#also the way her existence explains so much about why Kyrie is the way she is because of the Sumadera upbringing is so good

[onewholivesinloops]

who's your favorite minor character from the when they cry series?

mine definitely has to be Nomura, she's so mysterious.

I'm going with Kasumi because I've been thinking of how underrated she is lately.

I do think she's initially presented as a comical villain but despite her minimal screentime she gets plenty of interesting characterization, as well as a whole scene that's really thematically loaded with strong parallels to other women in the series who struggle because of misogyny, which is really powerful.

#also the way her existence explains so much about why Kyrie is the way she is because of the Sumadera upbringing is so good #Kasumi is so good guys #stupidhorse2 #asks #umineko

[rosaguard]

❀ . ━  ❛ ON AERIS’ DESI IDENTITY.

for the sake of making this question easier to answer, I’ll be breaking it up into parts ( yes, i tend to ramble about other things before fully getting to my overall point ). as always, i’m black - not south asian - but i do my best to research before speaking about a culture i do not belong to.

verumking asked : some questions about brown aeris because i'm. forever heart eyes tbh. // you've drawn a lot of parallels between hinduism and the cycle of life on gaia, and also the conflict between aeris' human desires and her duties as a cetra. is her desi identity something she specifically attributes to her cetra heritage? does she begin to embrace it in her day-to-day life at all-- i.e. making and wearing henna, cooking traditional food, etc? how do her views on her identity change with each incarnation? 

          this is a somewhat difficult question to answer simply because fin.al fa.ntasy often picks and chooses which game is going to be the one™ where the culture and identity of the people within the game actually matters and when it does not ( on a side note: the series in general has a bad habit of using real locations with brown people as inspiration for settings in the game and not reflecting the real people and culture of those locations within the games. half of xii’s party being white people from a desert region literally inspired by the middle east is a glaring example of this ). anyway, i would say vii itself easily places itself within the category of there not being any real sense of culture - or at least nothing of any real substance in my opinion. by that i mean things like how the sector 5 and 7 slums are essentially the same in the remake ( outside of the former being ‘greenier’ ) even though it doesn’t make sense for the equivalent of two mini-cities that are kind of semi-lawless / mostly left to fend for themselves by shinra to not have more of a difference regarding their identities: how they operate, how the people act within them, etc.

         there’s also the fact that one of the most well known locations within the game is a christian-styled church within the sector five slums...and yet no religion is ever mentioned within the game’s worldbuilding. the church’s very existence could be seen as ironic if there was actual commentary on humans ( unknowingly ) building a false religion over time as a result of the void created after their ancestors willing choose to abandon their connection to the planet but there isn’t any. humanity, at least within the context of this universe, are essentially treated as the equivalent of atheists that don’t ‘believe’ in the planet being a living organism that deserves to be respected. meanwhile the cetra, the closest thing the game has to a religious group, don’t really seem to follow any specific tenets of a faith outside of protecting the planet and cultivating life on it. basically, i find it weird that a human-made structure and the symbolism that comes with it is imprinted onto aeris of all characters. 

        on one hand i get the logic behind it: she’s easily the most ‘spiritual’ character of the group ( if not the whole game ) and is canonically white / ’western’ inspired as nom.ura put it so western concepts of what is pure / holy is going to be applied to her from a pure aesthetic standpoint alone. from the church, to her somewhat overused prayer pose™, and her own final limit break which has white angels taken straight out of christian art descend from the heavens in its animation sequence, this specific imagery is given to her a lot - even if it doesn’t make sense from an in-universe perspective. the reason i even bring any of this up is that i think how culture is used and applied to certain characters is already inconsistent which is worth pointing out. aeris’ own identity already clashes with itself in canon - some of it being fully intentional and a part of her arc ( her desires as an individual vs her duty as a cetra ) while some of it ( basically everything stated above ) is...definitely not? 

✿ : is her desi identity something she specifically attributes to her cetra heritage?

        yes and no. however, before i fully elaborate on why, i have to touch on how i view the cetra as a whole. i’ve always saw them as people who, while nomadic, still have individual ‘tribes’ they belong to / travel with and it would’ve been common for members of one group to branch off and intermingle / travel with another ( or even just travel on their own for a while ). the more the cetra travel and expand their ‘network’ across the entire planet, it’s only natural that groups are going to start forming their own unique differences, whether it’s with looks, how they speak, and their culture, with their bond to the planet and their duty being what ties them all together. the cetra being separated into specific tribes is also directly supported within canon: 

ifalna: 2000 years ago, our ancestors, the cetra, heard the cries of the planet. the first ones to discover the planet's wound were the cetra at the knowlespole*. 

ifalna: then, just as it had at the knowlespole. it approached other cetra clans...... infecting them with... the virus.

while the cetra capital, the city of the ancients, is in knowlespole ( the modern equivalent of the region that the icicle inn and the northern crater is ), ifalna confirms that other clans beyond it exist. although the details around jenova’s arrival and defeat are unclear, from ifalna’s retelling of what happened ( and her distraught response while doing so ) it seems as if all of the cetra that first encountered jenova were either killed or infected before jenova moved on to do the same to other clans. this more than likely results in entire sub-cultures and histories lost before jenova is sealed away by the cetra aeris descends from ( which would explain why there’s not much recorded information on the cetra within the universe ). 

      one also has to remember the groups of cetra that branched away from the others and become humans. although they abandoned their duties, it’s very likely that they still retained aspects of cetra culture and it just changed / adapted over a period of two thousand years. with the cetra mostly wiped out and forgotten about, i don’t find it realistic for aeris, at least at the beginning of the game, to really know which ‘parts’ of herself come from where; especially since there would realistically be desi-coded humans that haven’t had ties to the cetra in thousands of years. although i headcanon both her mother and father as brown / desi, aeris doesn’t know who her father, professor gast, even is and the years she spent with her mother were in complete captivity. based on aeris’ ignorance about the white materia ( ex. her thinking it was useless originally ) and the cetra in general, one would assume that ifalna wasn’t able to teach aeris much due to not wanting to reveal anything to shinra since they were likely under constant surveillance. there’s also the fact that aeris outright rejects being a cetra as a child and tries ( yet fails ) to assimilate into ‘human’ culture:

“well…” kyrie replied. “there’s a crumbling church in the slums, where we played together. we did things like pretending to hold wedding ceremonies. aeris was always in the church, taking care of the flowers on her own. sometimes we talked about it. one day, aeris told me to go home quickly. i thought she was being mean because i stepped on her flowers.”

“when i got home in a bad mood, my parent’s bodies were being carried to the house. i heard it from my grandmother. about the lifestream and the ancients. i thought it was just a fairytale at the time, but after that— i figured aeris was an ancient. ...hey, what do you think i said when i met aeris after that? i said ‘you creep me out’.” - kyrie revealing her relationship with aeris after learning of her death in the kids are alright novel.

     i guess the real world equivalent of what i’m trying to say would be similar to how i’m black / african american but do i really associate myself and my identity with africa beyond a surface level? the answer is no. how could i when i don’t know anything of my ancestors, african americans are generally robbed of learning about our history, and i don’t even know what ‘part’ of africa i come from. navigating your identity, your culture, and your heritage is extremely complicated and i don’t really see it being any different for aeris. she doesn’t have any way to truly ‘discover’ and connect with her cultural identity - even if she wasn’t actively rejecting it. 

✿ : does she begin to embrace it in her day-to-day life at all? i.e. making and wearing henna, cooking traditional food, etc?

      she does - although it’s a gradual process that doesn’t start until she leaves midgar. canonically, it’s not even until cosmos canyon that aeris finally begins to ‘connect’ to her heritage and fully understand what it means to be a cetra:

aeris: i learned a lot. the elders taught me many things. about the cetra... and the promised land...i'm...... alone... i'm all alone now... 

however, in between chasing sephiroth, almost dying, and then saving the world, she doesn’t have much time to come to terms with everything that she learned there. in my blog canon, she does eventually leave edge a few years after its built to begin traveling on her own and eventually finds herself back in cosmos canyon. realistically, the elders there don’t have all the answers for her but her simply studying there is an important stepping stone to reclaiming a part of herself that she never got to know - or really accepted ( her parents also studied and met there so her life would be coming full circle in a way ). 

      so with all that said, i see aeris’ ‘embracing’ her desi heritage the most with fashion at first since she technically already does - regardless of whether she realizes it or not. the ultimania for the remake includes concept art for the cetra ( which can be viewed fully here ) and they’re specifically said to have been designed to have similarities to aeris - meaning that aeris’ current style of clothing is meant to embody her ancestors. highlighting a cetra design that looks weirdly similar to aeris herself, this cetra’s outfit - at least to me - feels similar to clothing popular in india and other parts of south asia: 

if the dress was taken out and a few alterations was made to her top and half-skirt, it could easily resemble how a lehenga choli piece is worn. the top piece of her half-skirt also resembles the look of an oddiyanam, a type of waist ornament that women in south india wear.

there are other cetra’ accessories that resemble jewelry common in india as well: the armlet on the unnamed cetra resembles a bajuband ( a similar one can be found here ) and bangles similar to a kangan or churi, commonly worn by women across south asia, are prominent in both aeris and the cetra’s overall designs too. 

     with mehndi / henna, i definitely see her wearing it across her hands and feet but it’s mostly similar to whenever she wears traditional dresses: it’s reserved for special occasions / celebrations. with that said, that’s more so when she’s grown accustomed to applying henna herself without messing up or someone else is doing it for her. it wouldn’t be uncommon to see aeris’ hands decorated with different patterns every few months: a direct result of using her own body as practice when first learning how to draw designs ( if you want to get full fantasy with it, the designs glowing against her skin when she uses magic would be neat ). as a side note: for those who don’t know, there is a short story about aeris’ time in the shinra labs. it contains a drawing by her, which is also in the remake, that has more designs for the cetra ( you can see the unedited version here ):

     also aeris cooking? l o l. joking aside, in my three years of writing aeris i’ve never really put much thought into her style of cooking, what type of food she specifically likes to eat, etc. outside of the fact that i don’t think she is much of a cooker at all ( probably because i’m not one either ). however, i cannot let a question go answered so! i’m probably going to sound redundant mentioning cosmos canyon again at this point but it really is due to the fact that it’s specifically the source of her connecting to who she is. the drawing she drew in a trance as a child even includes a location that is more than likely cosmos canyon ( and yes, i checked to compare ). the most notable npcs there are all brown and i do see them all being people of color that have come from different parts of the planet to share knowledge and learn amongst each other. although her main purpose of living in cosmos canyon the years she’s there is to study her people and record her own knowledge ( i’ll touch on this later ), it also provides her with an opportunity to connect with other people that are desi-coded like her on a more personal-level. 

     am i basically saying she probably tasted some type of chaat ( dahi vada specifically ) for the first time after leaving midgar and never looked back? yes. it’s not until aeris leaves midgar that she gets to experience trying out various food from her own culture as well as food from cultures outside of it in general ( not that these foods didn’t exist in midgar but she’s poor and doesn’t really have the means / opportunity to try them before ). aeris definitely becomes a fan of dishes that are savory with gravy, can be eaten with sauces like chutney ( she likes red chili, spicy coconut and mango chutney the most ), or dishes based around vegetables ( although if there’s spinach it, don’t tell her because ew ), fish or lamb. dishes such as rajma, samosas, sambar, biryani ( it’s probably one of the first desi dishes she would cook on her own ), pakora ( she’s definitely eaten chili pepper pakoras without a sweat ), etc. are all up her alley. aeris admittedly also has a sweet tooth so snacks like kozhukkattai, gulab jamun served with ice cream, etc. also appeals to her greatly™.

    the process of eating these dishes when they’re made by other people vs actually introducing them into her day to day eating habits are two different things though. not to say that she wouldn’t make an effort to try - she definitely will but learning how to cook these dishes takes time ( especially if you’re already not much of a cook. ). incorporating them into her daily lifestyle wouldn’t be an instant process but it will happen eventually.

✿ : how do her views on her identity change with each incarnation? 

     as the embodiment of the lifestream, aeris is constantly consuming information between each reincarnation. the lifestream houses memories and knowledge since the planet’s very inception so she literally has thousands of years of information to sort through and process between each new ‘life’. the different cetra clans that were mentioned earlier? aeris would technically have the ability to trace back the memories of her entire lineage and discover which clan she’s from if she wanted to. with every incarnation, she’s learning a little more about her people, where she comes from, etc. and being a cetra starts to feel like less of a burden to her and a role she starts to embrace / actively take pride in. while there will come a time where she’s not the ‘last cetra’ anymore, aeris essentially becomes an eternal record keeper for her people.

once she begins working with the WRO, it’s actually her idea to start an annual celebration event ( or festival ) during the anniversary of meteorfall. despite her people being nomadic and spread out, the cetra had a capital city and it’s not far fetched to assume that it was used as a place for the cetra to converge during important events, celebrations, etc. through aeris, aspects of their culture begin to live on in new ways such as the meteorfall festival which becomes a celebration of life and the planet itself. while the festival isn’t intended to have any real world parallel, i do think the symbolism of the diwali festival is fitting for the events of sephiroth’s defeat / lifestream and holy destroying meteor:

 diwali symbolizes the spiritual victory of light over darkness, good over evil, and knowledge over ignorance.

overall, no matter how many times she reincarnates, aeris always returns to cosmos canyon to record everything she knows, whether its her own life experiences, the memory of her people, or their culture, so that her children, her grandchildren, and so on can always have knowledge of their history and identity in a way that she wasn’t able to.

✿ : brown aeris says thanks for reading!

i hope this was a satisfying answer to your questions! i try to do my best with honoring the cultures i’m talking about and not treating them in a haphazardly and/or lazy way. i wanted to explain her journey of being someone not really connected to their heritage at all and explaining the process she goes through in a realistic way without..making it surface level? hopefully i achieved that!

#❀ . ━ ❛ blood of the ancients ❪ headcanon ❫ .

[dreaming-gamer]

Day 6: Home, Family, Belonging – Vergil & V

Warnings: None

Pounding in his veins, increasing with every word that was exchanged.

”It’s my turn to have it! You’ve had it for houuurs!”

”Nuh uh! It’s mine!”

“Kyrie said ‘share’!”

Such a distant yet familiar scene and so utterly… annoying to see it play out. Was this a parody set by fate?

”Kyle, let go!” Carlo demanded, holding on to the plastic figure with all his tiny grabby hands. His (barely) older step sibling was just as tenacious however, shouting ’no!’ and bracing his feet against the pull.

And Vergil was sitting there, unsure if the universe was playing him a cruel prank, showing this. How vividly it made him remember so many fights like these with Dante, leaving a vile taste in his mouth.

Seeing it play out between other siblings… should he break it up? Would that change anything?

Surely, their fates would not mimic his and Dante’s. These children had no demon blood in their veins and though they had wound up as orphans once, they had people who looked after them now.

Though not of blood, there were people that treated them as family. Vergil’s fist clenched against his knee, his whole life he had fought against his family. Had all those fights between him and Dante as kids not happened, would it have made a difference? Without a conscious prompt, his legs suddenly felt it necessary to stand, to stop--

“You might break it, pulling on it like that.” A deep voice stated matter-of-factly, cane tapping lightly against the floor as V entered, spotting the two kids locked in a standoff.

Neither of them let go. Their voices rose, as if trying to convince V of each of their rights in the argument.

“It’s my turn!”

“No, mine!”

Given his towering, lean frame next to the children, V slowly lowered himself onto one knee, putting his gloved hand over the toy, stopping their fighting hands. Their gazes turned to him, hints of tears in Carlo’s, while Kyle’s jaw was set in a determined line. Vergil silently watched, eyes narrowing at his humanity, walking and talking, skin less pale than ever, back still a bit hunched but his overall appearance looked healthier. Stronger.

“Why don’t you explain how this started?” V asked, voice calm and inquiring. “One at a time.” He added as both children opened their mouths at the same second.

“It’s my toy but Kyle just tries to take it!” Carlo said quickly.

“Kyrie said we should share!” Kyle stated, voice turning just an octave shriller.

“But it’s my toy!”

“Kyle, Carlo.” V said, keeping his voice calm before the argument would heat up yet again. Black particles separated from him with a soft sound, the black panther taking form. Shadow’s red markings glowed, giving that otherworldly appearance to her black fur, her eyes taking in the sight of two human boys with great interest. The children’s faces suddenly lit up.

“Why don’t you go outside and play with Shadow for a while?” V suggested with a small smile, the words barely leaving his mouth before the kids let go of the toy, letting it fall into V’s hand while the kids approached his familiar, petting her.

“Can I ride her?”

