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melforbes · 3 years

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seaglass blue annotations

hello! i just posted the last chapter and thought i’d put together some ~fun context~ for that fic. it got way way more attention than i ever expected and for something i feel i didn’t put that much effort into i think i did in the end put a lot of effort into it so i might as well talk about it and answer some potential questions.

my favorite book of all time is the sunlit night by rebecca dinerstein (yes, that one) and something i find really compelling about that book is how sparing the prose is, forcing the reader to fill in certain gaps, and i think having to fill in those gaps makes the book a really acquired taste with which either you love it or hate it and there’s not really an in-between

i also really adore how in that book the natural world backdrop comes to life, something i find really challenging to write. recently i even read into thin air, the book about the 1996 mount everest disaster, and even though the writing was superb, i still had to google what the hillary step was because i couldn’t picture it on my own. i don’t know how people write nature because to me it feels damn near impossible, but this sparing approach really worked, so i thought i might try it out. i tend to be longwinded (gestures vaguely at this post) and wanted to have certain parts of this be a lot smaller and more contained without negating impact. whether or not i made it work is anyone’s guess. definitely not my normal style, so to speak

based on the comments i’ve received i think this might be everyone’s favorite part. in my mind age of consent by new order was playing in the background. in pretty much every fic i have a scene like this one and all of them are based on the poem first base gold by rh*annon mcg*vin from her book branches (censored because she has a tumblr and i don’t want her seeing this haha)

i absolutely can’t do the poem justice by describing what it’s about, but the simplest, most basic interpretation of the poem is that there is no better place to kiss than right here, right now, because of the past. i really like that imagery and tend to use it a lot. she as a writer has been a big inspiration for me and if you’ve read my fic true minds i should add that the nonfiction inspiration for that was directly as a result of one of her youtube videos. i particularly love how the last paragraph (stanza? im not a poet) is one big run-on sentence that’s jovial and tongue-in-cheek and colloquial and straightforward. it feels triumphant in a quiet way to me and i love how it’s done. obviously my attempts at something similar are nowhere near as insightful, but still, the most basic image of this is that there is no better place to kiss, and that’s how i felt about the two of them finding pudding in the supermarket

this part is autobiographical; while writing this last year, i went through six months of intravenous drug treatment, a month and a half of which involved long days of doctor visits on every weekday. when you’re on stuff like that for a long time you end up with a central line for better access (potential plot hole in all of this: scully never had one) but for a month and a half i got poked almost every day and strangely enough it got harder over time. the first couple you never feel, but a week or two later you start flinching, and if the needle goes in the same vein each time, it hurts the more it gets prodded. i reached a point toward the end of the in-office visits in which i would bleed a lot every time i got poked, and i can’t watch anything like that happen to me so i was looking away each time, and when i felt that the nurse was done, i would look back over, and sometimes i would be looking down at a pool of blood that i hadn’t expected to see. it’s weird, you don’t actually feel yourself bleeding, i would’ve expected a hot bloody feeling but instead it felt like nothing. and when i say a pool i mean that it would drip down beneath my elbow, stain the sheet they’d put underneath, and i wouldn’t get all of it off until i showered. i didn’t necessarily find it scary, but it was surreal and kind of pulled me out of normalizing the experience i was having. for a very long time needing iv drugs was my greatest fear and i was surrounded by that then and fine, and then, there was blood all over my arm, and like, haha, this is actually not fine. you’d think something else would’ve been scarier, but it wasn’t. and now looking back at this paragraph i wish i’d edited it differently but hey that’s life

