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snowdice · 3 years

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Little Kestrel (Actual Part 13)[Birds of Different Feathers Series]

I messed up and published chapter 14 as chapter 13. This is the actual chapter 13 and what I put out yesterday is chapter 14. I guess you get a bonus update this week. XD

Fandom: Sanders Sides

Relationships: Logan & Patton & Virgil (future Virgil/Patton but not in this story)

Characters:

Main: Logan, Patton, Virgil

Appear: Thomas

Mentioned: Janus

Summary:

It was supposed to be a quick job either way. Either Virgil would assassinate King Thomas of Prijaznia or he’d be caught and get executed. Yet, when Virgil gets the wrong bedroom and gets caught by Prince Logan and his future royal advisor, Patton, the job ends up getting way more complicated for the 14-year-old. He also ends up sleeping in a (actually pretty comfortable) closet for a few weeks…

Notes: Implied/referenced child abuse, assassination attempt, knives, torture mentioned, captivity, teenagers being really dumb

This is a prequel to Kill Dear. I wrote it 100 words at a time on my blog, but this is the edited version. If you want to see how it was crafted, look at the tag proofread stories.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13 is this one Part 14 because I messed up and published that chapter first on accident.

Logan was able to quickly set up the station for making protection charms. Patton had always liked making them, though he often used his more as fun accessories than for protection. The one he was going to show Virgil how to make was a very simple low level one used for little more than to keep bugs off of yourself and, in the event of a well-made one, alert one to imminent danger by changing temperature. It was a nice thing to hold in the middle of the night if one was frightened by real or imagined threats. It would be warm to the touch when one’s environment was safe; he thought Virgil might appreciate it.

He and Patton decided to wait until Virgil woke up naturally which only took about 30 minutes. Then, Logan brought him to his set-up supplies. He explained briefly the process for making a protection charm. “I will be the one performing the enchantment for today,” he told Virgil. “I will show you how to make your own later, but I thought seeing how to make them would help with the learning process.”

“Plus, it’s fun!” Patton said.

Logan flashed a smile at him. “And that as well. I’ve prepared a small number of possible pendants for you to choose from. You can choose the shape and color, then we will put on a custom engraving, as well as decorations.”

“Glitter! Glitter! Glitter! Glitter!”

“Yes, Patton, everyone knows you’re going to choose glitter,” Logan said, amused, “but why don’t we let Virgil decide for his own pendant?”

“Fine,” Patton said, “but mine will be glitter.”

Logan grabbed the box of blank pendants and offered it to Virgil. “Choose whichever one feels right,” he suggested. Virgil moved forward and looked over the box. “You can touch them,” Logan said. “In fact, I would suggest it as it is meant to be held when it’s done, and you may as well get a feel for it.”

At his prompting, Virgil did. He reached into the box and shifted a few to the side. Eventually, he started picking a few up. “I like the crescent shape for holding the most,” he said, holding a blue one up, “but I don’t know.”

“What’s your favorite color?” Patton asked.

“Oh, um,” he mumbled. “I dunno.”

“Well here,” Patton said, reaching for the box. He dug through it and pulled out every single crescent moon shaped pendant and lined them up. “What do you fancy?”

Virgil considered them all for a long moment and then tentatively pointed the purple one out.

“Great!” Patton said. “Then, we’ll use that one.”

Virgil nodded and Patton picked up the pendant to drop it into his hands. His fingers curled over the shape and he seemed satisfied by the choice, so Logan turned to Patton. “Your turn,” he said.

Patton happily grabbed out a heart shaped blue one, but then paused and exchanged it for a purple one. “We match!” he said.

Virgil smiled slightly at his enthusiasm, and Logan dug out a blue crescent moon shape for himself. “Now that you have your base, you get to choose the engraving.” He opened up the instruction book to the correct page and showed it to him.

Virgil looked over the two pages of designs with careful focus. He wavered between the spiral sun and the flames for a moment, but eventually settled on the flames. Patton chose the interlocking hearts design as anticipated; it was his favorite, and Logan chose the spiral sun design for himself.

“Now, I’m going to engrave this design onto yours,” Logan said getting out the thin pen like instrument and dipping it into the slightly glowing bottle of potion he’d set out. “In the meantime, Patton will show you what we have for decorations.”

He was careful to get the symbol as perfect as he could and then started on Patton’s. Patton apparently managed to corrupt the boy because both of them came back with brushes and glitter to add as decoration.

Logan shook his head and handed them their freshly engraved pendants. “Apply the glitter how you like,” Logan said, moving on to his own engraving. Once he was finished, he selected some glow in the dark paint to decorate his own.

Once he’d finished decorating his own pendant, Logan looked up. “Are you finished?” he asked.

“Yep!” Patton said, shoving his pendant at Logan while Virgil nodded. Virgil had been far less enthusiastic than Patton, having carefully brushed glitter into the flame design only whereas Patton had haphazardly covered his own all over with glitter. Logan took both pendants.

“This,” Logan said, bringing over a different potion, “is used to make sure the decorations never fall off. It basically allows the other substances to become a part of the stone. “It isn’t too dangerous, but I’d suggest you stand back for the moment.”

Virgil stepped back farther back than was strictly necessary and gave the potion bottle a wary look. Logan moved all three pendants to the prepared surface (else they ran the risk of also getting stuck to the table) and put on gloves, having learned that magically gluing rocks to ones hands was not fun years ago. Then, he carefully drizzled a bit of the potion onto each rock. The rocks fizzled loudly, and Virgil gave off a startled yelp before toppling over flat on his face with his wrist glued to his sides.

“Oh no, honey,” Patton said immediately crouching next to him. “I’m sorry. We should have warned you about the noise.”

Logan wasn’t sure what type of action he’d tried to take when the sound started up, but whatever it was, it had caused him to move his arms fast enough that he’d activated the binding potion and it snapped his wrists to his side, overbalancing him.

Patton’s hands hovered over the startled boy, but he didn’t touch. After a few moments, it was clear that the magic keeping Virgil’s hands at his side released because his hands slowly crept forward to push himself up, so his face wasn’t planted against the ground. His eyes still looked incredibly startled.

“Are you alright?” Patton asked.

Virgil blinked. “Yeah, I’m fine,” he said.

Logan took his words as permission to move without risking startling him more. Virgil’s eyes bopped back and forth between him and Patton a few times as he crossed to his wall of potions and grabbed one.

He also selected a clean cloth from a basket on his way over to them. “A light healing potion,” Logan explained as he knelt in front of Virgil. He uncorked it. “May I?”

“I’m fine,” Virgil said with a frown. “I’m not even bleeding. It’s barely anything.”

“Which is why it’s a light healing potion,” Logan said. “You are sure to bruise with the way you hit. This will prevent it and make it stop hurting.”

“Okay,” Virgil agreed after a moment. Logan dribbled a bit out onto the rag. After a moment of thought, he touched the damp part of the cloth with his own finger, just to quash any fears that it would harm him.

“It will tingle slightly,” Logan warned. Virgil tilted his head to let him dab it onto his nose and the light scrape on his face. His nose scrunched up and he moved to rub the sensation away quickly only to have his arms slam back to his sides.

Patton caught him so the sudden involuntary movement didn’t cause him to fall back, and then giggled when Virgil titled his head to what could only be described as pout back at him.

“Aw, poor thing,” Patton cooed, reaching forward to rub a hand across the top of his nose and then his forehead where the potion had been applied for him.

“Better?” Patton asked.

“You’re really bad at this being captors thing,” Virgil commenting, willingly leaning back into Patton. Patton just smiled happily.

Logan took the bottle and got to his feet, before returning it, and then glanced at the pendants as Patton helped Virgil to his feet. The pendants had stopped fizzing, so Logan felt okay reaching in and grabbing them all.

He handed both Patton and Virgil their pendants when they walked closer to the table.

“And now for the actual enchantment,” Logan said. “For today, I already prepared the potion up to the last step as it has to sit for a few hours, but I will show you the last step and eventually teach you everything if you are still interested.”

Virgil nodded, but said. “No more noises?”

Logan smiled. “No more noises,” he confirmed. Then he pushed forward all of the ingredients he was about to put in the pot for Virgil to study one by one before putting them each in it in the correct order. Then, he demonstrated how to stir it correctly and told him how many times, though he doubted he’d be able to retain all of the information from this one demonstration. “There,” he said, setting down his spoon. “Now we just all put our pendants into the pot, and they should be ready in 25 minutes.”

Logan showed Virgil around his potion’s lab while they waited, explaining what certain pieces of equipment did and a bit about his organization system. Virgil followed him around, looking at the things he pointed out curiously. He, however, got very distracted when Logan showed him one of the experiments he’d concocted. It was a thick liquid that was super attracted to itself and would form a small ball that could be disturbed by touching it. He seemed to like the sensation of squishing it down onto a table… over and over and over again.

“We should get him a ball of yarn,” Patton said out of the corner of his mouth. He may have been enjoying watching Virgil play with the substance more than Virgil was enjoying playing with it himself. And that was saying something.

Eventually, however, the pendants were finished, and he dragged Virgil away from his new toy to show him the finished product.

“What do you think?” he asked.

“Is it supposed to be warm?” Virgil inquired.

“Yes,” Logan replied. “It’s temperature changes based on if the magic on it senses a threat or not. Warmer temperatures mean you are safe.

“Oh,” Virgil said softly, hand squeezing around it. “I like it.”

Logan found himself smiling. “I’m glad. It’s yours.”

“Thank you,” he said.

“If you would like, I’m sure Patton has some suggestions if you’d desire a way to keep it attached to your person. He in particular likes to make them into necklaces or clip them to his clothing.”

Virgil looked over at Patton and nodded shyly. Patton immediately perked up. “I’ll go get some supplies!” he said.

Want to read more? Click below!

AO3 Part 14 Part 15

#sanders sides #logan sanders #patton sanders #character thomas #virgil sanders #little kestrel #adriana writes #birds of different feathers #not pieces fic #implied/referenced child abuse #assassination attempt #knives #torture mentioned #captivity

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rosesmith18 · 3 years

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(PnF) Headcanon #11 Thomarie Nitpicks #2 Pt.1 Clothing

This is sort of a sister post to post #6 & #7, it mentions characters from post #6, and is connected to my current series of post about the problems I have with the MnT(Marie and Thomas) Universe. I want to make it clear that I like these characters...to an extent, but to another extent I don't. I want the best for them as they were a big part of my childhood, and so in this post I want to make some tweaks to their clothing and personalities, as I find them currently sporadic and dated.

*Disclaimer: The MnT Universe is centered around (OC)Maria Flynn & (OC)Thomas Fletcher. Marie belongs to angelus19 & sam-ely-ember deviantart. Thomas Belongs to Melty64.

Maria's Child Clothing: Okay, so a lot of people have made the claim that Maria's design is generic which I will not deny. It's a blatant ripe off of her mothers clothes with a change of color palette, and while I enjoy the idea of Phineas designing her clothes to be that way, it's a waste of potential(as are most things I will mention in this post). Maria canonically adores France, and in my headcanon was born there, so I think some Parisian style could be added to this design. I'd draw instead of writing about this, but I have no artistic talent. For starters, based on my research(as I myself am not French)puffed sleeves are a common occurrence in French clothing culture, so giving Marie puffed sleeves in place of her mothers regular ones would be nice. Instead of basic shoes, ankle boots are also a common item in French clothing followed by white and/or black tights. Now, ironically enough the style of belt Isabella has on her clothes is similar to a French Skinny belt called a Maison Boinet, so just change it from being one color to a light brown with a metal clip, and it can stay-as can the main outfit. Lastly, to quote https://leoncechenal.com/french-girl-style-guide/ 'And I think the ultimate goal of all French girls is to find their own style (what they like and what they don’t) and to stick to it.', so in summary this doesn't need to look perfect or fancy it just needs to look natural.

Maria's Teen Clothing: Okay, this one is even worse in my opinion, but the whole one color thing is killing me! So, for this I did a COMPLETE recall and came up with this; A purple beret, orange bow wrapped around her neck mimicking a Parisian scarf, dressed in an orange & purple horizontal striped sweater dress that hangs off her shoulders, and a pair of black single buckle ballet flats. She would have a gold chain-link belt to replace her Maison Boinet one, a cameo necklace of the Virgin Mary, and a gold choker with small bells. Based on my research actual Beret's aren't that common in French culture anymore, though ironically striped shirts and dresses are, but Marie's is canonically the one her mother wore in the episode 'Summer Belongs to You' and familial connection is super important to Maria-so I decided to keep it. I kept her Garcia-Shapiro bow as I am appalled they tried to get rid of Isabella's in AYA(Act your Age)! Vivian clearly still has her from when she was young, and I believe every Garcia-Shapiro who wants one should keep them to some extent throughout their life! Off shoulder tops and dresses are pretty common in France as are sweaters, so I gave Maria an off shoulder sweater dress. And, ballet flats are some of the most common footwear for woman in France, they have many styles like the single buckle that don't actually look like ballet flats we American's would usually associate with ballet. The jewelry wore by French woman is wore all the time, and is rarely below the quality of 10-carrot gold. Layering necklaces of different sizes such as a cameo necklaces and a choker is normal, and chain-link belts are considered appropriate for any and every outfit. Chokers are a bit longer than some might expect them to be, and I went with a cameo necklace of the Virgin Mary as I headcanon Maria to be a serious Jew. Lastly, make-up in the French world is some of the most neutral in color and shade, so I gave Maria a soft pink lip and nose bridge blush at best.

Thomas' Child Clothing: I heavily dislike Thomas' child design. It lacks any personality in my opinion when compared to Ferbs or Vanessa's. I appreciate that it isn't a ripe off like Marie's, but that doesn't make it good or interesting. Also, this ties into my biggest problem with Thomas, but he's too...boyish. There is nothing wrong with having a practically boyish character, but that kind of personality and style is better used on a character intended to be boyish, and not characters who happen to be boys. I mean Thomas is the son of one of the most headcanon'd nonbinary characters in the whole show, and one of the most headcanon'd bisexual's in the whole show. This is why I mentioned these characters being a bit dated. They definitely came out before LGBTQ+ representation became popular in the fandom-at least compared to the extent of today. So, for Thomas I want to propose a few heavy changes to his child design, starting with...SKIRTS. I petition Thomas to have an either black & white(or purple and green), plaid skirt that reaches his knees. This style of skirt is popular in both British and German(Drusselstein) clothing culture, and is something his family would so support! I mean the potential Thomas has for normalizing clothing as gender neutral is being completely wasted! A white polo shirt inspired by his fathers and his original design underneath. A tweed blazer-of the same color scheme-which is considered always in style in Britain, and the Haferlschuh which are the most popular type of shoe found in Germany-and suit any outfit. Add some tracht socks in white and you have the perfect style!

Thomas' Teen Clothing: This design wasn't horrible, I actually quite like the overall vibe it was going for, but it's not specific enough. I don't find this design to be more than a vibe; It doesn't go deeper than that when it could. So, I summarized it into this; Ripped up, leather pants, sleeveless, white turtleneck, high-heeled, black boots, and to top it all off a trench coat and leather satchel. Considering Thomas is the lead singer and bass guitarist for a classic/heavy rock band I think some ripped leather pants with a bell bottom are perfect. I kept the sleeveless, white classic turtleneck that came from his original design as I do think it's appropriate. I also wanted to pay homage to his mothers almost iconic heels by giving Thomas a similar pair himself; A pair of black, over the knee boots, with a stiletto heel. The trench coat MADE his original design, and the traditional leather satchel is a perfect accent to it, both are British classics in the world of fashion.

Thomas' Rock Outfit: I'm added a subsection for Thomas' clothes as we NEED to talk about his band outfit. I want to say this first, I don't like the original name for the band. Clair is a generic name that doesn't sound too rock-ish in my opinion. It's supposed to represent Maria as it is a French girls name, but it's too simple for someone like Thomas. So, I changed it to Église des Gémeaux which represents Maria in more ways. The name literally translate to Church of Gemini from French to English. It represents Maria's French heritage, her connection to her Jewish Religious roots, and contains a reference to her birth month of June-her birth sign Gemini. The band in itself is canonically represented by The Spill Canvas which is an American Alternative rock band which I also changed. I gave the band a more Eisbrecher/Queen style as Thomas is German(Drusselstein)/British. Eisbrecher is a German Neue Deutsche Härte rock band(translating to New German Hardness aka Industrial Rock), and most of us know Queen the British rock band known for helping to start the rock genre making them a Classic rock band. Major headcanon to this band I want to add, Thomas primarily sings in German(Drusselstein) as he himself has a heavy German(Drusselstein)/British accent. His canonical outfit is a leather top similar to his mothers teenage attire, some basic jeans, and some black boots. I have rewritten this design as such; Ripped up, bell bottom, leather pants, long-sleeve, purple, deep V-neck top, covered by a studded, leather jacket, and keeping his pair of black, over the knee boots, with a stiletto heel. Accent this outfit with some studded, leather cuff bracelets, silver chain choker, and industrial piercing as well as some crescent moon 2nd/Upper lobe piercings. Now, the style of rock/punk is highly personal and changes heavily from generation to generation, but as someone whose family is highly involved in the antique business; It can be expected that Thomas would have a classic rock style inspired by the band he loves such as Eisbrecher, Queen, The Rolling Stones, Mozart L'Opéra rock, Amon Düül II, etc. Some of the elements of his outfit repeat such as his pants and heels, though his deep V-neck is inspired by a picture of Queen. His studded jacket is inspired by MANY rockers of the past. And, his jewelry has a very punk aesthetic. His make-up can be expected to be heavy with intense eyeliner, mascaras, and aided with a plum lip to match his V-neck. While I do enjoy the Grunge style take for Fred & Xavier; I personally find it underwhelming for someone such as Thomas.

I'll end the post here for now as it's getting pretty long. I'll make a post about personality changes at a later point(likely my next post). If you have any questions, comments, etc about what changes I've made feel free to share them! If you have any expertise with French, German, British, or Rock attire and believe I've been misinformed than please tell me! I remind you I am not an expert on fashion, character design, and am only aware of American trends. These changes are entire based on what knowledge is available to me, and my own personal feelings about clothes and characters, but I'm open to learning! I apologize if my opinions come off as harsh, I am merely opinionated about things I enjoy, but I hold no ill-will towards anyone who thinks differently. At the end of the day, I don't own Marie or Thomas or Phineas and Ferb, and am merely expressing my freedom to make or suggest changes. I encourage anyone reading this post to do the same, and be has intense as you feel, of course WITHOUT being insulting of the people you disagree with. Thank you!