V chuckled, slowly raising from the floor, his leather clothing creaking a tiny bit.

“If she lets you, but do be careful. And play nice, or she will not play with either of you.” The summoner added, receiving a chorus of ‘okay!’ before their footsteps echoed against the wooden floor as they rushed to the exit, the panther keeping in step with them.

V turned to Vergil, the smile morphing into a smirk.

“Did I steal your entry?”

“No, it was better that you handled it.” For Vergil felt it to be true, slowly sitting down again. The orphans under Nero’s care… he was not yet sure, but there was a lingering feeling that they were scared, or perhaps wary of him. Vergil barely knew how to act around his own son yet, so the children were, unsurprisingly, also a challenge. And yet the children had been so into their arguing that they had not noticed his presence. V on the other hand they seemed to accept, partially because of his fascinating familiars but Vergil had also seen the youngest ask V to read to him. Why he had felt that way, Vergil couldn’t tell, but he had felt… perhaps glad was the best word for it, that V was accepted. As his own. Kyrie and Nero had even let him stay in a guest room of theirs while he searched for his own home.

V nodded slowly, seemingly pondering his words.

“Because you were wondering if this scene was a parody of fate’s design.” That matter-of-factly tone was back, making Vergil’s eyes narrow. V met his gaze head-on, his smirk remaining.

“Maybe.” Vergil simply agreed, not protesting when V took a seat next to him.

“Separated we may be now, but I know how you think.” V said, voice soft and complementing, eyeing Vergil with deep green orbs, the same color as their mother’s. “That day, if your and Dante’s positions were switched… your fates might have been different. You might have had his life and he yours…”

Vergil was quiet, just listening without acknowledging that V spoke the very thoughts he had before. They both knew.

“You wish to prevent others from facing the same fate. But the Spardas are… a rather peculiar family. I sincerely doubt Kyle, Carlo and Julio will fight to the point that you and Dante did.”

Frowning, Vergil kept his eyes on V, not comfortable with having his thoughts voiced out loud. Except he knew they were not his own thoughts anymore. Connected they might have been, but as they sat next to each other, perhaps for the first time since he, no, they both made the decision to let V exist separately from himself, Vergil didn’t feel as if he sat next to his humanity, or a mirror of his mind. Truly, the feeling was something closer to, dare he say friendship?

“You’re probably right.” Those were not words Vergil used lightly. “Nero will… make sure they don’t.” His son. Vergil still found those words odd and yet they gave a sense of pride, warm and unexpected each time.

“Indeed. He has overcome much and he has done so with the help of others.” V thought aloud, his smirk turning to a small smile, his posture relaxed as he pulled out his beloved anthology to read. Filled to the brim with words that Vergil had only glimpsed, while V had taken them all to heart. Unlike Vergil, V didn’t seem to have any trouble hanging out with Nero. Fighting side-by-side might have that effect, something Vergil had not realized, nor really experienced until recently, facing the hordes of the Underworld with Dante.

Thoughts swirled in his mind. Many times had he committed atrocious acts, V knew more than anyone about that. Vergil wasn’t sure he ever wanted Nero to find out about all of it, just thinking about it gave him a crawling feeling in his skin, but there was one glimmer in his past. The fact that Nero existed and though his life had been hard, he had not committed the same sins as his father. Instead, he had tried to fix them. Found his place to belong. Even shared it with V, whom he now seemed to regard as a brother. Truly, though it might not be able to tell Nero yet, Vergil felt pride.

He owed it to his son to make the future a little brighter. Though Vergil would never admit it, he might even own it to Dante, for all the trouble he had caused.

And he owed it to V, who risked his own existence to make him see that mistakes could be corrected. Vergil knew he still had a long way to go there, but he had the Yamato, years of demon slaying in his past, for better or worse. It would take time before he could let Nero inherit the Yamato, for his work was not done. Vergil rose from the chair, the little break had dragged out long enough.

“I must go.” He stated, unsheathing Yamato, the grip as familiar to him as his own hand. With two fast slashes, the air split into a portal to the hunting grounds he had found yesterday.

V’s chuckle could be heard behind him.

“You could also try using the door.”

“Where’s the fun in that?” The silver-haired man asked, stepping through with a small smile on his lips. Off to work it was, there were demons to slay.

#dmcweek #dmcweek2020 #devil may cry fanfiction #devil may cry vergil #devil may cry v #my writing

[prolestariwrites]

Time To Go [9] Epilogue: How To Lose A Fortune In 10 Days

Fandom: Devil May Cry Rating: M   Characters: Nero, Dante, Vergil, Kyrie, Nico, Trish, Morrison   Tags: Mystery, Humor, Missing Person, First Time, Family Drama, Family Bonding, Post-Canon Chapter: 9/9 Chapter [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]

Summary: When Kyrie goes missing, Nero goes on a desperate search to find her. Unfortunately, Dante and Vergil go too. Sparda boys shenanigans, fighting demons, a smattering of family drama, and male bonding (otherwise known as Nero’s worst nightmare). Please check it out below, or you can read on FFNet or AO3.

It’s the last chapter!!! I’m so excited to have this story wrap up, but it being my first DMC fic it’s also a bit bittersweet too. I want to give a huge thanks to @copper-wasp for being such an awesome beta, and to @solynacea for being an amazing friend and cheerleader.

I have some new fics in the works and will be publishing new stuff in the next couple of weeks! Meanwhile please leave me a comment or emoji to let me know how you liked the story. I’m also planning a sequel so if you liked the fic and want more, let me know! Please enjoy and thank you to everyone for reading!

━━━━━━━✧━━━━━━━

Nero lounges on the couch, feet up on the ottoman, Kyrie curled up next to him. Her head rests on his shoulder, his hand rubbing her thigh as they watch a movie. It has been a few weeks since he had found her again, and he savors moments like this now, when the kids are in bed and the house is quiet and it can be just them together. Most guys his age are probably at a bar or club, but Nero must admit he likes this domesticity. Even though it was barely a full twenty-four hours, her disappearance had affected him, and only reinforced his determination to protect their family.

He turns and presses a kiss to the top of her head. Kyrie smiles up at him and wraps her arms around his, snuggling closer. "You look thoughtful," she murmurs.

"Just thinking of you," he replies.

Kyrie rests her head back on him, and Nero moves his arm around her waist, holding her tightly. Protect their family. The words had taken on a new meaning since his search. Particularly where Dante and Vergil stand; Nero has found his patience with them both is lasting a bit longer, his willingness to overlook their more ridiculous traits a bit easier. He had even started calling Vergil every few days to check on him or just say hello, even though the conversations are stilted and at times, uncomfortable. Dante is easier, but he always had been, their work allowing them a more natural way to bond and his natural goofiness not allowing any room for awkwardness.

He goes back to watching the movie, thinking about whether or not he should get Vergil a cell phone—a piece of technology the man is strangely against but would make all their lives a hell of a lot easier if he would just give in—when his own rings. Kyrie eases back as he fishes it out of his pocket, sighing when he sees Dante's number on the screen. "Yeah?" he chuckles as he swipes to answer.

"Hey kid, you home?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Cool."

The line goes dead and he frowns. Kyrie is sitting up, having paused the movie, and Nero looks over as she asks, "What was that?"

"Who knows."

Their front door bursts open, making them both jump. Dante and Vergil stroll inside, and it isn't so much the intrusion that has Nero gaping as what they are wearing. Vergi is in what is best described as a tuxedo; but it is purple, possibly velvet, with a tight doublet and a puffed collar, the monocle he wears and cane he carries completing the look of some medieval count. He flicks the tails of his coat behind him as he sits in their recliner, grinning.

Dante has taken the opposite track. His suit is bright orange, the shirt underneath unbuttoned to nearly his navel, several gold chains hanging on his chest. He taps his cowboy hat as he walks through the room, and when he does a turn Nero is startled to see he is wearing snakeskin boots that jingle with each step.

"What the actual fuck?" says Nero.

"Nero," Kyrie chastises with a laugh, her hand pressing to his arm as he continues to stare. Dante places a briefcase on the coffee table, and Nero shakes his head to see his fingers have several large, clearly fake gold rings.

"Wait until we tell you what happened," Dante says.

He and Kyrie exchange a glance. "Oh, I can't wait," he sighs.

Dante holds up his palms. "Get this. We were thinking, right, about what those dinguses said who took Kyrie. How mom's family had money. So we went to look, me and Vergil." He gestures between them. "We found the old house, and let me tell you, it looks like hell. But it's still there. I thought for sure there'd be some kind of, I don't know, strip mall or something there by now. But the land is untouched."

Nero looks between them. "Which means what?"

"Which means it still belongs to the Sparda family," Vergil says. "Not the bank. Which means Father and Mother had already paid it off."

"So we went to city hall in the nearest town," continues Dante. "Found the deed and everything. Sure enough, Eva Sparda, right there."

He pulls a piece of paper from his pocket, handing it to Nero. Kyrie peers over his shoulder as he reads, and just as Dante had described, it is a deed for two hundred and fifty acres of land, paid in full. "Wow," he says. "This must be worth a lot by now."

"Yeah! So Vergil and I went to the bank. We figured we could take out a loan, and use the place as collateral."

Nero frowns up at Dante. "You really think that's a good idea? Getting in more debt?"

"We didn't have to," Vergil says.

"What do you mean?"

Dante gestures excitedly as Vergil explains, "Once we gave our names, the banker recognized us. Said we had a safety deposit box there, that could only be opened when we came together."

"It's been there since we were born!" Dante exclaims. "It was opened when we were only a month old."

"So what was in it?" Nero asks, his own excitement starting to spark.

"Tons of stuff," Dante says. "Papers from the house, our birth certificates. Who knew I even had one?"

Nero chuckles. "You're official."

Dante nods. "I existed this whole time and never even knew."

"You've left out the best part," Vergil scolds him. "The deposit box also had the fortune those dinguses were after."

Both Nero and Kyrie give a gasp at the same time. "What do you mean, fortune?" Nero asks tightly.

"Stocks. Bonds. Stakes in all sorts of businesses." Dante grins and puts his hands on his hips. "Worth at least a million dollars."

The blood drains from Nero's face as he takes it all in. Their family, millionaires? This could be a game changer. They could move, get a bigger house, get out of the city like he's been dying to for years. They could afford to formally adopt. Samuel will be going to college in a few years—hell, Kyrie has been talking about taking classes too, and it can happen. A home, school, their futures secure.

His eyes slide to the briefcase on the table. "So what do we do?"

"Well," Dante says, rubbing the back of his neck. "It wasn't as easy as we thought. We called Morrison, and he hooked us up with his lawyer guy. We cashed in the money and paid off the debt we owed."

"You owed," Vergil interjects.

"Well devil hunting isn't easy. And I didn't exactly have a steady stream of income spending three months in hell, you know," Dante argues.

Nero shakes his head. "Wait. So there's nothing left?"

"Well I wouldn't say that," answers Dante. "I paid off the building, so I own it outright now. Then I paid the utilities, and the insurance I owed, and what I owed Lady, and what I had borrowed from Morrison, and paid all the back taxes."

"And I paid off my apartment, and the fines for um… some of my run-ins with the locals," Vergil adds.

"We also used some for these cool business outfits," Dante says. "What do you think?"

Nero blinks, but Kyrie answers, "You both look wonderful."

"We took your advice too, Nero," Vergil says quietly.

He frowns at his father. "My advice? What advice?"

"We hired a private investigator. Paid up front," replies Vergil. "We want to find out what happened to Sparda, once and for all. He is going to find us all the information he can, and then we're going to figure out where he is, and if he is alive."

"You'll come too, right?" Dante asks.

Nero hesitates for a moment before huffing out a laugh. "Sorry, I'm still processing all this." He glances at Kyrie, who is smiling broadly at him.

"It's amazing," she says sincerely.

"Yeah. Find Sparda, huh?" Nero chuckles and rubs the back of his neck. "Yeah, I'd be down for that. Sparda Family road trip, part two."

Dante cheers as Vergil chuckles, and Nero holds the deed out to return it. But Dante waves him off. "No, you keep it."

"What?"

"Vergil and I talked about it. You deserve something too, and neither one of us can take care of the place. You can sell it, or rebuild, or do whatever you want." Dante shrugs. "The property belongs to you now."

Nero looks between them in shock as Kyrie grips his arm. "Really? You're giving this to me?"

"Of course," Vergil says. "You're Eva's grandson. You should inherit her house."

"I don't know what to say." The money is gone, just like that; but that's okay, isn't it? In the end, they all got what they needed, and Nero smiles. "I'm happy for you guys," he says slowly. "I really am. And this… thank you." He looks over the deed one more time, his chest tightening a bit.

Kyrie kisses his cheek, pulling him out of his thoughts. "So what's with the briefcase?" he asks.

Dante grins and sits on the floor, laying it down to fiddle with the clasp. "Last of the money in here."

"Oh yeah?" Nero slides forward, wondering how much. Maybe a few thousand?

Instead, there are four Big Macs and a twenty-piece McNugget inside. "Celebratory dinner on us," Dante says happily.

He hands Vergil a sandwich before tossing one to Nero, which he looks down at in a mixture of amusement and confusion. "You guys really know how to live well," he laughs.

Dante pretends to "clink" his Big Mac with Kyrie's, and they dig into the meal when Nico appears at the door. "You guys still on your date?" she calls obnoxiously before gawking at them. "Hey! You got McDonald's and didn't tell me?" She plops down next to Dante, leaning over him to scoop up some nuggets. "Halloween was a week ago, you know," Nico jokes, eyeing his outfit.

"Hey, I make this look good," he says.

Nero laughs, listening to them argue and then team up together when Vergil jumps in. Kyrie leans against him and he puts his arm around her, giving her cheek a kiss. His eyes fall on the deed to the Sparda land as he smiles to himself. Protect their family. Yeah, absolutely.

#dmc #devil may cry #dmc dante #dmc nero #dmc vergil #nerokiri #dmc kyrie #dmc nico #dante sparda #vergil sparda #fan fiction #time to go #myfic #it's all done! #please help me celebrate :)

[looongcat]

Ozmafia Thoughts

I posted a whole thing on my main but now that I’m using this blog for all things otome, I figured I would try to organize my thoughts because i have so many thoughts.

This is not spoiler free! But I try to label some of the major spoilers.

Caramia

Caramia is the don of the oz family, and it’s his duty to protect his territory, the people who live in his territory, and to sign papers for stuff? Man’s is always signing papers for mafia reasons :) I knew from the start that he would be my favourite. I just love a guy who’s nice. Call me basic, but I just love a man who wants me to be happy and takes cares of me? I love feeling like someone cares about me! He’s also a great cook, and who doesn’t love delicious food? Idk how to explain how I feel about caramia, I liked his personality but I didn’t love his story? I really felt like there was some distance between Caramia and Fuka, like he was in a whole nother world from her. Which you do get to chose whether she’s happy he’s in charge or like she feels lonely. I did however really liked his transfer routes. I did the axel to caramia transfer first, and I felt like it wasnt clear that they slept together, but after I did caramia to axel and I got hit with that axel CG! Anyways, I liked the transfer routes.

Kyrie

I knew I would hate this guy so much. I’m just not interested in a guy who’s a fucking tease. Like he openly admits that he likes it when you’re upset. Like I do not want that TYVM. I found him kinda tolerable in his transfer routes however, probably because he does have to try and make Fuka happy in order to get Fuka to break up with her boyfriend. He really said break up with your bf i’m bored! Also I felt it was kinda weird that he was paying for Fuka’s br*th*l visits. I think its kinda weird that he introduced her to it, and was like encouraging it. ESPECIALLY*** (major super duper spoiler here what will be censored lol) if he thought she was *****

I saw some people argue that he might not actually love fuka, but I think that one transfer route ending, kinda shows that he really does love her IYKYK. but i’m so sus about that ending where he becomes a dumbass, i really think this bitch is faking it! I do not believe him for a second!

Axel

I quite like Axel. I personally don’t mind when a guy is at this level of over protectiveness. Plus as I have mentioned, i just love it when a cold guy is soft for you. I absolutely adore that shit (like when he ask Fuka to treat him as an equal and drop the honorifics? that shit gets me T_T)  He also gets extremely jealous very easily, which becomes an area of conflict for him and Fuka and it is up to you whether you wanna forgive him or move onto another guy. Personally, I would forgive him. I would talk to him about it! But I could understand being in your first relationship and not being able to handle your emotions. I think Axel is quite sweet, and he just wants the best for fuka, which is cute.

Scarlet 

IDK how I feel about Scarlet, specifically the part where he straight up states he’s a minor! Like what’s up with that? Why couldn’t he be older? However, I did really enjoy his route. It’s super cute and slow burn-y and nothing romantic actually happens probably because he is a minor. Scarlet is kind, resourceful, caring lol. We always love a guy who’s trying his best to keep the peace among everyone, while still providing for his family.

