the meta-narrative mumbo jumbo and her rebellious attitude provides a breath of fresh air for the Muse. So, the Muse agrees to give Aradia the future sight she needs.

Aradia looks into the future to find that she’s destined to be the next main villain.

She sees herself reclining in a large throne draped in shadow.

She sees herself floating in the sky as Earth C burns.

She sees herself staring down at the golden blood on her hands.

Aradia is taken aback briefly… but she quickly brushes it off. Aradia is used to being toyed with by fate by now and, more importantly, she has an out here.

Remember, John has Retcon Powers. He exists outside the typical rules of Paradox Space. If anyone could feasibly help them deny fate here, it’s him.

So, Aradia thanks the Muse for her time and she and Sollux head to visit John (Feferi can’t really join them, as she’s still dead and, thus, confined to the dreambubbles). They explain their situation and Aradia reveals her plan. Have John teleport her over to the Retcon Juju before John himself picked it up so she can collect it. The Retcon Powers would then allow Aradia to exist outside the laws of Paradox Space and keep her from turning evil per what fate had intended.

While that does sidestep the issue, Sollux cynically points out that now someone else would become the next villain. Aradia hadn’t so much solved the issue as she had handed off the “become the next villain” problem to someone else. They’re still likely to lose their happy ending.

So, Aradia, Sollux, and John meet back up with Feferi to discuss their next move. John brings up how Lord English seemed to be able to influence fate and the plot somewhat at the peak of his power, which he noticed while fighting him. Sollux cynically remarks that imitating Lord English is the very thing they were trying to avoid and Aradia kinda agrees. Aradia feels that she doesn’t really want to control the narrative. She wants to destroy it.

Think about it. Nothing suggests that they need a narrative to exist. Even if they were to operate under the assumption that they are fictional characters, they still wouldn’t need a narrative. Minecraft is a game with no narrative. No story. No plot. But characters still go about their lives within it. Villagers still live their daily lives, mobs still exist, and players still build things. All destroying the narrative would do is give them control over their lives.

John agrees with the idea, he felt he got dicked around by the plot a lot too before he got the Retcon Powers. Even Sollux admits that the idea would be pretty nice while Feferi just kinda goes along with it. She hasn’t really had the same experiences as the other three, but she trusts their judgement.

But, the same question remains. How are they gonna do it?

The four of them bat some ideas back and forth and this is the plan they come up with:

The Retcon Powers are the only known way to defy the plot and break the rules of the story. So, it makes sense that if they find a way to empower the Retcon Powers, they could be used as a means of destroying the narrative. They’d just need to find a way to do that. Aradia suggests asking a First Guardian, but John laments that Earth C doesn’t have one or, if it does, they haven’t found it yet. While they can time travel, none of them would be able to understand Becquerel and there’s no way they can trust Doc Scratch. Then, Feferi pipes up.

She��d been in the dreambubbles long enough to hear about Beforus and, logically speaking, Beforus would have a First Guardian. While they may not know where that First Guardian is, it’s likely Feferi's Beforus counterpart would. As the Empress, she’d have an interest in keeping tabs on an asset like that. So, the group teleports in to a Doomed Timeline Beforus and explain their situation. Her Everlasting Compassion specifically asks Feferi for proof. Aradia and John promptly demonstrate their God-Tier abilities, proving to the Compassionate that they are in fact Gods from another world.

In the ensuing conversation, HEC continues to only refer to and address Feferi, even occasionally speaking over the rest of the group. The group is quick to get annoyed and Feferi asks her to stop. HEC takes her younger self aside for a private chat, leaving her guards to “watch the lowbloods". Aradia is amused that she thinks the guards can do anything against two Gods and the strongest psionic on Alternia.

The Compassionate asks Feferi why she allows “her lowbloods" to be so mouthy. Feferi is very… put off by how the HEC sees it that way. She asserts that her companions deserve more respect. HEC dismisses this as a case of “agree to disagree" and changes the subject. The HEC promises that she’ll speak with her First Guardian and find a way to empower their Retcon Powers.

Her true intentions are a little more sinister however.

The next night, she has John and Aradia strap themselves into a machine she swears will enhance their powers and even makes a point of apologizing to them for last night. All Sollux has to do is start it up. All seems to be going well… until Sollux hears Aradia’s voice.

He hears Aradia’s voice in his head.

Sollux’s warning gives the two just enough time to escape the machine before it blows, although all three are highly injured.

Sollux doesn’t notice his injuries at first.

That's twice now he’s heard Aradia’s last words in his head. Twice that he knew that she was about to die. And this time he saved her life. He defied fate. He’d never felt so… free.

HEC orders the three be put into medical care faculties and consuls a distraught Feferi.

In truth, John and Aradia are being taken away to gave their powers studied and potentially extracted, while Sollux is chipped with a psionic dampener and taken to a daycare to be “re-educated so his needs can be met".

There, Sollux sees firsthand how lowbloods and mutants are treated on Beforus. They’re coddled. Handheld. They’re treated like children, well into adulthood, and have all their freedoms stripped away. Any showing of disobedience has them treated with shock therapy and, at worst, lobotomy .

HEC tries to guilt Feferi for this failure, implying that if she had taken “better care of her lowbloods” that this wouldn’t have happened. She’s trying to bring her counterpart around to her way of thinking.

In the HEC's mind, the highbloods protect and coddle the lowbloods from an uncaring world that they aren’t ready for. Lowbloods aren’t people her. They’re pets. Feferi, by contrast, has spent enough time with Aradia and Sollux to respect them and she finds the HEC's implications to be disturbing.

Luckily, Aradia and John prove to be difficult to contain. They easily escape their restraints, even with their injuries, and they team up to rescue Sollux.

The HEC sees this as another opportunity to try and make her point.

She has Feferi sent away to a separate location, knowing the three will first look for her at her palace. The HEC meets them there and, after feigning a fight, lies about Feferi’s location when defeated.

In truth, she sends them towards one of her daycares. The ensuing struggle with security inadvertently gets several bystanders killed.

While everyone is reeling from what they just did, the HEC spins the incident as “two lowbloods and a mutant" rejecting her “compassionate guidance”, resulting in massive casualties. She uses this to justify her policies to the public and tries to use this to convince Feferi that “her lowbloods" need her guidance and will only hurt themselves without her. Feferi almost believes her, but then questions what she could’ve done to stop them from screwing up like that.

John, Aradia, and Sollux regroup and teleport over to The Compassionate, overthrowing and killing her. Sollux finds and rescues Feferi, but he comes back to see Aradia staring blankly at the HEC's throne.

It’s the same throne Aradia saw in her vision.

It used to belong to HEC. From a certain point of view, Aradia inherited it.

Aradia notes this out loud and the three move to comfort her. Sollux brings up how, for the very first time, he was able to save someone who he heard die in his head. For the very first time, he defied fate, defied the inevitable, and saved her life. They clearly aren’t bound by inevitability anymore. Feferi, meanwhile, relates to where she’s coming from. HEC was… uncomfortably close to what she would probably be like if she hadn’t met any lowbloods growing up. If she hadn’t gotten to know Sollux and Aradia as people. Highbloods aren’t exactly raised to think of the needs of lowbloods very often, even in a comparatively peaceful setting.

Even still, Aradia is disturbed by the coincidence. Fate is an insidious thing. You tend to end up doing what it says, even when you think you’re ahead. So, Feferi comes up with an idea to ease Aradia’s conscience a bit.

Logically speaking, Beforus Feferi ending up the way that she die would be predestined to happen. She’d need to rule the way she did so that the Alpha Trolls would fail their session, allowing the Beta trolls to exist and so on. So, if they’re able to prevent Beforus Feferi from turning evil, that would prove that they’re still operating outside of the plot. John points out that that this is a Doomed Timeline, meaning they’re already outside of fate's boundaries anyways. Preventing Beforus Feferi from ending up like the HEC wouldn’t do anything. Feferi sheepishly admits to still not fully understanding how timelines work, as she has the least experience with all this meta narrative nonsense.

Regardless, Aradia agrees to go back with Feferi to prevent Beforus Feferi from becoming the tyrannical despot they had to deal with. Both Aradia and Sollux can kinda tell that this is affecting Feferi more than she lets on, even if they don’t say anything about it. Plus, it’ll help take Aradia’s mind off things, while Sollux and John stay in the present to find the First Guardian and get their advice.

Feferi and Aradia visit Beforus Feferi at various points in her life, giving her life advice and giving her the perspective Her Everlasting Compassion didn’t have. Meanwhile, John and Sollux are able to find where the First Guardian lives via the Beforus archives. The First Guardian tells them that, while this is slightly outside the realm of their omniscience, they do believe it could be possible to enhance the Retcon Powers with energy from the Green Sun.

The two teams meet up again in the dreambubbles afterwards and catch each other up on their little side adventures. Feferi wants to see how Beforus has changed now that they’ve fiddled the Beforus Feferi’s past.

When the group arrives on New Beforus, they find Her Imperious Benevolence waiting for them. They make polite conversation, getting HIB caught up on who John and Sollux are. HIB thanks Aradia, specifically, for all the advice she’d given over the sweeps and says she wants to thank her. So, as a gift, HIB gives her the throne of Beforus.

The same throne that Aradia saw in her vision.

All that existential dread that she’d been burying and avoiding all this time stabs through her all at once. No matter where she goes, no matter what she does, fate is still there. Mocking her. Taunting her. Controlling her. Just when she thinks she’s escaped it, something reminds her of that vision. Reminds her that she isn’t free.

As long as the narrative exists, she’s doomed to become the bad guy. That’s the only way she can interpret this. The only conclusion she can offer to the throne in her vision being outright handed to her.

Aradia maintains her composure and politely refuses. After Feferi talks HIB down and the group teleports back over to the First Guardian again. The First Guardian offers up a bit of their energy over to Aradia, explaining that she should be capable of absorbing it thanks to the Retcon Juju. Aradia takes the amount of energy offered, but then a thought occurs to her.

She’d get more energy if she absorbs more. And, with all the hints fate has been giving her, it’s entirely possible she’ll need it. She might still be on track to become the next villain, so she’ll need to destroy the narrative quickly. It should be fine, First Guardian’s are tough. She’ll just absorb a little bit more….

Next thing she knows, the First Guardian has dropped dead on the floor in front of her.

Everyone freaks out. Aradia quickly explains that it was an accident. She admits that she was likely still distracted by the throne earlier. She was still worried. Afraid that fate was hanging over her.

So, the group buries the First Guardian, show their respects, and leave.

As soon as she’s able, Feferi takes John and Sollux off to the side and expresses her concerns.

Between the throne cropping up twice now, and Aradia killing the First Guardian, maybe she’s still going to become the villain after all? Maybe they haven’t actually escaped fate at all. John and Sollux are still unconvinced. John maintains that he knows how the Retcon Powers work and Sollux knows he’s never been able to defy his precognition before. Feferi concedes but remains skeptical.

The team puts together a new plan. Now that they know Aradia can drain First Guardians until they’re just lifeless husks, they could farm them. More specifically, they could farm Doc Scratch. Scratch is a complete monster, so there’s no moral reservation to be had in doing so. So they farm versions of Scratch from Doomed Timelines and each time, Aradia meets an alternate version of the Handmaiden.

Each time, Aradia’ conversation with Handmaiden gets her thinking.

What makes you think you’ve escaped fate? Why aren’t you doing more to get more powerful, to destroy the narrative faster? Surely doing so would be in everyone’s best interest, right?

After a few stops, Aradia notes that she hasn’t really gotten all that stronger. Absorbing the Green Sun outright isn’t an option, absorbing that much power at once would likely kill her. But, maybe there are other power sources she could drain from? Aradia notes how Jade and Calliope are both stronger than Scratch, which gets John immediately protective. He makes it clear that Jade is off the list and Aradia backpedals. She didn’t mean anything by it. She was just thinking out loud. Still, she can’t help but notice the looks both John and Feferi are giving her now. Apparently Feferi’s concerns influenced John more than he realized.

The versions of the Handmaiden Aradia meets now note the distrust most of the team holds towards her. If they can’t trust you, how can you trust yourself?

One Handmaiden claims she has a way to get the power Aradia craves faster. Aradia says she’ll think about it.

The cycle continues for a few days. Eventually, Aradia comes to Sollux in the middle of the night, asking him to come with her. She wants to have his opinion on hand, to keep her from doing something stupid. The two approach the Handmaiden and Aradia asks about her offer.

The Handmaiden takes them to a timeline where the Condescension won. The heroes were destroyed, the Earth belongs to Condy forevermore… and a Grimbark Jade will be forced to serve the Condescension for eternity.

Surely, it would be more merciful to put her out of her misery.

Sollux immediately tries to veto this idea.

Killing a version of John’s sister behind his back like this, even one that’s nothing but a mindless drone now, is unbelievably cruel.

Aradia looks at Sollux and then she looks down at her hands. She remembers the golden blood dripping from them. Sollux’s blood.

She decides she can’t take that risk.

So, Aradia sucks the life out of the Grimbark Jade.

Sollux tells the others what happened when they get back and the three confront her about it.

Aradia begs for them to understand it from her perspective. She just did what she had to do. It was a mercy kill. She wouldn’t have stooped that low if she had a choice.

The group wants to pull out of this plan. Get Aradia locked up until the narrative can be destroyed. For everyone’s safety.

Aradia teleports away. Since her Retcon Powers are now far stronger than John’s, he can’t keep up with her.

Aradia hides in a dark corner of Paradox Space, trying to keep herself together.

She’s gone to far now. She has to destroy the narrative and fast. It’s the only way she can fix this. It’s the only way she can keep everyone alive.

Part of her even believes it’s the only way she can get her friends back.

So, as John, Sollux, and Feferi teleport back to Earth C to get everyone caught up and prepared for war, Aradia does some preparations of her own.

She creates a horde of her time duplicates and sends the all across Paradox Space. They bring First Guardians and God-Tiered Space Players to her for her to suck the life out of, fueling up the “main" version of herself to be as strong as possible. Her end goal is to become strong enough to absorb the Green Sun. And if that didn’t make her strong enough, she’d invade Earth C as a Plan B. Overpower everyone and absorb Calliope's life force. Then, she'll be powerful enough to destroy the narrative.

She'll free herself. She'll free everyone. Even if she has to fight her closest friends.

As her body count rises, her reputation spreads. Every Space Player knows now to run when a horde of Aradias appear outside your door.

They know none survive getting dragged before Madame Megido.

#villainstuck #aradia megido #homestuck #long post #sollux captor #john egbert #feferi peixes #beforus feferi #arasolfef #kinda if you read between the lines #up to interpretation really #Madame Megido

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jessbakescakes · 3 years

Text

Anonymous asked for: Josh/Donna - Griffin McElroy’s “exits” speech from The Adventure Zone.

Taking prompts from this post, this post, or this post!