#phineas and ferb #marie and thomas #headcanon #oc #clothing #marie flynn #thomas fletcher #phineas flynn #isabella garcia shapiro #ferb fletcher #vanessa doofenshmirtz #next gen #phinbella #ferbnessa #pnf

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caithyra · 3 years

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Ok, that OP...

...I’m sorry, but the RWBY Vol 8 OP music is very forgettable, just to get that out of the way. It feels like an OP commissioned for a filler arc in a long-running anime series while the manga catches up, if that makes sense?

Okay, so lets go through it scene by scene (spoilers of the OP’s scenes which may or may not foreshadow future events in the series, who even knows?):

Team RWBY with their past scenes overlay is a hit and a miss. Mainly because Yang’s overlay should have been of her big entrance into Junior’s club. I guess CRWBY doesn’t want to remind us of her sexual assault of Junior, or of Junior creeping on a barely legal girl so soon after Rooster Teeth’s series of sexual scandals involving girls in that age range.

And then move onto Ironwood being overlaid with a burning Atlas, and... Nope. What we should have had is an overlay of Ironwood praising Ruby in Ozpin’s office (Vol 2: Field Trip), Ironwood defending Weiss at the gala (Vol 4: Tipping Point), Neon at the Vytal Festival inter-cut with Marrow in his Ace-Ops uniform (Vol 3 and Vol 7) in the background with Blake with her weapon upgrade (Vol 7) in front, and then Yang opening the box of her new prosthetic arm and punching her palm with it (Vol 4). Possibly end it with the Ironwood/Qrow hug instead of the falling Clover pin. Maybe even in the background, behind Ironwood, we have the Ace-Ops training RWBY and Clover and Qrow instead of the falling pin.

That’s because three out of the four RWBY shots are “where we were before” shots. It would also give RWBY a stronger presence in the story of the OP other than the designated main character shots (the previous scene and Ruby being singled out in the title screen), since they would be personally tied to one of the antagonists in the OP.

Also, lets just skip the fiasco that’s Qrow+Robyn in prison (and how Qrow blamed Ironwood). Which may be the real reason why Ironwood’s overlay did not match the theme of the rest; the episode that he helps Weiss in is the same episode that Tyrian tries to kill Ruby and Qrow, and we can’t remind the audience of how colossally stupid Qrow was by teaming up with him, so lets pretend that episode never happened, mkay? Just like the Yellow Trailer...

Unfortunately, ORNJ (Orange, deal with it, it’s their name now) and Penny steals the show as true main characters of the OP. It begins with Oscar being the character in the same scene as the main antagonist (Salem), and then we have JNR, with Jaune looking brave and ready to defend while Nora and Ren look like they’ve had another lovers’ spat and are sad and now one of them are going to die and leave the other.

We get Schnee family drama with Weiss and Winter going opposite ways and a superfluous shot of Whitley and Willow to show just how many extra characters and conflicts there are who wont be properly developed and resolved. Yay.

A chessboard implying that Salem is outplaying Ironwood except she’s not outplaying him, she’s overpowering him while he’s being sabotaged by his allies while her minions are being annoying flies in the ointment.

Watts is finally hacking Penny, about a volume too late, but I guess he’s trying to be fashionable.

Group scene “you’re not alone”-shoulder touch of Ren with a cherry blossom petal (symbol for mortality) floating from him and escaping Nora’s grasp (yeah, one of them are dying, my bet’s on Ren, but also, since they should have left or died earlier to make room in this overbloated cast, maybe not? Though with Ren switching sides when he previously "yes, sir!”ed Ironwood, and with Nora being all about Mantle, perhaps Ren will die and Nora will remain to work in Mantle while the rest leaves for Vacuo because it’s “what Ren would have wanted” or something...), and then she is surrounded by all the girls in the group except Yang to face off in the obligatory battle scene.

Penny switches sides (hacked or fed up with Ruby, take your guess), but RWBY just smiles and jumps into the fight against a grimm horde that freezes for Cinder to make a walk-by and complain about her carpal tunnel while Emerald reaches after her like a little girl a third of her age, innocent of the bad in the world (not like a grown street urchin who aided the destruction of a whole city). At least Neo’s not impressed.

Anyway, evil minion showcase. Hazel should have worn this is Mistral and switched to his Mistral outfit in Atlas since it’s far more likely to protect against windchill. On the topic of outfits, Emerald’s jacket or undershirt should have covered her belly. Even belly-dancers cover their bellies in the arctic winter.

The two relics with two different smokes suggests that Jinn and her staff-sibling will make an appearance, but that they don’t in the opening suggest that it may simply be a stylish scene transition.

Anyway the rest of the scenes are so generic Yang even does a boob+butt pose in the group shot, and the blackout-outlined flashes with edgy words are just a poor imitation of Puella Magi Madoka Magica-tone, including Crescent Rose being alone in the snow under the shattered moon.

Well, there’s generic and then there’s generic+edgy, and this OP is the latter. And Ruby, Blake, Yang, Qrow and Robyn feels so shoehorned into the story of ORNJ+Penny+Weiss vs Salem vs Ironwood that I wondered why they were even there (j/k, I know they’re in the title, but seriously, their focus scenes in this OP were so bland, while all the story stuff was relegated to everyone else, and so RBYQR feels like filler wasting time in the OP when we could have better scenes about the story itself).

Here’s a problem, though: I don’t trust that Weiss has a place in the story either since her whole story tied to the conflict of the OP (Atlas Burning/Falling) is about her family, and that seems more like a side-show, if anything at all, given how OPs in RWBY sometimes set up conflicts that never happen (Yang having a big, red-eyed rematch against Mercury in Vol 5, for example).

So yeah, in this OP (but maybe not the Volume itself), RWBY themselves are superfluous and superceded by the side-cast. That’s... Not very good.

Anyway, that’s my random stream of consciousness ramblings about this OP.

#rwde #spoilers #random ramble

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solitariussanctumartarchitecture · 5 years

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The Sistine Ceiling

Within the vast complex of Vatican City, which is an independent city-state with its own governing body as well as the seat of the Pope in the Roman Catholic faith, is the famed Sistine Chapel (also known as the Venue of the Papal Conclave). The chapel is named after Pope Sixtus IV, who commissioned its restoration in the late 15th century. Originally, it was defined as the chapel of the Vatican fort, known as Cappella Magna. The chapel serves various important functions, from celebrating papal acts to ceremonies of the Catholic rite, but its major religious role is that of the site where cardinals meet to elect the next pope. The building where the Sistine chapel is located of the building very close to St. Peter’s Basilica and the Belvedere Courtyard in the Vatican.

The Sistine Chapel is also the home of 2 magnificent frescoes painted by the famed Michelangelo, the Sistine Ceiling (as it is known by) and later, The Last Judgement. There are also works from other notable Renaissance artists, from the likes of Sandro Botticelli, Pietro Perugino, Pinturicchio, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Cosimo Rosselli, and Luca Signorelli. The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel was originally painted blue and covered with golden stars (think of the ceiling of Sainte-Chapelle's lower chapel). In 1508, Pope Julius II (1503-1513) commissioned Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the chapel, instead of leaving it as it was. The pope wanted the ceiling done in a " geometric ornament with the 12 apostles placed on spandrels around the decoration". However, Michelangelo suggested that instead of doing ornamentation, he would do a painting of scenes from the Old Testament. Although, at the time, Michelangelo had been known more for his work in sculpture (as he had recently completed his famous sculpture of the Pietá as well as his statue of David, both of which reside in the Vatican) rather than painting. But, never one to be daunted, Michelangelo rose to the challenge and went on to create one of the most famous fresco masterpieces in Western art!

𐰸 Rendering of the Sistine chapel before Michelangelo worked his magic on it 𐰸

The ceiling of the chapel is made up of 33 separate areas, each space containing a different scene. Each scene is divided using a technique called trompe-l'oeil (visual deception, especially in paintings, in which objects are rendered in extremely fine detail emphasizing the illusion of tactile and spatial qualities), giving the impression that each painting is divided by physical molding within the vault. They are painted in monochromatic colors, creating a spatial effect between each panel. In the center of the ceiling is a series of nine narrative paintings, depicting scenes from the book of Genesis. There are five smaller scenes, each framed and supported by four naked youths or Ignudi. The scenes start with the Creation of the World (Gen. 1) and end with Noah and the Flood (Gen 6:9).

The subject matter was, more than likely, laid out with the help of a cleric from the Vatican (and seeing how this was the home of the pope, he wanted to be sure to get it right!) The entire project took Michelangelo 4 years to complete and took a grave toll on his health. He penned this poem, describing how his work was taxing both his body and mind:

I've grown a goiter by dwelling in this den– As cats from stagnant streams in Lombardy, Or in what other land they hap to be– Which drives the belly close beneath the chin: My beard turns up to heaven; my nape falls in, Fixed on my spine: my breast-bone visibly Grows like a harp: a rich embroidery Bedews my face from brush-drops thick and thin. My loins into my paunch like levers grind: My buttock like a crupper bears my weight; My feet unguided wander to and fro; In front my skin grows loose and long; behind, By bending it becomes more taut and strait; Crosswise I strain me like a Syrian bow: Whence false and quaint, I know, Must be the fruit of squinting brain and eye; For ill can aim the gun that bends awry. Come then, Giovanni, try To succor my dead pictures and my fame; Since foul I fare and painting is my shame.

The main theme of the frescoes is that of the connection between humans and God, and nowhere is this more evident than in the panel, The Creation of Adam. We are given a breathtaking vision of the spirit of God embodied as a human form, reaching across the heavens, just out of reach of Adam, who lazily reclines on a barren earth. This contact point has previously been described as a spark or current, an electrical metaphor which would be unknown to those in the sixteenth century. Nonetheless, it seems quite a fitting description, considering that the lifeblood which is about to flow into the awaiting Adam is similar to the flow of electric current produced when a wire is connected to a power source. In this case, the power source being God. This particular piece is world-famous and has been reproduced hundreds of thousands of times. And we can see why. It is such a powerful image.

At either end of the ceiling, and beneath the scenes are Prophets and Sibyls (a female prophet or witch, a nod to the pagan beginnings of religion) seated on grandiose thrones that alternate along the long sides, while the shorter sides are taken over by the figures of Zechariah and Jonah (situated above the altar) who has a distinguished position in so much as he is the adumbration of Christ. The crescent-shaped areas, or lunettes, above each of the chapel windows are tablets listing the forerunners of Christ and their accompanying figures. Above them, in the spandrels (the space between the shoulders of adjoining arches and the ceiling or molding above), eight groups of figures are displayed (however, they have not been identified with specific biblical characters). The entire narrative is finished off by four large corner pendentives (a curved triangle of vaulting formed by the intersection of a dome with its supporting arches) each one portraying a dramatic Biblical story. All of this illustrates the connections to Christ, before and after His birth and death, which are embodied in these paintings.

𐰸 map of the architectural features of the Sistine Ceiling 𐰸

𐰸 Guide to the artwork on Sistine Ceiling 𐰸

In 1510, Michelangelo decided that he needed a well-deserved break from this arduous assignment. Upon his return a year later, his style of painting had undergone a noticeable change. Rather than jumbled and multiple images within a scene, as previously done, Michelangelo had decided to minimise details and focus on essential figures, but on a grand scale. Also, he added a strong sense of emotion to the figures as well as dramatic gestures (as in The Creation of Adam). This would enable the viewer on the floor below to have a clear understanding of exactly what the scene was trying to convey. Further, when we look at the commanding figure of God in three of the frescoes, it clearly illustrates the separation of darkness from light, the creation of the heavens and the earth, all radiating its power through God's body. The influence of these works cannot be emphasized enough. The complexity of design in the individual figures display Michelangelo’s skill in creating a variety of poses for the human figure. His stupendous works have turned the Sistine Chapel into a veritable academy for future artists!

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eternallyimaginative · 4 years

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Marked ( House of Night Novel) by P. C. Cast & Kristin Cast

Book: Marked (Book 1 of House of Night)

Author: P.C. Cast & Kristin CAst

Publisher: St. Martin’s Press

Release Date: May 1st, 2007

Format: ePub

Pages: 306

Started Reading: October 15th, 2019

Finished Reading: November 15th, 2019

Summary (supplied from GoodReads): After a Vampire Tracker Marks her with a crescent moon on her forehead, 16-year-old Zoey Redbird enters the House of Night and learns that she is no average fledgling. She has been Marked as special by the vampyre Goddess Nyx and has affinities for all five elements: Air, Fire Water, Earth and Spirit. But she is not the only fledgling at the House of Night with special powers. When she discovers that the leader of the Dark Daughters, the school’s most elite club, is mis-using her Goddess-given gifts, Zoey must look deep within herself for the courage to embrace her destiny – with a little help from her new vampyre friends (or Nerd Herd, as Aphrodite calls them)

My Thoughts: Hmm...where to start....

Well lets start with setting I assume? In my minds eye this is in a parallel universe to our own, not quite our own reality. I say this because in the book it is common knowledge that there are humans and vampyres amongst the civilians of the universe. Heck the humans know that they may get “changed” into a fledgeling if they are “marked” by a “tracker” (another vampyre gifted with the ability to sense where a potential fledgeling is and mark them for the vampyre goddess Nyx). Other than that little difference based on my opinion, most of the technologies for 2007 are the same as we would have had in that year. Its kind of interesting that both of the writers made a logical choice and had the vampyre schedule be pretty much the flip side of the human schedule, Night vs Day. To me it made sense, and I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

Characters were actually pretty well rounded out for a beginning book of a series I think. It kind of gives you a glimpse at them, and want to learn more about them. But, of course with there being at least 12 books in the series there is still a lot of character development to be made. Honestly I’m not too surprised that this one has the content that it does simply because there is A LOT to cover.

As for each individual character....Nefret you can tell that there is something more with her from the foreshadowing that the protagonist Zoey gives us. Damien seems like a cupcake BATHED in glitter goodness, funny because thats how Stevie Rae is portrayed to the other characters. Speaking of Stevie Rae? I freaking LOVED her, honestly from the moment we’re introduced to her character you’re made to feel like there is to be a deep bond between her and Zoey. Mind you I think this is foreshadowing for the other books. The Twins are two psuedo twin girls from different ethnic backgrounds, but love everything the same way. I found them interesting in the fact that they are so much alike and spicy in personalities, but I do wish that we could have seen them more in this book, but again there is another at least 12 books so there is time for that. The character of Zoey’s “ex-almost-boyfriend” is named Heath....he’s not a bad guy....but he’s very much like a puppy that just won’t leave you alone...yeah take that how you want. The 2nd love interest of Zoey is Erik. He’s not a bad guy, but it just seems too easy of a love interest to me, like way to easy? “Hey I’m the new kid and I’m going to automatically get the attention of the hottest guy on campus”. Honestly I don’t know if I like that trope simply because I prefer the build up of a relationship dynamic. But, lets not forget about our main character Zoey Redbird. She’s not a bad character? She just seems kind of flat to me a bit. Especially when she has such a rich background and ethnic history that could have been explored more, or even stressed more to the audience. She seems like the type of character that is just spit out in a video game world and knows what they have to do *looks pointedly at SAO with a glare*. But, that’s just my opinion.

Now for a possibly touch topic? It really shouldn’t be touchy considering that its JUST a book. Religion/Faith/Spirituality. You’ve got a lot of this in the novel’s, and I guess you could say its the driving force of the realm that the books take place in. You have the humans and their “People of the Faith” who honour and worship the Judeo/Christian God, and who think that anything that is different than that is devil worship. On the flip side of that coin you have the vampyre society who acknowledges this god, but knows its not for their path and have been chosen to follow the way of Nyx the goddess of the night. Honestly this book was the first thing that introduced me into my own faith. I myself am Wiccan, but didn’t know exactly what this book was pulling from at the time of reading it. This is where I really do have to pay it to the writers for doing their research regarding pagan, mainly I do believe Dianic Wicca (I’m taking a guess on this path of Wicca simply for the fact that Dianic is more feminine power based to my knowledge). The symbolysims were pretty spot on from the colour candles representing each element to the fact that there is a goddess in this path. There is another reason why I want to say that it seems like the Vampyre society reflects pagan faiths. They acknowledge the other paths are there, but know where their feet are looking to go down the paths.

Now, I think I should address the writing style. Its actually fitting for the books. Its written like a teenager communicates. With the exception of Zoey though....to be honest she’s a little too innocent in the language department when I compare it to how I was at that age. On the other hand its probably at an age group that is probably available for a 13 year old to read? Even if there is some conent that you’re like “how is this in a book written in the language appropriate for a 14 year old? They should be more innocent?” Its just a little bit of a mixed vibe, but not bad.

Verdict: I’m going to rate this book as a 3.5 stars. Its showing that its got more in store for the story, and keeps you reading. It really is showing the potential in my eyes.

#marked #pc cast #kristin cast #house of night #hon #books #book #book review #30th book review #3.5 stars

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spaceshipkat · 5 years

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so i’m reading the sj/m tor interview, and here’s a couple highlights i wanted to share

Q: I want to talk a little bit about the jump from YA to adult. You’ve said in the past that you’d leave the shelving location up to your publishers, but did you know as you were writing that this was different from your previous work?

A: So it wasn’t a conscious choice to write adult, it was just—here is this story that I’m having an extremely awesome reaction to, this is the character that walked into my head. Moving to adult now just feels like the right move, this is the story that’s been so close to my heart for so many years. This is the next thing I’m dying to publish.

(hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh)

Q: What was the editorial process like, was it different?

A: Sometimes giant chunks of the story, or I’ll take out characters or add characters in, I do a lot of very intense revising. I really look forward to the editorial process because its that essential time for the book to become what it needs to be. It gives me time to figure out what I want this book to be. Whenever I turn in a first draft, I know that first draft is awful so I dump the book on my editors lap, and I’m like please help me make it better!

(oh please. i’m rolling my eyes again)

Q: You started on Throne of Glass when you were sixteen. Was it different to work on a series that hasn’t been with you for that long?

A: With Crescent City, I’ve really had to do a lot of planning for the second and third books. What are some of the big reveals that I can set up for in book one? With ToG and ACoTaR, I had the luxury of years of letting those books sit and figuring out what I wanted to do with them, so I could really plan the twists and turns and revelations. But with this one I don’t have all those years, I need to be smart and figure out what I really want to happen. So I’ve been heavily plotting book two and book three, and it’s actually really fun. Even if I’m not typing actual words for those books, it’s really fun to put on my headphones and daydream about what I want to happen next, and then see how I can be really sneaky in book one and put all those details in so that when something huge happens, readers can be surprised. I love writing those moments, my “mic drop” moments, and I love hearing from readers when they say “yeah, I was hoping that would happen” or “I didn’t see that coming but now I totally see that you were planting the seeds for that”.

(this is such bullshit)

Q: Crescent City is a decidedly urban setting, with modern technology alongside supernatural creatures. What was the world-building process like?