His route also has a bit of plot. It shows what hamelin was like prior to a specific event that you learn about in robin hood. I dont have a specific order that I think this game should be played but it might be interesting to maybe play scarlet’s route after robin hood.

Caesar

As I’ve said before, I don’t mind a man who’s trynna kill me. Idk what’s up with that LOL. Well maybe I like how you can see them change from wanting to kill you to not...wanting to kill you. One thing I remember liking about Caesar was that he usually called you a woman, as opposed to a girl. Which made me feel a lot better, will elaborate more on that later. I think even though he stayed harsh to her the whole time, I liked how you could see he was slowly falling/becoming whipped for fuka. Like the comedy of him wearing that dumb cloak so y’all could watch the stars together. Or like him working at Soh’s restaurant because he had to earn the money, and not just take Soh’s money. Like I loved that! Plus the ending where he isn’t accepted but he keeps pulling dumb stunts just to see you is v cute lol.

Soh

Idk how to talk about Soh without major spoilers. Soh is so sweet. I like how he’s always striking up conversations with Fuka in all the routes, which is probably good for her, considering almost everyone else is pretty wary of her existence. I honestly liked his route and I guess that's all I can say.

*big spoilers* I know most people don’t like Soh, cause he’s the reason for all things bad LOL. Yes he’s using/deceiving Fuka the whole time, but its not like he drugged Fuka or kept Fuka captive lol. Like most of the time he’s trying to keep her safe, and trynna make her happy, even if its probably so he could gain her trust or something. I also feel like his route was kinda him giving up his grand plan, and wanting to run away and be happy with Fuka, which obviously doesnt happen. Idk i liked that he ultimately treated her right.

Pashet

What’s up with otome games giving you a girl option but not the option to actually romance the girl? Her route was fine, and the friendship that builds between Fuka and her is fine. Sorry that’s a little salty lol. I actually thought this route was really cute. I have my reservations about Fuka being in romantic relationships, so it actually was kinda nice to see her make an actual friend without catching feels. Female friendships are absolutely underrated and I’m glad Fuka was actually able to make a friend who is looking out for her best interest.

Hamelin

I usually try not to use kiss cgs but this is the only couple cg and I like using couple cgs. So sorry if this is spoiler-y to you. But how do I feel about Hamelin... you know what I very much liked him. His route is so short and it’s kinda a secret ending. In that sense his route is a little unsatisfying. It’s kinda unclear how Fuka could love him in that short amount of time... but she does. Hamelin is hard to describe because he’s so different in all the other routes. He’s kinda the main villain in most of the routes, aside from his own. You get to see a little bit more of his personality in Scarlet’s route. I genuinely think he is a good guy, and was trying his best! That’s all you can really ask of anyone right?

*slight spoiler* I’m so sad he didn’t get a redemption? You find out why he did the things that he did, and he just... doesn’t get anything? He like doesn't even appear? Just gone into the abyss. I wish Fuka and him could have gotten a happier ending, since their ending isn’t really... happy

Dr Crow

I do not like Robin Hood. Isn’t Robin Hood about stealing from the rich? Like... why is this man treating everyone the same? Why is this man even apart of the upper class? Okay to keep this brief and spoiler free lol. Dr. Crow here is the town’s doctor. He treats everyone the same regardless of what family they are from. In his eyes you are his patient and his goal is to heal you. He’s quite elegant and seems really dependable and then he hits you with some REDACTED

*spoiler & TW for drugging* Fuck this guy. I think what’s worse is that he did not have to drug fuka, she would have gone along with whatever he wanted probably. I’m guessing he did it so she would be in deep sleep. But still, ew gross. How you gonna love your wife and do that. This man is out for revenge and I dont like it.

Manboy/Dorian/Alfani

I barely like Manboy. Honestly I never heard of Dorian Gray before playing this so I was v confused (and if you heard of it then you probably will be more prepared than I was). I actually played this route really early on because i thought it might be funny. It is in fact not at all funny and I was not okay after finishing it. I am a little glad I got it out of the way though, if I left this for like last I would have been v upset and it probably would have ruined the game for me lol. I do kinda wanna replay the route now that I know about Dorian but idk.. i still hate this route so idk if I really will.

If you don’t know anything like me, this is the br*thel route. Manboy works there more as like a receptionist? Dorian Gray is the ringleader, and there’s Alfani who’s the male escort. Feel free to wikipedia Dorian Gray before trying this route. Not to spoil the story but TW you also get drugged in this route too.

Overall Thoughts

I feel lukewarm about ozmafia. In one aspect I like how each route was different and how the different endings actually like split off. I also enjoyed how there wasn’t necessarily a good ending and a bad ending, they were just different endings. Obviously in some routes, one ending is better than the other, and also in others neither endings are great lol. I also quite enjoyed the transfer routes, it felt different, innovative, like ozmafia really tried something there! And the replay ability, the game adds extra scenes that provide more insight towards what the love interest is thinking, which makes replaying to get the other endings very enjoyable. There also an extra scene before each ending, so you could also replay the same ending too. I really went into ozmafia with like zero expectations, and i was both surprised and underwhelmed? I dont think thats the right word.

*MAJOR SPOILERS* There’s this really great video essay called born sexy yesterday, that really explains why I felt slightly uneasy about the whole story. If you think about it Fuka has amnesia, she’s mentally a child but here she in engaging in adult activities with grown ass men ._. and I know I said I liked the transfer routes, but that was before I found out that Fuka is literally a 10 year old in an “adult” body. LIKE WHEN I SAW DOROTHY I WAS LIKE WHO TF LET THIS INFANT READ DORIAN GRAY? Anyways the fact that dorothy is literally like 10 years old, did not sit well with me. Yknow this story is about wizard of oz, so I did have a feeling Fuka was dorthy, BUT WHEN ISAW HER SPRITE, girl i had to look up dorthy’s age and apparently shes somewhere between 8 and 12. So, throughout the game it was a bit uncomfortable because I did feel like Fuka was mentally a child but I kinda justified it as well she lost her memories, so she’s a blank slate like a child, maybe she’ll mature up with memories but uhhh, that’s just not going to happen.

So there are my thoughts. I thought Ozmafia was really different from other otome games because of how each character got their own story, and the transfer routes felt so innovative, as well as adding the extra scenes in the second playthrough! But there’s some bad born sexy yesterday vibes that make me not okay with it. I would recommend the game though. There’s so much content, it took me like a week to finish it all. Plus the art is quite nice.

#personal #ozmafia #on my main I wrote about how I wish the epilogue/grand ending would have done what nameless did #if you haven't played nameless here are some SPOILERS FOR THAT #In nameless like ozmafia there was a main villain who was the cause of everything just like soh #So i liked in nameless it actually showed what like was like for the teddybear and how when eri forgot about him it absolutely destroyed him #which caused him to do all the things to eri in nameless #i think ozmafia should have done that with Soh #like if it maybe showed how well he got along with dorothy and maybe showed her missing the outside world #and then her doing the thing and disappearing and him being like damn it empty here #feel like pure shit i just want her back #like enough he's willing to k*ll

[bloodfcst-a]

alright, so. i beat remake last weekend, but i didn’t want to come out with my newfound yufi information + meta right off the bat. i think this is an appropriate time to do so now, though. naturally, i’ll tag as spoilers, but if you need anything else, let me know.

also, my verdict? i am so glad i went into this blind, without any hype or expectations or people from fandom whining about it. yet again, i am so happy + i had an incredibly joyous experience.  this game fed me + also took over my life in a way i’ve not been possessed in some time so like......... good for it.

also no, i truly don’t miss hearing everyone’s hullabaloo +  i don’t wanna hear ur complaints of “ it didn’t say when part 2 is ” so like miss me with that. 

also warning: if u didn’t know already, fandom is WILD towards y.uffie for some reason and i also addressed that, so like if you’re from vii fandom u might seriously wanna read this bc... it’ll be pertinent to u understanding my feelings behind it.  i did address some questionable topics like the underaged oversexual portrayal + beastality that’s popular for her and i am NOT HERE FOR IT so if u came for that................. issa no from me dawg. when i say unbearable.... i mean it. fandom grossed me out. y’all wild.

anyway. thoughts below !

some things that were CONFIRMED for me were:

> midgar is lax around its anti-wutai rhetoric in its most important parts ( namely, hq, wall market, and avalanche ). for propaganda’s sake among the common people, it stands to create a united front. but in consumerism & in strength, they consider the wutai equals just as anyone else. 

see: tseng in the turks; madam m in wall market; the supplier for avalanche.

i would even argue that sector 5 / wall market is the safest place in midgar for wutaians, given don corneo’s obvious fetishism ( and that really............. isn’t saying a lot ).

i’m not going to entertain that it’s an “ admiration for culture and architecture ” in true weeaboo fashion given that of all positions he could give madam m to hold, her duties are to screen women that would be appealing to his aesthetic and to run a massage parlor where the highest bidder gets to have a happy ending. she is literally the “ asian parlors are actually fronts for brothels ” stereotype except in this sex trade, all women go to don corneo. i will have no apologists in this house. 

i have more developing thoughts on madam m like how she might be doing the sex trafficking part in her own self-interest / as a type of self-preservation, like the don might say “ well if u don’t want to be a wife then u better find some for me ” but... 1) this isn’t the post for that and 2) that logic does not explain why chocobo sam and andrea rhodea are also apart of the ring. but in my opinion, you can tell she’s not crazy about it bc as soon as aerith mentions it to her she becomes so wildly upset that she breaks character. i don’t think she’s a sell out. i think she’s an exploited and fetishized woman in a tough place, and i feel for her.

despite this, it’s clear that because of his obvious ‘ preference ’ they’re [ wutaians ] held at a higher standard ( i.e., he doesn’t dispose of madam m immediately like he does with every other woman who is unfortunate enough to meet him ), so i’m willing to go out on a limb and say despite the high amount of shinra foot traffic that goes through wall market ( and we know this bc everybody who is everybody from SOLDIERS to Turks go to honeybee inn ), a wutaian would probably be fine there.

> wutai is the strongest world power by natural means. without SOLDIER s & g programs, midgar’s biggest claim to fame is to reach first-world status as a metropolis by siphoning mako via its reactors. without its reactors, the whole town would either be: 1) slums, like below the plate; or 2) as common as every other area in the nearby vicinity ( i.e., kalm, costa del sol, nibelheim ). by siphoning mako energy, midgar truly is unnatural, so... hm... 

corel could have been a contender ‘cause they use fossil fuels ( and look at how successful gold saucer is! ), but the failed reactor really threw them out the loop. costa del sol + icicle inn are both partially shin-ra owned / managed, so i’m not counting them.

> infiltrating midgar / shinra isn’t difficult. nor is navigating throughout the sectors. while there is the mention of the ID scan on the trains, we see this is not applicable on foot ( freely able to walk through sectors 5, 6, 7, and 8 as party; jessie + co are able to go above the plate to go to her parents’ house despite already being listed as AVALANCHE and that their fake IDs had already expired ). given that yufi entirely travels on foot because of her airsickness / motion sickness, she’d be undetectable. also note that the first 59 floors of shinra hq by stairwell are not monitored... and neither was the front door, so she could easily sneak in whenever the need called for it.

> established multiple points of contact between rufus + yufi ( and by extension, the turks + yufi ). i’m really going into this in the next section ‘cause... their dynamic became so much more interesting. but we already know that at minimum, there was contact bc she had the phs rufus had provided to godo + was using it to communicate with zack for treasure.... but let me hold off on this bc there’s one more thing i want to add here.

regarding the turks: it’s established that even if a person is someone of interest to shin-ra, they won’t necessarily act on attacking or abducting immediately ( see: aerith ). we already know they’ve known yufi since she was a child, and if they’re working with rufus they’d know what she looked like as she aged, so the excuse of “ she looks different than when they worked with her in wutai ” is out the window. it’s more than likely that they’re enabling her to continue her business with rufus + have probably assisted her with not being caught. 

> yufi’s clothes are absolutely normal for her age. it always annoyed me that somehow tifa’s clothing was like considered “ impractical but acceptable ” because she’s a legal adult and because cishet men were too drawn to the boobies to complain. but then yufi was either like HELLA sexualized as a minor ( the amount of ecchi / hentai that exists of underage y.uffie despite there being of-age content [ i.e., her portrayals in advent children + dirge of cerberus ] is.......................................... ridonk ) OR she was like hella slut-shamed and i’m out here like.... hello??? what kinda anti-wutai rhetoric is this? anyway. i’d like to call attention to kyrie, who looks like she’s wearing like 60% of y.uffie’s dirge of cerberus outfit. if anything, this only reinforces that yufi’s fashion choices are.......... legit normal, age appropriate, and anyone who wants to argue otherwise can shut the fuck up.

if you’re really gonna ask “ how come her shorts are unbuttoned ” like go check your privilege. the short answer is probably that rufus stole all of her damn belts to make into his coat. the long answer is that a youth traveling the world SOLO she is probably slim on money to be frequently shopping for clothes ? and the clothes that are available in the slums vs on the plate are probably not great quality ( idk if y’all have ever shopped at a freesized open market before but like... buttons pop off INSTANTLY sometimes and those seams will tear if u stretch the wrong way. like fast fashion but like........ hella wild ). she could find better clothes above the plate, but given the anti-wutai rhetoric up there... probably not a wise choice. 

since you’re looking at her outfit anyway.. can i bring your attention to her sweater, and have you note that it’s made of the same material as cloud’s? i.e., she’s wearing shin-ra/SOLDIER brand quality? ( need further proof that it’s SOLDIER? zack and angeal wear the same one ) probably gotten from either a trip to hq or........ someone on the inside............ but obviously cropped to fit her. she might’ve even had it for some time. now let’s keep looking.... i’m willing to bet the latter, and here’s why! ( prepare for galaxy brain time )

now for standard SOLDIERS, they’re assigned colors. we know third class / infantrymen are blue; second class are burgundy / red ( think kunsel ); and black / dark blue for first class. don’t nobody wear green.... in this whole damn universe.... as a main character.... except child y.uffie. HMMMMM. here’s the sweater again to compare. 

i’m just saying.

now, the ideas INTRODUCED to me were:

> there is only one AVALANCHE, but it is splintered into different factions.

now i always wondered like, how come they just picked up the name AVALANCHE when it was established already. like idk i don’t think people would be like “ ah yes we’re the n.azis and we’re different than the other ones, but we wanna evoke the same fear ” u know what i mean?? usually u would carry the same ideology... but it was always so apparent that barret held different views and goals than elfe, so i was always so confused.

but not anymore. now it’s established that they’re the same group, begun in midgar + just carrying out different methods of “ fuckin’ shit up for the shin-ra ” over the last 10 years, spreading the word about the danger of reactors + it’s suckin’ up the lifeblood of the planet to anyone who would hear. now that makes sense. in the same chapter that this is established, however, they also claim...

> yufi as a benefactor to AVALANCHE.

now this shit had me like AAAAAAAAH. now there is no damn way you and i played the same game if u didn’t see this. they literally say “ AVALANCHE is being provided weapons by someone to fuck shit up, in return for all the materia in midgar. ”

who would want all the materia in midgar? HMMMMMMMMM.