“When someone leaves your life, those exits are not made equal. Some are beautiful and poetic and satisfying. Others are abrupt and unfair. But most are just unremarkable, unintentional, clumsy.” - Griffin McElroy, The Adventure Zone

Josh was used to people leaving his life. It seemed like an inevitability. He’d come to realize that he spent an inordinate amount of time preparing himself for the eventual departure of everyone important to him. At least, that’s what Stanley said. Stanley’s usually right.

Sometimes, he knew it was coming. Law school didn’t come with “See you next year, have a great summer” scrawled in yearbooks, after all.

Then there were the failed relationships. He tried to date women who weren’t in politics, but he found himself having to “defend” his “inattentiveness” - when in reality, he himself felt unsupported, misunderstood, or generally lonely. And his time with the women who he met in his line of work usually ended badly, too. There was a distinct possibility that he was just bad at this, bad at relationships. But the more he tried to fix it, the less he understood what he was doing wrong in the first place.

Of course, everyone knew about Joanie. About his dad. About Leo. Talk about abrupt and unfair departures.

The walls he built were impenetrable, an adamantine fortress to protect himself from the vulnerabilities of being human. He didn’t mind being vulnerable; he minded being vulnerable with nothing to show for it. So he just… stopped letting people in at some point.

The only person to ever come close to tearing down those walls was Donna.

Donna, with a metaphorical hammer and chisel, chipping slowly away at the barriers he’d spent all this time reinforcing. Donna, with her persistence and her selflessness, with her bright smile and her laugh and the way she would look at him for just a second too long, her eyes saying the words her lips couldn’t. Donna, who changed the bandages on his incision after Rosslyn. Donna, who used to sit by his bed to make sure he was still breathing some nights (he knew, even if he never told her he did). Donna, who brought him back from the edge of a breakdown more than once.

But she left him, too. Almost for good in Gaza, then in Germany. Then she came back to work, quit her job, and she left him, over and over again. Or at least every time they walked away from each other, passing by one another on the campaign trail, it felt like she left him again. Watching her walk away without knowing when or if he’d ever see her again was a specific kind of torture.

He knows it’s not her fault. He doesn’t really hold it against her. He does blame himself sometimes, for not giving her more opportunities, for not being there for her after Gaza, for everything.

And there’s nothing he wants more than to keep her from leaving him again. He just doesn’t know how to do that. So here they are, in Hawaii, Josh lying awake and hoping that Donna will grasp just how much he wants to make this work.

“Josh,” Donna murmurs.

“Yeah?”

“You’re tossing and turning.”

“Sorry,” he says. “Just thinking. Got a lot on my mind, I guess.”

Donna turns over. “About what? Do you wanna talk about it?”

“Nah. It can wait. It’s nothing, really.”

“You sure? If it’s keeping you up, I don’t think it’s ‘nothing’. Talk to me.”

He lets the silence linger for a few moments, wondering how to put the gnawing feeling in the pit of his stomach into words. Josh has spent a decent part of their first day in Hawaii in his own head. Donna noticed, so she made it clear that she wants to hear what goes on in his head -- the good, the bad, the ugly, and everything in between -- but old habits die hard, and it’s going to take Josh some time to get used to sharing what’s on his mind in a way that effectively communicates what he needs and wants.

“I don’t want to sound… ugh, I don’t know.” He doesn’t know how to finish that sentence.

“Open? Emotionally vulnerable?” Donna teases.

“I was gonna say ‘needy’, but, point taken.” He takes a deep breath. “Sometimes I wonder if you’ll get sick of me.”

“What do you mean?”

Josh rests on his elbow and turns to face her. “I’m not great at this sort of stuff, Donna. That’s why I… did this. Brought you here, at least partly. I wanted to show that I’m in this. I know you gave us a timeframe to… figure things out, and I want to figure it out. I just don’t want you to leave before I get it together.”

Donna doesn’t say anything. She leans up on her arm and turns on the bedside lamp, looking him in the eye as he talks. He searches her face for some sort of hint as to how she’s taking this. She doesn’t look angry, by any stretch - if anything, she looks somewhat sympathetic, but he can’t be sure.

The silence spurs him on. “I know you’ve seen me screw it up with people before. You have a unique perspective on all of this, having seen me self-destruct a million times. I want to get it together, I really do.”

Her lack of a response is unsettling. He takes a deep, shaky breath, then exhales, sitting all the way up. He looks at her again to gauge her reaction, but her expression remains unchanged.

“And now I’m dumping on you. And I’ve made it weird. See, I don’t know how to do this.”

“Josh,” Donna finally says. “You didn’t make it weird. I was just giving you space to process.”

“Oh. I think that’s the longest you’ve ever let me talk uninterrupted.”

Donna laughs. “Surely not. You’ve started and finished many a monologue in your day. Just maybe not about your feelings.”

“I can’t say I’ll make it a habit,” he quips. “Doesn’t feel very good. At least not when I’m not paying someone to get inside my head.”

“When was the last time you talked to Stanley?” she asks. “Have you called him since…”

“It’s been a little while,” Josh says, cutting her off before she says what he knows she’s going to say. She was going to say since Leo died, but truth be told, he hasn’t called before Donna went to Gaza.

“Do you think it may be a good idea to talk to him during the transition?”

He nods. “Probably.”

Donna takes his hand. “I can tell you’re trying, Josh. I know it’s not easy. I want you to talk to me. I’m willing to listen and help how I can. But I also know you well enough to know that my brand of support is different than Stanley’s, and sometimes you need that, too.”

“You’re right,” he says. “Sorry, I kind of killed the mood. I promise I’ll call him when we get back.”

“Don’t be sorry.” All of a sudden, she smiles. “You must really like me, huh?”

He laughs. “What makes you say that?”

“You were pretty worried I was going to bolt,” Donna says.

He looks at her for a minute before he leans in and kisses her, softly and slowly. Her hands find their way to his hair, pulling him in toward her as the kiss becomes more intense. He finally breaks the kiss, pressing his forehead to hers. “I don’t think I’ll ever stop worrying about that.”

“I think you will. Someday,” she answers, before reconnecting for another kiss.

Someday. He likes the sound of that.

#oops #josh x donna #the west wing #my fics

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puddleduckswellies · 3 years

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11, 18 & 31?

Thank you, Im guessing this is the “3 things…” ask!

11 - 3 books that you would recommend everyone to read.

My number one pick for this would be Jackdaw Summer by David Almond. Despite the entry level-3 writing style, this has been my favourite book since I first bought it from the old bookshop in the highlands. I haven’t read it in many years and yes maybe my memories are clouded with nostalgia but I still think about it often and would definitely recommend you to read it.

“One hot summer's day a jackdaw leads the two boys into an ancient farm house where they find a baby, wrapped in a blanket, with a scribbled note pinned to it”

“I want to be crazy as the moon, wild as the wind and still as the earth. I want to be every single thing it’s possible to be. I’m growing and I don’t know how to grow. I’m living but I haven’t started living yet. Sometimes I simply disappear from myself. Sometimes it’s like I’m not here in the world at all and I simply don’t exist. Sometimes I can hardly think. My head just drifts, and the visions that come seem so vivid.” - David Almond, Jackdaw Summer

My number two choice is also a childhood favourite which was bought in the very same bookshop as the first, however i bought it several years later. It is Dark Isle by D.A Nelson and is the book that introduced and got me into the fantasy genre. I love it because it is so individualistic and well written. It really does create a world unlike any other I have heard of. Or maybe I’m just biased because it is set in my home country. But seriously if you are looking for a new fantasy novel to read you should give this one a shot.

“A dragon with a grudge, a resourceful dodo, a talking rat and a young girl who learns to be brave. All on a quest that takes them into another world.”

“And so it began to rain. Cold, harsh raindrops fell like tiny arrows against the dragon’s unmoving, stone hide. She braced herself against the terrible weather that was to come, forever alone and miserable.” - D.A Nelson, Dark Isle

My final recommendation is a classic. Richard Adam’s Watership Down. I’m sure many of you have heard of this book and have also read it, but if you haven’t I highly suggest you do. The 1978 movie is a masterpiece in it’s own right but I feel that there was so much cut from the book to hit their runtime that the two stories have become very different. However if you do not want to read the book (which I would understand as it is very long and wordy) then I would say that the movie is a good substitute. Either way I can be certain that this story will affect your life even if it is only a little. On my trip to Yorkshire last year I couldn’t help but think about the Down and the tale I had grown up with and whenever I see a rabbit I think of Fiver and Hazel. I love the way that Adams was able to create and entire society to show us how humans are seen from the eyes of a rodent.

“Set in England's Downs, a once idyllic rural landscape, this stirring tale of adventure, courage and survival follows a band of very special creatures on their flight from the intrusion of man and the certain destruction of their home. Led by a stouthearted pair of friends, they journey forth from their native Sandleford Warren through the harrowing trials posed by predators and adversaries, to a mysterious promised land and a more perfect society.”

“There is nothing that cuts you down to size like coming to some strange and marvelous place where no one even stops to notice that you stare about you.” - Richard Adams, Watership Down

(Other books I love which are a bit less nostalgia based: faceless by Alyssa Sheinmel, The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness, and Orangeboy by Patrice Lawrence)

18. 3 dream jobs you had in your childhood

When I was younger my main dream was to be an Astronaut. Growing up watching Doctor Who I thought spacemen were the coolest people ever. As I got older I began to want to go to outer space for a different reason. It looked so peaceful up there and quiet, floating about in nothing with the stars and planets. Then I got to high school and realised how boring I found the non floating part of being an astronaut. Now i’m on a search for somewhere quiet and peaceful that doesn’t require me to know the laws of maths to get there.

I also had a brief moment of time where I wanted to work on a stage in Theatre (as many kids do). But I was/am a shy and overly conscious person and didn’t particularly like being watched never mind putting on a performance. I soon realised that I didn’t enjoy the idea of being on stage, but more so being recognised and working as part of a team. I really just wanted to have fun and get along with others naturally like other people could.

My third choice is also one that lingers into my adult life. Park rangers have always been a point of envy for me, being able to work outdoors in the quiet, making sure nature is safe and sound. Sometimes I regret studying what I currently am and wish I could just give it all up and switch to study geology and biology, but I know I don’t have the brain or patience for it, so for now I’ll stick on the path I have chosen

31. types of flowers you love the most

To be honest my favourite flower isn’t even my flower of choice. See, I don’t really know much about flowers and I prefer things like ferns or trees. However, my mother loves flowers. She has basically taught me everything I know about them. So my favourite would have to be her favourite, Rhododendrons.

Despite not being fussy about flowers I do still like some more than others, mainly because of memories associated with them. The Clover would have to be my second flower of choice. I know it’s more of a leaf, but when I was younger I remember playing hide and seek in the field after school, with the grass high over my head and the purple clover flowers standing out against the green. They signified the start of summer and the time for going out with friends and never knowing what you would do.

My last flower that I love is Foxglove (Digitalis if you must). It was another flower that showed the start of summer as a child and it was nice to see them appearing out of nowhere overnight. The name always amused me as I imagined little foxes using the flowers as mittens in the winter (something I am now definitely going to attempt to draw). I also enjoy them because I love to watch the bees fly into them and you can only see their wee bums wriggling while they work.

#ask game #thanks for the ask!#my asks #asks open #answered asks #book recommendations #wts

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nxsmss · 3 years

Text

Movies I watched in February

fyi, I have zero knowledge on how to professionally rate or review a movie. I am not gonna pay attention to every little detail. these rating are simply based on how much I enjoyed/liked the movie

Follow me

Unhinged

In Time

Avengers Age of Ultron

Songbird

Star Trek

Step up all in

Project Almanac

Ant Man

Space Sweepers

Christiane F.

Jurassic World

Jurassic World the fallen kingdom

1. follow me

A social media personality travels with his friends to Moskow to capture new content for his successful vlog. Always pushing the limits and catering to a growing audience, they enter a cold world of mystery, excess, and danger.

starring: Keegan Allen, Holland Roden, Denzel Whitaker, Ronen Rubenstein, Pasha D. Lchnikoff

the end was very predictable and i pretty much already knew halfway through the movie what was gonna happen. but it still was quite thrilling and I did enjoy watching it

6.5/10

2. unhinged

After a confrontation with an unstable man at an intersection, a woman becomes becomes the target of his rage.

starring: Russel Crowe, Caren Pistorius, Gabriel Batemen

hm idk, I didn’t really like it, my sister didn’t really like it but my mom did, I think. it just seemed so, no overdramatic but just too much in a way

3/10

3. in time

In a future where people stop aging after 25 and need to buy time to live, the rich become immortal while others cease to exist. So, Will is on the run with a hostage in a desperate bid to survive.

starring: Justin Timberlake, Amanda Seyfried, Cillian Murphy, Olivia Wilde, Alex Pettyfer

yes, such a good movie. Ireally like the concept. can recommend

7/10

4. avengers age of ultron

When Tony Stark and Bruce Banner try to jump-start a dormant peacekeeping program called Ultron, things go horribly wrong and it’s up to Earth’s mightiest heroes to stop the villanious Ultron from enacting his terrible plan.

starring: Robert Downy Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johanson, Jeremy Renner, Elizabeth Olsen, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Paul Bettany

hell yes, one of my favourite marvel movies. Wanda and Pietro.. Hawkeye.. all the little jokes throughout the entire movie and of course the scene where everyone tries to lift thor’s hammer, what’s not to love about this movie

10/10

5. songbird

In 2024 a pandemic ravages the world and it’s cities. Centering a handful of people as they naviagete the obstacles currently hindering society: disease, marital law, quarantine, and vigilantes.

starring: K.J. Apa, Sofia Carson, Demi Moore, Bradley Whitford, Peter Stromare, Alexandra Daddario, Craig Robinson

I really enjoyed watching this. yeah sure, the ending was obvious but I was still glued to the screen. I also felt super weird watching this, kinda surreal because we are basically living a more harmless version of this rn. I really liked seeing sofia carson in such a movie, I’ve only seen her in the descendants so this was a bit of a change haha. I’m not that big of a fan of kj but he was great as well and i really loved his characters style.

7/10

6. star trek

The brash James T. Kirk tries to live up to his father’s legacy with Mr. Spock keeping him in check as a vengeful Romulan from the future creates black holes to destroy the Federation one planet at a time.

starring: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Leonard Nimoy, Carl Urban, Eric Bana, Bruce Greenwood, Zoe Zaldana, Simon Pegg, John Cho, Anton Yelchin

I put it on because I wanted to have some background noise while playing sims but I ended up playing like 20 minutes and then just watching the movie haha I forgot how good it was, and the others as well, aaand I totally forgot carl urban was in it, so that was a little surprise. anyways, can recommend watching them if you’re into sci-fi action movies but at the same time, if you’re into that I’m pretty sure you’ve already watched them.