A: How can I have an old school fantasy world but give them indoor plumbing? Which, for ToG and ACoTaR—these are set in older times but they need to have toilets that run, and then I have to invent an aqueduct system for the city and explain how the water is carried, there’s a sewer network. But for Crescent City, toilet paper is a given, don’t need to explain that one.

A: There are a whole other set of questions that I’m still chipping away at. I love those world building details, and the world of Crescent City is populated by almost every magical, mythical creature you could think of and they all exist together side by side in this very complex hierarchy. Its kind of like the Roman Empire, and it’s been fun to say, a really hot vampire guy is trolling the clubs, so I can play on some of those tropes and have fun with them.

(well now we know why it has Roman columns so imma need someone to hold my beer. also, she didn’t explain once how the t0g world has indoor plumbling, so fuck that)

Q: And with technology, it doesn’t always work. Cellphones get stolen or lost or broken.

A: And I grew up in New York City, and so getting to write a character living in a city feels like I’m home again. Bryce, my main character, works at a magical antiquities gallery, and I spent one summer in college working at an antiquities gallery. Her job is a lot more exciting than mine ever was, I mostly sat at the reception desk in the gallery waiting for people to come in and if someone did I’d say, here’s the 2000 year old bust from Crete. I would give little tours of it. Bryce has magical artifacts in her gallery that could come alive and kill her so it’s a lot more exciting that my—oh, it’s 10:00AM, time for my yogurt and six almonds. I had a very regimented schedule to keep boredom at bay, I read the New York Times cover to cover every day. It isn’t an exciting market. I loved it because I love ancient art. It was amazing to go into a space every day and sit surrounded by things that were so ancient that were really expensive too. If I break it, I will be working here for the rest of my life. But it was really cool, so I kind of drew on that experience for Bryce—and being young and in the city. Bryce does things that I could not do, but I pulled from my experiences.

( @longsightmyth you’re gonna have to keep me chill while she uses this as an excuse to not do thorough research on how you properly handle ancient artifacts. we saw how she treats ancient books, so this is bullshit)

Q: It’s rare to find a fantasy series built on female friendship. Was that a conscious choice, to center the relationship between Bryce and her roommate, Dani?

A: Yeah, I’m lucky to have the most wonderful husband in the world and I’ve been with him for 15 years now—but so I’ve had this amazing and epic love with him that’s shaped my life. But I’ve also had my life shaped by the friendships I’ve had at different stages in my life.

(not to nitpick, but 1) why would you bring up your husband when asked about female friendships, 2) this is ridiculous bc she doesn’t write female friendships well, and 3) can we stop praising her for stuff like this? so many authors write female friendships much healthier than sj/m, so here we’re just stroking her already enormous ego)

#anti sjm #anti crescent city

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oldloveatz · 5 years

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where all the magic happens | yunho

— TYPE: series, harry potter!au

— WORD COUNT: 4k

— SYNOPSIS: hufflepuff jeong yunho fell in love with [YOUR HOUSE] reader and kept everything a secret, even from his friends. this is the start of where all the magic happened.

— AUTHOR’S MESSAGE: hi!! welcome to my first series~ i love harry potter aus, especially for kpop groups. we saw how much yunho adored harry potter so i decided to make this! i know yall are going to say he’s a gryffindor, but after much thinking i decided to put him in hufflepuff. now i didn’t decide anything for the reader because that is up for the reader’s house. i will try and not to name any major characters from houses and make it seem like you’re in the same house as them, but they’ll probably pop up from time to time! please enjoy this first series!!

— KEY: [y/h] = YOUR HOUSE

third year. that was the year where all the magic happened. you fell in love with a boy named jeong yunho. he was a hufflepuff, the same year as you. he was in almost all your classes for the week except thursday, and he was an excellent student, especially in charms. yunho was a very social person, having to know everyone in your shared classes and was the light bulb in a very dark room. he was the energizer.

and you fell in love with him, just like he fell in love with you. on the first day of astronomy, you and yunho had to share a telescope because he had forgotten his. he was sweet, always saying witty things when looking up at the cosmic stars and constellations, naming them and would tell you the cheesiest pick up lines.

yunho had asked you if maybe you and him can take this so called friendship to another level, in other words, become lovers. he wasn’t entirely sure if relationships between houses and students were permitted, but he didn’t dare risking the trouble. but the first thing he told you was,

“if it comes to that, i don’t mind protecting you from everything and everyone.”

pretending to not have a boyfriend was hard, especially if he were in almost of your classes except for that one day. yunho was especially social, so he was all over the classroom talking to everyone and befriending everyone. he’d talk to you occasionally, say his his and hellos, and how are yous. he’d look into your eyes sincerely before slipping a note under your quill. it usually has his nice handwriting on it, specifying where the both of you can meet up and at what time. they were during breaks, when everyone come to lunch and it wouldn’t be much of a difference if two students had gone off to meet up.

pretending became easy as you got used to it, yunho had to keep reminding you how he’s only yours and you’re his, so pretending that nothing ever exists between you became an easy task on a daily basis.

you may ask; how did you get a boyfriend? let’s go back to the first day of astronomy, and watch the story unfold.

september 2 — the first day of school

finally! it was the first day of school. you had just gotten settled in the dormitories yesterday upon arrival via carriages. it was your third year already, the first year was still vivid in your memory. the third year is where all the fun begins, meaning you can now attend hogsmeade along with your friends and those who want to attend, too. along with fun comes the dip of it all; classes.

although you weren’t exactly psyched to attend any of the subjects in your schedule, the new classes that you’ve heard of but never attended in your list was enough to keep you excited; astronomy, divination, care of magical creatures, oh my! it was going to be a long day.

you and two friends that you’ve made since first year all went down to the great hall to have breakfast before heading to class altogether. you were close to two people at your house, elizabeth hornet and alexis redford.

“i have double transfiguration today,” elizabeth said as soon as she sat down and examined her schedule more. alexis let out a defeated sigh as soon as she did the same thing. you looked more into yours, and you felt a bit of your soul die a little upon further examination. “and potions on thursday- god, i hate potions! the classroom always has this weird smell.”

“at least you’ve got the classes i like,” alexis said.

“ew, you like potions?” elizabeth retorted, stabbing her toast with a fork and stuffing a portion of it in her mouth. you decided to block their conversation by reading whatever was on your list, just to see if you had any double classes each week. “y/n, what about you? any double classes?”

“i’ve got double astronomy today,” you replied, stuffing your schedule into your book bag and beginning to eat. both elizabeth and alexis groaned, knowing that they, too, enjoyed astronomy. you could only laugh at their reactions. “i have it right after breakfast, and later at seven.”

“seven-”

“at night?”

“yeah, because you can clearly see the stars during night time,” you responded, shaking your head at them. the morning mail owls began flying above everyone’s heads, carrying parchment-covered items and newspapers. one dropped a newspaper dead in the middle between you, elizabeth and alexis. elizabeth picked it up, opening it up to read the big bold headlines across the spread. you read the main cover page, chills running down your spine as you read what it said. “that sirius black is out in the running.”

sirius black was a dangerous, convicted man in the wizarding world. he had recently broken out of azkaban and no one knows where he is. that might explain the dementors yesterday, and that incident with the ever so famous harry potter.

“more details over here,” alexis replied. they tried to make you read the passages, but you refused and minded your own business and breakfast. the two became heavily invested in reading that they almost missed the bell for class.

students from the great hall began walking to class, some out to the courtyard and majority to the moving staircases, all taking different sets of stairs that lead to various painting passages. you had to go all the way up to the astronomy tower and in professor sinistra’s classroom. it was a painful, long way to get there and there were a lot of long stairs to climb. your legs would often get sore, eventually getting used to the daily walks that always seemed to last forever. you could walk a marathon at this rate.

you walked in the classroom, it was nearly filled with students from different houses. the big, multicolored spheres hung from the ceiling as if to represent the solar system and its many stars and suns, it was a nice pop of color in the warm, beige room. there were students sitting on the desks, never-ending chatters ringing in the classroom.

there were at least five students from your house whom you don’t talk to as much, but built an acquaintance relationship with. though the seats around them were already taken. sighing, you took the seat up front, next to a bookbag that has already taken the other half of the two-seated desk.

a boy came by to sit on the seat next to you, placing his book bag next to his seat before facing the front with his hands clasped together on top of the brown, mahogany desk. you didn’t look at him, rather you mimicked his position.

he turned to you, his hand extended to you with a bright smile on his face. he had puppy-like eyes, shining as if it held the stars of the universe. his hair dark and chocolate-y, fluffy and nicely groomed like he spent hours perfecting it. his lips curved as he showed his pearly white teeth. how could someone look this... gorgeous?

you blinked, confused as you looked at his hand and down to his robe. yellow.. he’s a hufflepuff. “i’m yunho. yunho jeong.”

his voice was deep, yet soothing and honey-like. the type you want to hear last before slipping into deep slumber. yunho tilted his head, as if to check if you were still with him on earth. you snapped out of your clouded thoughts, taking his hand and shaking it with slight enthusiasm. it was big, and somewhat warm but a bit sweaty.

“y-y/n! y/n y/l/n,” you stuttered, mentally slapping yourself because of it. he nodded his head, pulling his hand away as his eyes averted down your chest. he was eyeing your house crescent before smiling to himself.

“you’re a [your house],” he commented, nodding down at your crescent. you looked down, somewhat forgetting that you were a [y/h].

you chuckled awkwardly, “oh, yeah! i am a [y/h]. kinda forgot.” yunho let out a laugh, not too loud but not too quiet. god, even his laugh was attractive.

“what do you have next?” he asked. even your schedule was faded in your memory, and you tried hard to remember what you had next. he was making you nervous and it was very close to becoming obvious. “i have history of magic next.”

“oh, same,” you replied after trying multiple ways to formulate a sentence. yunho nodded yet again, the conversation dying off after that. the awkwardness between you and yunho began to eat away at you, thinking of what to say as your eyes rolled up the pillars and across the ceiling. “i have double astronomy today.”

that spiked his attention. “oh, really!? i do, too!”

oh how destiny works.

“i’m really looking forward to seeing you up there later,” he added, his eyes shining more than it already does. you felt your face heat up, responding with a small smile as you turned to face the front of the class when professor sinistra bursted out of her office and into the classroom.

the class went by like a blur, all you remember was yunho getting up to go talk to other people and sitting back down to talk to you. why? you don’t know, he seems like a very social person that everyone knows. a social butterfly. “hey, y/n, let’s go to class together.”

“oh, why me? what about your friends?” you asked, getting up and slinging your book bag over your shoulder. he was quiet, he shrugged his shoulders. “well.. alright, if you say so.” he smiled at your response.

yunho was a lot taller than you expected him to be, but then again his knees were nearly touching the bottom surface of the desk he was sitting in. his robes levitated a lot higher than average, but they were baggy on him.

you began walking down from the tower on your way to professor binn’s classroom. it got crowded in the hallways and the moving staircase when you and yunho were trying to get to the third floor and in class 72. you practically missed your platform about three times before successfully getting on the correct one. these moving staircases are always so tricky to be on.

“that was fun,” yunho commented, adjusting his book bag on his shoulders and looking at you with a smile on his face. you giggled in response, nodding your head as you moved forward. the hallway was littered in large tapestry and moving paintings, as well as concrete goblets and carpets on the floor and moving knights in armors with its swords. the closed area were lit up with the torches nailed on the sides of each archways to more hallways, which were naturally bright because of the consistently spaced windows.

you thought yunho was a bit of a clown, he always has something funny to say about everything he sees. just in the moving staircases, he cracked about five jokes about the moving paintings on the walls and the fat lady’s terrible singing. he said he always passed by her last year and was stopped to make him listen to her sing, telling him to watch how “her voice shatters one’s glass,” even though she shatters it herself. he thought it was ridiculous.

“ah, professor binns,” yunho started, looking up at the nearly transparent apparatus of professor binns. he was still teaching history of magic despite being dead, and it was said he doesn’t know he’s dead. “my man.”

“greetings, mr. oswald,” professor binns responded, adjusting his half moon glasses on his straight nose as he looked at yunho, who was fighting back a laugh. “have you done your homework this time?”

“it’s the first day of school, professor,” yunho smiled, letting professor binns nod his head before going back to his seat, which was right next to yours again. he was staring at the ghost remains of the professor before him, a puzzled yet amused expression plastered on his face. you looked up at him in the midst of taking out your book and quill and ink, then following his gaze. “i wonder why they haven’t told him he’s.. you know.”

you merely shrugged, possible answers going through your brain as you laid out your things on your desk. “they probably don’t want to take in another professor.”

“but he’a a ghost-”

“we’ve never had a ghost professor before,” you cut in, patting his shoulder as he let out a sigh of defeat. you chuckled at his sigh, “just let him teach us for about four more years.”

“he’s chill,” yunho responded, opening up his book as soon as class had started.

yunho truly was a class clown and he always had something to say.

your favorite part of the day has finally arrived; lunch. just after a boring lecture of history of magic. yunho didn’t walk with you the great hall, instead he bid his goodbye and an i’ll see you in astronomy later, which you found quite sweet. a boy was looking forward to seeing you in astronomy, a class where you get to study planets and stars and constellations under the dark blue starry sky. alexis and elizabeth had already settled on the tables, they weren’t eating though.

you sat down next to elizabeth, who was unusually quiet and quite exhausted. she looked a lot more haggard at lunch than breakfast, you looked over to alexis for some answers. alexis merely shrugged, beginning to eat the food in front of her and near her now that you have arrived. “elle, what’s wrong?”

“divination was awful,” she suddenly said, her eyes screaming for help as they landed on yours. elizabeth had big, hazel eyes and she was even blessed with long and luscious lashes. her eyebrows were chiseled by the gods of heaven, it matched her complexion perfectly. she was a tanned girl, practically mocha from head to toe. her hair was often a mess due to it being curly, it’s magic the fact that she can tame her hair every single morning. she was on the thicker side, and she loved herself for it. “we’ve got a new professor, i believe. professor trelawney. she’s so- so, so odd!”

“she’s been going on and on about trelawney, y/n,” alexis butted in, munching on her chicken as she looked at you with very tired eyes. alexis was nearly the exact opposite of elizabeth; she wasn’t very pale, but pale enough to be distinguished between the three of you. she had a unique platinum hair that was cut on the base of her neck, and she always had one side of her hair held down by a clip. alexis was skinny, and she was a substitute for the [y/h] quidditch team. she only got to play if one or more players were injured or did not feel well. she was quite excellent in quidditch. “please- it’s your turn to take all of the things she says in.”

“i’m sure it’s not that b-”

“she made us drink tea from cups!” elizabeth said, her eyes widening. she hated tea. and that was all it took for her to start rambling again. alexis seemed like she wanted to dig her eardrums out of her own ears and never have to listen to her again, but sadly she has the worst pain tolerance. you, yet again, blocked off their conversation and began eating your meal, mentally preparing yourself for the rest of the classes after lunch.

after lunch, yunho caught on to you and asked what class you had next. you told him you had arithmancy, and he pat your back stating his apologies. “my class is actually also on the same way as yours, mind if i walk you there?”

“not at all,” you responded. he said he has charms next period, but charms isn’t on the seventh floor; it was on the third.

nearly all of the hallways and passages looked identical from one another, except for the transfiguration courtyard’s hallways and the dungeons, the other ones looked identical. red and yellow carpet finished off with aztec designs, and off-white almost beige colored tassles on each end. more and more tapestries hung from the top of the very tall wall and at the near bottom. the familiar large paintings also were hung up as you made your way down the hallway with yunho. “classroom 7a, wasn’t it?”

“yes, it is,” you replied. you stood by the door and turned on your heel to face yunho, who was ready to turn and leave for his class. he still had the very familiar face as he greeted all of the students walking in the classroom. “why did you come with me all the way to the seventh floor? charms is on the third floor.”

his smiling expression didn’t change, as if he knew he got caught but has no shame in it. “yeah, i know. i just want you to get here safe.”

“i’m perfectly fine, yunho,” you said, a smile playing on your lips as he nodded. “you’ve got to get to class! you don’t want to be late in flitwick’s or else i might see you again as a sheep or something.”

“ha ha, very funny y/n,” he responded, shaking his head that his fringe moved from left to right. he waved goodbye and left, basically ran down the hallway to get to his class early. you laughed at his action and went inside the classroom.

arithmancy was boring, and confusing altogether. lots of numbers and letters that your brain felt like it was all of a sudden jumbled together. you left the classroom feeling like everything also went by in a blur, and it did. you now made your way to herbology, all the way down the ground floor and in the green houses. the plants and greens in herbology were much more different than the one at your house in the muggle world; they were magical, sometimes ugly while the flowers in the muggle world all seemed.. normal. you used to pick the tulips in your mother’s garden bed as a present for her, but she shrieked and maybe cried for five minutes.

yunho, to your evident surprise, was in the same herbology class as you. but were you really surprised? maybe it’s just coincidence... right? the light made yunho look like an angel, the bright sunlight shining around him and in panels due to the glass roof. the dust particles all added in the effect that he might actually be magical himself. he was glowing. but the second you stepped in the classroom, his eyes rolled from your legs and up to your face, his face stretching in an excited and ecstatic expression. why is he happy to see me?

“oh! y/n, i didn’t know you have herbology too!” he said, getting up from his seat and moving his feet towards you. you smiles at his enthusiasm, at least nodding your head to acknowledge his question. “that’s fantastic- wait, come sit next to me, i think i saved you a spot.”

“you.. saved me a spot?” you asked slowly, your eyes observing the big flower pots that contained a plant, not a flower that you were hoping for. yunho hummed in response, patting the stool next to his seat and moving his book bag to his lap. he was genuinely like a puppy, and you found it adorable. “thanks.”

“not a problem,” he responded.

herbology was a fun class, learning about plants and greens all around the very naturesque greenhouse. professor sprout yelled at yunho for cracking an unnecessary joke about the mandrakes that you were going to be tackling on friday. he was a bit of a cracked egg.

“lemme guess, you’ve got potions next,” yunho said, rushing up beside you as you walked out of the greenhouse. you shook your head, you’ve got divinations. “divinations?”

“you’ve got divinations?” you asked, adjusting the strap of your book bag as you walked. you were violently shoved by a slytherin, who jutted his chin towards you before leaving without even apologizing. “totally fine.”

“asshat,” yunho commented as his eyes darkly followed the slytherin who had pushed you. though the minute they landed on yours, they became sparkly and light. he chuckled, for some odd reason. “yeah, i have divinations, too. destiny works in a weird way.”