> with that point established, let’s go back to rufus + yufi having multiple points of contact. so i already introduced the idea that rufus clearly has to have contact with yufi bc he’s the one spouting all the secrets to shinra treasure via the PHS. and yufi has claimed ownership of the phone by literally labeling it as “ treasure princess ” so there is no question that he thinks he’s talking to godo versus yufi. 

but we also know that rufus is the person behind AVALANCHE. my man has TIME on house arrest, obviously. we also know that he’s on house arrest in junon, not midgar. now, if he’s out here giving them logistics like places to go to spout their rhetoric, and yufi is providing weapons ( remember, wutai is the strongest power by natural means, and apparently hq is free real estate to explore, so she’s got multiple ways to provide gear without it being an inconvenience to her ), so it’s.........pretty obvious to say that the way she would go in connection to AVALANCHE would be through rufus. also, remember she has bad blood with AVALANCHE because of their actions in wutai, so... she’s not gonna be keen about them anyway. it seems much more practical for someone who already views them ( and tbh, lots of people ) as tools ( rufus vc: “ i own you ” ) to accomplish one’s tasks to help her connect with meeting her own goals ( “ all the materia in midgar ” ).

this would also explain why yufi is found hanging outside junon.

if you opted to grab her outside nibelheim... you might argue that it’s because nibelheim is obviously suspicious + truly the evidence at how shady shin-ra is, given the whole place was rebuilt + is filled with actors to hide the fact that the whole place burned to the ground + was once the site of jenova + currently remains the site as hojo’s secondary lab + other secret, vincent valentine with the protomateria slumbering. she could have been tipped off by rufus as “ there’s another treasure here ” but like... there’s no way she would have known it was vincent. even zack is like “ idk wtf is happening here so i’mma leave this alone. ”

also, i love that rufus uses “ heir to the throne ” verbage, which is so akin to yufi also being “ heir to the throne ” & look at them: spiteful children rebelling against their useless ass dads to create new world order + to destroy the old shin-ra company.  i love that for them.

so in conclusion........ this game FED ME. god i wanna play it again and again. i beat it on normal and got everything except 1 treasure and 1 task from chadley. i also need to do all the combat simulators. but given i did what i could in.... 3.5 days, i’m not too upset by it. this game has so much replay value and... i can say i’m glad i bought it twice.

g.amestop give me my freaking shinra badge i’ve damn well earned it.

oh and two more things going forward:

> nanaki continues to sound old as hell. which duh, given advent children. but u know how they established him as a young teen in the og + so it made sense for y.uffie and nanaki to be friends ‘cause they were mentally the same age? i don’t...... see how that works now. 

also.....y’all could have missed me with this shit already but STOP SHIPPING HIM WITH YUFI. NOW UR ONLY ARGUMENT IS GONE. STOP. i saw some art of nanaki & y.uffie fucking in the tags + floating around google and i was like....... WHY!!! and then there’s also weird hybrid art like what if they had a kid or something and i just........  STOP.

i have flashbacks of when i first started writing on tumblr + how i was bombarded by furries wanting to fuck bc of this. like deadass king dedede from kirby. later on i also saw sonic & even alligators ( not an alligator man.... tho i did see king k. rool + donkey kong as well........ i hated y’all for a hot minute ). it’s not even “ monster fucking ” it’s bestiality and I’M BEGGING YOU TO STOP. y’all can truly MISS ME WITH THIS.

however, u know, bigby wolf + everyone from castlevania could easily get it. stardust platinum where ya at. if i had to pick it would be....... more humanoid than a penguin or a “ lab rat dog ” u feel? 

> i am not crazy about y.uffentine. look. i know it exists. i know it was big bc fandom was like “ optional character ship ftw! ” + then dirge of cerberus came out and y’all went wild ( to be fair, i get it, it was the only ship outside of NANAKI and BEING KIDNAPPED/ASSAULTED BY SHINRA SOLDIERS AS A CHILD that people could feasibly comprehend for y.uffie for some reason............................................................... it was an actually “ NORMAL ” person........ ) but like. i’m sorry. it’s not doin it for me. i’ve seen like two other y.uffie blogs out here that actually stick to canon so like if u want your y.uffentine that bad, like maybe ask them. but please don’t ask me. 

ok i’m done for real now! thanks for reading !

#♝ meta. #♚ verse iii . travail. #spoilers / #ffvii spoilers / #remake / #remake spoilers / #ffvii remake spoilers / #idk if y'all need this tagged as anything else. #let me know if u do!

[beyond-the-mirror]

Music of the Night

The long wait is finally over!

Just another V x fem!reader I decided to start. This story takes place in an AU where almost everything is the same except for a few details, which include the fact that V is basically the Phantom of the Opera of this universe.

Tagging @thedyingmoon and @minteyeddemon, I remember how excited you both were when I shared this concept, it’s a bit long but I hope you all enjoy it!

Without further ado, let’s start!

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Chapter 1: Hauntings

The imposing building stood before you, intimidating you and stealing your breath for a few moments.

“Calm down (Y/N). You got this, you got this.” You cheered to yourself to shake your nerves away, closing your eyes taking and deep breath before exhaling. Opening your eyes once more, you crossed the grand entrance with renewed determination.

This was it. This was the day you were finally able to achieve your live long dream: Performing at Fortuna’s Opera House.

Once inside the building, a receptionist signaled you to the backstage entrance, kindly thanking him you rushed to your meeting with Monsieur Lefevre, the current owner of the theatre.

Performers as well as backup dancers and stage crew members rushed everywhere you looked, apparently a dress rehearsal for an adaptation of Puccini’s grand opera Madama Butterfly was about to take place in that very moment, meaning that everyone was pressured to get every single detail perfectly before the première in a few days.

Disoriented and a little overwhelmed by the crowd, you became lost in your way to find Lefevre’s office.

“Excuse me miss.” You heard a soft feminine right next to you. Figuring it was directed at you, you turned towards the voice. A young woman stood in front of you, she was wearing a gorgeously tailored dress with tiny flower petals resembling small butterflies sewn to the fabric, the jewels she was wearing also shared a butterfly motif and her long auburn hair was styled in a simple yet elegant up-do.

“I couldn’t help but notice you looked a bit lost, are you looking for someone in particular?” Her voice had genuine concern towards you.

“Uhm yes actually! I have an appointment with Monsieur Lefevre.”

“Oh you must be the new dancer! His office is right this way, please follow me.”

You let out a sigh of relief once you arrived at the owner’s office. Thank heavens for this woman’s help, otherwise you feared that you would have arrived late to such an important meeting for your career.

“Thank you so much, you totally saved me there! My name is (Y/N) by the way.”

“It’s a pleasure, mine is Kyrie. If there is something you need help with or any questions that you may have, you are welcome to ask me anytime.”

A member of the stage crew then called for Kyrie, her queue to appear on stage getting closer. She waved at you and wished you good luck before departing towards the stage. Alone once again, you knocked on the office’s door and awaited for an answer before entering.

“Ah Miss (Y/N)! It’s a pleasure to finally meet you in person.” Mr Lefevre received you warmly, you shook his hand before also greeting the woman standing next him. “I’m sure you still remember Madame Trish here, right now she was telling me about your stunning performance in the auditions. I’m sure you are going to be an excellent addition to our company.”

“Oh no, the honor is actually mine Monsieur. Performing here has been my childhood dream, I can’t thank you enough for the opportunity.”

“Your skills and talent make you worthy of a spot here, you don’t have to thank us.” Trish placed a reassuring hand on your shoulder. “But enough of that now, let us show you around the place so you get to know it better.”

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The more you walked, the more you knew about the hectic schedule of everyone in the theatre, still that didn’t erase the starstruck look in your eyes. Trish explained with detail your daily schedule and activities, most importantly your dance lessons which will be imparted by herself nonetheless and that she will have zero tolerance for late arrivals, with exception of critical emergencies of course. Monsieur Lefevre kindly pointed out that although strict and a little frivolous, Trish was actually a very caring woman, her dedication was what made her the current choreographer and supervisor in charge of all performers.

At the end of your long tour, Monsieur Lefevre invited you to watch the rest of the rehearsal from the first row, with Trish now leaving to supervise everything. On stage you spotted Kyrie, who waved at you as soon as she recognized you. As you had deduced earlier, she was the main soprano of the theatre, when she started performing and singing as Madama Butterfly you were stunned by how spectacular her voice sounded.

‘Everyone here is so talented’. You pondered to yourself as you watched the entire scene, the backup dancers supporting Kyrie’s number and the stage crew operating the moving scenery and carrying the props. You hoped to fit well in this place.

During a break, your cellphone rang and you excused yourself to answer the call. After reaching a quiet enough place, you answered. It was a call from your mother.

Just a year ago, your father died from cancer, it was already on terminal stage when it was detected. Instead of taking chemotherapy, he wished to spend the little time he had left with you and your mother. You remember his last words towards you.

“My child, I know how you dream of becoming a singer. Hold on tight to that dream and never let go, one day you shall achieve everything you set your sights upon. I love you my angel of music, I shall always watch over you.”

His words gave you the strength to keep going forward and move on. Eventually your mother wanted you both to move out of Fortuna, but you decided to stay, wanting to become independent and start living by yourself. She respected your decision, and from then on, she would often call you to check on you.

After saying goodbye to your mother, you ended he call. However when you headed back to the stage you noticed that something felt odd. The hallway was empty, only the far away sound of the rehearsal could be heard, but for some reason you didn’t feel quite alone, in fact, you felt like you were being watched.

You glanced everywhere, but you didn’t spot anyone. Shrugging it off as your imagination, you continued walking through the hallway. It was then that you heard a whisper behind you, quickly turning around you thought you caught sight of a shadow rushing behind a corner. You took a couple of steps towards it, still not sure if what you saw was real or a part of your imagination.

“Hello?” you called out, but no answer came.

“(Y/N)”

Your heart almost leapt out of your chest. Trish was right behind you, having looking for you before finding you in the hallway. “There you are. Come, I want to introduce you to everyone.”

After getting to know your coworkers, you definitely felt welcome in this new little world.

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“So (Y/N), do you believe in ghosts?” The girl in the seat next to you, Nico, questioned you out of nowhere.

It’s been a couple months since you started working at the opera house. You and Kyrie instantly became friends and she introduced you to Nico, the stage crew coordinator who took care of every prop and moving scenery in the theatre. You would often hang out together, right now you were enjoying dinner at a small coffee shop downtown, you even found Trish along the way with Lady, a friend of hers who worked as a bounty hunter of sorts, she didn’t want to specify more about it but you respected the discretion. You five ladies had been having a moment of girl talk when Nico brought up her question about ghosts.

“I really can’t say I believe in them, I’ve never seen one myself but who knows? Why do you ask?”

“Well, just wondering in case you haven’t heard about the rumors.”

You looked at her in confusion until Kyrie decided to explain to you.

“I guess you haven’t heard them. People believe that a ghost is currently haunting the opera house, but so far no one’s been able to see it properly.”

“Yep.” Nico interrupted after taking a sip from her smoothie. “So far the only evidence are disappearing objects, props appearing in places they weren’t before, and some even claimed to have seen a shadow moving behind corners.”

A shadow moving behind corners?

“I personally don’t believe in such nonsense.” Trish stated nonchalantly. “Those might as well have been caused by careless crew members who would rather blame a ghost than admitting their irresponsible actions.”

“But what about what the concierge claimed the other day?” Kyrie continued with the conversation. “He said he heard a male voice in Box Four, which is odd because that box was empty that day, in fact no patron has requested that box in quite some time.”

“Maybe someone entered the box while security wasn’t looking?” You wondered aloud. It is true that you witnessed what Nico had previously said about misplaced objects and how sometimes you would feel watched although nobody was around but you, then again, Trish’s explanation actually made more sense than the existence of an actual ghost.

“Ghost or not, I hope whatever it was won’t cause you any trouble in the future.” Lady added in the hopes of changing the subject. “But enough of that, how about we instead talk about much more positive stuff?”

Though everyone in the booth agreed, you still had your doubts.

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It was just another day in the opera house, rehearsing and practicing your choreography for the next play. You were just finishing your dance lessons when you were approached by Nico.

“Hey there darlin’! Would you mind taking this props to the storeroom over there for me? Apparently a spotlight got damaged and I’ve got to check it out.”

After letting her know you didn’t mind at all, she gave you a thumbs up before leaving. Poor Nico, she really deserved a break.

After storing all the props away, you glanced around yourself. Noticing that the storeroom was empty, you decided to practice singing. After all these years, you still weren’t confident in your voice, and when your father died, it got worse, only singing when you were alone and sure nobody could hear you.

You started with one of your favorite songs.

“What if I were a snow storm burning,

what of I were a world unturning,

what if I were an ocean,

far too shallow, much too deep.

What if I were the kindest demon,

something you may not believe in

what if I were a siren

singing gentlemen to sleep.”

Suddenly the lights went out and the door to the storeroom slammed close, leaving you in almost complete darkness and making you let out a small scream of surprise. For some odd reason, the room felt much colder than before, goosebumps appearing on your skin.

A voice deep inside your heart told you, you were not alone in this room.

“I heard an angel singing, when the day was springing…” A dark male voice sounded from inside the darkness that surrounded you. You glanced around, looking for whoever was speaking, but you found nobody.

Was this the phantom that haunted the opera house?

“Mercy, pity, peace; is the world’s release. Thus she sung all day, over the new mown hay, till the sun went down and haycocks looked brown…” the voice continued, making shivers run down your spine. “Such beautiful voice, like that of an angel from The Creator’s celestial choir… a diamond in the rough that has yet to be polished, a flower that has yet to fully bloom.”

“Who are you? Show yourself!”

“Hush my divine angel, no need to fear. I am merely a patron of this fine theatre, one that has watched over its many successful plays in delight. And if you allow me to be frank, your voice is one of the most delectable I’ve heard during my stay here.”

Whoever this entity was, you had to admit his voice was having a calming effect on you despite how scared you were feeling. It was soft like fine silk and molten like pure honey dripping down.

“What do you want?” You inquired this mysterious ghost.

The entity chuckled deeply, one that you could feel rumbling in your chest. “You fear rejection, that’s why you hide your precious talent here, where no one but yourself can witness it. Alas, I have found you my shy angel, and now I’m afraid I can’t let you go.”

You took a few steps backwards hoping to find the door, however your attempt at escaping was thwarted when someone grasped your wrists from behind.

You let out a gasp. You could feel his breath on your neck “Running away from me? You hurt me so my child.” He spoke right next to you ear. The phantom’s presence was so overwhelming, and complete with his deep sensual voice you couldn’t help but blush and submit to him.

He slowly let go of your wrists, but you remained completely still. “I have looked after this opera house from the shadows since many years ago, its meaning a very important one for me. I have watched over you too, I have witnessed your determination, your fierceness to pursue your dreams and keep moving forward, they have warmed my heart deeply so.”

He turned you around, and though you couldn’t see him well, you could feel his eyes connecting with yours “I wish to help you achieve your dreams.”

You felt scared no longer. His embrace was so warm and safe, like a guardian willing to protect everyone that sought refuge. You still had your doubts though, who was this mysterious man? Was he really a ghost? A spirit tasked with protecting this building?

You closed your eyes. Without realizing it, you were already answering him “W-what do I have to do?”

A moment of silence. “Everyday, at 12 o’clock, this area is left completely unsupervised. I believe it is also the time all ballet dancers take an hour long break before continuing their lessons. At that time, you shall meet me here. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

Complete silence. Before you knew it, the presence in front of you disappeared and shortly after, the lights went back on. When you opened the door, the voice spoke again.

“I shall be waiting for you, my angel of music.”

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So there you go! The first chapter of Music of the Night.

We meet the girls Trish, Lady, Nico and Kyrie in the opera house and befriend them shortly after. I’m planning to add the rest of the DMC cast as well so stay tuned.

A few references in this chapter: The song reader sings at the storeroom is called ‘What If’ and it’s by Emilie Autumn. Also, when the concierge mentions hearing a voice from Box Four it’s a reference to the original play; however in the original it was Box Five, I changed it to Four since according to a japanese superstition, the japanese word for ‘four’ sounds almost identical to their word for ‘death’. Quite befitting to this story and V in particular don’t you think?

#devil may cry #phantom of the opera #au #dmc v #v x reader #v x you #fanfiction #fanfic #romance

[villainqueen]

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell - Chapter 1

Yo! 1st real chapter out. Hope you like it. Like always I’m no native english speaker, please be kind :D

V X Fem!Reader fanfiction, set after the events of Devil may Cry 5.

Prologue // Chapter 2 / Chapter 3 / Chapter 4 / Chapter 5

Ao3 [Link]

Chapter 1

The busy bee has no time for sorrow

July 31st 3:00 pm

“Hey Nero, where are my ciggs?”

“Hell, as if I know, Nico!” It was a usual day on the road for the mobile branch of the devil hunting service called Devil May Cry. The music in the van was loud and the driving bumpy as ever, thanks to the driving ability of the young weapon artist Nicoletta Goldstein in the drivers seat and the bickering between the two partners was lively.

“Oh, here they are!” Nico sighed in relief as she found what she was so desperately craving for so she quickly, without paying the traffic any attention, reached over to the open glove box.

“Can you please watch the road while you’re driving!”

“Can you please stop bein’ a little bitch?” This type of conversation was the norm between the two. Nero however had no problems with the admittedly capable woman beside him, just sometimes in moments like these he wished he could just throw her out of the car. Regardless of that they made for a good team and Nero knew that Nico’s work was worth putting up with her bad habits.

“What are you so stressed about anyway Nero? The job went fine, you should relax a bit, or ask Kyrie to help you out with that” Nico grinned as she leaned over to him so he could light up her cigarette.

“Haha, very funny, Nico.”

“After what Kyrie told me… you shouldn't take that as a joke.”

Now Nero’s voice changed from an unamused slightly sarcastic tone to mild panic: “Wait what? Did she mention anything to you?”