i’d never really understood the purpose of religion as a self-driven part of life until i took anatomy in college. i was raised catholic and though culturally i understand having a religion and being raised with one, i’ve never really reached for religion when i wanted answers, and i haven’t personally understood why that’s someone’s first option. and i know there’s been plenty of commentary on the hypocrisy of dana scully as a catholic who believes in science, yada yada yada, i think everyone has read all of that by now. but what struck me while learning anatomy is that there is a kind of neuron we don’t know the function of. there are four kinds of neurons, and one of them is still a mystery to us. and then, there’s all of these different parts of human bodies that exist in a certain perfect way, but why do they exist like that? to support life, yes, but why is it that we can make comparisons? why were irises not the same color? and we name valves of the heart after religious figures. we are so hell-bent on meaning that something literal will never be enough. and all of that made me think that dana scully has god to fill in what science won’t answer, at least not yet. and there’s definitely a bigger conversation about science as denial of indigenous cultures that i am nowhere near qualified to start. after taking those classes, i think i would be more shocked if she wasn’t religious. you can ignore pretty much all of the paragraph above but it was important to me that at some point in this fic she willingly conceded that she didn’t know what would happen and that she didn’t have answers. with illness, there is no logic, there’s no thinking your way out of it, and i think that would plague her for a long time. to me, she only would accept her death when she could say she had no idea what would happen, she has no answers, there’s nothing filling in her gaps anymore, and she’s comfortable with that. and i put all of that in a paragraph about my thoughts on god because it made sense to me. there are times that just feel like you’re in a movie and there’s no one else you can say caused them. it’s not enough to build belief on but it’s enough to bring a certain kind of wonder. also one time my parents insisted on watching stripes because it was so funny and when watching it none of us found it funny at all and my parents grimaced and were like what were we on that made that good back in the day so that’s in here now haha

and now, the biggest question: does she die at the end? when i came up with the idea for this fic, i knew the beginning and ending but not the middle, and i posted this as a smaller project (ie: chapters below 3,000 words) while illness made my bigger projects harder to work on and essentially flew by the seat of my pants the whole time. i wrote the last line a long long time ago and have always seen the ending as written as the concrete ending. when i started writing this, i never intended for there to be a definitive answer to whether or not she dies. i like premature endings (the ending of girls burn brighter comes to mind) and i think that this works better without saying whether or not she lives. and i also have a hard time with giving a definitive answer because this fic very much is about death and having her die would, of course, be traumatic, but showing her living instead i think ruins any takeaways people could have. i’ve never had cancer but as a chronically ill person i think i can speak to how you never actually win with illness; the best you can do is tie, and sometimes, no matter how much effort you put in, you “lose” anyway, you lose spectacularly, and all of your effort was for nothing. i wholeheartedly believe that humans can’t emotionally or logically process natural disasters or illness, hence why much of the talk about illness in this is from mulder’s perspective as he experiences her terminal illness secondhand; that way, he doesn’t need to (but still likely will) find logic or reason or meaning for death from a terminal illness, so his discoveries and his coping mechanisms aren’t as urgently needed. had i written a chapter that describes how she lives, i think that the discussion of death in this would be voided altogether. and i also don’t believe the ending would be much different whether she lives or dies; there’s still the need for death acceptance and talking about dying, whether or not she lives, and none of the story in this fic would have happened had the characters known she would live. the whole point is not knowing.

for a little while i toyed with writing an unofficial sequel of sorts in which i spelled out what i think happens after the ending, but after realizing that that would end up being longer than the original fic and would also have some massive plot holes, i decided against it. i do have my own version and i don’t want to share that version because i never really intended for my version to be some kind of genuine sequel in which every question gets answered and everything is wrapped up and happy ever after and whatnot. it was just where my brain wandered in the same way it wanders when i watch an open-ended movie. all of that to say, if you think she lives, then she lives. if you think she dies, then she dies. it’s your decision. i’d much rather you choose than me. i never marked this as “major character” death on ao3 because, well, she doesn’t die in this fic. whether or not she dies after the fic ends, that’s for you to decide.

thank you for taking the time to read my writing. i never expected this to blow up (it blew up for me at least, for a while it was my most popular fic ever, with i think thousands more hits than anything else i’d written) and the response has been mind-boggling and wonderful. i don’t respond to comments often because it makes me feel like a pompous jerk (”thank you for enjoying this! i, too, enjoy this thing i have written! oh ho ho!” is how it sounds to me in my head, whereas when other writers respond to comments to me it just looks like thanks man have a good day, feel free to call me a weenie) but i’ve appreciated all of them very much. THANK YOU! i hope your new year is a Whole Lot Less Shit than 2020. i don’t plan on writing more msr because i don’t really have any ideas for them. thank you for making my last time special <3

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shishu-writes · 4 years

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Stories

𝐁𝐨𝐤𝐮𝐭𝐨 𝐱 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫

Words: 3.1k

Genre: Fluff

Warnings: language, Tattoos (?)