“does it,” you blankly replied. you have successfuly suppressed your excited tone of voice so you wouldn’t give yunho the satisfaction of you being happy thay he’s in your class. it was barely fifth period, and being in his presence already had you quite infatuated with him. “heard professor trelawney’s going to make us drink tea.”

“oh yeah! i heard it was good from my mates,” he said, dusting his dark robes and adjusting the hood. “when do you have charms?”

“tomorrow, actually,” you responded. “double charms.”

“damn, i have double charms thursday,” yunho added, clear disappointment in his voice. you, in fact, did not have double charms on thursday. maybe you wouldn’t have him in anything on that day, but the rest of week you will. “that’s okay. i’ll see you anyway.”

the class you have been looking forward to the most finally arrived and it was the second astronomy class of the day. it was already six at night, and class ends around seven. yunho was nowhere in the highest level of the astronomy tower, maybe he’s on his way.

a few girls stood by you and began talking to you, asking you how you’ve been and that it’s been a while since they’ve seen you. suddenly the thought of yunho dissipated, enjoying the small conversation the girls held with you.

yunho came crashing on the doorway, breathing hard with his black and yellow tie loose. what was he even doing? his hair nearly clung to his forehead and he walked next to you speedily. he was breathing hard, taking off his large robe and placing it on the surface next to you. he began fanning himself using his hand, and the girls around you all shut up to admire him. so that’s why they’re here.

yunho looked down at you, a smile with his teeth showing playing on his face. “may i ask why you’re all- sweaty- and breathing so hard?”

“is it obvious i came running up here all the way from the fucking- what was it called- transfiguration room?” he asked, his tongue slightly sticking out as he breathed more. you began to rub his back, giggling. “professor trelawney just asked me to stay and told me that i need to stop saying witty things- that’s why i told you to go ahead of me.”

you sighed, “that was quite a long time of you not being here though.”

“yeah, she gave me a long ass speech,” he said, buttoning up his shirt and tightening his tie. his eyes averted from you and to the girls next to you, tilting his head as an indication for them to go away. the girls left and had located themselves somewhere else, giving you and yunho more privacy. “hm, the stars are beginning to show up.”

yunho had completely changed the subject, turning his head up to the darkening sky and the twinkles of the stones were beginning to shine brightly. there were light tints of light blue as the sun went down, completely showing a dark blue sky littered with twinkles from the stars. it was beautiful.

“looks pretty,” you said, eyes rolling around the beautiful blue night sky to admire the beauty of the universe. your eyes were filled with the tiny white dots, and for all you know yunho was staring at you instead after looking up into the sky. he looked up at the sky, his eyes filled up witb the same white dots in yours.

“yeah, very,” he replied shortly, an extremely soft smile on his face as he admired the twinkling stones in the sky with you.

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sheabutterskyes · 5 years

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Novel Prep ~

Tagged by @bexminx a million years ago... ✧*:･ﾟ✧

WIP – The Coast of Arishore: The Crystal Guardian (Book 2)

First Look.

1. Describe your novel in 1-2 sentences (elevator pitch)

With secrets rising to the surface, and Scarlette’s connection to the crystal still a mystery, she and the other Council members must chase after the truth before any enemies do. But as Scarlette faces up against Arishore’s new threat, she must decide how far she is willing to go to find the truth, and how far she is willing to go to protect Arishore.

2. How long do you plan for your novel to be? (Is it a novella, single book, book series, etc.)

From the start I wasn’t planning on a book two, but here we are! There will probably be a possibility for a final book 3. But ending it all with this one should work too.. hopefully..

3. What is your novel’s aesthetic?

Snow covered mountains, the moon - crescent shaped moon details, raging water crashing against tall black cliffs, dark and drafty castle passages, huge windows, blood in the snow, campfire, silver blades, fire,

4. What other stories inspire your novel?

Idk, but I remember writing down a dream I had about a Council of like 7 princes dealing with a war, and this story became inspired from this.

5. Share 3+ images that give a feel for your novel

6. Who is/are your protagonist/s?

My main protagonist is Scarlette Lassruvon. She’s a human from Haladavar, and a newly appointed Council member for Arishore. She’s still struggling to find purpose and a sense of belonging - but is willing to give Arishore all she has.

7. Who is their closest ally?

Erynn, the chief messenger from Ryvik. But this could be argued, because she has others who work closely with her and have known her longer. But Erynn and her both share similar ideals, and unlike many of the other characters, between the two of them, they do not have secrets that get in the way of things.

8. Who is their enemy?

Haladavar’s King (also arguable), and a wizard named Vjeran.

9. What do they want more than anything?

Scarlette has struggled finding a place where she feels she belongs. As the first human member of the Council of Arishore, she wants to be an honorable member and do whatever it takes to help Arishore - and hopefully, will at last feel as though she is where she is supposed to be.

10. Why can’t they have that?

Prejudice and her connection to the crystal.

11. What do they wrongly believe about themselves?

Scarlette believes that doesn’t deserve her place among the Council, and typically feels similarly when things in her life are going really well.

12. Draw your protagonist! (Or share a description)

Plot Points

13. What is the internal conflict?

How far do you go for something you are fighting for?

14. What is the external conflict?

Challenging corrupt governmental systems, socialized mindsets, societal expectations, etc. Scarlette and my other POV characters want to change the way things have been in order to create peace between regions.

15. What is the worst thing that could happen to your protagonist?

Failing Arishore, or having them turn against her.

16. What secret will be revealed that changes the course of the story?

OHohoho! Vjeran is Phael’s long lost uncle, and Erynn is his son!

17. Do you know how it ends?

I wish, lol

Bits and Bobs

18. What is the theme?

“Sometimes you find where you belong where you least expect it.”

Or something like that.

19. What is a reoccurring symbol?

The moon is something that keeps popping up. It’s a symbol that relates to the wizards and their magic. To outsiders, it can be a sign of danger. But as the story progresses, it becomes a sign of change and maybe even hope.

20. Where is the story set? (Share a description!)

The “world” is defined by regions. Arishore, Haladavar, Valindra, Arromouth, and Ryvik. I have made and re-made and re-made again, a map. (Which I’m not going to share, lol.)

Here are some pictures that give a feel for each region (in order mentioned above:

21. Do you have any images or scenes in your mind already?

I love picturing the scene where Scarlette visits the Sapphire Gallery with Erynn. It’s a beautiful space that’s vibrant and filled with light. The area was once the main location where the king would meet with his advisers, like her father. And she had once looked forwards to sitting there as well. But things didn’t turn out that way, and when she visits the room this time, it gives her some closure. Especially because she is there with Erynn, who is just a ray of sunshine.

I’ve been trying to play a scene in my mind that takes place later in the story, but I can only clearly see one moment of it, where Scarlette is facing Vjeran in Arishore.

22. What excited you about this story?

I like my wizards. A lot of people think Harry Potter stuff, or something a little more familiar, but the wizards in my WIP are a bitttt different.

They do not consider themselves human, and even have a very distinct physical appearance that makes it very hard to blend in with the others. Their magic strength can grow and weaken with lunar phases - not by an extreme amount, but just enough to notice. Still working in this aspect. Also, they can die if they use too much magic in a short amount of time - but then of course, there are the Elite wizards, who are so powerful, that even just the smallest bit of magic can bring them close to death (without possession of the crystal). And ultimately, their magic requires no spells, and very seldom physical movements - it’s very much through mind and willpower.

23. Tell us about your usual writing method!

I outline, only to follow a few main points and make it up as I go. The ending is almost always a surprise to me. I don’t focus on making it pretty either - at least, not the first time around. As long as the story is there. I also hate editing, so I usually leave it alone for about a year before I go back with a clear mind to fix things.

I’ve also recently made chapter summaries with a color key, which really helps me stay organized!

Tagging: @etjwrites & @alwolfesblog ✧*:･ﾟ✧

#tag game #WIP #COA #writeblr community #writeblr #writers on tumblr

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negativereader · 6 years

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The Negative Reader Sporks Marked: Chapter 6

Alright, last chapter, Zoey was a complete and total idiot, nearly got herself killed, hit her head, and had a dream about Nyx who, for some reason that’s beyond me, has decided that Zoey is the specialist little snowflake to ever fall from heaven, so she’s going to be Nyx’s ‘eyes and ears’ in the real world.

This is an idea that even Zoey doesn’t think is good.

This chapter, we’re going to meet some people who I hate and have some smug conversations.

I want to go back and read Twilight.

That is how bad this book is, guys, I like Twilight better than it. Bella is a less obnoxious character. And…honestly…the world has more internal consistency.

So, the chapter begins with some Cherokee song that sounds really, really poorly translated. Now this could be a good touch. For instance, Zoey could say that it was a lullaby that she used to be sung as a child. Or at least we could get the significance of the song at some level. However, we don’t really get a reason why the song is being sung or what the song actually means, just that it’s old. As such, it’s not something that I am particularly invested in. It’s just sort of there to remind us again that Zoey is part Native American, and I’m supposed to be impressed by this for some reason.

“I’d felt so crappy lately…except I couldn’t remember why. Huh. Odd.” (43)

Ok, so this is a POV problem right here. I’ve mentioned it a few times in this blog, but first person, while a strong point of view that allows the reader to get a very close insight into the character, has a few problems. The first is the fact that it’s extremely limiting. You cannot narrate anything that happens outside of the character’s point of view, and another is that, while it’s completely possible to narrate something that happened that a character won’t remember in third person, doing so in first is a whole lot trickier. How is it that Zoey, who narrated the whole thing, not be able to remember what happened to her? If she doesn’t remember, then how are we getting the details of this? When is the story being told? If this was first person, present, it would actually work better, since it’s been told as Zoey is experiencing something.

Get used to it though. This is one of the Casts favorite narrative tricks, and it is incredibly annoying.

Granny’s voice keeps singing, and Zoey finally remembers what happened. Now, I could say that this excuses, the whole ‘forgot thing’ but it really doesn’t. If she’s going to remember, devoting attention when all you’re saying is “for a moment, I couldn’t remember what was going on or why I was there” in a fancy way is a waste of time and the reader’s attention.

It’s also, as always, really awkwardly written. \~/

Finally, Zoey remembers that she’s turning into a vampire and wakes up.

And we are introduced to the character that I hate most in this series, and who I honestly consider the worst human being in it: Granny Redbird. I despise this woman. But you better get used to her. The Casts seem to have decided that Granny Redbird an example of a supportive adult, despite the fact that I could build a pretty strong case to claim that she’s essentially using Zoey to hurt her daughter for deciding that she didn’t want to subscribe to Granny’s weird little variant of the Cherokee religion. Also, when I say “supportive adult” what I mean is “adult who gives Zoey absolutely everything she wants because she’s just that special”.

As I said before, she reminds me of my maternal grandmother, and that’s not a good thing. Still, as a reminder, judge her actions for yourself. I’m biased.

After a touching moment that would likely mean a lot more if I cared a wit whether or not Zoey lived or died, Zoey asked where she is and what happened, and Granny tells her that she found her unconscious covered in blood, and that her grandmother was scared out of her mind and “so pale that [her] dark crescent seemed to glow against [her] skin” (44).

The Casts are subtle!

And then we get into what I hate this woman. In a very abrupt shift in tone, and with absolutely glee on her face, Grandma tells Zoey that she called Zoey’s mother to tell her that she was taking Zoey to the House of Night, but hung up when Mommy started sounding upset.

Without her permission.

Now, if Grandma had been upset and angry with her daughter for putting Zoey in danger and not behaving like an adult to doing what was best for her child, I would understand. If she was angry that Mommy was so concerned with either what they neighbors were going to say or the fact that she was a vampire, it would make sense and have parallels to several parents who have, for some reason or other essentially abandoned their children. But she’s not. Granny’s acting like it’s a joke. She’s pleased that she’s got this chance to rub the fact that she’s a better person in her daughter’s face.

This has nothing to do with Zoey. Given how quickly Grandma’s attitude shifts, it almost seems that, after showing Zoey that she was worried, her real emotion shows. This happiness doesn’t stem from the fact that her beloved granddaughter is still alive, it’s coming from the fact that she’s one-upped her daughter.

Moving on.

Granny asks what Zoey was doing out in the daylight, which is honestly a very good question, but also asks why Zoey didn’t tell her earlier. Thankfully, this particular weird question is there for a reason since after Zoey explains things from her side, Granny says just climbing out the window to look for her doesn’t make sense.

Which is true for reasons that Granny hasn’t said. I’m going to need to pick that little monster apart so we got a long quote.

“I know,” I sighed. “I can’t believe I got Marked, either. Why me?”

“That’s not what I meant, baby. I’m not surprised you were Tracked and Marked. The Redbird blood has always held strong magic; it was only a matter of time before one of us was Chosen. What I mean is that it makes no sense that you were just Marked. That crescent isn’t an outline. It’s completely filled in.” (45)

First of all, the two word sentence ‘why me’ should be banned in fiction. I hated it when it was used by Garion in the Belgariad, I hated it when it was used by Eragon in Eragon, and I hate it now. It is the most self-pitying, whiny drivel for a main character to say. Even in Tolkien, when Frodo Baggins comes pretty close to it, Gandalf, though kindly, tells him not to think like that.

So, next comes the fact that Zoey’s mark is “now a completed crescent moon, filled in perfectly with the distinctive sapphire blue of the vampire tattoo” (45).

Where do I start?

The Casts are trying hard to justify Zoey’s existence as the main character by quickly making her ‘special’. They’re giving her all the trappings of someone who matters, from Nyx praising her to her tattoo, magically being filled in, which apparently means she’s more mature or something. According to the little guild book (which looks terrible, let me tell you) it means that the change is complete, which is something that shouldn’t happen for four years. All of this is to show us how unique that Zoey is. This is actually a pretty common tactic of new writers. They try to show how interesting the character is by giving them interesting powers.

However, the largest problem with this is actually Zoey herself. She’s got all this specialness dumped on her, but at the same time, there’s nothing about Zoey herself that is particularly interesting. She didn’t earn these powers from my view. She hasn’t done anything particularly brave, particularly mature, particularly kind or even noticeably different than anyone else. She’s not even sympathetic.

This is, of course, a problem with Mary Sues in general. One of the things that actually makes them into Sues is that, at some level, the focus is on the cool powers and abilities that the person has, rather than who they are. The Sue herself is honestly a pretty empty character. There is no amount of interesting powers or plot points that make Zoey special that will make me support her. Zoey has to be someone I would support even if she didn’t have those traits.

Another problem has to do with plot related issues. The Fledging Handbook gives a lot of medical jargon that attempts to prove that it’s not just magic, and there are biological things happening. The problem is that if Nyx decided to speed up a biological process that the book flat states will cause damage as her entire physiology is changed, there will be more damage.

And, of course, that’s another major problem with a Sue. They don’t suffer consequences for either they actions or the price of whatever power that they’ve gotten (unless the author thinks it will garner sympathy).

So, yes, there are major problems.

Zoey looks at herself in the mirror, and we get to learn that somehow, Zoey’s eyes look bigger and her skin is paler. So, apparently, Meyer wasn’t the only one accidentally said that being a vampire makes you white. Good to know. We also are told how exotic looking the tattoo looks, which, given a picture of it, either looks like a bad photoshop job or like she put a sharpie on her forehead and drew a moon.

Not particularly exotic. Though she looks more like Sesshomaru now.

She is unhappy about the change and does ask what’s going on. And someone out of the blue says that that is what they were hoping that Zoey would explain.

And it’s a very pretty woman. I know this because Zoey spends a good page telling me just how gorgeous this woman is from her “huge, almond-shaped eyes that were a deep mossy green” (46) to the fact that “her body was perfect” (46). Basically, she’s got red hair, green eyes, and boobs. Zoey is very sure to point out that she has boobs.

Also, because Zoey is an awful person, we’ve got this…charming line:

“She wasn’t thin like those freak girls who puked and starved themselves into what they thought was Paris Hilton chic (“That’s Hott.” Yeah, okay, whatever, Paris)” (46).

*takes a breath*

You know what, P.C., Kristen? You’re both repugnant. This entire sentience and thought is repugnant. The fact that you are not only mocking young girls for having unrealistic standards for their bodies and the fact that they are harming themselves to meet them, but also calling them freaks for doing so is disgusting. You both should be ashamed of yourselves and of your nasty little troll of a character.

The fact that you’ve put this little monster up as someone who should be admired disgusts me.

At least John didn’t insult Zoey or her sister or her mother for their bodies.

So. Moving on. Zoey has a crush on this random woman. That was the point. A crush that Zoey takes pains to insist is 100% straight not-that-there’s-any-problem-with-gay-people-one-of-my-friends-is-gay.

The woman smiles, and Zoey mentions that her teeth are “amazingly straight, white teeth—without fangs” (46) but she’s got the crescent moon on her forehead. That makes her a vampire. Not the fangs or anything traditional.

Cast Ladies…why didn’t you just make your vampires witches? You clearly want to talk about Wicca and magick and such. Why not just go the whole hog?

So, the vampire tells Zoey that technically she hasn’t changed, but the completed mark is still on her forehead, which blows everything the manual says out of the water, and should have killed Zoey anyways.

The woman says that having this happen is to be considered an good omen, and while Zoey flounders a little, Granny jumps in and introduces “the High Priestess of the House of Night, Neferet.” (47)

Neferet? You know, Nefertiti? Famed beauty of Ancient Egypt? Wife of the infamous heretic Pharaoh Akhenaten? The vampires of this world sure are humble.

Neferet greets Zoey as ‘Zoey Redbird’ and Zoey points out her last name is Montgomery. But this name is too normal for our Sue. Neferet basically tells her that this is the chance for her to make a new start and make choices she couldn’t before. Which basically means this is a time to choose her name. This also means that she’s legally an adult apparently, but that’s a can of worms I’m going to bring up later.

Now, I’ve seen this idea worked with before in the Skullduggery Pleasant books. When someone started working with magic, they got the chance to make up the name that they’d be known as by the magical community. And the book went into the problems that came from teenagers change their names. Because teenagers choose names that sound cool at the time, and then they need to live with the cringe. This book has plenty of names that their owners will…regret. Zoey, for once, shows some moderate intelligence and just goes by Zoey Redbird.

Zoey gets a melodramatic welcome to her new life, and she tries to shake hands, but Neferet grabs her arm instead, which is “weird but somehow felt right” (47).

Ten bucks says that this is how Amazons greeted one another or something in this world, and Zoey’s just magically in tune with it.

And then we get this paragraph:

“Her touch was warm and firm. Her smile blazed with welcome. She was amazing and awe inspiring. Actually, she was what all vampyres are, more than human—stronger, smarter, more talented” (47). (There’s more but I’ll get to it later.)

First, we get it Zoey. You want to marry Neferet. Second, Note the final sentence. I’ll write it out for you again.