7.5/10

bonus: I also watched star trek beyond the other day but this time I was barely paying attention so I can't really say too much, but it's also quite good👍🏻

7. step up all in

All-stars from the previous Step up installments come together in glittering Las Vegas, battling for a victory that could define their dreams and their careers.

starring: Ryan Guzman, Briana Evigan, Adam Sevani, Misha Gabriel Hamilton, Sephen Stevo Jones, David Schreibman, Mari Koda, Alyson Stoner, Izabella Miko

definetly one of my favourite dance movies. highly recommend it!! I’d like it more without the romancde but it’s fine, I guess, I can live with it haha and the last performance... wow just wow that’s all I can say to that. y’all go watch it

9/10

8. project almanac

A group of teens discover secret plans of a time machine, and construct one. However, things start to get out of control.

starring: Jonny Weston, Sofia Black-D’Elia, Sam Lerner, Allen Evangelista, Virginia Gardner

okay... I did enjoy watching it! the beginning was a little slow imo but then it just got more and more intense which was kinda nice. god, at some point the main guy kept making the wrong decisions and that was very frustrating to watch. the ending was alright, spoiler ahead (I guess) I would have liked the ending more if it was the exact same as the beginning, meaning that the movie is just one big time loop and the events from the movie were about to repeat themselves. but that's just my opinion🤷🏻‍♀️

6.5/10

9. ant man

Armed with a super-suit with the astonishing ability to shrink in scale but increase in strength, cat burglar Scott Lang must embrace his inner hero and help his Mentor Dr. Pym, plan and pull off a heist that will save the world.

starring: Paul Rudd, Michael Douglas, Evangeline Lilly, Corey Stoll, Michael Pena, Bobby Cannavale, David Dastmalchian, T.I.

another one of my favorite mcu movies. it's just fun and easy and doesn't have a lot of pain in it. the giant ant it's my favorite part haha I want it as a pet

9/10

10. space sweepers

Set in the year 2092 and follows the crew of a space junk collector ship called The Victory. When they discover a humanoid robot named Dorothy that's known to be a weapon of mass destruction, they get involved in a risky business deal.

starring: Song Joong-Kim, Kim Tae-ri, Seon-kyu Jin, Hyang-gi Kim, Richard Armitage, Ye-Rin Park

I really loved this movie. I cried like 6 times haha, which came unexpected. (or maybe it's because I'm suppose to get my period any day now) I did not think I was going to enjoy this movie as much as I did, at all. it was fun, it was exciting, it was sad (even my dad said that) the plot was good, the visual effects were amazing, it did feel like I was watching this movie for like 5 hours but not in a bad way and I am now kinda emotionally attached to the characters haha (I might do a rewatch). another thing I really liked was the language/synchronization. in the original version they speak mostly korean and english but also some other languages and it's the same in the synchronizations. the dialogue of the main characters is in the language you pick but every other character (I guess) is a different language and I absolutely love that. I highly recommend watching this!!

also, its was super weird seeing Richard Armitage not as a dwarf hahaha

10/10

11. christiane f.

A teen girl in 1970's Berlin becomes addicted to heroin. Everything in her life slowly begins to distort and disappear as she befriends a small crew of junkies and falls in love with a drug-abusing male prostitute.

starring: Natja Brunckhorst, Thomas Haustein, Jens Kuphal, Christiane Reichelt

I binged the series the other day and after the last episode this movie was in the "watch next" thingy idk and I thought "well, why not" and watched it. good movie, definitely!! I really liked that they didn't show the highs of doing heroin but focused on the negative effects it has on someone and what it's doing to your body. it is a super realistic but very very dark movie. the actors were all about 15/16 years old and looked very young which was a good and kinda disturbing thing because christiane and her friend were like 13/14 when that all happened and it made you realise that there were kids doing all that stuff

9/10

12. jurrasic world

A new theme park, built on the original site of Jurassic Park, creates a genetically modified hybrid dinosaur, the Indominus Rex, which escapes containment and goes on a killing spree.

starring: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Ty simpkins, Nick Robinson, Irrfan Khan, Vincent D'Onofrio

13. jurassic world fallen kingdom

When the island's dormant volcano begins roaring to life, Owen and Claire mount a campaign to rescue the remaining dinosaurs from this extinction-level event.

starring: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Rafe Spall, Justice Smith, Daniella Pineda, Isabella Sermon

I am tired and don't really want to say all that much other than both of them are very good and I do like them. good action/adventure movies. can definitely recommend them. I definitely like the first one more because it feels like (just a little bit) that the main story in the second one is the same as in the first one, someone creates a new dinosaur species to make more money and something goes terribly wrong along the way. but it's still entertaining!

jurassic wolrd: 7.5/10

jurassic world fallen kingdom: 7/10

#movies i watched in #lara talks to herself #also if someone wants to you can drop some recommendations in my asks/dms/whererver you want #movies #review #follow me #unhinged #in time #age of ultron #songbird #star trek #step up all in #project almanac #ant man #space sweepers #christiane f #jurassic world

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casual-eumetazoa · 4 years

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and boring, *boring* sex

Rule number one of living with your best friend: never walk into their bedroom without knocking first…

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency is a very special kind of workplace. First of all, it is hardly a workplace to begin with; almost six months after getting an office, and they have spent less than a week worth of days combined inside of it. Second, you couldn’t quite call it “work” either. It’s not that the employees are lazy or idle - things are still happening, tasks are getting done - but would you qualify them as work? I don’t think so.

Naturally, workplace laws (and occasionally the laws of physics as well) do not apply to this particular agency. Walls can change colours, and chairs can become Mona at any minute. Cases can start unexpectedly, in the middle of the night, unbeknown to everyone, including the client. And detectives can be disturbed offensively early in the morning, and right in the middle of somewhat important and distinctly private activities…

-Ugh. - First wakes up Todd, then wakes up Todd’s brain.

He reaches blindly for his phone and fumbles under the pillow, grasping at the sheets and candy bar wrappers. The phone stops ringing the second his fingers close around its plastic surface.

-Fuck. - He mumbles, opening one eye just enough to see the screen.

A missed call from Farah. Farah, who hates mornings, and hates phone calls, and knows better than to bother him like this at 6:25AM on a Saturday. He realizes that something strange and interesting and case-y must have happened before he hears her voice on the other end.

Five minutes later, and he is already walking across the corridor, barefoot and wearing just the t-shirt and the underwear he slept in, excited and eager to share the news with his roommate/best friend/boss. This early into a weekend (and a new adventure), Todd is not thinking much before he acts. Knocking doesn’t even occur to him when approaching the door of Dirk’s bedroom. He simply opens it in one not-so-swift motion and barges in.

-Dirk, some really weird shit has happened in… - Todd starts, then closes his mouth mid-sentence.

Dirk is awake. He was awake before Todd came in, that much is obvious. He is in his bed, and the soft golden rays of dawn are breaching through the curtains and highlighting his figure. His feet and ankles sticking from under the thin white blanket. His neck, collarbones, and chest, bare and exposed. His face, blank and slowly turning a subtle shade of pink. And his right arm, hidden from view by the blanket…

-Oh. - Todd says.

It is all Todd can say at the moment. Having lived for two years in a college dorm, he doesn’t need any more context to grasp the situation. Now, he should leave. Now, he should apologize and step out and pretend like he didn’t see a thing.

But Todd is not doing any of that.

And he has no idea why.

-I should have knocked. - He says instead.

-You really maybe should have considered that, Todd. - Dirk replies.

Despite wanting nothing more than to look away and stare at the ceiling, Todd finds himself locking gazes with Dirk. It doesn’t help.

-You should have locked the door, perhaps. - Todd continues.

-I possibly could have had done it, yes. - Dirk agrees. - But I evidently have not. And you most definitely did not knock either.

-Yes. I understand. - Todd replies.

He doesn’t understand anything, least of all why he is not currently in the process of getting the hell out of Dirk’s bedroom.

-So. - Dirk says, his right hand now out of the blanket and resting on top his raised knee. - Do you have a plan for how we are going to progress out of this situation?

Todd is looking at Dirk’s hand, and at his fabric-covered knee. Todd cannot help but look at it, cannot force himself to take his eyes off that hand. Cannot stop thinking about what that hand was doing just now. And he doesn’t have a plan. It is rather normal for him to not have a plan, but right now he does not have a plan especially.

A minute passes by in silence.

-Todd? - Dirk asks, now increasingly confused (yet strangely just as aroused).

Their eyes meet again, and this time, there is something in that look, something fiery and intense and exciting and… mutual? Dirk’s ability to read from intonations and expressions and Looks is rather limited but in that instant he is almost sure that they are speaking the same language, communicating the same thought, the same desire.

He is feeling quite brave on that fine Saturday morning. He gives Todd just a few more seconds to leave or say something before he will test his hypothesis. Secretly, he almost wishes for Todd to turn around and walk away immediately. That would be simple. That would be safe… but Todd does not leave.

Todd - brilliant, wonderful, handsome Todd - is still standing there, motionless, and watching Dirk’s right hand.

And Dirk cannot disappoint, so he gives him something to watch.

Todd makes one and a half step forward and leans back against the wall. He hasn’t a clue what he is to do next. After all, he has never been present for another man jerking off. He has also never felt attracted to a man before. Not once not ever. Or, maybe he has, maybe more than once, many more than once, but has not admitted it to himself, has not registered it as attraction. Has not dared.

It could have been easy to deny in the past but not today. Not this time. Not now that he is about a meter away from Dirk’s bed, from Dirk’s hand as he strokes himself, eyes closed, lips parted slightly, seemingly enjoying the act of being observed. It goes on for a few minutes. While Todd stays still, paralyzed by all the emotions currently flooding his conscious mind like a tsunami, Dirk is starting to get into the rhythm of his own private show.

He stops for a moment and grasps the edge of the blanket, watching Todd’s face for any signs of discomfort or hesitation. There are none. So, Dirk begins to pull the blanket down, dragging its edge across his stomach, revealing, slowly, first the outline of his hips, the skin of his thighs, and, not without a tiniest of gasps from the sensation of fabric brushing against it, his erection.

Todd is transfixed. He barely feels his face flush with colour as his shoulders slump and he slides ever so slightly down the wall. Dirk adjusts positions, giving him an even better view. He sits up and spreads apart his legs. His eyes are open, gaze wondering around (mostly on Todd’s slouching figure) as his hand continues to slide up and down his dick, fingers grasping firmly, speeding up then slowing down again, teasing the sensitive skin on top then going back to the base. Todd is not sure how much of that is just for him to see. He doesn’t care.

He does notice when Dirk’s eyes stop wandering and settle on one point. Todd looks down and realized immediately what caught Dirk’s attention. He is hard too. The thin layer of his boxer briefs is stretched across his skin, almost snug enough to bother him. Dirk pauses once more. This warrants a response. He wants to say something at first, then changes his mind and, looking directly at Todd, shifts to the right, freeing enough space on the bed for another person.

The gesture is registered and processed. Todd hesitates. He wants this, wants so badly to get rid of his clothes and touch himself… the erection close to hurts, demanding action. Can he do is? Is he… allowed to do this? He figures the moment is crazy enough as is, and there’s no going back anyway, right? So he takes the seat. Takes the seat so, so close to Dirk, and slides his thumbs under the rubber band of his underwear, and pulls it down to his ankles.

Everything that happens then is a bit of a blur for Todd. He watches Dirk reach towards him, feels the hot skin of Dirk’s hand, nods as some cool, slick gel is dispensed on his palm.

They sit just a few centimeters apart at first, each touching themselves. Neither is sure how it happens, but soon the gap between their bodies is closed. Both are breathing heavily. Todd senses the warmth of Dirk’s thigh pressed to his own and that alone forces a moan to escape his lips. He glances to his right. The side of Dirk’s mouth goes up. He doesn’t know what is going on, but he is liking it. Very much.

It is quite obvious how the situation must progress. They started off apart, and now Todd’s leg is resting on top of Dirk’s, Todd’s t-shirt is crumpled on the floor, and they are close enough to hear each other’s rapid heartbeats. The only way further, closer, is to take direct action.

The same thought occurs to them both at the same time. They stop, again, and lock gazes, again, and words are not necessary. Like zombies, thoughtless, all-consumed by attraction, they move towards each other, eyes blinking shut just a microsecond before their lips meet. The kiss is sloppy, hungry, fueled by months of repressed desire. Todd feels Dirk’s tongue in his mouth and fears he might pass out from the pleasure. How he could have not known that he wanted him so desperately?!

The kissing is enough only for a short while; soon the need for touch, for sensation, for closeness, wins, and they edge even nearer to each other. Wandering, exploring hands find their targets almost at once.

When Todd’s fingers brush and curl around him, the only words that come to Dirk’s mind are curses. He feels his hips move, thrusting slightly into Todd’s hand, while his own continues its strokes. Their motions are erratic, hasty, needy, but it hardly matters now. All that exists are the magical, electric waves of pleasure, stifled moans against each other’s lips and the soft warmth of another’s skin.

It doesn’t last long, and it also lasts forever. The sensation is overwhelming, so powerful it takes over completely and leaves them both breathless, hands moving fast, gasping, crying out every time another’s fingers hit a particularly sensitive spot. Both are on the edge in minutes. There is no stopping, no slowing down; just wanting more and more, until it is almost too much, until the euphoria almost hurts. Builds up in an instant, peaks, and spills over the edge.

Mere seconds after his own orgasm, Dirk senses hot, sticky liquid on his palm, feels Todd’s body shudder with bliss. Some time for catching their breath and coming back to reality, and they are staring at each other, speechless, as if they are only just realizing what has happened. Todd blinks and licks his lips. Here he is, naked, sitting next to his best friend, also naked, semen on his hands, semen on his friend’s hands… on the bedsheets as well…

-Shower? - Dirk says, and Todd is not sure whether that is a question, a suggestion, or a recommendation - but he nods in agreement.

Half an hour later, and they are drinking coffee together in the kitchen, fully clothed and relatively calm.

-So. - Dirk begins, dropping another sugar cube into his cup. - Should we talk about..?

-No. - Todd doesn’t let him finish. - Not right now.

-Reasonable. Agreed. - Dirk replies, then pauses. - Not at all talk about it or..?

-Not at all. - Todd gulps down coffee, which burns his tongue and throat. - I am not mentally prepared.

-Right. Sure. - Dirk taps his fingers on the coffee mug. - What were you going to tell me, before we, uh… - The sentence trails off.

-Oh. - Todd says. - Oh! The thing. - For a while, he was living in a world where cases and the detective agency did not exist. - There’s, uh, penguins? Missing from the zoo. And it looks like they organized an escape? I don’t know. - He shrugs. - Farah called and told me that.

-Penguins escaping from the zoo? - Dirk repeats. - Like in that cartoon where the animals get together on a ship to go have a holiday on a tropical island with cross-dressing rats?

-Cross-dressing… - Todd frowns. - Madagascar?

-Yes, that one.

There is a pause. A long, long pause.

-Yeah we should talk about it. - Todd gives up. – About the sex. – He adds. – Not about Madagascar.