“Who knows, Romeo, who knows…”

“Whatever the job was shit, not even good enough to pay for–” Riiiing Before Nero could finish complaining the loud obnoxious noise of the phone interrupted him.

“Oh, as if someone could read your mind, sounds like we got a little more work to do.”

“You don’t know that yet…” huffed the young devil hunter as he picked up the phone: “Devil may cry…”

“Hello there, it’s me Dante your favorite-”

“Why are you back?”

“Well, nice day to you too, I was over a month away and that’s how you greet me, how cold.” Nero couldn’t help but look annoyed, of course he was glad Dante was back, not that he ever doubting the return of his uncle but he hadn’t forget what happened during that last couple of months. Truth be told, Nero had forgiven Dante but was not one to admit that. Therefore, the cold treatment it was.

“Hey hey, Nero, who’s that?” Nico chimed in while blowing smoke in his face.

“Just Dante…”

“Just? Gimme the phone, let me talk to him!” With excitement, Nico tried to snatch the phone out of Nero’s hand however his reflexes proved again to be the superior ones, she stood no chance. No wonder why Nero did the work at the front. He was the body of the operations after all and Nico was content with being the brain, something most devil hunters in the business seems to lack in her opinion, at least the male ones she knew. Otherwise they would all appreciate her genius and skill.

“Nico just shut up, you can fangirl later!” said Nero as he tried to wrestle away from her and returned to the phone call: “Okay Dante, what’s going on?“

“So, I’m back from hell, quite literally, for a day now and thought I give you a call, you know, to let you know that I’m still alive and well-”

“And Vergil, is he fine too? I still have his book I want to return to him.”

“Yes yes, your old man, that guy is fine but well he is not one for staying around, you know… But you should bring the book with you when you stop by.”

“Stop by? Why…”

“Ah yeah, Morrison offered a job, only the girls are out and I’m back from hell, so I think I deserve a damn day off. I decided to be generous and just pass that on to you.”

“You’re simply making me do your work, am I right?” Nero furrowed his brows, one day he gets called dead weight, the next he’s the one doing Dante’s unwanted workload, lucky him…

“Nero, it’s not like you’re not getting paid for it and so far, the client offered good money and with that I mean really, really great payment. So, be a good kid and stop by will ya?”

“Okay okay….”

“Good and don’t forget the book.”

“Whatever!” With that he hung up. Not really sure what he should make of it. Dante just comes back, calls nonchalantly and it’s back to the usual business as if nothing happened.

“Care to share what he said?” asked Nico with a curious twinkle in her eyes.

“Guess we got another job offer.” answered Nero, still unsure what to make of it. “But let’s hear about it first before we take it.”

“Nah idiot! You said it yourself, we need money, the car doesn’t drive with only water and my good will, okay? You goin’ smackin’ some demons!” lectured Nico him with grin on her face that made Nero almost uncomfortable.

“Yeah yeah, whatever…”

Nero didn’t want to admit it but her logic was sound. After they cleared up all remnant demons in Red Grave City, the last month was a quiet one and the last thing he wanted was that Kyrie getting sleepless nights over money problems.

“Nico?”

“Hm?”

“You know, I hate it when you’re right…”

“Well, tough luck. Get used to it.”

July 30th 11:00 pm

The lights of the Devil May Cry office turned on as two men made their way inside.

“Home sweet home!” yelled Dante as he threw his weapon to the side and took a seat at his desk. “Seems like Trish isn’t here so V you can make yourself at home, if you want. You like Pizza? I feel like ordering something.” The other man followed behind him much slower with his weight supported on his trusty cane. Carefully taking a seat on one of the leather couches.

“I have to decline that offer.”

“You know V, now that you’re a normal everyday human you do have to eat, they’re also delivering pasta if that’s more your thing. I will just judge you a bit for that.” That didn’t get much more of a reaction out of that, in black leather clad, man. However, on one hand Dante was not so far off. It took a bit to fully process it, but V was now a human, not Vergil’s human part anymore and not a half demon, just a human. But he felt weak, weaker than ever before. A feeling he did not like. Even though his tattoos remained, was he still able to summon any of his familiars? Without them, he felt completely powerless. He did desire to exist but what was he going to do now? He had nothing, no reason, no motivation, no power. His train of thought was quickly stopped by the noise of the heavy front door as another man walked in, the broker J.D. Morrison.

“I knew you’d come back and here I am stopping by and you’re here like you’ve never left. Always good to see you, old friend.” He said as he made his way over to Dante. “And as I can see, you brought our last client with you.”

“Yeah, we’re back but what brings you here at this hour?”

“Well, I hoped the Ladies were already back, I’ve got a new job at hand, a promising one and the pay is unusual good.” Morrison declared with a smile since he knew, if great pay was mentioned, Dante would be all ears.

“Tell me about it.” Dante was tired and hungry, regardless he knew Morrison wouldn’t come by that late if there wasn’t something to gain for them, so he was more than simply interested. V on the other hand was too sunken in his own thoughts and not one bit invested in Dante’s business. He had no part in it, yet nowhere to go and for the first in a long time, he felt alone.

“Great, listen up Dante, this job comes from the higher ups and with that I mean the church. Yes, you understood me right here, the church! They’re quietly recruiting mercenaries and demon hunters for something big. All in secret, a bit fishy if you ask me, especially with the high payment they offer but they can afford that I suppose.”

“Why would they hire guys from the outside? I thought they got people for such things? Okay, now that I think about it I doubt I have ever seen priests roundhouse-kicking demons yet. On one thing I’ll agree with you, that job it does sound a bit fishy. They would trust anyone with a gun to smack demons for them?” joked Dante with a somewhat questioning expression. The information could be nothing out of the ordinary as he doesn’t have much to work with here. Regardless his guts are telling him; something does not feel right. That also could be the hunger though.

“The job is basically about this castle in the mountains-” started Morrison but was quickly interrupted by a groaning Dante: “Why does it always have to be a castle?”

“Will you let me finish? So where was I, ah yes, this castle. It’s pretty cut off from the outside world since like a really long damn time by some magical barrier or something. And all of the sudden the barrier is gone and demons swarming the castle. The church wants people to get rid of the demons and retrieve any old artifacts or interesting stuff that was left inside.”

“All of them? That is a bit broad and wouldn’t the risk that some everyday gunman sacks some treasures in for himself, sounds not genuine. ”

“I’ve gotta agree with you on that Dante. I’d almost say the church doesn’t really care for artifacts and got something specific in mind.”

Dante took a moment to piece that together. He knew how suspicious churches could be but this mystery tickled his scooby-sense. He smirked as Morrisons and his eyes met. Both business partners understood exactly what’s going to happen. Dante got a plan.

“How about I look into this church business a bit and send someone else to that castle instead. And I think I have the right henchman for that job. Oh and V? You’re going with him.” This pulled the young man out of his own thoughts and with a surprised and slightly confused look, he turned to Dante: “Care to explain? You should have noticed that I have no means to fight.”

“Nah V, you still got the whole goth-look going on means you probably be able to summon your annoying pets again. And did you honestly thought I let you freeloading here? Trish is already expensive enough.”

V looked over to Dante and Morrison, who just shrugged his arms as if he wanted to say; “There is nothing I can do for you son.” V understood he wouldn’t be of any help and would be nothing more than a burden in his current condition, but everything was better than doing nothing. Just sitting around feeling sorry for his state would do him no good. All he could do now was accepting the defeat.

“Good it’s settled then, V you’ll accompany Nero to that castle. You’re much more perceptive than that kid. If there is something weird or you see any artifact that could be interesting, make sure to get back to me with that.”

#devil may cry #Devil may Cry 5 #DMC #DMC V #DMC 5 #V #V x Reader #Vitale #DMC Vitale #fanfiction #chapter 1 #fanfic #writing

[iblue-kitzune]

Of Rising Calamities Beyond the Cosmos: Chapter 3

Subtle changes in the atmosphere were far and few between these strange times, but they were there, lying in wait, churning beneath the surface, and everyone can feel it.

A big one, as slight as it appeared to be, was upon them. In the water, in the air, or under the very ground they stood upon, it didn't matter. They could truly sense it in full, feel it deep within their bones and down to their very souls.

The change was so deep and felt so ominous, from the way the wind stopped blowing in mid-gust to the storm clouds clearing away in haste as if they got spooked by something, that it put everyone on the island all on edge.

No thunder...

No lightning...

And no rain...

It all suddenly stopped.

But that’s not what made them freeze up in fear. No, it was the agonizing silence that came immediately after the change they felt seconds ago.

It was quiet...

Too quiet...

                                            XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Inferno’s eyes snapped open the second he heard the sound of rushing water and garbled cries for help. Now immediately on guard, the dragon-bird raised his head and looked out in the distance, past the waterfall and past tall shrubs, to see an enormous flock of different birds and winged monsters burst into the area, and before he could react, they all flew right past his resting spot without a word.

"[What the—]" he jumped to his feet, jaw dropping in disbelief at the sight of an incoming tidal wave looming over the horizon.

Hearing more cries and roars, he took a quick glance down and had to not only bite back a curse but also stop his heart from jumping straight out of his chest as he witnessed an endless amount of monsters and wild animals get swept up in the current, never to be seen or heard from again as they were now lost within the watery depths.

His heart went out to them.

'[This isn’t good...]' he slowly backed away from the approaching tidal wave, and took a quick look behind him out of the corner of his eye. ‘[I need to warn Jane and Kagome. But first...]’ a purple glow surrounded his body as he closed his eyes, drew forth his mana, ‘[I must do this!]’ and shouted in his mind vehemently.

SWWWOOOOOOOOOOO!

The spirit ignored the biting sting from the sudden huge gust of wind that ripped through the area as a large glowing red colored rune materialized in place on the ground beneath his feet... 

“[Let the flames engulf you!]” Inferno started to chant, ignoring the shadow of the tidal wave looming over him and the cave as he stood to his full height of fifteen-foot-three and spread his wings wide open...

ZZZOWP!

And he ignored the sudden appearance of a new aura that just blinked into existence one thousand feet above him as his eyes snapped open.

"[Flame Ring!]" he cried out with a powerful flap of his wings.

A reddish-gold and orange circular ornament-like glyphs, in the form of hot flames, shot up from the ground right as the wave crashed right into, and blocked it.

FIIIIIZZZZZZZZZ!

The spirit gritted his teeth, holding onto his attack as the water began to dissipate bit by bit, ‘[Come on...]’ and as a result, a cloud of steam appeared before the dragon-bird and surrounded him from all sides.

‘[Damn it! I can’t see!]’ he squinted his eyes, trying to see how much water was left through the ever-growing veil of steam but to no avail.

The steam was too thick, making it not only harder for him to make out anything in the distance but it also clogged up his senses—specifically, his sense of smell and his sense of intuition.

He couldn’t smell or sense anything!

And what made things worse was that some of the steam was circling his around his spirit arte, completely blowing right past him —damn that cursed wind—, and straight into the cave!

"[Oh no...]" he looked back in horror. That will surely cause a problem for the ladies later on. He knew that for a fact—

WHOOSH!

A dark shadow interrupted his thoughts as it appeared right above him, and because of this, Inferno’s concentration of keeping Flame Ring up shattered into millions of pieces.

‘[No!]’

The flames vanished into thin air, and before the spirit could react, the unknown object plowed through the veil of steam of steam and landed right on his head, a cry of pain and shock escaping from his lips as he was knocked over.

‘[...S...Shit...]’

The last two things he saw before everything went dark was the identity of said object, which turned out to be a small dark colored griffin with a muzzle on his beak, and a small tidal wave rushing towards him.

Resigning to the fate that has fallen before him, he slowly shut his eyes closed and said his final words.

‘[...Jane...]’

The current washed over Inferno and drug both him and the griffin, who immediately latched onto his head without even realizing it, underwater.

‘[T...Take Kagome and...r...run away!]’

                                            XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

“Hey Auntie...”

“What?”

“Inferno is one of the Five Great Spirits on Earth, right?”

The sudden question, while it did not make her pause in the slightest as she continued walking through the dark cave with a blue colored flame lit in her left hand, confused her greatly.

“Yes,” Jane replied and looked back at the young black haired woman walking behind her. “Why do you ask? I thought you already learned this in elementary and high school?”

Kagome pursed her lips in thought. “I did...” she paused and considered her next words, “It’s just that...since you summoned him through a summoning spell instead going to his shrine domain and physically meet up with him like you or anyone else normally would, what happens to him if he gets hurt and defeated by someone?” she looked at the older woman who turned back around and faced the pathway up ahead.

At her inquiry, the older woman placed her free hand underneath her chin and rubbed it between her thumb and index finger. “Well it’s simple really. He just disappears,” Jane said with a small hum.

“Really?” she asked in astonishment.

“Yes, really,” the astrophysicist confirmed with a nod of her head.

As if she still couldn’t believe it, Kagome then asked, “Like all those who’ve been turned into summons do? They don’t die?”

“It’s a little complicated to explain, but when you create a summoning contract with any spirit, great spirit, or even a monster, they get placed in a special position. If you summon them to your side from wherever they were at, in battle or outside of battle—it doesn’t matter, and they either get knocked out or defeated from taking too much damage, they disappear and go back home. Or back to the last location they were in before they got summoned,” Jane elaborated in a teacher-like tone of voice. “It is only during this time, when you summon them, that they cannot die. They’re safe...” she said, moving her hand away from her face and dropping it to the side. “For the time being that is.”

Kagome blinked, forming an O shape with her mouth. “I guess that means if they’re not brought into the field and turned into mere summons through the contract you have with them, they will die,” she finished with a mumble, her face looking grim.

“Precisely,” Jane said solemnly. “And their names get crossed out in the contract after that. You’ll know when it happens,” she explained in a low voice. 

“How?” the young miko asked with a raised brow.

“By opening up the contract and checking the name after it and the scroll glows white,” the scientist answered. “That part is not exactly common knowledge to academia institutions or all of Earth just yet, but right now, only those within the summoner community or those who’ve made a connection with the spirits or monsters have possession of that knowledge and more.”

“I see...” Kagome said nothing further and looked down at her feet with half-lidded eyes, staring absentmindedly at the different colored pebbles and crystallized rocks embedded into the floor, thinking about how sad all of that sounded. 

It seemed like nothing, not even a summoning contract, could save a spirit or monster from death. It only bought them enough time to recover away from danger.

And this would prolong their lives just a little bit more.

At least, that’s what she thought. The young miko didn’t know because she never actually tried forming a contract with a spirit or monster before.

Only a handful of people—ones that she knew aside from her auntie, already did...

Like her dad, her little brother, Sango, Miroku, Lady, Nero, Kyrie, Dr. Strange, Clint, Wanda, Peter, and that one guy with black hair and amber eyes named Jude she met a few years back in Reize Maxia when she visited there, once.

“That’s strange...” Jane’s voice broke Kagome out of her thoughts. “Did I just...” the young miko looked up to see her aunt standing there near the edge of a cliff, looking deeply disturbed with her hand placed firmly on her hip.

“What’s wrong, Auntie?” a frown appeared on her face as she asked this.

Jane looked back at her and grimaced.

“I just heard Inferno’s voice right now before he poofed...” she trailed off when her golden brown-amber eyes caught sight of something moving above them, “What in the world...” and quickly threw the fireball up in the air to brighten the room up even further.

“Huh?” Kagome followed her auntie’s line of sight, and a small gasp escaped from her lips. “Oh dear, that’s not good at all.”

Tiny cracks started forming along the base of the icy colored stalagmites, that loomed high above their heads on the ceiling, and creating a zigzag-like trail until they reached the very tips. And before the two ladies could react, one of them exploded, sending millions of tiny shards everywhere.

“Aaaaahhh!” the two covered their heads as a few of the shards rained down on them, slicing up their sleeved arms and exposing their flesh to the biting chill of the damp cave, leaving goosebumps in their wake.

CRACK!

FWOOOOOOOOO!

‘Oh what now—’ the two quickly jumped away from their spots, narrowly avoiding a group of stalagmites that fell to the floor with a loud crash and shattered to pieces, staining the cave floor white.

Then all of a sudden, the fire went out and the room went completely dark.

“Shit...”

It took a few seconds for them to process what just happened, and they stared warily at the pieces of stalagmite dissolving into a puddle of water on the ground with wide eyes.

They were extremely lucky that they were able to dodge that in time; otherwise, they would’ve turned into a bloody shish kabob. 

And that would have not been a pretty sight to see.

The two ladies had no desire to find out what it looks like from the other end of being stabbed through and through or find out exactly how painful the whole ordeal feels once it happens. And despite how ridiculous it sounded, the two had the Sparda Twins and Nero cover that part considering the amount of times they’ve been skewered by a deadly sharp weapon in the past...