A/N: HAPPY BIRTHDAY YOU FUNKY LITTLE VOLLEYBALL MAN HERES YOUR GIFT BOKUTO STANS!! THIS IS MY LONGEST WORK YET AND I TRIED TO DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT WITH MY STYLE OF WRITING!! this is a lot more story based than dialogue based so enjoy!

After having the privilege of being with Bokuto for so long, there are many stories you have to share. Not a day went by that felt dull. There was always an adventure or antics for the two of you to be up to no matter the time, weather or place.

Here's some of the stories that you can recall like they were yesterday.

Seven years ago when you agreed to assist the boys volleyball team as a temporary manager, the day you met Bokuto. This is a story you enjoy to tell, not once failing to perk up when a friend or relative asks how the pair of you met, eager to share what, to you at least, feels like the love story of the century.

When you saw him for the first time, a smile on his lips as if it was made to be there, chatting loudly amongst his less vocal friends, throwing his hands in the air and jumping around to emphasize points in his story was like breathing for the first time. He was so animated, speaking his mind without a thought weighing him down. It was a skill he had mastered, that you hadn't yet. When he noticed your presence awkwardly standing in the doorway of the gym, he decided then to greet you for the first time. Which, in time, he realized was the single most important and life changing decision he ever made.

You became friends within the first day, exchanging numbers as practice ended before waving goodbye to Bokuto, who stood in place, watching you walk away. Seconds after you turned the block and were no longer in view, a buzz rang from your pocket, and on your phone sat a notification from the number just recited back to you.

The night was spent texting back and forth until your eyes got heavy, and only when you closed your eyes, resting your head on the pillow beneath you did you realize just how speaking to Bokuto came so easy. For the first time you didn’t hesitate when talking to him as you did everyone else. There was no fear of judgement if you said something wrong, or asked something silly. It felt like he listened to you and wanted your opinions and commentary, just as you wanted his.

Late night texts turned into calls that lasted until the next morning, small waves in the hallway became lunch dates and study sessions in the library, and the lone walk you took home every night after practice became a nightly adventure as Bokuto insisted he would come along, despite his home being in the complete opposite direction.

The months after your friendship bloomed, when he finally realized his feelings for you. (-Or, rather, Akaashi did.) Which is also one of the fondest memories you have.

It was the first day since you met him that he was nervous.

Akaashi wasn’t blind, but he was aware how blind his best friend could be to his own emotions. The way Bokuto’s eyes softened when you spoke, or how Bokuto would smile more with his eyes when he was talking to you, but still you offered the biggest grin to urge you to continue to speak, or even how he’d cut people off who interrupted you when you spoke, loudly declaring that you had something important to say and was talking before being “rudely” interrupted, even if you weren't saying anything even relatively significant at the time.

He could understand just how head over heels his best friend was, despite his best friend being completely oblivious to it himself.

The day Akaashi asked Bokuto if he liked you is the day Bokuto’s entire world shifted. Now that he was aware of his own feelings he felt as if everything would change. How would he ever face you? You probably didn't even like him back. Could the two of you ever be friends again if he couldn't get over his crush on you? A million thoughts raced through his mind at once, and the far away, almost anxious look on his face caused Akaashi to blurt out the obvious solution to the issue at hand.

“Why don't you just tell her and see what she says?”

So he did. The same day.

He told his coach quickly before practice that he'd be a little late then sprinted to the nearest convenience store. He hadn’t a clue how to confess or what girls in general liked, so he went off of the things he'd seen on T.V.

He bought a large bouquet of flowers, chocolates and some of your favorite snacks, paying quickly before stuffing everything in his duffel bag. He ran back to school, tossing his bag in his assigned gym locker before getting to practice. He didn't wave at you, nor did he shoot you a glance, and the entire practice he was off his game, hitting shots out of bounds or bouncing directly off the blocks and into his court, however none of that resinated enough with his mind to pull him into his “emo mode.”