“Actually, she was what all vampyres are, more than human—stronger, smarter, more talented” (47).

Right here is the core problem with this series. It’s not Zoey, though she’s pretty close. It’s not the other obnoxious, insensitive, and otherwise awful things that happen. Right here is the core problem: the Casts have admitted to us that they think that their vampires are better than humanity. Therefore, everything that they do should be seen as superior as well. So, there is no way that we can see anything wrong with the vampires as their own flaws. We’re supposed to see them as an ideal of how we should want to act. After all, they’re better than human. This is not just about a single Sue. This is about a Sue species, and the Casts, like Stephenie Meyer, can’t imagine why we would think that they were anything other than perfect.

And this honestly sets her vampires up for failure since now every flaw isn’t something that can be gotten over, it’s something that I’m supposed to like, and see as a good thing. The fact that the vampire society is actually in some ways more sexist than modern society is supposed to be seen as good. The utter indifference that the vampires have to the potential death of the children that they’re teaching is a good thing. The utter distain for humanity is something that I’m supposed to agree with.

This also is a plot hole. Again, are the vampires an oppressed minority facing unjust biotry or are they so much better than us that there’s nothing we can do about them so that the hatred against them is totally justified? For someone to be oppressed there as to be something that the oppressor has over them. Vampires not only have the desirable jobs, but honestly don’t seem to suffer much other than fear and a lack of understanding. They have magic powers, immortality and influence. People have every reason not to trust them, and if the vampires are smarter, better, and stronger than us, then humanity has a good reason to view them with nothing but suspicion. What’s to stop them from enslaving us as a sort of breeding population for new vampires?

Seriously, given this kind of power, what’s to stop them from using it?

Of course, the Cast Ladies either didn’t think about this or really don’t care.

So, let’s move on the rest of this paragraph, shall we?

“She looked like someone had turned on a blazing inner light within her, which I realize is definitely an ironic description considering the vampyre stereotypes (some of which I already knew were totally true): they avoid sunlight, they’re most powerful at night, they need to drink blood to survive (eesh!), and they worship a goddess who is known as Night personified. (47)

One of these things is not like the others.

So, this is clever. They’re very carefully setting their own little idea of goddess worshiping as part of what makes a vampire a vampire. You notice that it’s in the end of the sentence as well, so it’s sort of being slipped in at the end along with the actual ‘stereotypes’. However, I would say, as a writer, it is dangerous to make religion so important to a species. Are there vampires who are atheist? Who retain their old religion? Why not? Is the religion enforced?

Since Zoey’s experience seeing Nyx is treated as if it is rare, then the Casts can’t even claim that people convert due to the personal experience.

Now, there are three potential ways to handle this question. The first is that Nyx chooses people who are likely to believe in her to be vampires. The second is that the vampire transformation also involves brainwashing. The third is that there are several underground religions being practiced and people staring emptily into space during services, but the Nyxian religion tends to suppress and oppress anyone who doesn’t believe like they do.

Zoey finally comes to herself and says it’s nice to meet her, and then Neferet tells Zoey that she’s special.

Or rather she says how she’s never seen a fledgling (as they call baby vampires who haven’t…I don’t know popped or something) come to them unconscious and with a completed mark. I’d buy the completed mark, but unconscious would probably be common, given that this is supposed to be a life or death situation, there are probably cases where the unfortunate kid is far away, and it takes a long time for the parents to get them there.

Neferet asks if Zoey remembers how she got there, and Zoey opens her mouth to say what happened and then

“I got a weird feeling, like someone had just hit me in the stomach. It was clear (there should be a semicolon here) and it was specific,(that comma should be a semicolon too) and it was telling me to shut up” (48)

...

I hate feelings.

This is probably one of the standard laziest conventions of writing. Don’t want the main character do divulge information that you don’t want them do but is totally within their character do to so? Have a character be thought dead, but you want the main character to believe they’re alive for no reason? Want to have the main character trust someone despite their being shady? Just give them Feelings!

The reason that I hate ‘gut feelings’ or whatever isn’t that they’re not real. If you listen to a lot of things like ‘Let’s Not Meet’ you’ll read about a lot of times where that sinking feeling either saves someone’s life, or is the precursor to a very bad time for the writer. The problem with it in literature, is that it gives the writer an excuse to have the main character peek at the plot’s outline. They just ‘know’ that a certain character can or can’t be trusted, or they can sense that a character isn’t dead and so on. It’s a way to protect the character from bad choices, make them make the right choice, or show how right they are when the writer can’t think of anything that might work.

Because Zoey, normally, would tell Neferet, and then Neferet, being evil, would have done something, but the Casts, can’t give Zoey any real reason not to.

They’re apparently too lazy to even have Nyx go ‘btw don’t tell anyone ‘bout this for a while, k?’

Now I know that it’s supposed to be a hint that Nyx is working with Zoey, but that’s just as dumb.

Also, I wonder if Neferet is the villain. Uh-oh, I’d better not give away the ‘plot twist’. Seriously, Casts, if you’re going to give me a shocker villain, try not to have the ‘bad feeling’ the moment you meet her.

Anyways, Zoey lies and says that she can’t remember, and:

“I wanted to look away from the sharpness of her green-eyed gaze, but the same feeling that was ordering me to be quiet was also clearly telling me that I had to keep eye contact with her, that I had to try really hard to look like I wasn’t hiding anything, even though I didn’t have a clue why I was hiding anything” (48).

This is just pathetic.

As a word of advice to writers. You don’t need to do this. You don’t need to sit there and bash readers over the head with what is happening. Most readers aren’t stupid. They really did catch the what was happening the first time.

Also, again, twist villains are twist villains because they don’t give any indication, outside of very subtle ones that you’ll only catch on a re-read that they’re twist villains.

What’s dumber is that Neferet has no reason to think that Zoey’s lying. She’s been all but drooling over Neferet from the beginning. This is silly.

Anyways, Granny mentions that memory loss is a sign of head trauma (obviously, though if that’s the cause Zoey should be seeing a doctor, not that these guys believe in those) and Neferet agrees really fast and her face stops being sharp. And she assures granny that everything’s going to be fine, calling her ‘Silvia Redbird’.

Zoey relaxes at this point because clearly anyone who likes Granny is a good person.

Seriously.

It said so in the text.

Morality is now defined by whether or not you like a random old woman who might or might not be a horrible person. Oh. Right. I guess I’m evil now according to this book.

…

Whelp, I’m a Catholic, so I guess that’s a given.

Neferet asks if Zoey wants to see her new roommate, and Zoey, still feeling misgiving, agrees.

“‘Excellent!’ Neferet said. Thankfully she ignored the fact that I was standing there like a smiling stupid garden gnome” (49).

…I…have surprisingly little to say to that. I just…sort of wanted you to read it. And be as vaguely confused as me.

Granny is a little nervous about this and asks if Zoey shouldn’t be in observation for another night. Given that she’s just said she’s had a concussion and is experiencing memory loss, this is something that should be done. Neferet, being a jerk, dismisses any natural concern and says Zoey’s naturally healing. Because vampires are awesome.

So, Neferet smiles at Zoey and Zoey smiles back even though she’s uncomfortable.

“It seemed like she was genuinely happy that I was there. And, truthfully, she made me think turning into a vampyre might not be so bad” (49).

So, this is the Casts trying very, very hard to make it sound like everything’s fine and this was a false alarm so that they can later claim that Neferet was a shocking plot twist. The problem is that all that this really does is make Zoey sound stupid. There’s no reason for her to trust this woman, she’s been taught all her life that vampires are dangerous. Why does she allow herself to go along with this and trust her other than being stupid?

However, Zoey just assures Granny that everything’s fine, and realizes that, honestly she does feel better.

It took her that long to realize it.

Neferet, for her part, also assures Granny, giving her “solemn oath” (49) that Zoey is safe and gives the information that fledglings are paired with a mentor who is an adult and promises to be Zoey’s mentor.

I wonder if this is part of her plans.

Also, while she acts like this is a good thing, she doesn’t explain what this means. What does a mentor do? Are they supposed to be emotional support? Teach them ethical means of getting blood? Act as a sponsor into vampire communion like in the Catholic Church? What?

But Neferet does a salute with her fist over her heart and bowing. Now, I’ve researched this, but apparently, this doesn’t actually come from anything. I’ve seen it in fiction, as something amazons did, as something Martians did, as something Trojans did. I’m going to bet this is something that the Casts read in something like MZB and decided that it sounded cool, and they trace it to Amazons. Granny does the same thing and then hugs Zoey and tells her to call and leaves.

So, I’m going to remind everyone that Granny essentially kidnapped Zoey and took her here without her parents’ permission, and apparently the laws so favor the vampires that there’s nothing that they can do about this. Zoey is now completely cut off from the outside world with only people who believe in the same thing for company.

And this is a good thing.

Neferet asks Zoey if she’s ready for her new life.

I would pay, right now, to see an angry main character. Someone who was taken from a family she was happy with, saddled with a destiny she didn’t want, and angry that everyone seems to think that this is a ‘new life’ and she’s been ‘chosen by the Goddess’. I’d pay to see resentment, fear, but all we get is…this.

“I looked up at her and thought again how amazing she was. If I actually Changed into a vampyre, would I get her confidence and power, or was that just something only a High Priestess got? For an instant it flashed in my mind how awesome it would be to be a High Priestess” (50).

Did you feel that hammer pound your head? That’s called foreshadowing.

Now, there are several things wrong with even these few sentences. The first is the simple fact that only a few minutes ago, Zoey was scared of this character. Now, we’re expected to like her again. The second, obviously, is the High Priestess garbage.

Casts, you don’t need to tell us how the story will end on the fifth chapter of the first book. It’s really kind of sad, and a little insulting to your readers. They don’t need this level of spoon feeding. What’s more, even though Zoey claims that sanity returns and she’s just a confused kid, she’s already come off as more than a tad arrogant. Finally, this whole thing comes out of nowhere and doesn’t help to make Zoey’s final claims of being nervous sound true.

If she’s fantasizing about being the High Priestess, she’s not that nervous.

But she claims, when she says that she is that she’s glad that she sounds more confident than she feels.

And that’s the end of the chapter.

This was a necessary chapter, given that it introduced the villain Neferet, but the foreshadowing was far too ham handed, the writing is still painful, and Zoey flips around from being scared to impressed to forgetting that she was scared. I wish I could claim that this was Neferet’s powers or something, but it’s not. Zoey’s just dumb.

Anyways, next chapter we get sexual assault! But that’s fine before it’s girl on boy, and we’re fighting the Patriarchy™!

Wish me luck.

#marked #PC Cast #Kristin Cast #pc and kristin cast #marked sporking

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theastrophilearchitect · 3 years

Text

Every book on my TBR.

So. Every single book on my TBR (to-be-read). It’s not as dramatically long as most you’ll see - but then most BookTubers and Bookstagrammers are basically book hoarders. I started properly reading about three and a half years ago, August of 2017, and, at the time, I definitely wanted to eventually build a book collection so big I could line an entire wall with custom bookshelves, fill those bookshelves with my sixteen copies of every one of my favourite books and still have stacks and stacks either side of my desk. Then I came to the realisation than that’s insane. Books are expensive. So are bookshelves. And no-one wants to have to pack up boxes and boxes of books and set up new shelves when you move. So, now, I try to get most of my books from the library or BorrowBox, which always has a better selection, or I buy the eBook - it’s usually cheaper and means I don’t end up with a physical object to carry from place to place, all in my phone (though I usually read eBooks on my iPad).

Anyway, I have only about 30 books on my Goodreads want-to-read, 8 of which are on my physical TBR, which is what I’m going over today.

The Hidden Oracle by Rick Riordan

This is the first book in Rick Riordan’s third Percy Jackson (I guess?) series, The Trials of Apollo. I don’t know too much about what this book’s about, and I’m going to keep it that way - I loved Percy Jackson and the Olympians, and I loved Heroes of Olympus, so I’m not really concerned. I do know, however, that the god Apollo gets put into the body of a demigod named Lester (I thought as I was writing this that Lester was just the name he took as a mortal, but now I’m worrying that maybe Lester is a demigod whose body Apollo gets put into, which would be weird, but we’ll see) and its main characters are the lovely Nico di Angelo, son of Hades, and Will Solace, son of Apollo.

I can’t wait to get to this, but I did just finish Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard, so I’m pacing myself. I don’t want to burn out on Riordan.

Evenfall by Gaja J Kos & Boris Kos

Honestly, the description for this book is quite vague. Nope, incredibly vague. I could’ve sworn it wasn’t this vague when I put it on my TBR. I’m not sure how to summarise it, so here’s the Goodreads description:

A monster does not deserve the intimacy of a name As if waking up in an unfamiliar world isn’t enough of a surprise, Ember gains a new title to her name. Saviour. Hunted by the Crescent Prince and his lethal shadows, she accepts a young Mage’s help to navigate the land of blood magic and its many illusions. But where Ada sees the good in her power, Ember discovers something else. An icy darkness, designed to take lives, not save them. The only thing worse than not being able to rely on her senses—or the reality she had once believed to be true—is knowing that she cannot trust her heart. Especially as it seems to draw her to the one person in whose hands she can never fall… Will Ember escape the thrall of darkness or will she reign in it?

This is currently the oldest book on my TBR, which, were I anyone else, could mean it’s been on my TBR for literal years, which it technically has been, but only two.

12/02/2021 Note: I started reading this book on the 11th, and just couldn’t get into it. It felt like the world had just spawned into existence when Ember arrived in it. I tried to push myself to at least 50 pages, but I just couldn’t do it, so I DNF-ed it. Putting this note here because I wrote this post a while before it’s actually going up, and I don’t want to include a DNF in my wrap-up.

The Diviners by Libba Bray

I own this book in a really uncommon cover; I got it on amazon a couple years ago, and this just happened to be the one available at the time. Irrelevant. This is one of those books everyone has read, and I’m looking forward to eventually getting into it.

This book is set in a paranormal 1926 New York City, and a girl named Evie O’Neill has to live with her occult-obsessed uncle. When a girl turns up dead with some kind of cryptic branding, Evie’s uncle is called to the scene and she realises her power could help catch the murderer. That’s as simply as it can be put, but I get the impression there’s a lot more to this book, and despite the fact I’ve been desperate to read this book since I heard of it, I somehow still haven’t read it.

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

I love Leigh Bardugo. In truth, I didn’t particularly enjoy the Grisha trilogy, but I loved both Six of Crows and King of Scars, and am currently rereading Crooked Kingdom on audiobook. This is her first take at an adult book, and follows Alex Stern, the only survivor of an unsolved multiple homicide who was offered a place at Yale by a mysterious benefactor, with the catch of monitoring the university’s secret societies, whose occult activities turn out to be more sinister than she could have expected.

This is a book that went onto my TBR immediately after I heard about it, and I’ve been waiting to read it for the last year and a half.

Skyward by Brandon Sanderson

I tried to read Sanderson’s Mistborn trilogy a couple years ago, and failed to get into it, partly because it didn’t interest me that much, but I love the idea of Skyward, and it’s gone down so well in the book community.

It’s set in a future where the human race is on the verge of extinction, trapped on a planet constantly attacked by alien warriors. Spensa, a teenage girl stuck on the planet, wants to be a pilot, but it seems far-off. Then, she finds the wreckage of a ship that appears to have a soul, and she must figure out how to repair it, and persuade it to help her navigate flight school. Again, I get the impression there’s much more to this story, especially since it’s planned to be part of a four-book series.

Catwoman: Soulstealer by Sarah J Maas

Honestly, the reason I bought this book was that I had a £10 reward on my Waterstones card, and I didn’t, at the time, have any books on my Goodreads want-to-read I hadn’t already bought, so, having recently become interested in the Avengers movies, I figured, why not? (Even though this is DC, not marvel, but not the point.)

This is book 3 in the DC Icons companion series, where every book is by a different author - I’m also panning to read Wonderwoman: Warbringer by Leigh Bardugo, and probably some of the others in the series, but for now, this is the one I own.

Selina Kyle returns to Gotham City under a new alias, and, with Batman off on a mission, only Batwing is left to defend the city from notorious criminals. Meanwhile, Batwing, trying to prove himself, targets Selina under her alias, who has teamed up with Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn.

Eliza and Her Monsters by Francesca Zappia

This is the only regular, probably-sane contemporary novel on my TBR - I tend to lean towards escapism, but this caught my interest.

This follows Eliza Mirk, who, online, is LadyConstellation, anonymous creator of popular webcomic Monstrous Sea. She’s your typical outcast, and isn’t interested in trying to live in the real world. Wallace Warland, the comic’s biggest fanfiction writer then transfers to Eliza’s school, and, believing her to be a fan, begins to draw her out of shell, until her secret is revealed.

House of Earth and Blood by Sarah J Maas

Let’s be honest, everyone just knows this book as Crescent City. This is Maas’s first proper-adult series - I say that because A Court of Thorns and Roses (ACOTAR) is technically new adult, though it’s marketed as young adult. I loved both Throne of Glass and ACOTAR the first time I read them, and am honestly now more slightly apprehensive at how seriously Maas’s books take themselves - I also just finished listening to all the Throne of Glass audiobooks. Unlike her previous fantasy books, this is a sci-fi.

Bryce Quinlan finds herself investigating her friends’ deaths in an attempt to avenge them after they were taken from her by a demon. Hunt Athalar is a Fallen angel, enslaved by Archangels, forced to assassinate their enemies, when he’s offered a deal to assist Bryce in exchange for his freedom.

And that, is every book currently on my TBR.

(12/02/2021)

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ruffsficstuffplace · 6 years

Text

And The AWRD Goes To... (Part 38)

I wrote a massive, self-indulgent Magical Girl episode that probably wouldn’t be safe for Earth kids, but totally fit for Remnant kids, considering that they allow marital training at extremely young ages to slaughter Grimm.

The good news is, I have the basis for yet another LWA/RWBY AU, or an original series of my own.

The bad news is, I felt it was WAY too self-indulgent to show you guys, and completely got out of any of the plot or the characterization of the show, along with being too self-congratulatory to my writing skills, however my audience will take the self-indulgent trash I wrote.

The other good news is, I figured out a completely different way to write this chapter that won’t alienate people or feel like desperate, self-praising filler.

I hope, at least.

“I must say, I’m rather impressed the creators took the time to weave such complex, coordinated, and physically-involved fights into the show!” Diana said during the credits of another episode of Starlight Crusaders: Solar Eclipse. “Most other examples I’ve ever seen of this genre always seem content to have the characters blast their foes with an obscene amount of visual effects from a distance, and have the monsters just writhe and cry out before they’re defeated.”

“Not Starlight Crusaders!” Weiss said, hugging one of her pillows to her chest as she sat up and watched. “Man, there’s so many things I love about this franchise, but the way all the fights just leave stick with me long after the credits are a huge part of it...”