And so they do.

Talk about it, I mean.

But not before making out for long enough to let their coffee get cold.

#dghda #brotzly #dghda fanfic #paradox nerd post #nsfw/

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simlishfish · 4 years

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Nine muses legacy challenge

Do you like Greek mythology? Do you want to explore different aspects of the game you've never yet played with? Even if you don't I have the perfect challenge for you!

I proudly present to you the nine muses legacy challenge, a nine generation legacy (duh..) based (very loosely) on the myth of the nine muses, deities and daughters of Zeus from Greek mythology.

Basic Rules:

1. cheats are allowed, basically just play however you want to whilst entertaining the rules of each generation

2. you may live in whichever world, and which ever property or would like, provided it is not otherwise stated for that specific generation.

3. you must complete the goals of the current generation, before moving on to play with the next generation.

4. play with the lifespan on normal.

5. You can name the sims after the generations (these are the names of the original 9 muses) however this is optional

6. go ahead and use #nmlegacy if you play this challenge because I really would love to see you play this or even just create the characters in CAS

Generation 1: Clio

Your sim has always been a huge history buff and has always loved the idea of a big family to share their passion with. They have always been good at anything they tried, but most of all value relationships with friends and family. Your sim tries to live their life as much as possible trying to learn as many skills, and meet as many new people as possible on the way.

Traits: bookworm, ambitious, family oriented

Aspiration: successful lineage

Career: freelancer writer

rules:

· complete successful lineage aspiration

· master writing, mixology and one more skill of your choice (the last must be archeology skill if you have jungle adventure)

· complete a postcards collection

· have at least 3 children with at least 2 different baby daddys/mammas

· adopt at least 1 pet (optional for cats and dogs)

Generation 2: Euterpe

Your sim was raised in a hectic and busy household where much was unclear for them. the only thing they knew for sure was that they loved music. They don't really know what they want, but they hate the commitment of a job, same applies to people. They kind of a loner and spent most of their childhood alone in their room.

Traits: lazy, loves outdoors, noncommital

Aspiration: musical genius

Career: none

rules:

· complete musical genius aspiration

· master violin, piano and handiness skills

· achieve lvl. 8 in gardening skill

· enter the secret lot in oasis springs

· have your sim's partner be a loner sim and never get married

· have 1 child

Generation 3: Thalia

Your sim has always loved comedy and being the centre of attention but never really connected with their parents. Apart from being a dedicated comedian, your sim has a side hustle of shoplifting and swiping items, determined to escape their poor childhood. Although they never mean any harm, their rash behaviour always seems to land them in a lot of trouble, chasing their dream of living in a nice big house with a perfect family and a white picket fence.

Traits: cheerful, kleptomaniac, good

Aspiration: mansion baron

Career: entertainer + buisiness

rules:

· complete mansion baron aspiration

· master both entertainer and buisiness career

· master charisma skill

· move to an empty 50 x 50 lot in a new world

· marry a co-worker

· have at least 1 child

Generation 4: Melpomene

The opposite to their parents, this sim has never really seen the point in comedy. They have tended to trust in logic rather than emotion and have never been truly happy. They are always following others and has pursued a career as an athlete, as it seems this is their natural 'talent' even though it is not something they particularly enjoy. At least they feel they are doing something productive.

Traits: gloomy, active, neat

Aspiration: body builder

Career: athlete

rules:

· complete body builder aspiration

· master athlete career

· master fitness, logic and programming skill

· get divorced and later remarried to the same sim

· complete an element and a crystal collection

· have at least 2 children

Generation 5: Terpsichore

Your sim had everything they wanted as a child and the household they grew up in was good and respectable, but they have been longing for something a little more exciting. As they enter their teen years the begin to discover them self on a deeper level and basically spend all of their time dancing and partying. This doesn't stop as they grow old. Your sim is a social butterfly who must have as many friends as possible and throw the best parties!

Traits: outgoing, erratic, dance machine (if you don't have get together, like me, use the hot-headed trait)

Aspiration: party animal

Career: style influencer

rules:

· complete party animal aspiration

· master style influencer career

· master charisma skill

· achieve lvl.8 in 5 other skills

· leave someone at the alter during a wedding

· achieve a gold medal in every base game party type

· have at least 3 children, all with different baby daddys/mammas

Generation 6: Erato

Like their parents, this sim has never appreciated structure or authority. They are in love with the idea of love, and wants to be able to gather intel, er i mean date lots of different people. This sim loves being evil, wait, I mean playful towards other sims, and uses their alluring nature to get want ever they want.

Traits: romantic, evil, creative

Aspiration: serial romantic

Career: criminal

rules:

· complete serial romantic aspiration

· master criminal career

· master mischief, painting and charisma skill

· paint at least 10 masterpieces

· get married as a young adult to a richer, older sim

· murder spouse

· have at least 3 enemies

· have at least 1 child

Generation 7: Polymnia

As a child, this sim was surrounded by paintings and creativity and this really rubbed off on them. They are very career focused and want to be the most sucessful author in the world, and want everyone to know their name. Their tendency to obsess and overthink things made it difficult for them to find love but they got there eventually.

Traits: perfectionist, book worm, materialistic

Aspiration: Best selling author

Career: writer

rules:

· complete best selling author aspiration

· master writer career

· master writing skill

· complete a mysims trophies collection

· get married as an elder

· have at least 1 child

Generation 8: Ourania

Their parents uptight tendencies never really resonated with this sim. They're more of a free spirit who would rather explore, be it the laws of science or the beauties of nature. Curiosity is what drives this sim and all they really want is a simple existence where they can learn and discover for themselves what life is all about.

Traits: loves outdoors, genius, cheerful

Aspiration: nerd brain

Career:

rules:

· complete aspiration

· master career

· master rocket science, gardening and handiness skill

· complete a space prints and space rocks collection

· build a rocket and go to space

· move on to a 20 x 30 lot

· have at least 2 children

Generation 9: Calliope

This sim has had enough of their parents' hippy dippy lifestyle. They want to go big or go home. They will work hard and do whatever it takes to get them to this oh so important dream of theirs. Their sole desire? To live like a king/Queen.

Traits: snob, ambitious, self assured

Aspiration: fabulously wealthy

Career: business (Lawyer if you have discover university)

rules:

· complete fabulously wealthy aspiration

· master business (Lawyer if you have discover university) career

· display at least 15 self made paintings in home

· move on to a 50 x 50 lot

· marry snob sim

· master painting, guitar and (optional for jungle adventure selvadoradian culture) skill

A (very) brief history of the muses (the inspiration)

The Nine Muses of the Greek Mythology were deities that gave artists, philosophers and individuals the necessary inspiration for creation.

According to the Greek Myths, God Zeus bewildered the young woman Mnemosyne and slept with her for nine consecutive nights. The result of their encounter was the Nine Muses, who were similar to everything.

Μnemosyne gave the babies to Nymph Eufime and God Apollo. When they grew up they showed their tendency to the arts, taught by God Apollo himself.

#ninemuseslegacychallenge nmlegacy ts4legacy ts4challenge

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zephyrthejester · 4 years

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Three Years Blog Anniversary!

Well, would you look at that. In the blink of an eye, an entire year has gone by! It has now been a grand total of three years since I started up this liveblog, and ever since, it's been a whirlwind of an adventure that has introduced me to amazing shows, amazing games, and above all, amazing people! As has become tradition, it's time for us to gather 'round by the fire, bundle up in blankets, sip some hot cocoa, and reminisce about the shenanigans we got up to in the year 2019.

You know the drill! Click "Keep Reading" to see the rest! Let's go!

January kicked off with the closing episodes to Steven Universe's fifth season, and what a finale it was! In true SU nature, it managed to be wholesome, funny, terrifying, and sad all at once! Not to mention the finale episode specifically, which was rife with both fan service and a breath-taking final confrontation. It even prompted me to type up three whole Addendum posts just so I could get all my thoughts out there. Intermingling with these episodes were some rather poignant and touching episodes of RWBY's 6th Volume, which saw some great plot advancements for some of my favorite characters. And of course, there was one liveblog session early on dedicated to Fate/Stay Night, a series I began back in 2018. And that would end up being the last I'd liveblog about it. Following the technical difficulties of the Visual Novel crashing at an important moment, I lost much of my motivation to keep going at it, putting Fate/Stay Night on the bench... For now. But more on Fate/Stay Night later.

Then came February! Where I proceeded to do absolutely nothing at all. For 42 days, I fell into a pretty bad funk that I called depression, at the time. Well! I must be in a better mental space right now, because until it came time to make this post, I forgot all about it! Moving past the shame I felt for wordlessly abandoning my blog and discord community for over a month, come March I pressed right into a brand new liveblog: Kill la Kill! A frenetic, frantic, freaky series that serves as the spiritual sequel to what was, once upon a time, my favorite anime ever: Gurren Lagann. I was immediately charmed by it's absurdist humor and over-the-top everything. However, it wasn't long before I succumbed to my greatest flaw. I'm exceptionally picky about what I liveblog, and sadly, Kill la Kill didn't tick the boxes that needed to be ticked for me to stick with it. I eventually dropped the series after only three episodes.

Needless to say, I was getting desperate to reinvigorate my lost momentum. It was then and there, at the tail end of March, that I introduced the most significant change to my brand ever: Liveblogging itself was being benched in favor of a fanciful second attempt at running my video game focused Youtube Channel! While I would certainly continue to liveblog new episodes of shows I had previously caught up with, my efforts would be redoubled and focused upon something I hoped would shake things up for me. I put in the effort of buying a new, fancy, high-tech microphone, and set about to new projects!

First up was a tense and troublesome self-imposed-challenge: A playthrough of Resident Evil 2 Remake on its hardest difficulty, with the added stipulation that I can never access the item storage box! My knowledge and skills of that game were put to the test as I skirted by the dangerous zombies and mutants while carrying only the bare essentials on my person. That series lasted 7 videos, plus a Highlight Reel, over about a week. My new microphone really brought out my screams of terror. Yes.

Immediately following the conclusion of the REmake 2 challenge run in early April, a new series debuted: A blind let's play of Subnautica! A simply incredible sci-fi survival game set on a planet that's nearly entirely an ocean... But much to my surprise, it was secretly a horror game all along. Spanning 18 episodes + a highlight reel between April 5th and May 23rd, we descended ever deeper into the abyss, deciphered alien riddles, fled from toothy leviathan-class predators, established a lovely home base, and had a great ol' time overall. A truly remarkable game with a surprisingly good story, for its genre, and it left me eagerly looking forward to making a Let's Play of its sequel: Below Zero.

Simultaneously, beginning on April 10th, I embarked upon yet another adventure that was of such a large scope, I made my channel's primary time slot dedicated to it. The Phoenix Wright Trilogy! A collection of the first three Visual Novels in a wonderful, wonderful series about the titular attorney at law. It wasn't long before I fell in love with this series, big time. It had everything! Immensely satisfying mysteries for me to solve, memorable and lovable characters, great pacing, and it knew how to keep things fresh and interesting. Although I started out the Let's Play by saying I wouldn't read everything aloud, that proved to be a lie. As of now, the series is a whopping 78 videos long (I do expect it to reach 100 before all is said and done), and I have given voice to roughly 50 unique characters so far. The series really helped awaken my Let's Play chops by improving my speech, vocal clarity, and focus. Swapping between my first video ever (for Legend of Grimrock II) and the most recent Phoenix Wright video is a real night-and-day difference! Overall, it's very safe to say that the series has stolen my heart. Unmatched hype, dizzying plot twists, and delightful shenanigans burst from the seams, truly. The Let's Play is currently ongoing, though the end is within sight...

As the Let's Plays of Subnautica and Phoenix Wright Trilogy progressed, so too did the production quality of my videos. I got a better grip on editing, improving the design of my video thumbnails and taking more care to edit out needless and dull moments of gameplay. I even introduced a brief and stylish video intro, which was my avatar appearing over a dark background before it faded off into gameplay. That would be the image up above! However, as we move into 2020, I’ve begun to feel that it could do with a slight improvement... Wink wink!

Following the end of Subnautica came a new Let's Play involving yet another sci-fi horror game: Prey! Spanning 25 videos + a highlight reel between June 3rd and November 19th, it immediately gripped me with its stunning attention to detail, marvelously crafted environments, and boundlessly creative gameplay. It was a pleasure to explore the varied regions of the Talos One space station, blasting aliens, uncovering secrets, untangling the connections between the employees there, and making some seriously difficult moral choices. A truly impressive video game that's just begging for a second playthrough on my own time at some point.

July 20th saw the beginning of new activity on my blog. In a spur-of-the-moment decision that I didn't think out too well, I brazenly announced out of nowhere that I would be doing a re-watch of Steven Universe! I proceeded to liveblog the first 11 episodes of Steven Universe over a week, lovingly looking back at the series' origins, calling out moments of foreshadowing, and analyzing everything with the lens of all my knowledge about the show. And then... Nothing! Just as soon as it began, the project was dropped. I had hoped it would rekindle my interest in Liveblogging (outside of new episodes of SU and RWBY), but I had no such luck. You know I'm burnt out when even Steven Universe, my favorite thing ever, can't help...

By September 3rd, the Steven Universe Movie had finally released! Over a hype-as-hell two days, I liveblogged the entire film. It truly was Steven Universe at its absolute best! Touching, sincere, unexpected, and rife with some stellar songs that are STILL stuck in my head. It proved that the Crewniverse hadn't lost its spark since the conclusion of the original series.

November 5th was my 25th birthday! My family celebrated by all going out for an amazing sushi dinner. Good times! Sometimes, it's really hard for me to grasp that I'm actually 25... I'm a kid at heart, really! Or maybe it's that I'm a social recluse who enjoys watching anime a little too much. Regardless, I feel no shame!

November 10th saw the debut of RWBY Volume 7, and so far it has been an exceptionally strong season. I've long maintained the opinion that the show gets better and better every season, and Volume 7 has given me no reason to doubt that. One episode in particular became my second favorite in the series, right behind a certain one from Volume 6! I'm really enjoying how the characters, new and old, are playing off each other this go around, and the fights and art direction have been no slouch either. This season's a looker! I'm really looking forward to seeing how it ends.

Hot on the heels of the ending Let's Play of Prey, I immediately started up a new series on November 20th... Chrono Trigger! A legendary and widely loved JRPG from the SNES era of gaming that I had somehow gone all my life without playing. Better late than never to fix a mistake like that! I eagerly dived in and nearly immediately understood why it's heralded as an all-time great. The series is currently 13 episodes long, and each one is an endless stream of me being hyped and giddy. I’m already excited to record more!

December 8th saw the debut of Steven Universe Future, a very special epilogue series that's sure to tie a nice bow on the franchise as a whole. As of this post, I have liveblogged the first 8 episodes, and it's fair to say that while it's not holding back in giving the audience exactly what it wants, it's also doing something very unexpected and very, very interesting with Steven himself. Only time will tell how it all ends and whether every remaining mystery will be answered, but so far I have been more than satisfied with it.