Or stabbed through the chest without warning, and by their own weapon no less at times.

Quite terrifying when you think about it.

‘I’m starting to think that’s some twisted family tradition of sorts,’ Jane mused as she and Kagome dodged a few more fallen stalagmites in the darkness, ‘I should probably ask Dante since he’s the one who has it worse...’ then dropped down into the abyss below without hesitation, successfully avoiding the rest of them.

“Where does this lead to?!” she heard Kagome holler from somewhere above her.

“I don’t know!” Jane answered back. Then she took a peek down and noticed something very peculiar.

‘Rocky platforms?’ she narrowed her eyes in deep concentration, and sure enough, the young brown haired woman saw a couple of them sticking out of the cliff wall’s side.

‘That’ll do.’

Seconds later, however, Jane saw exactly how close she was to reaching the bottom floor. 

‘Forty feet it seems,’ she estimated in her head. 

And so, with that in mind, she moved towards the wall and pushed herself off its surface with a powerful kick and jumped high in the air. Then in that same momentum, she turned and flipped her body upright —with some difficulty— just in time for her feet to land on a stray platform.

Once that was done, and after taking a few deep breaths, Jane braced herself and jumped off the platform the rest of the way down.

“Oh thank god...” the young woman sighed in relief once she landed on the ground safely. “That was actually a little bit harder to perform than I thought,” she wheezed a bit, wiping the sweat she managed to work up in that little time off her forehead. 

‘It’s because you’re tired...’ the Aether whispered to her. ‘You and Stark’s daughter have been running around and flying from island to island for nearly ten-and-a-half hours now. Exhaustion was bound to catch up with you sooner or later after all.’

Rolling her eyes, Jane ignored the voice of the reality gem and looked up, catching sight of Kagome’s falling form and watching how the young woman landed on the floor with a grimace.

“You make it easier than it looks, Auntie,” the young miko grumbled, dusting the invisible dirt off her clothes.

Jane shrugged, saying nothing in response to her niece’s comment, and took a look around the area they landed in. Technically, it wasn’t that different than what the upper floor of the cave looked like, just a bit more open and spacious.

And what do you know, there was some form of lighting, due to illumine purplish-blue and silver-white glow the surrounding rocks gave off, in the room.

“Well, at least it’s not pitch black to where I can’t see my own hand anymore.”

Jane laughed at her niece’s off-hand comment.

“True.”

                                            XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Loki didn’t know how much more he could take. Within the time he teleported in some unknown area and crash landed into that giant dragon-bird creature, who disappeared out of existence the moment the water washed over them both, the God of Mischief had been dragged under and thrown to and from every rock and wall he encountered in the cave.

He couldn’t do anything, let alone get any reprieve from the abuse his body suffered through for the past five minutes now. 

And it’s not like he could just fly out of the water and save himself—not with the condition his wings were in.

Plus, the moment he was able to push himself up to the surface to get what little air can and somehow breathe through the muzzle, that had tiny holes and cracks running along the surface of the damn contraption he once thought was indestructible —well not any more it seems—, he got dragged under.

Every single damn time!

‘Gahhh! Not again—’

A muffled groan of pain escaped from him as he was forcibly dragged underwater, again, and thrown into a much bigger rock this time, which turned out to be a broken stalagmite, shattering it in the process.

Loki closed his eyes and cursed in another language in his head. ‘That was the seventh time now!’ he seethed, cracking his green eyes wide open.

And it was a good thing he did too because there was another stalagmite heading towards him at high speed.

Panic seized him, and yet he still worked his wings and limbs into overdrive and quickly yet sluggishly moved to the side, letting the sharp rock flip past him and crash into a wall somewhere behind him. Then with a bit slight difficulty, he kicked his way up to the surface and broke free with a loud gasp that got followed by a few coughs seconds after.

‘I don’t think I can take much more of this,’ he flapped his wings and body to stay afloat, splashing water everywhere as he panted through the damaged muzzle harshly.

Too bad he couldn’t use his magic in the water. If it weren’t for the fact that his magic stopped working the moment he gets dunked in a large body of large water or for the fact that he can’t—

“Do you hear that?”

“Yeah, it kind of sounds like running water.”

“But that’s...impossible.”

Loki snapped his head up the moment he heard two familiar voices, and he turned around in the water only to freeze up at the sight of an upcoming drop—

‘Huh...?’ his body broke out into shivers at the sudden feeling of some foreign energy washing over him, and it had nothing to do with the temperature of the water, which he was already immune to. 

Then all of a sudden, a bluish-white light appeared and wrapped itself around his whole body.

‘What...what madness is this?!’ 

The God of Mischief found that he couldn’t move.

He couldn’t summon his magic...

He couldn’t counter it or teleport away out of it...

He just couldn’t break free of whatever hold he was in no matter how hard he tried.

He was trapped!

Before he knew it, the light surrounding him expanded in size until it completely engulfed him and the whole room.

When it finally died down, Loki was nowhere to been.

                                            XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Kagome jumped at the sight of a bright blue-white light warping in place above their heads, and to her immense surprise, a familiar dripping wet griffin, covered in cuts and bruises, popped out of the glowing portal and fell forward.

“How did you...” she trailed off, her eyes straying to the side to see her aunt’s hand glowing the same exact color. “Nevermind,” the young miko said.

A small grunt escaped from the astrophysicist’s lips as she caught the small animal and held him close. “What in the world are you doing here, Little one?” she asked, looking down at the squirming griffin, who blinked three times, as if to get his bearings, then froze still in shock once he realized where he was and who he was with. “You should still be back at home recovering from your wounds,” she spoke to him softly, reaching up to pet him on the head.

And to both of their surprise, he closed eyes and started to purr, which made the young woman smile.

“I think we should worry about that later, Auntie...” she heard her niece said over the griffin’s purring, who stopped and opened his eyes the moment she dropped her hand. “Because we got something bigger coming our way that we should focus our attention on,” the young miko continued.

Ignoring the open look of confusion, wonder, and slight relief in those shocked green eyes of his, Jane turned her attention away from the griffin to Kagome and noticed the woman slowly backing up in fear.

At the sound of roaring water, she snapped her head up—nearly giving herself a whiplash in the process, and her face dropped at the sight of a big tidal wave falling from the sky. 

‘So that’s what Inferno meant by “Take Kagome and run away”...’

With no time to waste, Jane shouldered the griffin in her embrace with one hand and grabbed a hold of Kagome’s arm with her other hand. “Time to go now!” she quickly yet gently hauled the young woman over to her side just as the water descended to the floor with a giant splash. “Hang on tight, Kagome!” she warned the young miko before levitating off the ground.

The young black haired woman nodded, too stunned to say anything as she wrapped her left arm around her aunt’s waist and held on tight.

Within a split second, a blue-white glow surrounded the three right as the tidal wave was upon them, and before it could come crashing down on the group, Jane took off with a great burst of speed.

                                            XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The sudden jerk of motion surprised the god and nearly threw him out of Jane’s arms, but he latched onto the woman’s sleeves before that could happen and held on with what little strength he had left as they flew through the dimly lit cave, watching everything around them blur by with the look of resignation.

As much as he didn’t like it, Loki had no choice but to accept Jane’s assistance—not if he wanted to get out of here alive that is. He will just have to grin and bear it until they find the exit. Then he can leave the woman’s hold, and maybe her company, although he wasn’t sure about that last one there. 

It was strange how calm and at ease he was right now—even stranger how it all happened in the first place, and it happened the moment he heard Jane’s voice and landed in her arms, seconds later. 

The funny part about all of that was him not making a fuss or saying a single word about it to her. Technically, he wasn’t angry at her for putting him in a telekinetic hold even though the action itself almost sent him into a panic attack, which he should give her a piece of his mind for that, but he wasn’t going to. And he most definitely wasn’t angry at her about the fact that she literally teleported him to her side—how could he when it was she who saved him from a death that he would consider so degrading.

But to be fair, he had been more surprised at that discovery than anything else. And what a discovery it was! To learn that a mere mortal, a small Midgardian woman, could perform such incredible powers similar to that of his. It had been so powerful that not even he, a God, could break through it.

This Jane was something else entirely. An anomaly that he’s never encountered before.

And speaking of anomalies, he wasn’t exactly sure why he was content with being held for the ride, and so intimately at that too. 

Normally, he disliked being touched by another being—couldn’t stand it actually as a matter of fact. Not since the time his life got turned upside down with the discovery of him being a Frost Giant, not since the time his so-called parents lied to him, not since the time Odin rejected him when he and Thor hung over the broken Rainbow Bridge by end of Gungir, and not since the time fell into the Void after letting go.

Point of the matter is, he didn’t like it. Didn’t like the idea of being held, hug, or touched...unless he was the one who initiated the action first. 

Just him and no one else.

But somehow, and for some strange ungodly reason, a small tiny little part of him that he didn’t want to acknowledge right now—the part that he thought he’d  buried long ago when he was a sweet, naive innocent young boy, didn’t mind being held by Jane. 

Hugged by her even.

Compared to every other Midgardian he had the misfortune of being around with, before and after his awakening, there was just something different about Jane. Something that he couldn’t quite figure out just yet—and he was determined to.

So mysterious...

Like puzzle...

That’s it. That’s what she reminded him of, a puzzle!

And he’s solved many puzzles before. Some had been intriguing while others had been either boring or frustrating—borderline on the maddening side of things.

Where she fit along the spectrum was a mystery itself. 

And lucky for Jane, Loki loves a good mystery.

“The griffin’s been oddly quiet this whole time,” he heard Kagome said in a low voice, noticing the young woman looking right at him out of the corner of her chocolate brown eyes. “I wonder what’s he thinking about?” she mumbled to herself quietly.

So the girl wanted to know what his thoughts were huh? Well that’s too bad. He wasn’t in the mood for that kind of discussion, and never will be. His thoughts were his own and no else—  

“Just the usual...like every other stranger thinks when they first meet someone like me. They think I’m like some sort of interesting puzzle, an enigma, someone they can’t figure out. Pfff, as if I need to be solved by a bunch of people, animals, spirits, and monsters,” Jane said with a laugh, sounding both amused and annoyed at the same time.

“Well can you blame them, Auntie? You can, uhh, be a little hard to read at times...” Kagome pointed out. “Or talk to...sort of,” she added with a small sweat-drop.

“And you think I should make it easier for them? Jeez, I hope that’s not what you’re—” 

“Implying? Goodness no! I’m not!” Kagome grinned at the other woman. “You’re just being yourself. And if that’s something people have a hard time figuring out or coming to terms with, well I’m sorry to say that —and no offense to our new furry little friend here— that’s on them,” she continued with a shrug. “Every individual is special and unique in their own way, and you’re no different, Auntie! You are...you! You’re a Half Fire and Light Wielding Spirit with cool Psychic Powers! You’re Dr. Jane Valerie Foster, Nobel Prize Winner, one of the World’s Leading Astrophysicist, Faithful Ally and Friend to the Avengers, and one of the most recognized scientific geniuses of this time! A scientific genius who also happens to be a member of the Science Bros!” she finished with a flourish, passion dripping deep from her voice. 

“Is...that really how everyone views me whenever my names pops up in the conversations? That’s...I don’t know. You sure you’re not laying it pretty thick on there, Kagome? It seems a little...” Jane trailed off quietly, as if she couldn’t imagine the level of excitement people experienced in her presence before.

“Believe it, Auntie!” Kagome winked at the older woman then busted out laughing when she turned pink and looked down to avoid her smile. “Never thought I’d ever say this out loud but good lord you can be pretty oblivious when it comes to these kinds of things—”

“Did you just...”

“Oh please! Darcy and my little brother aren’t the only ones who still watches anime.”

“Why am I not surprised by that,” Jane deadpanned with a roll of her eyes. “And to think that Naruto, of all things, is still popular to this day despite that show being old—”

‘...What...’

It can’t be...

This woman was...

And just like that, the overload of information he was unknowingly presented with as well as the astonishing discovery of Jane’s identity and her full name, including those surprisingly long titles that came with it, caused Loki’s brain to short-circuit. 

                                            XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Dead silence now enveloped the atmosphere as Jane continued to carry both Kagome and the griffin, who strangely thought himself a God—as outrageous as that sounded to her, through the air, weaving in and out of different paths that split into twos the further they went into the cave. 

“I don’t hear the tidal wave anymore,” Kagome said, looking behind her. “Now that we’ve escaped from that disaster, I think we’re pretty safe in here to say the least.”

“Good...” a small hum came from Jane as she said this and turned a corner. ‘Wait a minute...’ there was something gleaming in the distance, something that looked like an opening. ‘Wow! It is one!’ a smile broke out on her face at the sight of a small white hole up ahead, shining as bright as the sun itself. “Because I can see the exit just up ahead,” she told her niece.

Kagome along with the griffin, who shook himself awake, perked up at this news.

“Oh thank Kami!” the young miko closed her eyes and let out a big sigh of relief. “I thought we would be stuck in this cave forever.”

Resisting the urge to say a sarcastic remark, or at least something back, the scientist held her tongue —for now— and sped up, flying toward the exit with every little bit of mana she had left.

                                            XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

In a small clearing of a spacious green valley with what looks to be a weird hybrid between an extravagant city and a village, that was surrounded by snowy mountains and bright blue lakes, lurking in the far distance, various monsters and other creatures of sorts ran around the area. Some frolicked through the tall grass, hiding behind whatever boulder they could find, as if they were playing a game of hide-and-seek, while others flew through the air in loopy loops.

In the midst of their performance, they zoomed right past a figure sitting Indian style on a wide boulder that not only sat waist deep in the middle of one of the lakes, but it also towered over the majority of the boulders and stonehenges in the area.

And that figure was a blue and black bipedal jackal-like creature with a mask around its face, short spikes on the back of its forepaws and its creamy colored chest, and four black appendages that hung down behind its head.

Currently, it was mediating and focusing on expanding its energy, checking for anything out of the ordinary.

FIIIIIZZZZZZZZZ!

Like right now.

The jackal grunted before its eyes snapped open, revealing ruby red orbs that glowed a bit orange in the light from the evening sunset above.

“What is it Lucario?” five voices, three of them being feminine while the other two were masculine, called out the it from below.

“Hmm?” the jackal said, its voice deep in sound. “What is it?” he looked down and spotted a group of creatures gathered around near the water.

Up front and center was a white and light blue colored fox with a small crest on his forehead, midnight blue eyes, midnight blue rhombus markings on his back, the tip of his tail, and on the tips of his dangles hanging down from the sides of his face.

Next to him, on the right, was a bluish-black weasel-cat with three pink tail feathers, red eyes that were surrounded by black eyelash markings, and yellow oval markings on her chest and forehead while the one on the left was a white and bluish-black sphinx with ruby red eyes, a crescent moon shaped horn on the side of her head, and a scythe-like tail.

And finally, behind the three, were two dragons. The bigger one was wyvern and bat-like with a black and purple body, yellow eyes with blue-green sclerae, large wings that blue-green in the membrane area, and a long sharp tail that curled around her body while the smaller one was western-like with a blue and grey body, black eyes that had a hint of blue in them and was surrounded by red ridges that sat on top of his head, red markings over various parts of his body, and giant red wings that were shaped like fans.

“What did you sense just now?” the weasel-cat asked.

“I think Absol mentioned that she sensed something too just before we all came over here,” the fox added.

Lucario narrowed his eyes and jumped down from the rock, joining the others on land. “Just three non-hostile auras that have arrived here, Sneasel, Glaceon...” he replied then turned his attention to Absol. “What about you?” he asked her.

“What I sensed had nothing to do with the new auras. And I felt it near the cave,” she answered, and out of the corner of her eye, motioned the two dragons behind her. “Noivern and Salamence got a little bored with their game, so they found me and decided to tag along after I told them what’d happened.”

The jackal nodded.

“Okay, that should be the area you guys check out first. Meanwhile, I’ll stay here and keep an eye on things,” he suggested.

“Right!” they all said.

Lucario turned around and jumped back onto the rock while his friends took off.

#lokane #fanfic #chapter three #jane foster #half-spirit!jane #loki laufeyson #kagome higurashi #oc (original character) #marvel #mcu #dmc #tox #inuyasha #pokemon #au verse #multiple crossovers #a tale of new beginnings gallery #of rising calamities beyond the cosmos

[historians]

7. & 8.

7. share a piece of prose and explain why you like it.

"Between the blinding city lights and the whir of the freeways, the sprawling, densely packed streets leave no view of the stars up above. The only things that come close are whatever corporate buildings and radio towers happen to be taller than eye-level, or the neon marquees that line the alleys. Beyond that, it’s nothing but darkness out into the sky.