“Hah, remember when we used spent the entire week between each episode trying to recreate them in the training grounds?” Akko asked.

“How could I forget?!” Weiss replied, laughing. “It’s why I wanted to become a huntress in the first place!”

“You decided to go into this dangerous career because you wanted to reenact scenes from a children’s show...?” Diana asked.

Weiss smiled at her. “Relax: I’ve added a whole lot of other mature, deep reasons to it since… but as they say, every aspiring hunter had to get that passion from somewhere. I guess it didn’t hurt that grandpa and grandma could actually make it a reality, to a certain extent.”

Ruby blinked, before her eyes brightened. “Are there giant robot monster parts stored in your house somewhere?!” she asked excitedly.

“Sorry, Ruby, just giant monster costume pieces, made to be worn by Schnee Grimm summons,” Weiss replied.

Ruby frowned, the light in her eyes fading. “Aww…”

“I suppose that’s why your house’s training grounds were so complex and modular?” Diana asked.

“Mhmm!” Weiss said. “Could basically reenact the mechanics of any sort of Starlight Crusader fight, save for those while falling out of the sky, underwater, in low-orbit, or the Shiny Chariot special crossover special for Luna Nova.”

“What was the problem with that last one?” Ruby asked. “Maybe I could help solve it.”

“I appreciate the offer, Ruby, but it was entirely with the cast,” Weiss replied. “Lack of a Shiny Rod and what means Chariot used to transform it into so many different forms aside, she had both my speed and agility PLUS Akko’s strength and endurance; whenever either of us tried to play her, we’d either end up exhausted before the ‘episode’ was even halfway done, or didn’t have the necessary finesse and grace to even try to pull off her acrobatics.

“Looking back on it, she probably needed to be that strong and skilled to even use the damned thing without breaking every bone in her body after each show...” she finished, casting a glance at the Shiny Rod.

“More like ‘definitely needed!’” Akko added, before she sighed. “I always knew Chariot was awesome and incredible and way beyond my level, but I’m only realizing by just how much right now… I’m conflicted, you guys:

“On the one hand, she’s like, 500% more awesome, and given how amazingly spectacular she was already, that’s a huge increase in raw Coolness Factor!

“On the other hand, now the difference between us is even bigger than before and I’m not sure if I can even reach that, period...” Akko finished, now moping in her bed.

“… Maybe I can still help with that...” Ruby said.

The next episode of Starlight Crusaders was about to begin, Weiss paused it. “What do you mean…?”

“Ah, how do I explain this… back at the Bunker, it was generally a given that someone would be heavily reliant on tech to compensate for something when they first get in. If it wasn’t prostheses to replace original parts, it was accessibility technology, like a sound-sensitive pair of glasses with a heads-up display for a student with hearing impairments, or Battle Saddles.”

“Pardon me: Battle-what-now…?” Weiss asked.

“Battle Saddles!” Ruby repeated. “It’s what we called wheelchairs and other mobility devices, generally after we motorized, armoured, and armed them. They even have specializations called ‘Battalions’--my favourite was Rolling Thunder, the heavy weapons, artillery, and explosives specialists.

“Anyway, we were always making, adapting, and developing new tech to compensate for impairments and handicaps, and I could definitely do the same here, like develop shock absorbers for Shooting Star so the reaction from all the raw force the Shiny Rod is capable of won’t break our bones and send us flying off again.”

“May I interrupt you, Ruby?” Diana asked. When Ruby gave her the go ahead, she continued, “I know it might be rather irrational and biased given my experiences, but it feels like we might end up over-relying on your tech, which has its own consequences...” she said, looking down at herself.

Ruby nodded. “And you’re right to be worried about that, Diana, but you didn’t let me finish: once we were done getting someone up to the standard levels of performance, we started thinking about how we could go BEYOND that.

“Heck, that was actually a huge part of my developing Crescent Rose! At first, I didn’t have the balance, the coordination, or the strength to even swing her properly, let alone all the essential combat techniques, so I built a giant robot helping arm to provide raw strength and control for me.

“Then, when I could swing it and stop it without its help, I started thinking how I could start using all that momentum and weight to my advantage. And after a LOT of experimenting and redesigning, I started using it to amp up the force of my attacks like back with the grave lord, and all the other times I’ve cut something when I wouldn’t normally have enough raw power to do so.”

“So… what, you’re suggesting we make training wheels for the Shiny Rod…?” Weiss asked.

Ruby thought about it for a moment. “… Yeah!” she said. “I guess I do want to try and build training wheels for the Shiny Rod, if those training wheels happened to get cannibalized later as components for magnetic-levitation wheels to help your bike go even faster!”

She got a thoughtful look on her face, before her eyes started scanning the others, too. “… And come to think of it, I could make improvements to all our other weapons, too, especially Gwragged Annwn...”

Diana frowned. “Ruby, I’m not entirely sure I want you experimenting on my spear… it’s a prized family heirloom, totally irreplaceable!”

“Oh, then I promise I won’t!” Ruby said, smiling. “I respect the weapon’s owner more than my desire to improve and experiment on said weapon. Or I guess in the Shiny Rod’s case, the weapon itself. How about you guys, though…?”

“Count me in!” Akko said.

“The designers called Myrtenaster the peak of multi action dust rapiers, but that’s what they called her predecessor, too—feel free to experiment” Weiss replied, nodding.

“Awesome, thanks!” Ruby replied. “That’s going to be for when we’re all out of the hospital, though—back to the anime!”

Weiss picked up the remote and began to unpause the video.

“WAIT!” Akko cried. “I forgot something!”

Weiss flinched. “What is it...?” she asked, the others turning to look at her.

“What happened to the giant robot helping arm?” Akko asked.

“Oh! It’s probably in the storage room along with all the other robot helping arms, waiting for someone to either study it to make their own, or borrow it for their experiments,” Ruby replied. “They still take it out to the cafeteria sometimes to try and arm wrestle with it—still unbeaten in the ‘Giants League’ without disqualifying damage to the apparatus!” she said, beaming.

“Nice!” Akko said. “High—oh wait, sorry...”

“We’ll high five in spirit!” Ruby cried. “High five!” she said, cast-covered limbs still immobilized.

“Up top!” Akko replied, her cast-covered arms still by her sides.

Diana and Weiss both burst out laughing. “You two are ridiculous...” Diana said, shaking her head.

“You haven’t seen the worst of it, trust me,” Weiss added, smiling. “Unpausing now!”

The four of them went back to watching Starlight Crusaders. Whenever there was another fight scene and weapons started getting brought out, however, Ruby didn’t seem to be enjoying herself quite as much as she did earlier.

They eventually made it to the last few episodes, tensions ramping up, story arcs coming to a close, the Crusaders tearing their way through the main villain’s ranks until the inevitable final confrontation.

One of the nurses knocked and opened the door, Weiss reluctantly paused the video again as a nurse popped his head in. “Excuse me, Ms. Schnee, your family has come to visit you.”

“We brought umeboshi and blueberry froyo!” Whitley called out from outside.

Weiss and Akko both brightened up. “Let them in, let them in!” Weiss said.

Snowie stepped in with a shopping bag filled with the promised treats, among others. “Hey there, sorry we took so long, we couldn’t really—“ her eyes widened. “--Oh my gosh, is that Solar Eclipse?”

“It is, it is!” Whitley said, giddily rushing into the room and taking the seat beside Weiss, Snowie and Winter sitting or perching by Akko’s side. “Play it, play it!” Whitley said, beaming as he leaned forward with his chin in his hands.

Weiss didn’t hesitate. The nurse looked at them, patients and visitors alike all completely enamored with the show, smiled, and began to close the door. Then, he felt someone put a hand on his shoulder, turned around, and knocked again.

“Excuse me again!” the nurse said. “Ms. Rose, your father’s come to visit you.”

Ruby’s eyes brightened up as she took her eyes off her screen. “Dad! Come in, come in!”

The nurse turned back to Taiyang, and opened the door with a flourish, he happily stepped in with a silly swagger and a huge smile on me face. “Hey there, dear daughter of mine! How’re you doing?” he asked as he came over to Ruby’s bed.

“All four limbs still broken, dear dad of mine!” Ruby chirped. “I’m getting better, though, especially since Weiss can use the remote for all of us.”

“That’s good to hear!” Taiyang said as he carefully hugged her, she tried to nuzzle her head into his shoulder. “So, what are you guys watching?” he said as he settled into the chair next to her bed. “No, no, wait, don’t tell me! It’s... Starlight Crusaders, and this season’s, this season’s, ah...”

“It’s--” Whitley, Weiss, Winter, Snowie, and Akko began.

“No, no, don’t! I’ve got this!” Taiyang said, peering intently at the screen, sweat forming on his brow as he concentrated, listening carefully to the names of the characters and their Crusader titles as they fought each other, willing forth the answer from deep within his mind...

“NEW MOON ORDER!” he cried, nearly launching out of his seat. “It’s New Moon Order, right?” he said, nodding and smiling, proud of himself.

Whitley, Weiss, Winter, Snowie, and Akko spared a few moments from the show, and all shared looks with each other; after a silent vote, Snowie got the duty of breaking the news to him. “Ah, Mr. Xiao Long? It’s actually Solar Eclipse; New Moon Order was one of the movies.”

“Call me Taiyang or Tai, please. Anyway, it’s based off this season, at least...?” Taiyang asked hopefully.

Snowie smiled politely, slowly shook her head, and went back to watching with the others.

Taiyang sighed. “At least I got the franchise right this time...” he muttered to himself.

The episode ended in suitably dramatic fashion, the girls and Whitley all cheered. Weiss paused the video as the credits started rolling, and turned to Snowie. “You mentioned blueberry froyo earlier?” she asked, eyebrows raised.

Snowie dug out a tub from the bag, and handed it over.

Weiss took it in both hands, and cradled it to her chest. “Thanks mom, you’re the best,” she whispered, before she opened it and started digging in with the spoon attached to the side.

“You’re welcome, Weiss,” Snowie hummed, looking proud of herself. “We even got treats for all your other friends!” she said as she dug into the bag again.

Akko cried out in delight as she pulled up a jar of umeboshi, Ruby eyed a pack of chocolate chip cookies hungrily. “I didn’t really know whatever it was the rest of you liked, so I just sorta got a little bit of everything from a convenience store on the way here.”

“She really does mean everything,” Whitley added as he took the jar of pickled plums, opened it up for Akko. “You should have seen her back at the aisles, trying to figure out if she should grab any special varieties, or just stick with the original flavours.”

“Hey, it’s not MY fault someone decided there needed to be like, 500 different flavours of Kari-Kari!” Snowie cried as Winter took to the bag of snacks over to the other side of the room. “I swear, that store had basically everything on the shelves!”

“There’s 317 total, and only 47 in that store, mother, I looked it up and I counted while we were there,” Whitley said as he started feeding pickled plums to an eagerly awaiting Akko.

“Still too many damn flavours of candy coated wafers...” Snowie grumbled. She blinked, looked around, and sighed. “Aw, crap—anyone seen my snowball?”

“It’s right here, mom!” Winter called out, pulling up a ball tightly wrapped in plastic, colourful packets taped to it.

Snowie held her hands up. “I’m open!”

Winter tossed it, Snowie missed it, it hit her in the face. She winced, caught it before it could fall to the floor, and started unwrapping it, revealing a ball of shaved ice.

“Well, haven’t seen those in a very long while...” Diana said as Snowie ripped open the syrup packets with her teeth, poured the blue liquid onto her snowball.

“Probably because it’s not as good as what you’ll find from the shops that really care, or the kind you could make at my da—father’s office, but you know, the mass produced stuff isn’t half-bad,” Snowie said, before she gleefully chomped down on her snowball.

“Anything you’d like in particular?” Winter asked as she showed off the rest of the bag over to Diana.

Diana looked uneasily at the sea of junk food, then back up at Winter with a frown.

“Don’t worry, I’m sure there’s something healthy in here…” Winter said as she sat down and really dug into the mess.

“There’s a handful of sandwiches and a salad in there!” Whitley called out. “Don’t take both the egg sandwiches, one of them’s mine!”

“Found them, thanks, little brother!” Winter said as she dug them out. “Any catch your eye?” she asked as she held them out to Diana.

Diana looked at the plastic wrappers, and the proud labels of Mistral’s ubiquitous “Sari-Sari” convenience store franchise, and said, “I suppose I’ll take the strawberry cream…”

“Good choice!” Winter said, putting the rest back into the bag.

“I’m really rather sorry for inconveniencing you like this,” Diana said as Winter unwrapped the sandwich.

“It’s no trouble at all,” Winter replied. “Though if it bothers you that much, I suppose I could just wedge a tray on your chest to your chin, let you try and eat this with just your mouth?” she asked, smiling.

“… I’m not that sorry.”

Winter chuckled, and started feeding her.

“So!” Snowie started. “Diana, your family planning on flying over from Vale to visit any time soon?”

“No, actually,” Diana replied, before she took a dainty, careful bite out of her sandwich, started humming shortly after she started chewing.

“Aww, that’s sad,” Snowie said. “You want our help making a video to send to them, while they can’t come? I found that always helped when my parents were still going off on expeditions.”

Diana’s chewing slowed down, before she swallowed, and smiled politely. “The gesture is appreciated, Ms. Schnee… but I’d really rather not.”

Snowie paused for a moment, before she nodded, and went back to her snowball.

“Anyone else want more?” Winter called out after empty containers were thrown into the trash, or resealed for later. “Plenty of snacks still left in here,” she said, gently shaking the bag.

Whitley took his sandwich, and Taiyang grabbed some “to go” for himself, but otherwise everyone answered in the negative.

“So, anything else we can do for you guys while we’re here?” Snowie asked.

“We were just planning on going back to watching Starlight Crusaders, thanks,” Weiss said as she picked up the remote, Whitley hurriedly unwrapped his sandwich in preparation. “There’s really not much else we can do when I’m the only one with a working pair of arms.”

“I could recommend some pretty cool voice-recording apps we use at the Bunker!” Taiyang offered. “Free of charge, too, though getting support if something goes wrong can be a little… iffy, because they’re all experimental.”

“The offer is appreciated, Mr. Xiao Long, but Blake and Lotte have been doing an excellent job of transcribing from our diction,” Diana replied.

“I just wish Constanze wasn’t so busy with the mind palace machines and her own projects, though,” Ruby said. “She’s basically the only person that can help me take down weapons engineering notes.”

“I’m sure you’ll be able to get right back to it soon enough, Ruby,” Taiyang said, ruffling her hair.

“Maybe I could try helping with that?” Snowie said. “I take a lot of notes and dictation for my parents when they’re busy, I could probably do it.”

Taiyang chuckled. “Now I’m not saying I don’t believe you, but I have to warn you: my daughter’s thought process when she designs or studies weapons is a giant, jumbled mess of jargon, doodles, and schematics flying everywhere all at once.”

Snowie snorted. “And you’ve just basically described what my brain is like 24/7! I’ve got this, probably,” she said as she stood up.

“I’ve seen parts of Ruby’s journal when she sent me info on the Shiny Rod, mom, he’s really not kidding!” Winter said.

“Be my guest, though!” Taiyang said as he stood up, and gestured to the chair he was sitting in.

“You sure about this, Snowie?” Ruby asked as Snowie sat down beside her.

“Positive!” Snowie replied. “Jumping headlong into things without being entirely sure what I’m doing is kind of my thing! I mean... it doesn’t always work as well I think it will, but I work best when I’m figuring things out as I’m going along!” she said as she pulled out her scroll, complete with her own quill.

“Alrighty then!” Ruby said.

Whitley nudged Weiss to resume playing Starlight Crusaders, she did, and the others went back to watching the show. She found herself frequently looking away from the screen and listening in to Ruby and Snowie’s conversation, however.

“So, what exactly are you thinking of here?” Snowie asked as she got her quill at the ready.

“Well, I was thinking about trying to make some sort of recoil buffer for Shooting Star, hopefully one that will also work when it fuses with the Shiny Rod to become Shining Star,” Ruby started.

“There’s just WAY too much force that thing is capable of whenever Akko chops with it, and short of starting to learn how to throw it; let go just before each impact, and hope it doesn’t hit her or anyone else when it inevitably flies off in the opposite direction as soon as all that aura force is discharged; or chop really, really, really gently with it, we need to drastically increase her upper body strength, muscle mass, and possibly even aura reserves if we’re ever going to be able to use Shining Star without ending up in the hospital, or causing more excessive, collateral damage if we try to use the firearm component.

“It’s really bad because we can’t really use any of my momentum harnessing and/or controlling techniques and tech I use with Crescent Rose because Shining Star’s a shotgun-axe, and it’s a lot less aerodynamic.

“On the plus side, I might be able to just freely attach them to the weapon thanks to the already bulky design, but then that might necessitate Akko having to get used to the entirely new balance and weight of it.

“But do the buffers need to be on Shooting Star itself?” Snowie countered as she continued scribbling without much effort. “My daddy’s robot limbs have a lot of internal buffers and servos to amplify and compensate for all the stress, damage, and physical labour he puts himself through, not to mention all the upgrades he made specifically for surpassing his biological limbs’ limits, or making it a better option than using his originals.

“He prefers punching Grimm in the face with his robot hand for a very good reason! You know, aside from the fact that it’s easier and less painful to repair if it breaks, than his flesh-and-bone hand.”

Ruby blinked. “Huh. That’ll definitely be much more expensive, and I’ll have to call some friends back at the Bunker who specialized in exoskeletal enhancement rigs, but yeah, it could be better in the long-run!

“Maybe we could even go past recoil absorption, and go straight into power amplification, with all the extra leeway.”

“Thermoelectric generator to charge and power servos, make the second chop hurt much more than the first?” Snowie offered. “Though we’ll have to limit how much energy they can actually store, or else we’ll probably blow Akko’s arms off from the reaction...”

“And even if they do stay on, they’ll likely shatter all her bones, probably beyond repair this time...” Ruby muttered.

The two of them furrowed their brows as they considered a way around of this problem, before two metaphorical lightbulbs went off in their heads at the same time.

“Her semblance!” Ruby and Snowie said at the same time, their eyes shining with a similar glow.

“Temporary invincibility, plus a strength boost from the inhibition of her pain receptors, right?” Ruby asked.

“Exactly!” Snowie said, furiously scribbling now. “If we can train Akko to activate it JUST before it comes into contact, every single time, she can probably decimate whatever she’s attacking without completely fucking herself up!” The light in her eyes faded, her writing slowed down. “… And probably everyone around and behind her, too, because the reaction will likely send her spinning, or flying off at an angle like a missile, and then we better hope there isn’t anything hard and solid that she’ll hit while she still has high velocity, because her semblance would be deactivated and recharging by then, so...