And that brings us to the present! Wow, it felt like a lot less happened this year than you would think, huh? No, it's been jam packed with new adventures! I think I am very content with how the year has gone, and I hope you are as well. We'll be striding into the year 2020 with more Steven Universe, more RWBY, more Phoenix Wright, and more Chrono Trigger! Plus, it may very well be that we'll see the return of Made in Abyss and Madoka Magica, both of which (I believe) are getting continuation movies in 2020. I may or may not be entirely wrong about this. Forgive me if I am...

In the near future, the Phoenix Wright Trilogy will be followed up by a Let's Play of Fate/Stay Night! Indeed, the canceled Liveblog will be reborn in youtube video form! And following Chrono Trigger, well... It's mostly up in the air, though I do have a few good ideas. In particular, I recently got a Virtual Reality system set up... Wink wink!

So that's really all there is to it! Cheers, lads! Cheers to a good year, and cheers to the next year being even better! To our good health, our unbreakable friendships, and all the stupid bullshit we’ll get into together! 2020 has arrived!

#Zephyr the Jester #Blog Anniversary

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kuningannasansa · 4 years

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A musketeers rewatch (that nobody asked for) 1x07

Here we go, my least favorite episode of the whole show excluding season three which I didn’t watch! If you have even a passing fondness for Ninon, I suggest you look away :)

We start with a royal procession through the crowd and there are quite a lot of waving people there. If they can fill the streets with extras for scenes like that, why can those same extras not be used for the court scenes?

Priest whose name I have forgotten is being robbed. The musketeers rush in to help.

Meanwhile, a crazy girl tries to get close to the queen and ends up being ran over by her carriage. If this is meant to be some Emily Davison analogy, it sucks!

The dead lunatic’s name is Therese and she wanted to give the Queen a note. Constance takes it and says “Fleur, what does this mean?” Am I supposed to take from that that she cannot read for herself? Cause a merchant’s wife definitely, definitely would know how to do that.

Fleur is nowhere to be seen, however.

“This is an age of glorious discovery!” says Ninon. “Galileo observes the moons of Jupiter... But what is the role of women in this age of wonder?” - well, gee, i don’t know Ninon. Maybe you could have mentioned some female scientists of the era in addition to Galileo? Catherine de Parthenay, anyone? Or Marie Fouquet? Hell, Ninon de l'Enclos, my atheist queen, for whom this Ninon is doubtless named, was a notable woman in her own right! But no, we have to make women look more oppressed than they actually were to make this waste of space look more awesome.

“My women of Paris, seek your own enlightenment!” - wrong era!

Therese, an orphan from a humble background, wanted to hand a petition to the queen about women’s education.

“If she was an illiterate orphan she could not have written this. It is misguided but not unintelligent.” - says Richelieu. And indeed he turns out to be right. She didn’t write it. Which is fucking bizarre.

Anne asks him if he doesn’t favor women’s education and he replies: “I admire learning wherever it is to be found, but this amounts to an attack on the authority of church and state.” Any French history buff know what the actual Richelieu’s thought of women’s education? @tatzelwyrm? I’m gonna start a biography on him soon, but not until I’m done with this rewatch.

Ninon barges in past the guards and yells “stay out of my way, I will address the King!”. I’m sure this is meant to make her look badass, but she just comes across like a complete idiot who doesn’t understand that she would do better to follow court protocol, no matter how much she might dislike it, if she wants to achieve her goals.

Luckily for her she’s pretty, so the king doesn’t mind.

“I want to know why this tragedy happened. If your guards are to blame I want them punished.” And then she gives Treville a dirty look! How dare you, you waste of skin and oxygen! Don’t you dare blame Treville for this mess!

“You knew this lunatic?” - lmao, Richelieu!

Therese was the daughter of Ninon’s servant whom Ninon decided to educate. So she was educated, she COULD have written the petition herself. But she did not. Because when Richelieu says “she wrote this and was killed trying to give it to the Queen” Ninon screeches: “Don’t be ridiculous! She didn’t write it, I did!” And I mean, who exactly is looking down on servant girls here and saying it’s ridiculous to expect them to write something intelligent. It’s not Richelieu.

But more importantly, WHY?? If Ninon wrote it, why couldn’t she hand it to the Queen? Why did this poor girl have to die? This is so, so stupid! I mean, okay, maybe Therese heard Ninon speak well of the queen and got the idea to hand her the petition on her own, without being told by Ninon to do so. But why did she have it in the first place, if it’s Ninon’s petition?

“Apparently the Comtesse de Laroque believes herself above the normal laws and conventions of society.” ´- well that’s an understatement.

“The treasury is bankrupt and the country needs a new navy. Ninon has the wealth to provide it.” And that is why Richelieu sends Milady into the salon to find something to use against her. These two are so good in this, I love their scenes together! Pity about the rest of the episode.

Richelieu is now freaking out about lesbians and Milady is just like “really, dude? really?”. I love her!

“Ninon must pay up or face destruction, I want every last penny from her!” - so it was not his intention to kill her, just to get the money. Interesting.

Fleur’s father is Bonacieux’s cousin. I love that, the commoners having family connections and support circles of their own.

The robbed priest is called Luca! Richelieu is “delighted to see him”, apparently, cause they’re old friends. And Louis isn’t, because he wrote a pamphlet arguing that Kings should bow down to the Pope’s authority.

“We can’t have a comtesse abducting young women and spiriting them away to her boudoir!” - Oh, Richelieu! Do calm down.

It’s odd watching Richelieu try to use homosexuality to take Ninon down while shipping Trevilieu thou.

Athos barges into Ninon’s salon, demanding to know where Fleur is and Milady very discreetly hides behind a pillar. Lol!

And Ninon starts hitting on Athos immediately. She tells him that she’s often thought he’s handsome but the “melancholy aspect” to his looks is “probably only mental vacancy”. Who taught you how to flirt? Why must you be so abrasive and confrontational all the time? Like really, I get she’s meant to be a Strong Woman Who Don’t Take No Shit TM, but she just comes across like a loudmouth.

Athos likes it thou!

“Forgive our intrusion-” “I will not forgive it!” - Jesus Ninon, it’s just a figure of speech, a polite gesture. People use these in conversation sometimes. She’s so unnecessarily rude smh.

Aramis says he “gladly acknowledges the superiority of the female sex” and I throw up in my mouth a little. That’s not feminism, that’s slimy!

D’artagnan: “If that wasn’t flirting, I don’t know what is.” Porthos: “Rubbish! She can’t stand him.” Aramis: “One day I’ll sit down and explain women to you.” - cause we’re all the same and no means yes, right writers?

Luca: “His holiness is concerned about the direction of French foreign policy.” Richelieu: “Well the pope is Spain’s performing monkey.” - he really is so funny! I know I keep saying that, but he is!

Also, YAY politics! Intelligent dialogue! I love this scene so much!

“In matters of religion I defer to Rome, in all else I am my country’s servant” - lol, Richelieu inventing the separation of church and state

Luca: “Is this your final word on the subject?” Richelieu: “It is.” - and that right there is where Luca decides to kill him. The actor plays it really well, knowing it’s coming I can see the briefest moment of regret in his eyes, but without hindsight I wouldn’t notice anything. And he gives Richelieu the poisoned gift.

Also, isn't it the same guy who plays Margaret’s new man in Harlots?

Athos says that Therese and Fleur were so far below Ninon in status that they were not in a position to make choices of their own free will. Which is fuckign stupid. But Ninon saying that she views all women as equal regardless of their birth is equally moronic. I mean, sure, they should be, but in reality they’re not and ignoring that doesn’t help anyone. And Athos does point out that Ninon’s money and position gives her certain privileges, but it sits wrong coming from him and not from Porthos or Milady or Constance, who are from poor/less wealthy backgrounds. That said, this is still one of the few semi intelligent scenes in this whole episode, so whatever. At least someone said it.

Now she kisses him and invites him to dine! And he just looks sad.

Luca tells Richelieu to “deal with” Ninon “firmly”, cause the Pope is dying and Richelieu could be the next Pope if he shows himself a strong defender of the church against “heresy”. What heresy thou? Women learning to read? Lol, that’s so cartoonishly evil and ahistorical, but whatever. This at least explains where Richelieu’s desire to have her burned came from.

Richelieu: “I wouldn’t go so far as to call her a heretic.” Luca: “A woman who openly defies God's laws, what other word is there?” - what laws thou? what has she done, other than hold some salon meetings, as every other noblewoman was doing at the time?

Richelieu promises to consider his options and Luca tells him to pray to the poisoned bone for guidance, lol.

This right here is Richelieu letting personal feelings cloud his judgement, thou! Which he said he has learned no to do. But he allows himself to be carried away with visions of becoming Pope and honestly I don’t see how he can possibly believe that could happen with his foreign policy and how hated he is by the Vatican, as stated in this very scene.

Milady and Ninon! I love that scene! Ninon clearly thinks she’s super special because she “takes the initiative” by kissing men instead of waiting to be kissed. She’s so damn smug about it! And Milady is just like “oh I could never be so bold” and I swear I can hear her laughing internally!

And she very cleverly charms Fleur’s location out of Ninon!

Athos’s idea of a first date is the morgue. Charming.

Athos saying that Ninon is responsible for what happened to Therese because she gave a lowborn girl an education doesn’t sit well with me. Classist ass! But she is responsible for not thinking of Therese beyond how daring and adventurous and fun and positively scandalous it would be to educate a servant girl and then not bothering to care for her when she got bored. Cause if she had done, Therese could have come to her with her plan and she could have prevented her death. Because yes, regardless of her education, her background predisposed Therese to be naive about the King and Queen and how petitions work. Where was Ninon in all this, when a girl under her charge decided to do this foolish thing that cost her her life? Because if you want to be someone’s teacher you do have a duty of care. In short, Ninon is a classist ass as well! They’re perfect for each other!

So Luca’s stolen bag is in the morgue with the body of the thief who stole it. And Athos promises to send for it in the morning. I know it’s CSI: Musketeers and all, but why was it not delivered to Luca the moment it was found, lol? He’s a pretty important guest at the palace and it’s his property.

Athos agrees with Ninon that marriage is a curse. LOL!

Ninon’s reason for not marrying is that she does not want a husband to own her wealth and body. Makes sense and that’s why many independently wealthy women chose to stay unmarried. Just pointing out the few things that make sense.

“You are a rebellious woman” - oh good, we managed to squeeze the title of the episode into the dialogue!

Aramis just tossed a red guard out of Ninon’s house. Can’t tell if he’s dead or not, but certainly unconscious.

There’s fighting. The red guards have swords, the musketeers have books. Athos screams “where is your authority for this!?!” - well, the Cardinal, I’d assume, since they are his guards. Oh bear of very little brain!

Fleur and some other runaway girls are found sleeping in a secret chamber and Ninon is arrested for abducting them.

Athos is all like “you said she wasn’t here” and Ninon tries to explain that Fleur did not want to be found and begs “make them stop” to which Athos replies “sorry, I can’t”, his voice and face making it very clear that he doesn’t want to. Because a woman lied to him! This is the worst crime! Really Ninon is lucky she’s being arrested right now, otherwise she’d end up swinging from a tree.

“Four young women! In their nightwear! I can only speculate as to the horrors they have endured!” - Richelieu really has a bee in his bonnet about lesbians. The days before p*rnhub must have been hard for a catholic cardinal.

Luca is even worse thou! “Your majesty is joking but Satan is real! And his female familiars are everywhere amongst us.” Jesus christ guys, calm down! Have a wank or something!

“She had the girls, she lied, she brought her fate on herself.” - Oh shut up Athos! Not everything is about you and your relationship issues! As Aramis points out. Thank you, Aramis! And I never believed I’d ever say that.

Ninon/Aramis > > > > > > > > > > Ninon/Athos

Aramis gives Ninon the cross Anne gave him. This is quite sweet!

“It’s not so easy when you don’t have money” Constance says and she is right. But it’s like the show is saying that the only way women can be independant is if they are independently wealthy like Ninon. But that’s not really true, Fleur could get a job such as a seamstress or pharmacist or grain merchant or actress or even as a secretary now that she knows latin and greek thanks to Ninon. Women did have jobs in 17th century France and even belonged to guilds etc. Not saying that Fleur would not be more financially secure still with a husband, but if she really doesn’t want that she has options and I don’t like how this supposed “feminist” episode constantly erases women’s actual history.

Fleur’s father rages “what does she need an education for? She’ll be a seamstress until she’s married and then she’ll be a dutiful wife and mother.” But if he is Bonacieux’s cousin then they are in the same social class, that is to say, the merchant class. And merchant women had to keep their husbands’ shops when their husbands were away. They needed to know how to read and write and do sums. They needed this to be an attractive marriage prospect to a husband of their own social class!

And the father wants to hit Fleur and D’artagnan all heroically threatens him. How boring!

Richelieu: “Many of our young women are educated. It’s not something we’re ashamed of.” Fleur: “Not just embroidery and sewing.” Me: “WELL OF COURSE NOT!!!”

Then Fleur says Ninon taught them the “secrets of our bodies” and Richelieu is a hound on the scent!

“Be quiet or you’ll be gagged!” - Again Armand, this is neither the time nor the place to indulge your kinks.

ENTER MILADY!

She does such a brilliant job of her testimony! This is again her lying about rape and I talked about before why that is bad, but in this case I don’t mind cause it’s for state reasons and doesn’t in any way invalidate her own story the way the thing with D’artagnan does.

Athos completely LOSES HIS SHIT!! Not doing the defence any good there, buddy!

The look she gives him as she walks out is priceless!

Queen Anne to the rescue, bringing clemency from Louis! Clever girl, must have manipulated it out of him! Season 1 Anne was intelligent.

And Ninon ruins it by saying: “I have never consorted with the devil until this moment. I am looking at him.” To which Richelieu replies: “Condemned from her own mouth.” As any person with half a brain would. Jesus christ Ninon, you should have been gagged! For your own safety!

And then Richelieu stops breathing! And we get Treville’s reaction to it, thank you camera people! Thou Treville mostly just looks confused, like “what is that drama queen doing now?”

Now he’s twitching! And I’m sorry but it looks hilarious.

Aramis carries him to bed on his back and puts a hand over his mouth. I’m not sure that helps with the breathing issues...

Louis pushes Aramis out of the way and cries “please don’t die! please don’t die!” aawwwwwwwwwww!

Aramis really saves his life here, huh.

Anne is briefly jealous about the cross and asks Aramis if Ninon is his lover. Lol! She never expected him to stalk her for the rest of her life, she fully expected him to keep lovers.

Luca: “Satan turned his blood to acid at her command!” Porthos: “We’ll add Satan to the list of suspects.”

Fleur: “You think I poisoned him?” Constance: “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard even by musketeer standards.” - THANK YOU CONSTANCE!