It’s just days away from the longest night of the year, leaving millions of workers watching the sun slowly melt out of the horizon while still stuck inside their offices. By five, it’s dark. Until seven, it stays that way. It’s the season of the night, and with it, the slow weight of the cold that blankets the city. It’s beautiful out there.

It’s the season of night, and everything is dimmed on low. Strings of lights cascade in and around the peripheral view, as soft as their make allows, coming down to frame the windows out into the city. There’s a candle burning, soft eucalyptus and mint, three wicks melting wax and dancing shadows on the wall. In the corner, a single lamp bleeds its light through a red shade. Everything else is just cast in varying shades of darkness and flickering glow, save for slits of twinkling lights in between the cracks of shuttered blinds.

It is quiet. It is still. Inside, the world is slow, but it is warm, and while that heat is heavier, it is an easier burden to bear. It’s the season of lights, and the colors are perfect. It’s even more beautiful in here.

Here, the world feels small. As small as the edges of a mattress, as small as the shadow of a flame flickering across skin, as small as the brush of fingertips. If the blinds were closed all the way instead of cracked, it’d be so easy to get wrapped up in the idea that this is all the world is at all, even if just for a time. Closed off to the sense of sight completely, reality narrows still, until the only thing that exists is a hitch of breath, skin against skin, and dizzying heat. In here, time doesn’t mean much at all."- practice & theory; chapter 5

this comes right before a, uh, pivotal scene that a lot of the fic was leading up to. i remember i started this chapter with a really clear vision of the aesthetics of the situation and wanting to convey those, but also use them as a transition into a very cut-and-dry description of the current situation. i feel like this was successful in setting the precise mood i wanted and stands as one of my favorite sections from the fic, and certainly my favorite intro piece. i'm fond of the entire setup. this is only the first half, i felt like the entire thing was more than a snippet.

8. share a piece of dialogue and explain why you like it.

'“I’m sorry, where was I going with that?” He shot a glance to Kyrie, cross-legged from him on the other side of the mattress. It was a rather large mattress, and Riley was grateful Kyrie was taking some of it for now. He wasn’t tall enough to know what to do with all of it. 

“Someone named Nathan,” she offered, her own glass of wine between her legs. Riley had lost count of hers, but it took more for her to feel a thing than it did for Riley to become a public embarrassment, so it didn’t matter. “Don’t ask me where you were going with it.” 

Riley rolled his eyes to the ceiling, finishing off the rest with an exaggerated groan. “Right, right. Anyway, he has full sleeve tattoos, Kyrie. Both arms!”

“So you’ve said,” Kyrie replied, patient as ever. “Full sleeve tattoos, and you’re the unprofessional one.” 

“And I’m the unprofessional one,” Riley repeated, holding out his glass vaguely in her direction. She filled it about halfway, but with pointed, unflinching eye contact on his part she shrugged and made it three-quarters. “It was the weirdest thing, Ky. It was like he was purposefully trying to piss me off. Has that ever happened to you? Is that normal? Whoever takes insult in stride wins?”

“I’m in fashion design. So yes, actually.” 

“Well, I don’t do that for a reason.” Riley rested an elbow on his knees, slumping into his hand. “And I did not take it in stride. So, yeah, I blew it.” 

“You don’t do that for a lot of reasons.” She passed him the glass of water again. “You never know. You think he has a nasty attitude, and he has a job there. I think your nasty attitude is charming. You might fit in. Maybe that’s why you'll get it.”- american boys; page 23

technically not a fic, as this is taken from an original work. but, that's the hell i currently am residing in, so i wanted to choose something from it. this is from the first scene the main character [riley] and his long-time best friend [kyrie] are seen interacting in person. it serves both to explain their dynamic and contrast the protagonist's attitude/behavior around a close friend versus the very professional setting from the scenes before. riley is the golden child of OCs, and his banter with other characters, especially kyrie and the deuteragonist, nathan, are some of my favorite parts of the entire process. i've had these characters and their plot since i was a young teen so i've come to really love character writing for them more than practically anything lmao. sorry i never shut up about this lately but buy it at b&n 2020

#Anonymous #witness testimony

[ramblingsofthegoldenwitch]

(You've commented a fair number of times about how you don't like EP7 much compared to other EPs. If you don't mind elaborating, what are your complaints about it?)

It’s difficult to explain my feelings in regard to Ep 7... and they might feel like things that affect just me so, everyone, if you feel like digging in this explanation, consider yourself warned.

In fact, to be honest, some of the issues I’ve with it are a matter of personal taste, for example I didn’t like at all how it was structured (as in the way the whole story was delivered to us) and I felt like many choices in it weren’t really necessary to the plot. All this can of course be countered by another person with a mere ‘but I liked it!’. We’re all different, after all, and my tastes don’t rule the world or dictate what should be likable and what shouldn’t.

Some issues I’ve about it are in regard to how ‘confusing’ its presentation is. No, I’m not talking about Will giving us obscure answers, I’m talking about the huge Meta structure that basically permeates all Ep 7 and that is never well explained. By now I’ve my theories and I’ve more or less sorted it out but the problem is that they’re just MY theories, MY interpretations. People come asking me what in the world is going on in Ep 7 and all I can reply to them is what I THINK is going on but I can’t say for sure and what makes it worse is that I don’t think we needed things to be so confusing. Umineko had better Meta ways to deliver things that had already been used. No need to complicate everything by making new ones. Of course, again, there can be people who loved all this.

Another issue I’ve with it is the Theatre-going authority. We’re lulled into thinking that it will push characters to tell us things, and that their testimony will be the truth. All the people Will uses it on were ALREADY willing to speak (even Kinzo was persuaded to do so by Lion) and they tell us an extremely personal, sometimes even deliberately mendacious version of the truth (Kinzo was the one who wanted to kill the Italians, not Yamamoto). The effect of the theatre-going authority is fundamentally the one of a giant fantasy flashback. We already had them, no need for it... unless they were supposed to be red herring? The only person who didn’t want to talk is Shannon, Will tries to use the theatre-going authority on her and then… gives up. It seems as if the theatre-going authority only existed to let us see Shannon going in ‘freaky/robot mode’ (it varies according to you reading the VN or the manga). It’s one of the things I felt we could go without.

A small issue is about Will, Lion and Clair. Although I love them to pieces, plot wise I feel we didn’t need those extra characters. I wave it off because… well, I love them madly because Ryukishi is awesome at creating characters. This doesn’t change the fact I get the feelings the addition of those extra was a tad forced.

A concrete issue I’ve with it is how it hand waves certain matters, just appealing to our suspension of disbelief on threat that if we think too much at it we’ll get a headache. Those things could have been explained one way or another but instead… no explanation is given for those oddities happening. They just… happens and we’re either asked to swallow them or make up our own explanation about why such odd things took place.

Will’s presence on the island? Hand waved, no one wonders how this strange got there or who he is, even though it’s a private island and he wasn’t on the boat with the adults. He walks in their private property out of nowhere and no one stops to wonder who’s this guy and from where it comes from, not the servants who should know who was invited nor Kinzo, the master of the house or… everyone else, really. Krauss asks him who he is but then he drops him with Lion and ignores the whole matter, because evidently that’s no more a private ceremony in a private chapel in a private island but a public place. Lion is the one who has a vaguely normal reaction and asks Will why he’s at the funeral, when a better question would be how he got on that island.

The portrait hanged in 1984? No reason for this is given in Lion’s world, it’s just something Kinzo decided on a whim.

Battler’s absence from the conference in Lion’s world is unexplained (yes, my Battler/Sayo heart shipper tells me it’s because Sayo wasn’t on the island but that’s my heart talking, not Umineko. Knox would wave it off as a random guess…).

The same goes for Kinzo’s decision to hold Beatrice’s funeral that year… in which nothing special happened. Kinzo just woke up that morning and decided to hold a ceremony to mourn Beatrice. When he didn’t feel like it when Beatrice truly died.

We aren’t told why Natsuhi changed her mind and accepted Lion even though it’s apparently extremely unlikely. Natsuhi just woke up and decided that hey, maybe tossing him off a cliff would be a bad idea.

Kinzo doesn’t notice how Rosa is screaming she killed Beatrice.

The whole story of how an Italian submarine carrying gold came to Japan is historically illogic as submarines in such conditions would historically go to Spain. To make us swallow it we’re told that maybe they had a reason to go to Japan but ‘nobody knows it because who knew died’. For the gold the same principle is used. It was hard enough to think it was Italian but then Will randomly tosses in it could be German which opens up an even huge can of historical worms and again the whole issue is hand waved with a ‘oh well, we don’t know’.

Clair doesn’t ask Will the solution for all the mysteries. Of course we believe Will knows everything but if we accept she believed he knew everything also then why questioning him in the first place? If I’m not wrong Ryukishi claimed somewhere he wanted to focus only on the riddles that seemed difficult but then the whole scene ends up on being a plot contrivance to deliver to the readers some answers in an obscure way. Oh, it’s artistically pretty and I love it for its prettiness, but it’s plot structure is shaky.

Note that Ep 7 (and Ryukishi) also raised questions in points that didn’t need some.

The tale Battler wrote for Beato? The fandom knew it was Dawn only EP 7 described it in such a way people didn’t really find it matching with Dawn plot so people started wondering if there was another tale written for her and it didn’t help that Ep 7 manga version didn’t bother posting the title on the book cover, something that Ep 8 has no problems making (note that, due to how the manga was printed the two scenes didn’t exactly came out at years of distance but were pretty close so I don’t see where’s the problem in confirming things in EP 7).

Battler’s letter? Maybe in the Japanese fandom things were different but I didn’t remember people doubting he merely didn’t write it until Ryukishi in an interview raised the issue there was more about it… before dropping it completely. The letter is never addressed again. Not even in Ep 8. What broke Sayo’s heart is just… hand waved. Battler doesn’t know about it and while in Ep 8 he’ll apologize for not coming back he’ll never get a head up about the letter matter.

We’re all disgusted by Kinzo’s behavior with Kuwadorian Beatrice? If I don’t remember wrong Ryukishi tells us we don’t really know how things went between them… which is true but it’s clear enough they were horrible enough to push her to follow a complete stranger and try to escape. Not knowing the details of the rape doesn’t really erase it. Unless we’re supposed to doubt the whole story Rosa told us as well as what the servants told us and think that Kuwadorian Beatrice slept with Kinzo willingly and that she left Kuwadorian only for a short walk that ended poorly.

The family conference in the year in which Battler should have come back is conveniently skipped. Or handled so poorly it seems it’s skipped. We actually have a scene from 1980… but it doesn’t look like a family conference and people talking about what will happen in ‘that year’s family conference’ (Kyrie will supposedly show up) reinforces this opinion only it turns out that the next conference we’ll see is the one of 1981… Maybe a problem in the translation? Still it doesn’t work well.

Shannon feels up on asking Genji and Kumasawa to lie to Kinzo, Krauss and Natsuhi and also… hire her as Kanon. And no one notices a thing about this boy whose face is the same as Shannon and that doesn’t come from the Fukuin house as no one of the Fukuin servants could know him but… out of nowhere, really.

Kinzo pulls out the epitaph, which is a hint to Genji that he knows Shannon might be Lion and Genji gives hints to Shannon about how to solve it but… he, Kumasawa and Nanjo don’t stop thinking to a less traumatic way to break the truth to her in those almost two month it’ll take for her to solve it as if they couldn’t realize how traumatic it would be for her. No, the idea of Ep 7 is that they had to traumatize her which requires them to be either jerks or dumb… while it could have more or less worked if everything had happened without them having the chance to predict it and so, caught by surprise, they ended up saying things in a poor manner.

We spiral down with the teaparty. We’re left with the adults in a definite situation, Eva and Hideyoshi are arguing with Krauss, Natsuhi is instead arguing with the other siblings… then all of sudden we’re told that Natsuhi jumped on Eva and this caused her to get shoot. The manga worsened things by showing that the two groups were even distant and that Eva and Natsuhi were giving each other their backs and it kept on worsening things when it insisted on how EXACTLY THE SAME THING would happen in Lion’s world as well, with the only difference that Lion would be called in Jessica’s place. I can swallow that the siblings were in economical troubles even if Kinzo was alive and hated each other so much that they would still argue and kill each other but… different conditions should cause minor shifts in the plot. Instead the only difference between a dead scene and the other is in how the gun next to Eva is placed… which can be the result of a mistake done due to the change in perspective… and well, that Beato isn’t there.

Then there’s Kyrie’s characterization. Kyrie is supposed to be suspicious, careful, rational. All this flies out of the window when she decides she can trust that the credit card really will lead them to all that money without checking first, that there’s no way to convert the gold without Krauss’ help when Sayo, in order to get money on that credit card, should have been able to do it, that the bomb will surely explode even through its mechanism wasn’t tested, that the range of the explosion surely won’t involve Kuwadorian, that the safest way to go through it will start gunning down people instead than grabbing some sleeping pills from Nanjo’s bag, drugging everyone and then gunning them down and, worse of all, she doesn’t check neither Sayo or Eva’s corpses and misses their vital points rather badly even though we were told she was good with guns. Note that I can accept that Kyrie would consider murdering everyone… but I’ve issues with how careless she becomes.

Rudolf too comes as a little odd as he knows he has a defective gun but doesn’t go take another one. It’s minor as Rudolf is lazy… but well, when you’re going on a killing spree and a defective gun can cause you troubles you should play on the careful side. But well, I can swallow it.

Battler’s ‘disappearance’ also doesn’t work well. Ep 8 explains us that the solution to this is ‘Battler left the house then, all of sudden, remembered he didn’t remember the way to the chapel and came back to ask about it to Gohda’ which feels silly as: Kyrie shouldn’t have sent him in such a place considering how it was easy to predict he wouldn’t remember where it was or should have made sure he knew the way (it’s well known that the church is hardly used and Battler had been missing from the house for 6 years, you can expect him not to remember were it is) and Battler should have asked her where the church was. So again, Kyrie comes out as careless and Battler leaving to realize he doesn’t know where to and coming back comes out as a plot contrivance.

On a general note… I think that the previous episodes better addressed Sayo’s issues than the whole of Ep 7. Ep 7 focuses a lot on how ‘it’s all Battler’s fault’, when he actually wasn’t the only one to blame, and generates the false impression that this was Sayo’s only problem. It’s true that there are hints in Ep 7 that this actually wasn’t her only problem but after getting all that ‘it’s Battler’s fault’ for so long, with Will agreeing to it as well, the other issues seem minor when they actually played a big role. Sayo also comes out as petty, pushing the blame of her actions solely on Battler, when we know that in Prime she actually took responsibility for them. So ultimately I think Ep 7 did her a disservice.

Ep 7 also lost a good chance to dig deeper into the motivations of minor characters like Genji, Nanjo and Kumasawa for setting up Sayo’s life in a manner that was… simply terrible.

I’ll let slide the whole matter of how they let her believe her sex was female without even bothering to prepare her for the fact she wouldn’t develop secondary sex characteristic or be able to become pregnant because Umineko wanted to keep in the dark Sayo’s sex and use the full trauma of her discovering her own condition as one of the driving forces for the whole thing (even though the fact that Ep 7 completely overlooked on the whole matter ended up making it look less important than it was).

Let’s focus on the fact they kidnapped Sayo and gave her a new identity so that Kinzo won’t make the same mistake and rape her, which is understandable really, but then they took her back on Rokkenjima AS AN ORPHANED SERVANT, when she was too young to work and under the disguise she was actually younger. Kinzo could have recognized Beatrice in her again, think this time Beatrice reincarnated in a person unrelated to him and rape her all over taking advantage of the fact that now she was his servant. It’s a horrible plan and their decision for going through it is… poorly explained.

Then there’s the loss of a chance to let us know more about minor characters like Kinzo’s wife (where was she when the baby was handed to Natsuhi since she was clearly still alive to scold Rosa and push her to escape in the forest and meet with Beatrice? Natsuhi claimed that Krauss and Kinzo were away but what about Kinzo’s wife? Did they drag her along?) or how Asumu, a young woman with no health problem mentioned, suddenly died, to dig a little better in Battler’s six years away from his family and his feelings for Sayo (he’s jealous she chose George but then he can brush it off… so it looks like it isn’t a big deal… only we’ll learn in Prime he risked his life for her more than once and, hadn’t she died, he was willing to spend the rest of his life with her).

Then there are issues I’ve specifically with the manga.

In the scene in which the culprit shows up for the first time… the culprit’s form is slightly kept in the dark but we can see she’s not Shannon, she’s not Beatrice and she isn’t even Clair. There’s no reason for this person in the dark to be an ‘extra’ person.