She sighed and looked down. “… Never mind, it’s a terrible idea...” she mumbled as she put her quill down.

“Hey, don’t feel bad, we’re brainstorming!” Ruby said. “It’s a feature, not a bug! And besides, I got a great idea for how we can redirect all that force away from her arms, inspiration thanks to Diana’s semblance...”

Snowie blinked, looked at Ruby in a mix of wariness and fear, before she hesitantly took her quill back up. “Okay…? I’m listening…!”

Whitley gently nudged Weiss on the shoulder. “Don’t worry: I’m certain it’s simply just the two of them platonically nerd-bonding, nothing more,” he said teasingly.

Weiss blinked, and looked at him. “What are you talking about…?”

Whitley he looked at Ruby and Snowie deep in conversation once more, then back at Weiss’ confused expression. “Oh... oh, I see how it is,” he said, nodding and looking satisfied.

Weiss’ eyes widened. “Are you--?!” Her cheeks turned red. “Look here, you little shit: this isn’t one of your yuri manga or fanfics when the team full of girls eventually hook up with each other!” she hissed. “This is real life, Ruby is just my teammate and my friend, and if I may remind you again, I swore to hold off on the romance ever since Aqua...!”

“I believe you!” Whitley said, holding up his free hand. “Calm down, I believe you, Weiss!”

Weiss glared at him, before she sulked and went back to watching Starlight Crusaders.

“Here’s to hoping it goes better than it did with Aqua...” Whitley thought as he turned back to the screen, a small smile spreading on his face.

Yes, the Bunker also has a storage room full of robot helping legs, giant or otherwise. The other body parts and non-human limbs share a series of rooms together, because they’re not nearly as numerous enough to justify having their own dedicated storage.

No, Weiss is DEFINITELY not afraid her mother is going to attempt to make a move on Ruby, it’s more a “I’m jealous I can’t do this thing that my new, good friend clearly enjoys so much and needs at the moment because her arms are broken, and realize I could have learned to do it if I bothered to learn more about mechanical engineering when I was younger, and now I can’t even concentrate on my favourite show because I really kinda hate myself right now for not being here to help my teammate.” sort of feeling.

#little witch academia #rwby #fanfic #and the awrd goes to #dianakko #white rose

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chromemuffin · 7 years

Photo

Shoukoku no Altair Liveblog (Chapter 6)

The first volume was a wild ride filled with more gorgeous art than I had room to gush about.

Let me just say that I love the color palettes used in these covers. Although I don’t really have a good sense for color balance, none of the elements of these extremely detailed and busy covers seem to clash with one another.

There is just so much going on here, even the dark blue sash around his midsection has detailing. The collar, cuffs, and shoes have a really nice flower/vine motif going on, and interestingly there is a lock and key hanging off the shirt collar (which is made to look like an actual collar). Then there is that tassel (how do you even draw knots like that), and the ones crossing his chest. I also like the little flower buttons going up the sleeves?

idk let’s move on.

I have run out of Japanese raws, which is a good thing. Cuts down on my language ramblings a bit.

Chapter 6: The Council of Generals

We start the volume off with a portrait of Zaganos walking like a badass. Lots of thorns on the frame, and one exits the frame to become that dangly...thing in the back with the eyes and idk I really need to know more about Turkish designs to say anything. I did notice a flower and moon charm thing in the back.

So, first we get a review and additional information about the Diwan, which is nice. This series has a good balance of breaking away to ramble about the world’s structure before going back to the action with our main characters.

Anyway, I love Kato’s attention to detail (have I mentioned that already lol) that extends even to background characters. We never got the name of any of the Araba characters, yet they each looked distinct from one another. Same with the other pasha (there are 42 in all, wow). There’s a good range of features (especially nose shapes, here), but even their clothes and chins are different.

Assuming this is the head-honcho, the buyuk pasha (are these titles capitalized...?) who has glorious facial hair and a very, very large turban.

Oh god, this post is going to be so long. These panels are all really tall.

“And most important of all, military and foreign policy, which are handled by the third convention and decided by a unanimous vote between the 30 vizers.” In case you can’t see it in that image. Interesting how the most ‘important’ section is the only one in the dark, so to say. As we’ve seen, foreign policy and the potential for military action can be a very shade business.

I shrink every image to fit the theme I’m using, just in case it gets wonky if the picture is too large, but it so does not do this shot justice. Just look at the architecture! @the-golden-city has several posts picking apart these tiny details throughout the series, although I haven’t gotten around to reading all of them because for once I want to avoid spoilers.

This hall/chamber is probably based off this real life building in Istanbul:

Even the chandelier, and the railings, match. Getting back to Altair, though, I vaguely see Zaganos, Mahmut, and Ibrahim at the far right.

Ok, so they are asking why Ibrahim left Hisar for Altin in the first place, which I had almost forgotten about by this point.

Huh, I had to go back to the second chapter. Didn’t quite remember that Zaganos had told everyone to meet up to exchange information.

Whoops, gut reaction there. Why is he so surprised though...? Ibrahim told him why they were called to Altin, so was it that last bit “In regards to that case, I can’t call it anything but recklessness” that shocked him?

Also, add another intimidating face to the cast. The Buyuk Pasha (have a feeling “Pasha” should be in caps) is definitely a guy you do not want to cross.

Lol

“Mahmut Pasha, quiet, we did not give you permission to speak.”

“Ok next matter of business.”

“Mahmut Pasha, your turn.”

Oh? I meant to speculate about the aftermath in my last liveblog, but ended up forgetting (chapter 5 was a long one, I was exhausted by the end). We don’t actually know how much time has passed between now and the uprising, only that it’s no longer the month of Seker.

...Are you capable of smiling (without smirking). He is very displeased, yet again.

That splotch of blood. o.o He got stabbed last chapter and is still up and about. You really need to get that patched up, Mahmut. On the next page he’s actually holding his left arm up to it, so.

I’M SO GLAD NO ONE ENDED UP DYING. Seems they may not be out of the water yet, though, with the council deliberating as to their fates.

His mood instantly switches here, from happy/relieved that his friend and his family are safe, to serious. While Ibrahim says it with a smile on his face in front of his kids, he and Mahmut realize that it’s not over yet.

He realizes his own limits here. Things seemed sort of bleak before, but that was nothing compared to what happens after.

Dude doesn’t even bother giving him a real answer. You could confirm or deny, you know, instead of being like that. Though I guess he figures it doesn’t matter at this point, which is true. Or he just likes being mysterious.

I bet Zaganos’s expression would be the same if they had announced the opposite result. I sort of guessed that he’d be let off, but I still breathed a sigh of relief when they reinstated him. I’m weak, ok.

Anyway, more Mahmut expressions! Shocked makes him look younger than he is, and serious makes him more mature. I like how, well, mature he is. These are high stakes, and he knows the severity of the situation well.

Aww look at his shell-shocked face. I guess Mahmut really guessed/feared that they wouldn’t forgive what Ibrahim had done. From the standpoint of someone in their universe though, the result they got must have been very unlikely.

He held it together until he left! In isolation, that face looks a little derpy though.

AW. I needed that. I always love it when that chain with the tassel and (don’t know if it’s a whistle haha that thing) are drawn. And the asymmetry of his outfits. I think I mentioned that in my first liveblog. I usually do not like asymmetrical designs much, but.

And this! This look of unease. I have a baaad feeling about this.

Mahmut’s thought process is fun to read.

HAHA WHAT. WHAT.

WELL. First, you’ve gotta appreciate this extreme, divine irony going on where the sun is shining on him full force, and yet he’s lost so much in this single instant.

AND THEN. Well, I guess his demotion has to do with the whole war thing. It seems a good portion of them want to go to war, and up until this moment Mahmut has had the initiative and position to resist that. Just because he was younger didn’t mean he had less power as a pasha, but if he no longer has that title...

He’s too stunned to even be sad that his dream, which he had just achieved, was snatched away like that.

But lol at least the council is clear in their intentions: “Please think of it as a sort of permanent house arrest.”

This shot of him walking away...

Talk about a tough position to be in. He was punished the most, even though he did the most to resolve the situation. He’s happy that his friend wasn’t executed, but this is the price.

I love these shots of his front in darkness, with his back to the light. IT’S ALSO REALLY SAD.

As shitty as it is, Halil does have a point. And he prefaces saying this with a “Mah-kun”, so you know he really means it. He clearly cares for this boy, and it’s probably not easy seeing him crash so hard, but Mahmut was simply too young and inexperienced for the position he held. His thought process is getting there in some aspects, but in others he hasn’t experienced enough about the complexities of the world around him. He knows what he wants to change, but not how to do it.

I wonder why they bothered making him a pasha so young, anyway. Turkiye hasn’t gone to war since he was young, so he doesn’t have experience in that, either.

It’s probably even more painful because everything Halil is saying is true. It wasn’t a malicious decision. His look here is like a mix of devastated and a quiet sort of revelation. Like: “....oh.”

Then why did you guys freaking promote him to pasha in the first place. Just saying. But, now it’s out.

Weeelll, at least you’re not banned for life.

God I love this kid so much. He was indignant before he started talking to Halil, but now he realizes the gravity of what he has done. He’s not stubbornly rejecting or acting out against that logic, he’s mature enough to own up to his mistake.

And now...

This is a terrifying “oh shit” moment. He realizes here just how much his mistake has cost him, and not just him, but the country. He has no power to do prevent a war now that he got himself kicked out, essentially. If he’d stayed a pasha, maybe he’d be able to exert enough influence to alter events.

But his expression here as he realizing this is really good.

WHY IS EVERYTHING SAD BASKING IN THE LIGHT OF A THOUSAND SUNS.

Zaganos is heeere. Never know how things are going to go with him around.

HAHAHA. Oh, Zaganos. “I made a mistake and your impulsivity somehow helped me out of it. (thanks I guess) But what you did was still stupid as hell.” That was such backhanded compliments/acknowledgment that you might as well not have said anything at all aside from “That was stupid.”

Oh? You’re actually giving him something?

It’s something useful! I love the little details on this bauble. The intricate knot, the little crescent moon.

Wait, don’t blow up and get angry, I want to know why he’s entrusting this thing to you.

So Zaganos did indeed know and let everything proceed, all of this just to make one very strong point to the council. Geez.

Mahmut, you look so tiny next to him.

This is why I love this kid as a protagonist already. He is intelligent, smart, and hard-working, but he isn’t infallible. Youthful arrogance and inexperience was his downfall. It doesn’t even seem like youthful arrogance while you’re experiencing he situation in Hisar with him. He’s the protagonist, and you know he’s right in that he couldn’t just leave Ibrahim to go down for a crime he didn’t willingly commit.

But, now that he’s realized it, he also acknowledges that it’s pointless to dwell on it and beat himself up. And in that sense, we can see he’s already grown from how he was as a child. Then, he lost hope that he could ever improve and needed Ibrahim to talk him out of his tears.

What Ibrahim gave him is actually really precious, I’m dying here ok, he made Mahmut realize that if he works hard at it, improves himself, he can achieve his dream. Now he knows that he’s just going to need more effort than he thought.

He gets frustrated a lot, and it usually seems to be about himself. I feel bad for him, but on the other hand, like when he got knocked off his horse in cirit and the older guy admonished him, he really needed it.

It didn’t take him long, not even a full day it looks like, to bounce back and resolve himself on a new goal. Seems like his journey has gone a little backwards (don’t protags in manga usually work their way up from rock bottom; Mahmut had one of the highest positions in the country after coming from the bottom up, and now he has to do it again).

This has been a sort of transition chapter (I wouldn’t call it quiet), but by god did it have impact.

← back・onward →

#shoukoku no altair #the very long altair liveblog #long post #image heavy post #im sorry i curse a lot #please let me know if it bothers you #altair vol 2

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ciathyzareposts · 4 years

Text

Game 370: Final Fantasy (1987)

This title screen doesn’t occur until a couple of hours into the game.

Final Fantasy

Japan

Square (developer); Nintendo (publisher)

Released in 1987 for NES in Japan, 1989 for MSX, 1990 for NES in North America

Remade numerous times for various platforms, including mobile, between 1994 and 2016

Date Started: 11 June 2020

I decided it was time. There are a few things that I want to do in the future that all require me to have had a look at the first game in this apparently never-ending series. I had an original plan to cover the game in a single entry, as I’ve typically done with console games, but it’s clear to me now that to do it justice, the entry would have to be the size of small novel. Keep in mind that I’m fitting this in between my regularly scheduled titles, so I’ll cover as much as I can in this initial entry, you can all tell me what I’m doing wrong, and I can pick it up again at a future date. We’ve seen eight Japanese RPGs prior to 1987 on this blog, representing a fairly wide range of subgenres, including a text/RPG hybrid (The Dragon and Princess, 1982), a Wizardry-inspired first-person dungeon crawler (The Black Onyx, 1984), and a number of console-style action games with limited RPG elements (Dragon Slayer, 1984; Deadly Towers, 1986). While these games don’t share much, they do have characteristics common for a genre in its toddler years–lots of unevenness, stumbling, and experimentation along ultimately unproductive paths.

The game’s status screen. Those four orbs in the upper-left are going to become important somehow.

To me, 1987 feels like the first year that Japanese RPGs learned how to walk. (We do have to keep in mind that there are more than 40 untranslated games between 1982 and 1986 that might change my mind.) The Ancient Land of Ys, Sorcerian, and now Final Fantasy feel like whole products in the way that their predecessors do not. That doesn’t mean that they’re original; Final Fantasy, as we’ll see, is mostly a composite of several American RPGs, particularly Wizardry, Ultima, and Phantasie. But when borrowing elements from a previous title, there’s a difference between doing it blindly and doing it craftily. In playing most clones, you get the sense that the developer of the clone didn’t know any better; that he included an element because he couldn’t think of an alternative; that he didn’t have enough experience with the scope of previous RPGs to truly understand when something works and why. Final Fantasy is something of the opposite. It strikes me as a product of someone who has really analyzed the best American RPGs and has deliberately created a composite of their strongest characteristics. In fact, I’m willing to venture that at the time, it might not have been possible to create a better console RPG experience. It exemplifies the simplicity that we have come to expect from a console of the era. It doesn’t bog itself down in character creation or in a long backstory, and it requires minimal preparation in terms of reading a manual. It is the very essence of plug-and-play. As I started playing, I initially saw its approach as an object of criticism, but as the hours wore on, I began to understand. The game has a relatively detailed backstory; it just chooses to feed it to the player in small bites. It comes with an 84-page manual, but the first two pages cover everything you need to know to get started (the rest quite literally walk you through the entire first half of the game). Its one-line dialogues seem less like a limitation of the platform and more like an effort not to exhaust the player with too much text. I don’t always like the result, but I admire its success in what it wanted to achieve.

The only backstory you get.

So little has been provided on the backstory so far that I’m not even sure how to summarize it. A single-screen opening text crawl says that the world is in trouble (for some reason), but a prophecy says that four warriors will set things right. Enter your four warriors, “each holding an ORB.” That’s enough to start you off, but with every town and castle you visit, you learn just a little bit more. Not in the way–I hasten to add–that you learn more about the main plot of, say, The Legacy or Ultima VII. Those games have mysteries that you slowly unravel, but at least it’s perfectly clear from the beginning who you are and what your basic mission is. In Final Fantasy, on the other hand, you get the sense that your own characters know more than you do. After all, they each have an ORB. Why? Where did they get them? Why do people keep calling them “Warriors of Light”? Character creation allows you to select four characters from six classes: fighter, thief, black belt, red mage, white mage, and black mage. Aside from the “black belt,” these seem mostly inspired by Wizardry, with the white mage taking the role of the priest (mostly defensive and healing magic), the black mage taking the role of the mage (mostly offensive spells), and the red mage taking the role of a bishop (able to cast both). The inclusion of a “black belt” class made me chuckle with remembrance of a time in the 1980s when “black belts” were considered the ne plus ultra of martial artists, and you had several games of that title and movies with black belt protagonists. And then dweeby kids we went to high school with started getting black belts, ruining the entire illusion, and we started worshiping more nebulous figures like ninjas whose designations couldn’t be bestowed by the local used car dealer running a “dojo” on the side.

Party creation is just names and classes.

Each character is assigned starting attributes in strength, agility, intelligence, vitality, and luck, this list coming from Wizardry but lacking “wisdom.” From these are calculated a variety of derived statistics: damage done, hit percentage, damage absorbed, and evade percentage.

My white mage’s statistics towards the end of this session.

Once you’ve selected a party, you’re locked in for the game. I selected poorly. I wasn’t paying attention to what the manual said about the different mage classes, and I went with a fighter, a thief, a black belt, and a white mage. A couple hours later, I realized that I really wanted two mages, or at least a red mage instead of a white. The thief doesn’t seem terribly useful–there really isn’t any thieving to be done in the game–and if I could do it over I would have replaced him with a black mage. My selections mean that I miss out on most of the offensive magic in the game. However, each class later gets a “prestige class” upgrade that introduces some more magic options.

The opening scene.

Gameplay begins outside a castle with an attached town (it looks like six attached towns, in fact, but the town icons all lead to the same locations). Towns have shops that sell weapons, armor, spells, resurrection, and potions and magic items, the selection getting more advanced as the game progresses. Inns are one of the few places where you can legally save the game (like Zelda, the cartridge came with an internal battery), the others being a variety of temporary magical structures (tents, cabins, and houses) that you can purchase from the magic shop. (Inns restore all hit points while these magic items restore only some.) Either way, save points are limited, and you have to pay to save.

Buying an initial selection of weapons.

Checking in at the inn.

Towns also have about half a dozen wandering NPCs, each of whom deliver a sentence or two when you approach them. From the ones in this town, I learn that someone named Lukahn foretold our arrival, and that he has gone to “join his colleagues at Crescent Lake”; the princess has been kidnapped; and the city of Pravoka lies to the east.

I get a hint from an NPC north of two magic shops.

At the nearby castle, we learn that Princess Sara has been kidnapped by someone named “Garland,” a former knight until something happened. (If the name seems familiar, it’s also the name of the duke in Zeliard.) He took the princess to a temple to the northeast. For a while, I’m dumb enough to think that this will be the main plot of the game.

The king asks for my help. I suppose we’ll find out who “Lukahn” is later.

So far, we’ve encountered a character system similar to Wizardry (classes, attributes, prestige classes, leveling) and a top-down exploration system with towns and NPC dialogue similar to Ultima, but outside we run into combat that couldn’t come from anywhere but Phantasie. Enemies face the party on the combat screen (left-to-right here, instead of top-down). You specify an action for each character–attack, cast a spell, use an item, drink a potion, or flee–and the game threads your actions with the attackers’ based on an underlying initiative score. As each character acts, his icon leaps forward and has an accompanying animation. This is cute at the beginning but (like Phantasie) soon just adds unnecessary time to the encounter. So does the silly dance that the kids do when they’ve won a battle.