Fleur is to be married to a 40 year old butcher. Poor girl!

“Was it you?” - LOL!

“Half the doctors say you’re doomed, the other half claim you’ll make a full recovery. There’s a lot of professional pride at stake.” - Milady is very funny too! But I’ve always known that!

“Whatever happens to me, I want you to extract this confession from Ninon.” - translation: it doesn’t matter if I die, the main thing is that France gets that navy. For France, always. I’m amazed by how much he trusts Milady here thou.

Milady thinks the kneebone of St. Anthony is gross and “as much use as the doctors”. Bless her!

Constance very sweetly talks Fleur’s father out of forcing her to marry. Go Constance!

Ninon: “There is nothing worse than a woman who betrays her own sex” Milady: “I can think of a few things, but let’s not argue.” - THIS!! This is my favorite part of this whole miserable episode, because yes, with her background she can think of things Ninon couldn’t possibly imagine. It’s also a fuck you to that “don’t encourage girl on girl hate” line terfs and white feminists always hide behind when they get called out on their bullshit, though this wasn’t the point here. I love how she doesn’t even explain, too. Let’s not argue, cause what’s the point. You’ll never get it.

I do want to stress that Ninon is not wrong for educating other women and she has been unjustly condemned (althou I would argue that she might not have drawn Richelieu’s ire if she went about it in a more subtle, less smug way, for the safety of the girls she teaches if not for her own). But Milady is employed by the First Minister of France and is doing her job here, a job which she depends upon for her own independence and safety. As she says, Ninon didn’t do anything to her, she’s just a victim of circumstance.

“If you don’t confess, the women of your salon will burn in your place. Surely you wish to save the lives of your accomplices in Satan?” - Milady does a good job of selling it, but if you think about it, that makes no sense. These women have already been publicly proclaimed Ninon’s victims. And if they have legal trouble with burning her alone, how would they manage a whole bunch of them, most of whom are also high ranking noblewomen?

Ninon falls for it thou. Fail!

Richelieu orders Ninon burned and Milady says that the Queen and King won’t like it. Richelieu replies that: “she’s irrelevant and a new navy will soothe his dismay.” He’s really underestimating season 1 Anne here. But season 2 will prove him right, sadly.

“The kingdom of heaven is a dream. Our only life is here.” - Go Milady!

Richelieu says he won’t burn her for heresy but to be careful cause “one day someone else might” and idk, but it comes across like pretty friendly advice, considering what he’s currently doing with Ninon.

Now he worries he might go to hell! And Milady says he’s already there, lmaoo! I LOVE THIS SCENE!!

They go to the morgue to retrieve Luca’s bag and discover that the thief was poisoned in the same manner as the Cardinal. Thus the plot is uncovered.

“Open his mouth!” “You open his mouth!”

Luca kills a red guard and is about to kill Richelieu (who fights him with a fork!) when the musketeers burst in. And Richelieu curses them for being late!

Richelieu had apparently worked out that it was Luca who was trying to kill him at some point during the night. No idea how.

Athos begs for Ninon’s life while the pire is already burning. And Richelieu agrees cause burning her is all very “dark ages”, like he said to begin with. He says he’s not a cruel man, just a practical one. But practicality sometimes requires cruelty. He’s not a sadist thou, that’s what he meant and that’s true.

Athos drags Ninon off the burning pire. So the great feminist character got duped by Milady and then had to be rescued by her love interest. So good, much feminist.

“As far as the world is concerned, Comtesse Ninon de Laroque died on that pire today.” Richelieu takes her lands, her property and her money and sends her into exile. Then he threatens to execute her if she ever tells anyone the truth of what happened.

“My voice will never be silenced, but I promise you will never hear it.” - the stupidest line of the whole episode and that’s saying something. Seriously, what does this mean? Your voice was silenced! Richelieu got your wealth which you could have used to educate more women. You were completely defeated. Like really, who is the idiot who wrote this? And what made them think this is in any way empowering or even just a satisfactory conclusion to Ninon’s acr?? Ughhhh!!

I do love Richelieu and Milady getting a rare victory thou!

“Nothing, no person, no nation, no god will stand in my way.” - HOT!

Aramis gets his cross back lol. Otherwise it would have burned.

Lmao, Richelieu sends Luca’s ashes to rome with a threat to the Pope.

And Capaldi pronounces “Richelieu” in a very strange way.

Milady: “You do realise you’ll never be Pope?” Richelieu: “It’s an Italian club and largely a clerical position. I prefer something with a little more influence.” - L! O! L!

Ninon plans to open a school for poor girls and be a teacher. Well, idk, I hope she does a better job of it than she did with Therese.

Athos asks Ninon if “Madame de la Chapelle” ever told her anything about herself. And Ninon is like “so you did know her after all?” and he says “in another life” and she warns him to be careful because she has the cardinal’s protection so “a blow against her is a blow against him” and idk, does she realize that Milady was Athos’s wife here? Is that how I’m supposed to read it? He did tell her before that he used to be married.

Then she kisses him and tells him she could have loved a man like him. And she’s just way more into him than he is into her.

Lmaooo, Fleur is not forced to marry and can continue with her education and she’s “sure” that the woman who convinced her father was Ninon. And Constance doesn’t correct her and doesn’t even want the credit, but I’m mad lol, as if Ninon even remembers you exist Fleur!

D’artagnan gives Constance the credit, at least! And then comes his declaration of love, which is actually very sweet and I really liked them together in season 1! Constance is so beautiful in this scene too! It’s very well lit and she’s wearing that lovely dress!

Aaaaand we fade to black on some PG13 kissing and groping! Sorry, this was very long, but there was a lot to complain about.

In conclusion, awful! Like, the thing that bothers me the most is that this token girl power episode would not even have been radical in 1970, never mind today. The message is simply that women should have an education, which no sane person today would disagree with. It’s very safe and bland. And erases women’s real history in the process. It’s almost as if these male writers are congratulating themselves “weren’t things ever so bad Back Then, we are so much more progressive now”, instead of doing the truly radical thing and showing women’s real history, showing women in positions of power running their literary salons and not getting burned for it, showing women as independent businesswomen with an education! Why not give Bonacieux a female rival in the cloth business? Why not go deeper than “women are human beings” and give the episode a truly radical message that still resonates today. After all, we might be ever so educated now but it’s not like women have achieved equality. More on that in this old post: https://kuningannasansa.tumblr.com/post/126434697304/the-problem-of-ninon

Anyway, I really hope the next episode will be better!

Red Guards killed: 1 or 2, impossible to really tell

Ladies killed: Therese

Best Dressed: Ninon. She did have some pretty dresses.

#the musketeers #bbc musketeers #cardinal richelieu #milady de winter #anti ninon #musketeers rewatch

18 notes · View notes

pinstrpe-blog · 5 years

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doctor who sentence starters tenth doctor, part ii.

you poor child.

correctamundo.

blame your boyfriend, he's the one that put us on this.

i wish i'd had school dinners like this.

don't tell me i don't fit in.

i'm so going to kill you.

three months ago, massive UFO activity.

there's definitely something going on.

do you think i'd just invent an emergency?

doesn't that strike you as odd?

well, no harm in a little investigation while i'm here.

it's weird seeing school at night. it just feels wrong.

when i was a kid, i used to think all the teachers slept in school.

i hate it when you say 'team'.

infiltration and investigation? i'm an expert at this.

i thought you'd died.

i waited for you, you didn't come back, and i thought you must've died.

i lived. everyone else died.

and you decided to scream?

does anyone notice anything strange about this?

i don't mean to be rude or anything, but who exactly are you?

the missus and the ex... welcome to every man's worst nightmare.

what's the nasty lady done to you?

you see what's impressive is that it's been nearly an hour since we met her and i still haven't said i told you so. though i have prepared a little 'i was right' dance that i can show you later.

did i do something wrong? because you never came back for me, you just dumped me.

you didn't need me. you were getting on with your life.

you took me to the furthest reaches of the galaxy. you showed me supernovas, intergalactic battles... and you just dropped me back on earth. how could anything compare to that?

think how bad things could possibly be and add another suitcase full of bad.

you wither and you die. imagine watching that happen to someone who you love.

you can spend the rest of your life with me. but i can't spend the rest of mine with you.

this plan of yours... what is it?

your people were peaceful to the point of indolence. you seem to be something new.

would you declare war on us?

i used to have so much mercy. you get one warning.

we're not even enemies.

the next time we meet, you will join me.

i don't feel threatened by you, if that's what you mean.

with you, did he do that thing where he'd explain something at like 90mph and you'd go 'what?' and he'd look at you like you just dribbled down your shirt?

today, we shall become gods.

they've taken all the children!

crack that equation and you've got control over the building blocks of the universe.

with the paradigm solved, reality becomes clay in our hands. we can shape the universe and improve it.

call me old-fashioned, i like things the way they are.

you act like such a radical and yet all you want to do is preserve the old order.

think of the changes that could be made if the power was used for good...

become a god, at my side.

how lonely you must be.

i could save everyone. i could stop the war.

pain and loss, they define us as much as happiness or love.

whether it's a world, or a relationship, everything has its time and everything ends.

we're about to head off, but... you could come with us.

i can't do this anymore. besides, i've got a much bigger adventure ahead.

some things are worth getting your heart broken for.

we are under attack.

there are creatures - i don't even think they're human.

he has watched over me my whole life and he will not desert me tonight.

the clock on the mantel is broken!

brilliant! i got a spaceship on my first go!

anyone on board?

nothing here. well. nothing dangerous. well. not that dangerous.

you know what? i'll just have a quick scan... in case there's anything dangerous.

dear me, had some cowboys in here.

there's enough power running through this ship to punch a hole in the universe!

well... we're in deep space, so they didn't just nip out for a quick fag.

now there's something you don't see in your average spaceship.

what are you doing in my fireplace?

didn't want to just say 'magic door'.

you're scared of a broken clock?

if you were a thing that ticked and you were hiding in someone's bedroom, first thing you'd do is break the clock.

stay on the bed. right in the middle - don't put your hands or feet over the edge.

what could there be in a little girl's mind worth blowing a hole in the universe?

you are incomplete.

everyone has nightmares.

even monsters from under the bed have nightmares.

i mean this from the heart... it would be a crime, it would be an act of vandalism, to disassemble you... but that won't stop me!

you do not appear to have aged a single day.

oh, you never want to listen to reason.

every time! it's rule one! don't wander off!

is this like... normal for you? is this an average day?

it's a different planet.

it's switching back on. then it kills everyone in the room.

get out of here this instant!

you're not keeping the horse!

i need to find out what they're looking for.

you've never been alone in your life.

lonely then and lonelier now. how can you bear it?

they're going to chop us up!

trust me, you wouldn't want to mess with our designated driver.

among other things, i think i just invented the banana daiquiri a couple centuries early.

always take a banana to a party. bananas are good.

you are the best! you know why? 'cause you're so thick! you're mr thick! thick thickety thickface from thicktown, thickania, and so's your dad!

right, you, that's enough lying about!

in five years, these creatures will return. what can be done?

you won't be able to stop them, but you might be able to delay them a bit.

he'll be there when you need him. that's the way it's got to be.

those creatures are messing with history. none of this was ever supposed to happen to you.

one may tolerate a world of demons for the sake of an angel.

your words are nothing. you are nothing.

i have made a decision, and my decision is 'no'.

i have seen your world and i have no desire to set foot there again.

you think i fear you, but i do not fear you, even now.

you are merely the nightmare of my childhood - the monster from under my bed.

if my nightmare can return to plague me, then rest assured, so will yours!

talk about seven years' bad luck, try three thousand.

it's over. accept that.

what's in a name? names are just titles. titles don't tell you anything.

i have often wished to see those stars a little closer. just as you have, i think.

in saving me, you trapped yourself. did you know that would happen?

still want to see those stars?

pack a bag!

go to the window. pick a star. any star.

always 5 and a half hours.

reason tells me that you and i are unlikely to meet again, but i think i shall not listen to reason.

godspeed, my lonely angel.

do you know me?

technically, this is a new form of life, and that contravenes the bio-convention.

how will you do that from beyond the grave?

kill him.

one minute, she's standing there, and the next minute, roar!

brace yourself! we're gonna crash!

we fell out of the vortex, through the void, into nothingness.

we're in some sort of no-place. the silent realm. the lost dimension.

this is not your world.

it's like an alternative to our world, where everything's the same, but a little bit different.

don't look at it. don't even think about it. this is not your world.

if you ever trusted me, then listen to me now.

trust me on this.

oh, i can trust you alright! trust you to cock it up!

um, i don't suppose you'll be joining us tonight for the party?

events are moving faster than i anticipated.

a parallel world is like a gingerbread house! all those temptations!

there's nothing out there to tempt me?

the brain is what makes us human, and my mind is more creative than ever!

we're not meant to be here.

it draws its power out of the universe, but it's the wrong universe - it's like diesel in a petrol engine.

but i've seen it in comics - people go hopping from one alternative world to another.

all those people, disappearing off the streets - it's been going on for months. it's them!

so that gives us 24 hours on a parallel world.

stay where you are, both of you!

you don't know anything about me, do you?

there's no choice, is there? you can only chase after one of us, and it's never gonna be me, is it?

you don't think he's insane?

we just take him for granted.

you lot, you're obsessed. you'll do anything for the latest upgrade!

different world, remember?

i keep hearing all these stories, people disappearing off the street!

there's nothing official, but there's all these rumours and whispers...

i thought they'd gone and disappeared you!

guess i'm just kind of useless.

you know what you need? a nice sit down and a cup of tea.

for you, i've got all the time in the world.

you don't contact your family, 'cause it puts them in danger!

you're london's most wanted.

the most precious thing on this earth is the human brain and yet we allow it to die.

my government does not give you permission, and i think no government ever will.

i am governed by greater laws: the right of a man to survive.

if you want to know what's going on... work in kitchens.

no work, no politics, just a few good mates and plenty of black market whiskey.

you can't stay, even if there was some way of telling them.

you're talking to london's most wanted.

why am i telling you all this?

i can manage a nice glass of champagne, or a nice cup of tea.

who the hell do you think you are?

i suppose a remark about crashing the party would be appropriate at this point.

put the guns down, bullets won't stop them.

#rp sentence meme #rp sentence starters #rp meme #rp prompt #rp ask meme #meme.

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rahimaldemir · 5 years

Link

GamesRadar+ - DYING LIGHT 2

By Josh West March 13, 2019

One day, we will look back upon the last decade and come to realise that the greatest trick developers pulled this generation was in convincing players that they had any agency over the virtual worlds that they inhabit.

Our fascination with even the most rudimentary inclusion of choice and consequence metrics makes complete sense; we feel empowered when we feel as if we are in control, be it over the direction of a branching narrative or the characters that populate them. But, the truth is, many of the choices that we make in so many video games are binary. Pick between a thinly veiled Option A and Option B to immediately receive a reward or response. Basic morality systems leave us to deliberate over the concept of right versus wrong in an arena that is free of any real consequence. Systems bend around colour-coded sliders, having only the most tangential impact on the direction of a story or the way in which a game is played. There has to be another way, right? Techland believes that there is and it's putting it on full display in Dying Light 2.