Kinzo’s wife has no face nor name. I can get over the fact they didn’t give her a name, not on the fact the mangaka didn’t give her a face as there’s no reason to obscure it. She’s not hiding some dark secret. We won’t learn the truth about her later on as we’ll do with Asumu, whose face will be showed only in Ep 8 (bless Ep 8). Yes, maybe they wanted to drive home that for Kinzo she was a ‘not entity’ (his children too get no face) but still… I don’t like this. Personal taste? Maybe.

The manga tossed in a bunch of nameless maids who… go nowhere really (when it would have been so much better if, as someone (myself included) speculated, they also were vessels for things like the Chiesters or the Eiserne Jungfraws) as they don’t get names and just… disappear, while waited to introduce Reinon. This is more or less a direct transposition of how the VN handled matters, only in the VN it worked better as there were no random new faces, just random voices so you could speculate it was a 7 sister maid the one speaking and it wasn’t so clear that Reinon popped up later. The manga makes obvious that’s not the case.

Ep 5 manga version implied the promise happened on the same balcony on which Beatrice, in Ep 4, asked Battler to remember about his sin. This was a wonderful new info but… it goes completely skipped over in the manga transposition of Ep 7. Ep 7 manga version transposes faithfully the novel and just focus on the scene in the garden… where no clear promise is made. Sayo just urges Battler to come and he confirms he’ll do but he never says ‘I promise’ nor they’ll make a pinky swear.

Overall, Ep 7 isn’t fully to blame for most of the issues I’ve with it.

The background behind the Umineko plot is one of an huge amount of extremely unlikely facts happening one after the other, most of whom we’re asked to figure out. While unlikely facts can and will happen, often, in stories in general and in mystery stories in particular the author usually avoids them or explains/excuses them. Umineko just… embraced them as if the unlikely were the ordinary and Ep 7 was the point in which we were asked to do the same, often without being given a convincing reason for having to do this beyond ‘it was unlikely but it just happened, insert devil’s proof here’.

That’s why I wish the manga had at least dimmed some issues I had with the novel version, for example handled better (and not worse) why Eva ended up shooting Natsuhi or how Kyrie and Rudolf murdered everyone in Lion’s world as well.

Most of those issues weren’t IMPOSSIBLE to handle. They just weren’t explained, hand waved with an ‘it happened, don’t think too hard at it’.

As a result, I feel Ep 7 was handled poorly and the manga version did nothing to fix it. It’s my personal impression. I know there’s who loves Ep 7 and how it handled everything and, as usual, that’s fine.

#Umineko #Requiem of the Golden Witch #Umineko VN #Umineko Manga

[sg2tiger]

That almost every theme and metaphor in the series comes back to Sayo's existence. I remember after my first read, I felt that the Ushiromiya's were a little shafted in Chiru, but then I soon realized that while they kinda were, the more you learn about Sayo, the more you realize she's kind of like a culmination of every aspect of the Ushiromiya family's tragedy. And returning back to Sayo's motivation, I feel like while it was profound, the impact could only be felt if you went back and (cont)

(I feel like I might have missed an ask here, but this one is showing up as the first of three…going to just answer this one on its own because I felt like it deserved its own topic)

I would disagree with you about the Ushiromiyas. In fact, I’d say that the only characters of the original 18 who didn’t feel sufficiently developed by the end of the series are Hideyoshi and Nanjo. And yes, that includes Chiru - starting with EP5, let’s think of the characters who got a lot of significant development in Chiru (mind you I can’t include EP8 having not read it myself, so this is just EP5-7).

I know this one’s gonna get long too so let’s save some scrollbars.

Going in order of family rank because why not:

Kinzo: EP7 gives us a lot of insight into his character. Since he’s alive in Lion’s world, we know that the Kinzo we’re seeing is the real deal, and not a fabrication like previous Episodes. Aside from being a bit less mad as a result of Lion not dying, I’d say the Kinzo that Will meets with is otherwise exactly the same as the Kinzo from other worlds. Though the flashback he shows us is very tinted by rose-colored glasses, it also tells us quite a bit about his past. Maybe the story about how he met Bice is idealized quite a bit, but we still get a good lens into how his life was toyed with by the Ushiromiya elders, and how this could have driven him into the mindset of the Kinzo we know. In fact, isn’t it quite similar to Yasu? He was forced to live a life that he felt he had no control over, and so he turned to his hobby of the occult as a form of escapism, much like Yasu turns to her fantasies, or Maria turns to her own occult interests. This is an overarching theme among various characters in the series - the idea of ‘running away’ to an idealized fantasy as a means of escaping an unfortunate life. Finally, in the flashback scenes where we see Yasu solve the epitaph, we get to see how he deeply regrets what he did to Kuwadorian’s Beatrice, and how much he just wants to apologize one last time. He knows he’s being unreasonable when he asks Yasu to call him ‘Father’…but he begs her to do so, because now, at the end of his life, he just wants to feel that feeling that he rejected so much from Kuwadorian Beatrice (who we know was not allowed to call him Father) and feel like a parent. We know that what Kinzo did was inexcusable, and so does he, but in the end all he wants is to repent before he dies. Considering EP7 is our biggest look at a living Kinzo and not a representation of him as shown in the games where he’s long dead, I would say Chiru actually gives us the most significant information about the family head.

Krauss: EP5 shows us how much he truly loves his family. He tells Natsuhi that they’ll file for divorce once the whole business with Kinzo is over, and that he’ll make sure to secure a happy life for her and Jessica. He’s thinking of them before anyone else, basically saying ‘sorry I was such a shitty husband and forcing you guys to deal with my dumb financial decisions’. We also know from Natsuhi’s flashbacks that, when Krauss was away from Rokkenjima’s stifling environment and always trying to impress Kinzo, he was actually a really easygoing guy. EP7 also shows us how he does care about his siblings, with how he sticks up for Rudolf while Natsuhi berates him for his infidelity driving Battler away. That image EP3 cemented for a lot of people, of Krauss being a misogynistic ass and bully to his siblings, was unfortunately damning and I don’t think that’s fair. That was a young man trying to impress his very traditional father, and since Krauss is the heir apparent he’s always had that pressure hanging over his shoulder. When you take Krauss out of that environment where he’s trying so hard to be worthy of a father who never acknowledged him, he’s actually a really good husband and father, and he does love his younger siblings despite it all.

Eva: EP7 tea party. ‘nuff said. I also know EP8 deals with some of the inherent issues between her and Ange, so I imagine she gets some good development there, as well. We also have the whole fight with George in EP6 which, while not necessarily positive development (development does not have to be positive!!), shows a lot about her parenting style and the harsh way she brought up George, while believing that was for his best well-being.

Rudolf: EP7 tea party…er, ‘nuff said. But also, Chiru as a whole gives us a much better picture of Rudolf’s inner character than previous Episodes (where he was often shown through Battler’s perspective) had. We see in an EP7 flashback how much he regretted having cheated on his wife with Kyrie and getting her pregnant, and how he saw raising Ange as a form of repentance (I’d assume he actually meant repentance for what he did with switching Battler’s birth, IE, actually letting Kyrie raise her own child this time). Even during the whole tea party shenanigans (which mind you I haven’t hit yet in my reread so these memories are a bit more outdated) we get a feeling that he probably isn’t nearly as thrilled about what they’re doing as Kyrie is (not that this excuses him, at all), and how he still, if nothing else, wants to make sure Battler is spared - and that he sits them down and tells them the truth about them being parent and child. Like I said, character development does not have to be praiseworthy, but I think Chiru definitely gives us a lot of insight about Rudolf’s character.

Rosa: Rosa is a lot less developed in Chiru than she was in the question arcs, but that’s okay, because she was developed a whole lot in the question arcs. However, EP6 does show us a bit more insight into her situation with Maria’s father, which was one of those little mysteries that hadn’t really been addressed up to then. EP5 also shows the more wise side of Rosa when we see her discussing the epitaph with Battler and Erika, and her tendency to think that her opinions are stupid or meaningless even when she’s actually onto some big insights with the epitaph. This shows us more just how much her siblings beat into her head that she was stupid and inferior, so even when they’re not around, she tends to be the type of person who thinks that every word from their mouth is going to be stupid and that they’re bothering other people by even talking about it. A lot of my friends have these exact tendencies, always apologizing for saying things they think are dumb or being afraid to ask questions, etc, so I would say that even little scenes like this that give you more insight into the sort of character someone is are important. Rosa is also one of those characters with a very negative reputation, so I feel like a lot of people tend to overlook just how much emotional abuse Rosa herself has suffered through, and that she is in fact pitiable (not that it excuses her abuse of Maria at all, but it does EXPLAIN it quite a bit).

Jessica: The love duel in EP6 and her whole relationship with Kanon is expanded on, even if much of it is just a rehash of the ideas from EP2. We also see her in sharp contrast to the gung-ho and determined George, and how she’s really hesitant about even participating in the love trial for a long time (note her fight scene with Kyrie). EP7 also gives us the ghost story about the time she got pranked in the VIP room, and tells us that her asthma is FAKE and something she does to get out of uncomfortable situations. We also find out a very interesting attitude that serves to explain (faintly) why she maybe didn’t notice Kanon = Shannon - when the truth behind something feels more uncomfortable and ominous to her than a lie or an excuse, she’ll take the excuse. The idea of the servants banding together JUST to prank her was way too over the top and unsettling, so she decided that believing in her own active imagination was a better alternative. Perhaps on some level she did notice that Kanon was just Shannon in different clothes…but the fact that she was developing feelings for her long-time meido made her uncomfortable, so she played along with the idea that Kanon was a boy.

George: His confession to Shannon in…was it EP6? About his past character and jealousy over her relationship with Battler, tells us a lot about George’s personality and how he’s ‘evolved’ since he met Shannon. His fight with Evatrice also expands on the kind of home life he suffered, which was harsh even if he did respect that his mother had his best interests at heart. In general I’d say we get a more realistic depiction of George in Chiru than we did in the question arcs, where more often than not he was portrayed as little more than the wise, level-headed, calm and dutiful older cousin. The love trial also reinforced the ideas shown in EP4 during his fight with Gaap, about how strong his determination to marry Shannon was, and how - despite some rather ugly emotions initially making him interested in her - he really does love her.

Battler: Pretty sure I do not have to write an essay to show how much character development Battler gets in Chiru XD

Maria: Like her mother, Maria takes more of a back seat role in Chiru compared to her development in the question arcs…however, there’s still a lot we can get out of her scenes. Her fight with Erika in EP6, and her story to Will about how she met Beatrice in EP7, both show just how strongly she believes in Beatrice and her magic, even if on some level she might realize that it’s a lie. EP7 gives us a lot of insight into why Maria developed the way she did, growing up being bullied at school for not having a father, and how raising the subject made her mother become aggressive. She falls into her occult hobby out of a desire to stand out and make an identity for herself…which Beatrice then fosters as the two of them become friends and create Mariage Sorciere. When you put this information together with the things we learned about Maria in the question arcs, her entire life clicks into place and you can really understand what kind of person she is, and why she’s another example of the overarching theme of escapism in Umineko.

Natsuhi: Um, all of EP5. Like, literally all of EP5? EP5 is the Natsuhi episode. Almost all of her development comes from EP5. Before Chiru, we actually didn’t know all that much about Natsuhi or her life - yeah, she’s The Lead Mom in EP1 and that does focus on her somewhat, but after EP1 she’s generally relegated to ‘that temperamental and bossy bitch who’s obsessed with Kinzo’s dignity and will yell at you if you insinuate that Kinzo was his mistress’. EP5 actually gives Natsuhi multiple layers of character, and I don’t think I need to really lay it all out here - if you’ve read EP5, you know just how much Chiru did to develop her character. As an aside, though, also that scene in EP7 where she chews out Rudolf for his infidelity, which shows that she’s not afraid to Tell It Like It Is when it’s something she feels strongly about, and how she really does sympathize with Battler in this situation.

Hideyoshi: Poor guy. RIP character development.

Kyrie: …Hahaha…haha…ha…haaaa……… (EP7 tea party aside, though, her fight with Jessica in EP6 also gives us a lot of insight into her character…and perhaps, uh, foreshadowing. EP5 too reinforces how cunning she is since wasn’t she the one who initially felt the 1985 conference was ‘off’ and suspected that Kinzo might be dead, convincing the other siblings of the whole plan to force the truth out of Krauss in ‘86? And probs EP8 also goes into more detail about her since I know that’s The Ange Episode and this is obviously a pretty huge issue for her)

(you said Ushiromiyas specifically but let’s just cover every character anyways)

Nanjo: RIP. Though, we do get to squeeze a little development out of him by way of it being confirmed that he was one of the three Secret Keepers who knew the truth about Yasu and Kuwadoriantrice. Other than that, though… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Genji: Genji’s always been a tough nut to crack, and I really do wish we got to know more about him. However, EP7 paints a very strong picture of what he’s really like underneath his undying loyalty as a servant and friend to Kinzo. He actually went against his master’s wishes and lied about the baby being dead because he didn’t want to see Kinzo repeat his mistakes on this child. Granted, the end result of his actions was…uh, not so great, but he had good intentions at heart. And he did watch over Yasu like a father figure for all those years…to the point of agreeing to help her in her ultimate murder-suicide plan. We get a lot of little scenes throughout EP7 that show us what kind of person Genji really was. I wish we got more, but at the same time, I’d find it hard to argue that anything in the question arcs developed Genji’s true character more than those EP7 tidbits did.

Kumasawa: Much like Nanjo and Genji, we can learn a lot just by way of knowing that she was one of the three who kept Kinzo and Yasu’s secrets. We also see what a loving and motherly figure she was to young Yasu, and how much she influenced her (for better or worse) - she helped her stop losing things, she developed her interest in mystery, she fostered her belief in Beatrice and fantasy…Kumasawa played a very large role in Yasu’s development. The scene with Will in Lion’s world also shows us how Kumasawa felt very strongly about what Kinzo did to Kuwadoriantrice, despite keeping his secret for all these years. Even the EP6 meta scenes with her and Chick Beato, IMO, give an image of how she must have been with Kuwadoriantrice - the scene where she speaks out against Battler throwing her cookies on the floor comes to mind, and I can see Kumasawa probably lashing out at Kinzo’s angry behavior (like if Kuwatrice called him ‘Father’), with Genji stepping in to try and stop her before the situation could escalate.

Gohda: Um, some of the stuff he says in the Yasu Theatre segments give some insight about him for people who hadn’t read Notes from a Certain Cook? Maybe? You got me. Gohda didn’t really need a lot of development from Chiru, IMO. I did find a lot of his moments in EP5 pretty funny, though, where he was constantly on the verge of accidentally spilling Kinzo’s secret, and it was suuuuuper clear that Natsuhi was not amused by his careless comments.

Shannon/Kanon: Bruh. C’mon.

But yeah, so ultimately Umineko is a story about Yasu and her struggle, but I absolutely can’t agree that the others weren’t developed even in Chiru, or even with your assessment that Yasu was basically the one major factor behind the whole tragedy. Because half the point of Umineko is that it was everyone’s fault that things wound up the way they did. All their various problems intersected at different points and made things more complicated, and not just for Yasu!! I think it’s really unfortunate to boil down Umineko to little more than a story about Yasu like that, because one of the things I like about it so much is the fact that every character gets strong, multi-faceted development (except Hideyoshi and Nanjo and maybe Magical Gohda Chef, RIP). It’s a story about all of them. And when we say, ‘without love it can’t be seen’, I also think it’s a mistake that a lot of people equate love specifically to romance because that was such a big part of Yasu’s struggle. But Umineko is also very much about other kinds of love, especially familial love. I’ve posted about this subject before, but if the Ushiromiyas could have all just gotten over their various issues with each other and loved each other like a goddamn happy family, the tragedy would not have happened. 

The whole family played a significant role in the story, and the tragedy, and while Yasu was like The Rika of Umineko (the ultimate central character and true protagonist), I don’t think it’s fair to ignore the importance of the ones around who influenced her so much. It’d be like saying once you find out Rika is the most important Higurashi, Keiichi and Mion and the others don’t matter anymore. Even though their friendship and bonds with Rika are the driving force behind her overcoming her insecurities and escaping her own tragedy. One thing Ryukishi does do really well is creating a diverse cast of characters and crafting a story around them where they all matter in some way, and aren’t just there to fill up space in the background.

…I was originally gonna answer all the asks at once but I think now I’ll probably do the other two as a separate post and leave this one specifically about the family.

#umineko #umineko no naku koro ni #umineko spoilers #asks #down-the-rabbit-well #umineko discussions #umineko asks