Battle options against a party full of pirates.

Unlike Phantasie, there isn’t much consideration of enemy rank–any character can attack any enemy. There is a consideration of character rank. The character appearing first gets about 50% of the attacks, the next 25%, then 15%, then 10%. It’s thus important to keep the strongest, most well-armored character at the top. This is particularly annoying because certain enemy effects, like stunning and poison, plus fleeing battle, seems to cause the party to spontaneously re-arrange, and you spend a lot of wasted time untangling them. The magic system is a hybrid. Final Fantasy uses spells with names and effects similar to Phantasie, with numbers indicating relative power, though all shortened to four characters for space reasons. So instead of “Healing 2” and “Fireflash 3,” we get HEL2 and FIR3. There are four spells per level and spellcasters can only learn three of them, which must create real agony for the red mage, who is mixing white and black magic. Anyway, instead of Phantasie‘s magic points system, Final Fantasy uses the “slots” system of Wizardry, in which each character gets a certain number of spell allocations per level, all of them restored when you rest. I find the combat system fun and relatively tactical when exploring dungeons (where you can’t save or rest) and facing boss-level enemies. You have to carefully ration your spell slots, strategically use fleeing to preserve your resources, cast the right spells for the foes you’re facing, and find the right balance between concentrating your attacks and spreading them out, so that you kill the most powerful foes as quickly as possible, but don’t waste extra attacks on creatures killed by an earlier character.

The white mage doesn’t get many damage spells, but she does get one that only works against undead.

In general, however, combat becomes exhausting quickly. Both outdoors and in dungeons, you get yanked into combat (it’s always a surprise; you don’t see enemies on the screen) every 5 to 10 seconds of travel time. As long as you keep an eye on health levels, most of the outdoor combats are of negligible danger, so all they do is sap time. NESTopia comes with an “alternate speed” mode that you can activate by holding down the TAB key, but it only goes to a maximum of 240%, not the “warp” of other emulators. So I spend a lot of time just holding TAB and mashing my way through combat. The game is pretty relentless in its generation of “random” encounters, too. If it decides that in 8 seconds, you’re going to face 3 ogres, and they’re going to get a surprise attack, there’s no fiddling that you can do to save yourself, not even using emulator save states. You can’t pause and wait until they pass like you can in Dragon Warrior because their appearance is based on movement rather than time. Duck into a town and the clock happily pauses until you leave again and then resumes. And the list of numbers generated for combat must be different than those generated for other purposes, because you can’t avoid the encounter by, say, casting a spell to force it to use the next set of numbers for a different purpose. You’re going to face those 3 ogres, and that’s that–unless you want to save and shut down the machine. There isn’t a lot of reason to avoid any one specific encounter anyway, but I thought it was amusing how futile it is to even try.

Multi-level dungeons, where you cannot rest or save for long periods, are hard to survive without grinding.

You don’t want to avoid encounters anyway because you need the experience. This is an extremely grindy game. I’m aware that some party combinations–four fighters?–might lessen the amount of grind early in the game, but overall it’s clearly designed with grinding in mind. The manual even tells you to go grind (or, in its words, “power-up by battling”) in strategic locations. You not only need grinding for leveling but also for gold, as each new town offers more expensive weapons, armor, and spells. Easily half the time I’ve spent on this game so far has been spent grinding.

The manual makes it clear that grinding is expected.

Leveling up happens immediately after the battle in which you cross the threshold, and like Wizardry, you get boosts in a random selection of attributes. The frequency of leveling has thus far been satisfying enough.

My thief levels up at the end of combat.

That leaves the game’s plot, which has been distressingly linear for this session, at least. What looks like a relatively open world map artificially channels the player through the use of terrain. At the beginning, the player can’t leave a small strip of land between the castle and the temple being occupied by Garland. Finishing the first mission is a simple matter of entering the temple and finding Garland in the first room. He attacks alone and dies quickly; the random monsters roaming throughout the temple are harder than him.

Battling the first “boss” enemy.

The princess is freed and returns to the castle, and one of the nice things about the game is that NPC dialogue in the castle and nearby town changes to reflect her rescue. The king and queen now offer thanks, and other NPCs who had lines about the princess have substitutes instead. Even in its later editions, Ultima didn’t often make such concessions to the changing game world, and it’s one of the several small signs that more care and craft went into Final Fantasy than the typical RPG of the 1980s. In gratitude for her rescue, the princess gives the party a lute. The king has a bridge built from the land you’ve been able to explore to the main continent, extending the party’s range. He also tells the party to “make the ORBS shine again,” which is another clue as to the developing plot. As the party crosses the bridge, the title screen finally appears, suggesting that the game so far has been a prologue. A few text windows add here that the ORBS used to shine with light 2,000 years ago.

Everyone in the area has different dialogue once you’ve rescued the princess.

The party next encounters a witch named Matoya living in a cave to the north. She demands the return of her crystal. If you talk to one of her magically animated brooms, you get a secret key combination that brings up a map of the world with the party’s location and the locations of places to visit clearly annotated.

The game world. You start north of the inner sea on the southern continent.

Moving on, the city of Pravoka has been invaded by pirates. If the party wins a single battle against the pirates, the pirate captain (Bikke) capitulates and gives the party his ship. This opens up the game world a little. The problem is that the ship can only embark and disembark at docks, and the dock to which it is attached is on the continent’s inner sea. There are only a few places to land from here. A variety of sea monsters attack the ship, but frankly I wonder why we bother to stop and fight some of them. You can imagine that that the “sahags” are clambering aboard the ship and engaging us in melee combat, but why are we fighting sharks?

This game likes to include Dungeons and Dragons enemies but with skipped letters. I suppose “sahags” are sahuagins, but they could also be seahags.

West along the sea, the party comes to Elfland, another structure with a castle and town. The castle was sacked a few years ago by someone named Astos, who put their prince in a magical slumber. Only some herb from Matoya will awaken him. While searching for Matoya’s crystal, I come across a castle where the king says that Astos betrayed him. He asks me to get his crown from the Cave of Marsh.

We find our ship waiting in Pravoka’s port.

The Cave is easily the hardest part of the game so far. A three-level dungeon, it is full of tough random encounters, including plenty of enemies that can poison the party, for which we need to keep a large stock of curing potions. I had to grind, try, grind, and try again for several hours before I was able to survive the journey to the third level, the boss combat against several wizards (who are guarding the crown), and the journey back.

A difficult combat that I had trouble winning with all my characters alive.

Returning the crown to the mysterious king, we find that he has tricked us and that he’s Astos. His triumph is short-lived, and soon the party has left the castle, Matoya’s crystal in our hands, Astos’s body on the floor. Thus begins a lot of backtracking. We have to circle back through Elfland to the ship, take the ship to Pravoka, then walk to Matoya’s cave. Matoya takes the crystal and gratefully gives us the herb for the prince.

The prince needs an herb. It has a different connotation if you say it that way.

We thus reverse our travel and go all the way back to Elfland. The prince is awakened, and he gives the party the mystic key.

I feel like we could have saved ourselves a lot of time by taking it from him while he was sleeping.

I was wondering when I’d finally get this. Throughout the game so far–at both castles, the temple, and the Cave of Marsh–there have been multiple locked doors that require this mystic key. Now that I have it, I have to backtrack through just about every location I’ve visited so far. It’s mostly worth it, as some of the items I find are powerful weapons armor, but it’s still a lot of time.

The runesword is a decent weapon.

All the way back at the original castle, the key opens a door to a treasure chest that contains TNT, which turns out to be prized by the king of the dwarves, who is building a channel between the inner sea and outer. Once we deliver the TNT to him, he finishes the channel and now the ship can sail just about anywhere, finally opening up the world. I suspect I’ll still continue to find plot linearity, but we’ll see.

Now we can get around.

I’m used to console games making things easy for the player and not requiring the type of mapping and note-taking that a computer RPG often requires. This game is a little different; if you don’t take some notes, you’ll swiftly lose track of who wants what object and why. The manual tries to instill a note-taking ethos in the player by suggesting bullet points at the end of each city. That’s fine for me, in 2020, at the computer, but I don’t know how I would have felt about it in 1990 on the couch. To the extent that console RPGs have any appeal to me, it’s that I can play them somewhat mindlessly from a semi-recumbent (or, let’s face it, sometimes fully recumbent) position. If I reach for an end table, it’s going to be at most for a potato chip or bottle of soda.

I haven’t spoken much about the graphics. I like the monster graphics. As for the protagonists, they are what they are. As usual, they look like children. The manual is clearly written for children. There’s something childish about all RPGs, perhaps all video games, but I wish that Japanese RPGs didn’t have to emphasize it so much. You have to imagine that it limited their markets. Kids may not mind role-playing kids but probably also don’t mind role-playing adults. Adults, meanwhile, probably don’t want to role-play kids. I hear a lot from readers who had Nintendos in the 1980s when they were kids and still look upon the games fondly. I don’t think I’ve heard from a single person who was an adult in the 1980s and started on the Nintendo. This is not true, of course, about personal computers.

The manual not only walks you through the first part of the game step-by-step, but it also provides a summary of the walkthrough.

But beyond the graphics, there’s an intriguing complexity to this one, and it helps me understand why the series became so popular. There’s still a lot to say about the influence of the game and the people who made it, so we’ll have a second entry after I’ve won The Legacy and Ultima VII.

Time so far: 7 hours

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/game-370-final-fantasy-1987/

#retro games #dos games #retro #crpg #adventure #amiga #oldcomputers #8bit #16bit #blog #repost

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chromemuffin · 7 years

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Shoukoku no Altair Liveblog (Chapter 5)

A lovely image. The lines are lighter/clearer in the digital version, but this one has the translation of the names and their titles so. I just love these portraits though, especially how some of them fall out of the frame (Shara! And the tall dudes). And wow, for once you don’t look like a tiny child, Mahmut! He still comes up to Zaganos’s chin, though he is a little taller than Shara. (despite me dragging him for his stature, I’m not much better irl. I am also short enough to be inconvenienced by the world around me.)

Before I even get started on the gut-wrenching situation Mahmut has found himself in from last chapter, let me comment more on those portraits.

I love the detailing on the frame, and the designs at the bottom that symbolize each character. Not going through all of them, but here are some nice details I noticed:

Iskander looks puffed up. :3

I keep meaning to mention this, but haven’t found a place to bring it up since noticing it after the first chapter. Iskander is shaded so that there is a light band in the shape of a crescent moon on his forehead.

Louis’s pants/leggings/whatever these are have some sort of pattern or embroidery on them. The manga-ka’s attention to detail is nothing short of amazing. Not to mention the circles on Mahmut’s standard outfit, which have to be drawn every time he appears in it.

So the eyepatch twins are Colbert and Eleanor? I remember Eleanor’s name mentioned last chapter. And seems they are also from the Cult of the Red Snake, as is evident by the Arbok-like creature. Arbok is based on the Indian cobra, for the pattern on its hood, but I’m not well versed in snake species so idk what the symbolism here is. It looks very happy for some reason, though.

Chapter 5: The Citadel

Onto the actual chapter! We left off with Mahmut getting punched in the gut by an ugly rusty looking club of a sword.

Chill, dude. Seriously.

Poor Mahmut.

I don’t think his leg gets cut here, there’s no blood, so does that mean you are supposed to use that sword to bludgeon your enemy to death? It looks like a club, really it does.

(And I can kind of see how this outfit was supposed to be a dress, there are just so many folds and stripes involved it just looked like one big cloak.)

Stop being creepy, eyepatch dude. The font makes it more ominous too. (Also, he has very pointy ears.)

Oh? What have you got there, Iskander? The basket Shara carried their clothes in? Looks like Mahmut sent him on a mission of some sort. Also, an interesting note. Apparently golden eagles fly with a slight V shape in their wings, like an airplane.

Interesting, another crest. This is the place Leredrick is from, if I recall.

Oh, man. This lady’s dissatisfied face.

Ha! ‘I’m outta here’. She even does a little hand wave to say, ‘this isn’t worth my time’. She’s so done.

Well, that escalated quickly.

A lot of these characters pull off dramatic, menacing, sinister, and ‘I don’t give two fucks’ very, very well.

HAHA yeah awkward moment when you realize it was all a sham and there is absolutely nothing you can do to take it back.

But, who is this I see approaching:

Iskander, what are you up to.

Looks like a bird and a dancer are here to save the day.

OF COURSE, eyepatch lady has to go and ruin it. Oh nooo, Shara.

So it was the container Mahmut keeps meat in for Iskander, not the basket. Poor birdie, gotta work nights too. xD Eagles aren’t nocturnal. And he has to sacrifice his food to boot.

But where he is dropping it off?

“Once the Imperial Army gets here, we will have to fight on their side. Once we do, the Empire will save the hostages. All we can do now is hope the Empire will keep their promise.” I’m not so sure about that anymore, Ibrahim. They seem kind of trigger happy.

And back to Zaganos. What have you been doing this whole time? Preparations I guess.

Uh...what is that...Zaganos is the ‘Poison’ General so...I love the detailing on the jars/bottles, though. Each one is different for some reason. Are they each a different poison or did he just decide to stick them in fancy containers? Yeah, they didn’t exactly mass produce things back then, but these aren’t even all in the same style.

Zaganos really does not hold back, does he. Though he does seem to be thinking about the decision here, it is a pretty underhanded tactic. Well, at least he’s not jumping at the bit to use it.

Well, who do we have here? People from the Empire, right. Why are they attacking the guys sent by Louis...? Aren’t they on the same side...And since the name of the eyepatch people’s cult is Swedish, maybe that means they are more like mercenaries Louis hires, rather than actual soldiers from Balt-Rhein.

Gllad is an awkward name to my English speaking self. You don’t see that consonant cluster every day, and it’s one letter off from Glad (in Japanese it is グララット, guraratto, so yeah, that matches).

I like this more formal introduction to these two, though, purely for the fact that the antagonist actually got injured (it’s like, a scratch on the arm but whatever) before the main conflict with them even starts.

I see. So Leredrick just doesn’t want to follow Louis’s plan (quite an extreme way to say ‘fuck you I’m doing my own thing’ considering they’re on the same side though lol).

Poor kid. Stop bludgeoning him with your club sword, you jerk.

UGH, his expression morphing into resolve and defiance. Aand then back to pain.

LOOKS LIKE IT CAN STAB. will you please leave him alone already you ass

Even worse than a pointy sword, it is uh apparently CRACKING bones. And he has to twist it around, pouring salt in the wounds much.

Now that’s just painful to watch urggh. And that is a LOT of blood on the next page.

What’s going on...I think I see a wing shadow there... (and the text box from hovering over the image whoops)

AHAHA THAT’S GREAT. Seeing her just go fwip! Gone! was greatly needed after seeing Mahmut freaking tortured in an alleyway.

Shara’s expression is great, too. And I really like the flow of the lines framing her on this panel. It’s just so fluid and swirly.

Holy mother of- that is a lot of birds. Way to go, Iskander! OH. Was he...maybe dropping his container of meat to attract the other birds? It seemed that he was dropping it off near a tent earlier.

Mahmut is a summoner of birds. That would be his special power in a fantasy land.

And this is actually really fucking terrifying. More terrifying than just Iskander coming at you with claws outstretched. Apparently the largest of the golden eagle species can have a claw on each foot that is only a tiiiny bit shorter than that of the harpy eagle (the largest eagle in the world, and a deadly thing that can carry deer into tree branches and can easily cut you to the bone). Female golden eagles can be the size of a man’s torso. So, WOW.

And now we get smug Mahmut! God, this kid’s expressions.

This is a massive page (I think it’s a 2-pager actually). Just...drawing all that detail. The cover coming off (with those stripes), the frame of the tent, the birds, the people and all the supplies that formed a wall around them.

Oh.

OH. Not so high and mighty now, are we.

YES. SAVED BY A DANCER AND A BIRD.

Methinks you owe Iskander some meat. What a good birdie.

I’m surprised you can move that arm of yours, though.

BUT. I have not forgotten Zaganos, who is preparing to use some very deadly concoctions. Oh, never mind! They got the message to him on time.

Very nice horse. I like the tassels it’s decked out in.

lol She’s great. Got a passed out/dead guy right next to her too.

“All the troops were drunk at the time or something.” Better than knowing you were outsmarted by a kid, a dancer, and a bird right.

His faces are...haha and he even has a hand on one hip. *pokepoke*

We don’t know much about them yet, but these two are rather fun. ‘Killed by falling rocks’...Ok...

OH YEAH. EYEPATCH DUDE. HE’S STILL THERE.

So, falconers usually use a whistle to call their bird back to them, but it looks like Mahmut uses his for other purposes.

Like smacking swords out of people’s hands. What happened to his club sword?

It also has the little wing symbol on it. Actually, is it a whistle? I can’t really remember if it was ever mentioned anywhere that it was. I just assumed.

Ooh, this battle is not over yet. Man, Mahmut is tough. He was still able to fling that thing around with his injured shoulder. Adrenaline is a godsend.

Very nice. You can see a bit of blood (!! he really needs to get that treated) and it seems he let the sword fly out of his grasp on purpose to-

Choke him, apparently, nice.

But the question is: What would Mahmut have done in if he was in Ibrahim’s situation? Interesting. He’s talking about how he is helping Ibrahim out, not based on his actions here, but because they’re friends.

WELL, you certainly got back at him. Is he dead? And what happened to Eleanor after she got carried off by the birds? Are they both dead.

Anyway, I’M SO GLAD THIS DIDN’T END IN TRAGEDY. I still have 17 more volumes to go for that to potentially happen!

Iskandeeerrr I like his little jesses. Iskander is half the reason I’m looking forward to the anime.

Btw, you owe him some meat, Mahmut.

They cleaned this up for the digital release (it was originally spread across 2 pages and thus a little awkwardly split up).

STOP. You’re not allowed to make me cry this early in the series. (kidding, I don’t cry easily, but damn. That was a great ending to this arc.)

...What is with your expression, Iskander.

That is the look of a bird that has seen some shit. My cat makes the same expression sometimes for no good reason.

The credits page is a nice touch. You usually don’t get one like this. I love Mahmut petting Iskander up there in the corner. Birds like to be scratched, too!

...Though Zaganos has this, like, Medusa hair going on. Does it get worse without the hat?

AND THAT’S THE END. DAMN was that an emotional rollercoaster.

← back・onward →

#shoukoku no altair #the very long altair liveblog #image heavy post #long post #i don't want to edit this ever again #just endless scrolling to the bottom #altair vol 1

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