If you listen to Dying Light 2’s producer Kornel Jaskula tell it, the studio has one hell of a pitch for the future of open-world sandbox design. “We believe that Dying Light 2 is the first game of its type. It’s going to be a game where your choices will have genuine consequences, from how the world looks, to how the game plays, to the events that occur throughout the story. This is an open-world game where you should treat the narrative as a gameplay mechanic.”

As far as statements of intent go, this one piqued my interest. The studio is attempting to build a game world that is forever shifting underfoot. Techland has set out to “create a complex matrix” of choices that constantly feeds back out into every facet of the game. This is an experience where you will feel the weight of every one of your decisions, each of them reflected in the narrative, game and visual design. “Everything can change,” Jaskula teases. “The state of the world is always the result of the decisions that you make. The choices you make allow you to make your own version of this city."

Making a dream a reality

To make this dream a reality, Techland has poured resources into constructing new proprietary technology, a necessary expense (and headache) to engineer something as ambitious as Dying Light 2. “You could say that it has been quite the challenge,” Jaskula laughs. “All of this has forced us to change the technology behind our games. We created a brand new engine – the C-Engine – to support the focus on choice and consequence that runs through the story and the gameplay.”

But all of this will be for nought if Techland can’t sell the concept of its ‘narrative sandbox’ to prospective players. The truth is, it’s incredibly difficult to demonstrate something so inherently systemic. The entire game is layered in such a way that even the smallest interactions, decisions and actions can feed back into the simulated world at large. If every one of your actions feeds into the wider scope of the story, as well as the gameplay opportunities that pervade the experience, simultaneously, how do you possibly convey that idea to the players?

The best way to think about the structure, Jaskula suggests, is if you cast it in the context of going rogue with a LEGO set. “The player does have an overall goal in Dying Light 2, but it’s up to you to decide how you get to it,” he tells me of the overarching narrative, one which sees you charged with trying to locate an object that can potentially turn the tide of the zombie apocalypse in your favour. “It’s like having LEGO bricks and being given the goal of building a house. We give you the bricks but not the original set – you don’t have the instructions that can take you through it step-by-step. You only have the goal and it’s up to you to decide how that house will look by the very end – but it is going to be a house. It’s up to the player to figure out how the bricks can connect, how they influence one another, and how the building and its interior takes shape…”

Building a better world

As far as analogies go it’s admittedly a little messy, but I think it works. Take the demo shown to the public late last year; In it, you’ll see a group of smugglers seize control of a water tower in a dilapidated district of the city and begin rationing resources that are vital to survival. One of the local factions, The Peacekeepers – the last bastion of law and order – send us in to investigate after an emissary goes missing. Assist The Peacekeepers in eliminating the squatters and the area will evolve accordingly as a result, introducing new gameplay and narrative opportunities to you.

The Peacekeepers may begin to gradually move into the district and bring their considerable wealth and influence with them, which in turn could give you benefits such as free health stations and new traversal options to better assist your movement when night falls. Decline the offer and choose to side with the smugglers, on the other hand, and you’ll have to pay for clean water like everybody else, but you will get a monetary cut of the illegal businesses that begin cropping up in the area and may even see new hubs appear, such as black market retailers selling high-end weapons and rare crafting materials. You could choose to ignore this strand of the game entirely, forcing a whole other set of opportunities to unfurl.

If the choice seems clear-cut on paper, Techland is keen to assure us that this is still a world of grey areas. There are no clear ‘right or wrong’ decisions; The Peacekeepers are authoritarian by their very nature, so while the area may become more overtly safe – shifting the locations of Dark Zone areas and hordes of zombies, for example – the group will begin to crack down on any behaviour that doesn’t fall in line with its own. Siding with the smugglers, on the other hand, will turn the district into a criminal den, but it won’t be under the iron fist of the government, giving you more freedom to move and space to act as you please.

Every faction in Dying Light 2 has its own goals and motivations; They have their own enemies, friends and plans for the future. Interfering with any of these elements will have an impact on something else in the city, with the game working behind the scenes to constantly generate new scenarios and world states, all of which will steadily lead you towards the end-game objective. Of course, little of the change in the city will happen overnight. Techland wants the city to feel like a living, breathing space. For this to work, Dying Light 2 has to feel as if it is being constantly shaped by player-driven decisions, rather than being altered by scripted moments triggered at pivotal points in key quests.

The shifting space of the city

Some of these changes may be immediately apparent, while others will be smaller and established over time – such as gradual alterations to the topography of the city, a change in population types, or the location of human and zombie enemies, among other things. As we said, every decision yields a different result, and it is only as these outcomes begin to layer up on top of one another that you will begin to see them manifest in the world as completely different combinations of gameplay, story and visual elements. “Changes aren’t immediate,” Jaskula reaffirms. “They can take some time to manifest because they aren’t binary changes… when we showed how the vista of the city changed [in the E3 2018 demo] it wasn’t based on any one decision, there were many decisions that the player would have to make leading up to that moment and each of those decisions can create something different.”

Techland doesn’t know exactly how many different branching and divergent paths Dying Light 2 will have just yet, or if it does it isn’t saying – it must be, after all, difficult to pinpoint. To support this direction, Techland has had to create, frankly, an incredible amount of content. “We are designing the game with the foundation that some of the players will miss content and we are okay with that,” says Jaskula. “It’s almost like we are creating several games worth of content right now. But, thanks to the variety of stories, of missions, content and assets, we believe that it will make players want to play the game again and again or try to play with other players in co-op to see their worlds. That’s something that we established as a foundation at the very beginning, it’s one of our design goals, and it’s something that we still keep in mind.”

All of this work is being done to give you the opportunity to build your very own world and story within Techland’s sandbox. In theory, that means every player’s experience will be unique. Dying Light 2 is designed to increase depth in open-world action adventure games in a way that we haven’t quite seen before, and it is purpose-built to cause conversation and enact storytelling sessions between friends.

Or, better still, you’ll be able to jump into a friend’s world and experience it for yourself if you want to. “Of course, Dying Light 2 will support co-operative gameplay. It’s in our DNA,” Jaskula confirms, before revealing how the four-player co-op system will bend to each player’s unique world state. “Whoever plays the game, it is their game. You can join my game – with your experience, your skills, your equipment – but it’s going to be my world, built by my decisions and I’m going to make the decisions that continue to shape it. But I can then join your game and it’ll be completely different, with completely different outcomes shaped by your decisions.” If you’re looking for the word to describe all of this, it’s ‘wild’.

The unlikely success of Dying Light

So what has emboldened Techland to take on such an evolutionary stance to game design? It probably has something to do with the unlikely success of the first Dying Light; a game that seemed to arrive out of nowhere, from the ashes of Dead Island, to prove that there was still work to be done in the open-world space yet. In fact, since its release in 2015, Dying Light has become something of a cult classic of this generation.

The game may well have eluded the attention of the media for the last three years, but the players have certainly taken notice of Techland’s dedication and responded in kind. “We haven’t been talking to the media! We have been talking directly to the players, so maybe that’s why it has been such a success,” he says, laughing. “No, no, the truth is, we have this huge community now. If you compare the original title, when it released three years ago, to how it looks and plays today, it’s almost like it’s a completely different game. We made a lot of changes and gave it a lot of support – a lot of additional content, most of which was free. That has gotten us a lot of support from the players and we just want to give them more freedom and more of what they want.”

I recently had the opportunity to view a fresh behind-closed-doors demonstration of the game in action and I was, honestly, left in awe of what the studio is attempting to put together here. It’s also gave me cause to reflect on the last three years – on the success of Dying Light and how that passionate community has pushed the studio to broaden its horizons

[Video in original article]

By pouring so much time and energy into supporting Dying Light, Techland had the wits to gather key feedback on the minutiae of its creation by entering into an honest and open discussion with the players. The huge variety of content on offer, from smaller-scale DLC such as Cuisine & Cargo and The Bozak Horde to larger standalone expansions, such as The Following and Bad Blood, has effectively given Techland the time and space that it needed to properly process what a full sequel could or should look like.

As proof of its commitment to this process, Techland even put Hellraid on hold back in May of 2015 (much to the dismay of some corners of the community) to focus on serving the burgeoning Dying Light community. All told, all of this extra work has been instrumental to get Techland to where it is today. “Our community has a voice,” continues Jaskula. “That’s why we are still supporting Dying Light even now, four years after its premiere. There are still more than half a million players playing the game each week. They have given us a chance to gather important feedback – we are constantly talking to the community. We are getting this feedback from them and we are putting it all into this bold sequel to the original game.”

‘Bold’ barely covers it. While a lot of the studio’s creative energy has been focused on creating the engaging, dynamic world and narrative that we’ve just scratched the surface of, it has also spent considerable time improving upon the core pillars of the original game.

Expanding the scope of play

The size of the new urban play area is huge. Remember, Dying Light took place over two huge sprawling open-world maps, which was later expanded to a third in The Following – which was actually twice the size of the previous two combined. Well, Techland is promising that the new city will be coming in at some four times the size of the map found in the original Dying Light, it's an impressive accomplishment. “Not only is the city bigger at a 2D level, but it’s also more vertical – it’s higher, you could say because it’s like a European metropolis,” says Jaskula of the principal differences between the new city and Harran. “There’s also a lot more space to fight on the ground now, especially against human enemies. We needed more space to really challenge the skill of player fighters.”

The movement has been entirely overhauled, with Dying Light’s famously slick traversal now made even better by the inclusion of double the number of parkour moves – navigating this open world should be an expression, Jaskula tell us. As too should the technical combat, with Techland pushing to ensure that its robust melee, weapon crafting and AI systems work in tandem to create memorable and engaging experiences.

This, we’re told, is a perfect example of how feedback has influenced the development of Dying Light 2. “We’ve been watching a lot of PvP matches of Dying Light to influence our direction. We observe how the players behave and react to each other’s actions, and,” Jaskula explains, “we are creating our AI systems to be as reflective of real players in PvP matches as possible. We want you to feel like you are fighting real players instead of AI.”

Combat is heavier and more deliberate as a result. Encounters with battle-hardened human survivors – Dying Light 2 takes place 15 years after the original infection, this city is the last that humanity has – will now be real challenges to survive. Enemies fight smart and look to overwhelm, pushing you to block, dodge and work for your openings. If that should fail, you’ll now be able to unleash parkour attacks, allowing you to traverse more aggressively than before or utilise physical objects in the world as part of your combat strategies. And should that fail, well, you’ll still be able to add a litany of ridiculous makeshift improvements to your weaponry – the studio estimates that more than 50 new customisable effects can be added to your custom builds.

This is still just scratching the surface of Dying Light 2. The day and night cycle has been completely re-worked, as to has the artificial intelligence of the infected and the general progression systems. All of this is impressive, but we’re still struggling to pull our attention from what it is trying to achieve with its intertwined story and gameplay.

Dying Light 2 is first and foremost an open-world action game, there’s no doubting that. It's fast and ferocious, a game that still derives real joy out of its free-flowing movement systems and kinetic combat. But it’s an action game that draws from RPGs in a way that we weren’t expecting. This isn’t about micromanaging stats or skill trees, nor is it concerned with having you pick through rudimentary dialogue choices or in making you sit back and watch as a game reacts and shifts to your decisions in a cutscene. Dying Light 2 treats its narrative design the same as it does its gameplay – this is a sandbox, a true sandbox. It’s a game about choice and expression, about feeling like you’re in full control of your character and their destiny, in a world that is constantly reflecting your successes and failures, no matter how large or small they may be.

It can be easy to scoff when Techland announces that Dying Light 2 might indeed be the “first game of its type”. But after seeing it in action, after speaking with the team working so diligently behind the scenes, we’re honestly struggling to find ways to argue with the assertion.

#dying light #dying light 2 #techland #dying light game #video games #long post #stills #news

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itsacruelirony · 5 years

Text

Jarry - Better than Aberystwyth

For @bell88x9y, Jarry Prompt No. 73, “Don’t you get it? I’m in love with you, and that scares the hell out of me!”

“I love you.”

Harry goes deathly still, not even breathing, while his heart races a mile a minute in his chest. Oh, no, he thinks. Staring into James’ eyes, Harry sees his vulnerable honesty and the complete lack of regret in saying the three simple words, but also, as more seconds tick by, the realisation that Harry is not saying it back.

They’re over two months into their affair, Harry’s wedding to another man is in a few weeks, and he knows with all his heart that going through with the marriage would kill him. All he wants is to stay with James. What he feels for the man he is currently in bed with eclipses whatever modicum of affection he has for Ste. The truth is, he would choose James in a heartbeat.

“Uh— I—.” God, I really am pathetic.

Bile rises in Harry’s throat instead of words. He chokes it down but then tears burn behind his eyes. Which would be more preferable, vomiting or crying after a declaration of love? It’s not that he’s never said the words; he has said it to his family, and to Ste - which, upon reflection, makes it even worse that he cannot say them to the one person who means more to him that anything else.

With a frustrated sigh at himself, Harry pulls away from James and sits up in bed, his hands reaching out for his discarded clothes. He can’t look at James’ face right now and see the despair and heartbreak in his eyes and in the set of his mouth. He can’t look at what he’s done because he didn’t mean to hurt him. The guilt eating away at him is worse than what he felt after killing Ryan, even worse than the guilt he felt about Amy. Why can’t I just say it?

“I’m sorry.”

Harry freezes. What does James have to be sorry for? I’m the one who should be sorry. Startled, he turns around. His fingers fall numbly from their fumbled attempt to button his shirt, and his mouth is agape. He must look so slow and confused - God, he barely scraped his A-levels and James has a bloody law degree from one of the country’s top universities - how did he ever think he could stand beside James as an equal, let alone be in a relationship with him without showing him up with his damn dumb brain?

“I know you won’t say it back. You’re engaged.” James gives a dry chuckle, looking anywhere but not Harry’s eyes. As if he won’t see the man’s pain so long as he averts his gaze. But Harry sees anyway. “Soon, you’ll be married, off on a honeymoon somewhere sunny, and you’ll have forgotten all about me. But I can’t deny how I feel about you, Harry. Let me have this.”

James’ heart is breaking in front of Harry’s eyes. It is only being held together by pride; James will only let himself break apart once he is alone. Harry doesn’t ever want him to be alone again, if only to keep that beautiful heart in one piece. This man is so pure and beautiful, so selfless that he would admit his love knowing it is unreciprocated.

The words he wishes to say refuse to come. They are lodged in his throat. He can barely breathe. Even if he could speak, he’s not eloquent enough to express his feelings adequately. James deserves someone smart, someone who belongs in his world. James is a rich lawyer and Harry is a penniless criminal - they are on opposite sides of the courtroom.

A sob forces itself out of Harry’s mouth, and suddenly, he can’t stop crying. He turns away from James’ concern. Oh, well done, Harry. Crying like a baby after sex and an ‘I love you’. He wipes furiously at the tears but can do nothing for the band tightening around his chest and his shaking shoulders. His face is a blotchy, ugly mess, he knows - he’s never been the prettiest crier - and no one needs to see it.

“Harry? What’s wrong?” James puts a hand on Harry’s shoulder, and he is too weak to resist. He holds Harry close, close enough for Harry to hear his broken heart beat, his own sadness pushed aside. If only harry had James’ strength and could stop bloody crying and get over himself. “Harry.” His name is whispered so reverently, with such love, that Harry’s tears fall even harder.

It is only when his eyes have dried up and he notices his uncomfortable position in James’ arms that Harry pushes away. James stays where he is, giving Harry some much needed space.

“You can tell me what’s wrong. Harry, you know I’ll listen.”

“Don’t you get it?” Harry screams, leaping to his feet and staring down at his lover. “I’m in love with you and that scares the hell out of me!”

James is as still as a statue. Harry licks his lips in anticipation. This is not how he would have liked to have admitted it - in a perfect world he would not be wearing another man’s engagement ring, nor would it be in the heat of the moment after sex. James deserves so much better than everything Harry can give him.

“You love me?” James finally asks, his brain seemingly short-circuiting.

“Yes.” Harry whispers.

“And it scares you. Why?”

Harry takes a deep breath and employs one of James’ own techniques; he stares at a point above James’ head and pretends the man isn’t gazing at him with teary, mooning eyes. “It scares me because Ste is comfortable and familiar, and you are new and exciting and so, so incredible. It scares me because if I leave him for you, I could lose everything. My job is with Ste, my family are closer to Ste than to me, my friends - the few that I have - will not take kindly to a relationship with you, and I will most definitely have to leave home. I’m putting a lot on the line for this. It scares me, because I’ve never loved anyone as much as I’ve love you right now. And I know that I will love you more and more every day that we are together. Loving you scares me, but I want nothing more than to be with you properly.”

Harry finally looks down into James’ eyes and is blown away by the sheer emotion pouring out. James says nothing, only moves closer to him and slowly pulls him closer.

“I understand.” James smiles, looking deep into his eyes. “I don’t blame you for being scared about taking this step. I would be too. But, please… leave him.”

“I will.”

James refrains from rolling his eyes and sighing. Harry knows how many times he has said that and done nothing.. “Leave him now. Not later, not tomorrow or next week, or once you’re married. Now. Run away with me.”

“Now?” Harry already knows his answer. Yes.

James nods. He takes Harry’s hand and slowly works the engagement ring off his finger. He puts it on the bedside, never taking his eyes off Harry. “I’ll buy you a better one.” The thought warms Harry from the inside out.

“You already know my answer. I will run away with you. Now.”

James’ smile is blinding, and harry believes that maybe he can be what James deserves, if he can keep smiles like that on his face. He swears to do better by James, to be worthy and prove his love every day. He wants to spend the rest of his life with James, and he will make sure it is a life full of happiness.

James packs a few essentials, but they forgo packing clothes, determined to be on their adventure as soon as possible, and they are heading out to the car less than half an hour later. As they get into the car, Harry can’t help correcting James. “It wasn’t going to be sunny.”

“What?”

“The honeymoon, with Ste. It’s to Aberystwyth, in Wales.”

James scoffs. “Well, we can do better than that. I will take you wherever you want to go.”

“I love you, James.”

For a moment, Harry fears he may have given James a heart attack. The man stares at him, gazing adoringly, until he suddenly shakes himself out of his stupor. The grin he gives Harry is blinding. “I love you too, Harry Thompson.”

#hollyoaks #harry thompson #James nightingale #fanfic #prompt fill #jarry

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silksayings · 6 years

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Volturi Imagine, Caius!FemReader Part 1/?

A CaiusxFemReader Imagine, set in Volturra. Reader is living with the Volturi as Caius’s Queen. She is currently still human.

The last rays of the setting sun retrieved beyond the horizon as the clear skied night set in around the city of Volturra. (Y/N) let out possibly the one hundredth sigh of that hour. Even though the day had been dull and uneventful for her to the point where it seemed as if every second dragged slower and slower every waking moment, (Y/N) still stayed on the same windowsill she had spent the entirety of the day, gazing out of the Volturi’s castle window. Considering the fact that sleeping was the most exciting thing she could think up at this time, (Y/N) had slept late into the day and she did not feel like going back to bed again just yet. To her there was a certain magic when it came to nighttime. As if the stars illuminated emotions and thoughts the sun was too bold to bring out and that could only survive in the gentle caress of whispers and wishes in the dark. The world was swept into a sheer fabric of dream where the lands of fantasy were real for as long as the person wanted. (Y/N) stayed up, hoping this turn in atmosphere and mood might bring something interesting or at least different to the numbing state of the seemingly unending hours.

She did not fault her husband. Caius was an essential member of the Volturi leaders and had a very crucial part in the trials and other decision making. It was no wonder his days were busy with the two other kings, such is the cost of upholding the vampire law and one’s status as a leader. (Y/N) understood and respected that. Still, she figured it was rather upsetting to her that she and Caius did not spend that much time together. When (Y/N) had time, Caius was working and when Caius had time, (Y/N) was dead asleep due to her current status as a human. Over time she had grown accustomed to being alone during the daytime, even if it still bothered her in the back of her mind.

But then again, for every moment she and her vampire husband did manage to find together, he spoke words of adoration and romance to her in every tongue he knew. He found himself caressing her whenever she was within arm’s reach. Even when his brothers were around and he would feel the need to keep up his reputation as a cruel monster, a small content smile would make its way on his face whenever his eyes met (Y/N). He would ask broad questions, just so he could hear her talk about the things she loved and enjoyed and why. Sometimes he would leave paintings of her favourite flowers and sceneries in her room and hide around poetry he wrote for her to find during the day. Whenever Caius had the chance, he would show the uttermost love and devotion to his beloved. This made some of (Y/N)’s days bright ones, since most of the time her entertainment came from her own ideas of things to do or from conversing with the passing guards. There were usually only few, maybe even only one member of the guard, Jane more specificly, since not that many were brave enough to approach the Queen of Caius.

She often looked forward to conversation, more than any other activity. Interaction with another tended to lift her mood and give her a sense of belonging, which is a feeling that is rather hard to achieve when you are surrounded by people of different species entirely. However, adding to the dreadful stillness of her day, none had come to her today. No questions that needed answering, no commands from Caius to make sure she was well, no post, no nothing. Even when her meals had been delivered to her, the deliverer had been too quiet for her to pick up and she only realized it was time to eat when she had walked around the massive hall and noticed the tray on the mahogany dinner table.

(Y/N) leaned a little bit closer to the slightly open window and peeked at the shining stars. The cool and refreshing night air swayed few of her stray hairs and the ribbons on her gown. From a distance, a harmony of a violin and piano played in the air. It seemed some of the nighttime patrons had started their appreciation of the arts. Leaning back, (Y/N) closed her eyes and took in the welcomed song. The tune was soft, with plenty of high pitched notes and from the rhythm of it she presumed the song to be a waltz. It crept under her skin, into her veins and bones and brought an image to her mind.

A green meadow on a quiet spring day. Pastel colored tiny flowers shifted slightly in the warm breeze while bumble bees and butterflies went on their merry ways. Sun rays caressed the grass and the surface of a tiny pond from which a small bird was taking a drink out of. The bird stood up, ruffled its feathers and shook its head, after which it decided to carry on to new adventures. Taking off the ground, it circled over the meadow few times and then glided over the trees of varying shades of light green that bounced off the bright sun.

A small squeak of the window brought (Y/N) back from her mind to the Mediterranean night. Lost in the sensation of the song, she noted that she had started to sway along to it and accidentally pushed the window. She got off the still, doubting the thought that she might fall, but deciding to take no risks of that sort. Standing on the cold stone floor, she kept her eye on the window. The marvel of the image had not left her and she felt the desire to drown herself in the melody again. She turned away, taking a couple of steps to the rhythm, feeling herself entering a state of calmness and relaxation. Finally, she was granted something to do and the most lovely song to do it to.

The hem of her gown shifted and flew across the floor with her as she moved, one delicate step at a time. This time she was slightly more aware of her surroundings. Even though the rooms and the halls connecting them in her wing were massive and had a lot of space between the furniture, she did know that if she would allow herself to get lost in the melody once again, there was a possibility she would trip over something or even fling herself straight on to the wall. That in mind, she still enjoyed the song to her heart’s content. The players must have had a long time to practice in order to be this masterful in their craft and deserved all the appreciation for it, even if it were a silent one.

Slowly feeling her usual peacefully joyous and cheerful personality returning, she felt like herself once again, letting out a faint, content giggle. Now that the night had begun, the others might be returning from work to their free time activities and the possibility of (Y/N) being a disturbance was a much lesser one than before, she decided it to be a grand time to venture out and seek company. She would steer clear from the offices, only preying on those who were on free territory and not in a hurry. She made her way to the doors, pushed them open and glanced into the wide hallway leading to her chambers. The coast was clear.

Her step was light and tender as she searched and looked around the old castle. She came across few guards here and there, who were all on their own separate ways. Not wanting to keep them from whatever called their hearts or bother them in other ways, (Y/N) gave them all soft smiles and briefly greeted them in a gentle voice. Guards who felt comfortable with her, greeted back casually and even gave her a smile back. Those who were slightly uncomfortable, not really knowing what to think of her, responded coldly with the most formal greetings.

(Y/N) had known for a while now how these vampires who feasted upon humans felt about them. Sure there were different levels of approach, but generally here in Volturra, humans were never thought of too highly. And (Y/N) was one. She also was the most dearly beloved wife of the most infamously ruthless and sadistic king. So treating her with even the slightest pinch of disrespect might have been the worst decision one could have ever made in their life, since there was never knowing for certain who might be listening. Even with the knowledge that she will surely be changed someday, it was still quite bothersome for some of the members to muster up enough respect towards a human. They still tried nonetheless and (Y/N) was proud of them. Looking at them straight in the eye as they tried their hardest to find proper words to address the Queen with, they looked so precious.

After scavenging the castle for some time, (Y/N) hear a pair of unmistakable dragging footsteps. It appeared that Marcus was making his way back to his chambers. When it came to the late night business, Marcus was usually the first one to excuse himself and retire for the night, which meant the others might still be in the throne room bickering. Where Caius would spend his nights painting and Aro would find entertainment from music, it was a complete mystery for (Y/N) what Marcus was up to. Most likely nothing, (Y/N) had concluded, since nothing on this earth seemed to stir up emotions of any kind in the melancholic one. ”Well, that would mean that he might be free for the night”, (Y/N) realized. She had always felt sympathy for Marcus. He had begged for death for so long, only to be denied by immortality and a good band of bodyguards. (Y/N) waited for the grieving vampire to enter her line of sight to make a proposition to hopefully better at least a moment in his eternity.

”Good evening Marcus. I hope the night finds you well” (Y/N) greeted with a gentle and empathetic tone.

”Aah, precious (Y/N). I dread this night finds me as well as all the other ones have” he lamented in his usual monotonous voice. Although (Y/N) did cling on to a little bit of hope that she had heard a slight hint of enthusiasm in his initial reaction to seeing her.

”I’m sorry to hear that”, she paused for a moment, not really knowing how to continue, but trying nonetheless, ”I was wondering if I could borrow your time for a while”.

”I have all the time in the world, child” he said. It was clear that he was rich with currency that had become worthless to him.

Even though (Y/N) loved conversing with as many people as possible, Marcus had never been the social type for as long as they had known each other, causing (Y/N) to not really know where she stood in relation to him. It was better to be too courteous than too forward in her opinion.

”If it is not too forward of me, I would like to ask of you if you could…” (Y/N) smiled ”…teach me to dance”.

(Y/N) knew perfectly well how to dance the more traditional and common ballroom dances, and even for the ones she knew nothing of, she could let the others take the lead and simply let herself fall into the arms of the music. This was all merely a cunning plan to slyly get Marcus to enjoy the activity. Her well-meaning scheming had not shown through and the unusual question caused Marcus to be slightly taken back. None had asked such things from him for the longest time, if ever. And why would (Y/N) come to him?

”My child, have you asked Caius? I am sure he would take it as his most honoured duty to teach you.”

(Y/N) knew that telling him the truth, wanting to cheer him up, would only cause him to draw deeper back into himself, denying such thing to ever be possible and insisting the very thought to be wasted potential on the undeserving. (Y/N) crossed her fingers in front of her and dropped her gaze down to her hands.

”I am hoping I could better myself before I bring myself in front of him.”

”Dear (Y/N), brother Caius would never think lowly of you, there is no need for insecurity. Trust me.”

(Y/N) could have sworn on her life that she had just seen Marcus smile to the reference of his powers. She took this as a sign that there was at least a hint of something in him that could still feel something joyous. A wide, warm smile of relief and amusement flew across her face, but she kept her tone calm regardless.

”I know this. But I do have a subconscious standard for myself that I wish to uphold. If not for him, then for my own vanity. I greatly value your counsel my friend, and I would like to hear your advice on what I need to improve.”

Marcus let out a small sigh. The poor girl was hoping to impress or at least to be good enough to her beau. And he had never been one to deny romance. The hopeful smile on (Y/N)’s face reminded him of the days past, when there still was some warmth in his world. How on earth had his cruel brother found the most gentle little human, whom he not only loved dearly, but who could love him back the same, the gloomy man could not comprehend. But as caring and kind as her demenour was, she was not short on persistence. Marcus knew it would be faster to help her in her noble quest than to try and weasel his way out of doing so. And who knows, maybe it would be nice to dance with her for a while. It has been many centuries since the last time and (Y/N)’s company is not among the most dreadful of his acquaintances.

”Thank you for your faith. I suppose I could lend my assistance to my brother’s beloved.”

(Y/N)’s shoulders dropped as she straightened her back, smiling with cheer.

”Thank you Marcus. I truly appreciate your kindness”, (Y/N) rejoiced and let her arms fall to her sides.

”Oh do not mention it, dear”, he replied, offering his hand. (Y/N) took it and Marcus turned to lead her to the castle’s ballroom.

”You are family after all.”

Part 1

Part 2

AN: Originally I planned for this to be a three part imagine and that’s what I’m aiming for. After a year, part two is quarter of the way done, soooooooo, no expectations here. Also, the reason it’s set in nighttime is for the aesthetic and also I vaguely remember that the Volturi spent their days doing business and nights enjoying the arts, don’t @ me tho.

#twilight #twilightsaga #twilight imagine #imagine #volturi #volturi imagine #caius imagine #caius x reader #caius x reader imagine #reader imagine #marcus volturi #caius volturi #gif

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