After practice was over he ran to the locker rooms to change, being interrogated promptly by the rest of his team on his odd behavior. Their gripes and concerns landed on deaf ears as Bokuto got dressed, grabbed his bag and ran from the room, greeting you in your usual spot outside by the gym doors. Sweat started to bead along his forehead, rolling down his red cheeks. Raising a curious brow, you ask him if he's okay before he bows quickly, apologizing loudly before unzipping his duffel bag, revealing what used to be a full bouquet of roses, but has now been reduced to stems with loosely hanging petals littering the greenery, and a couple squished snacks.

He pushes the ruined bouquet into your chest, yelling in a higher pitch than his usual tone that he’d like to take you out on a date, slowly he looks up, and just then realizes just how tattered the roses were. He quickly retracts his hands, putting the stems behind his back and his shoulders slump. Silence ensues for seconds, which felt like hours to the boy, before your laughter rings loudly upon his ears. It wasn’t in a mocking tone, but pure joy. Slowly the flustered boy giggles too, before the pair of you are sitting, laughing with tears brimming the corners of your eyes on the concrete walkway into the dimly lit gym.

After the laughter died down, the happiest “I’d love to.” left your lips.

The night he met your parents, which is still your parents favorite story to retell seven years after that night.

Bokuto was nervous, yet again. Since your relationship officially began and the pair of you put a label on yourselves, he had become a bit more accustomed to this feeling of nervousness. He felt like he could lose you, and it scared him. So the day you brought up meeting your parents it struck such an intense feeling of fear in him you had to physically jostle him out of his thoughts.

It took a long time and a lot of convincing but he agreed. The Friday night of the dinner arrived and Bokuto showed up at your house an hour early. As you opened the door, still adorned in pajamas, hair only half way done. He stood with a bouquet of flowers, this time, untarnished.

His hair was done nicely, dressed in a button up shirt, half of it tucked in and the other side hanging out and a belt with nice jeans. You stared up at him, eyes wide, partially because you didn't expect him so early, before walking onto the porch with him and closing the door behind you. He stuttered out apology after apology, saying how Akaashi told him he should arrive a little early to make it seem like he respected your parents time, and to prove to them he REALLY respected their time he showed up an hour before dinner.

Giggles left your lips as you fixed his shirt, adjusting his collar and gently wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of your sleeve. You spent a couple minutes talking him down until he was relatively more relaxed before inviting him in. Instead of berating him like he thought they would, your parents laughed it off when they heard his explanation.

His flowers were put in a vase and your father sat to speak with him over various things. You left the room with a kiss on your fathers and Bokuto's cheek, heading up to your room to finish getting ready while your mother busied herself in the kitchen.

Thirty minutes later you came back down to the sound of raised male voices from the room you had left the two men previously. There your father and Bokuto sat, talking animatedly about sports. A friendly argument had broken out, both yelling out their opinions to each other with lighthearted smiles on their faces.

You stood, watching them for a moment, admiring the fact that it took a mere thirty minutes before Bokuto had already made friends with your father.

As dinner was served the four of you made your way into the kitchen, sitting down at the table next to your boyfriend, who was less tense, but still somewhat on edge as he had yet to properly speak with your mother. The dinner went smoothly, your father and boyfriend cracking jokes and playful jabs at each other, and your mother finally getting in a good conversation with Bokuto.

The night was coming to a close, plates empty as the four of you just chatted idly. Your hand was resting in Bo’s beneath the table, rubbing a soothing thumb over the back of his hand whenever he tensed up at a question or topic. Before your father decided it was time to reel it in for the night, he asked Bokuto one final question.

Your father asked Bokuto's intentions with you, the playful glint in his eye disappearing. The look he was giving the boy made him want to disappear. Eyes wide, mouth now suddenly dry despite the multiple glasses of water he had throughout the night, he stuttered.

“Uh-I-i um- well I love her! I mean- no I don’t-shit-oh god- excuse my language- I do love you is that too soon? By the look in your eyes it looks like you're going to say it's too soon and if it's too soon I take it back!” words tumbled out of his mouth before he could even really comprehend what he was saying, your parents sat back stunned and you sat there mouth agape, still holding his now sweaty hand.

Your parents excused themselves awkwardly after a moment, stifling laughter as they made their way upstairs, and the two of you sat in silence, as Bokuto apologized quietly you cupped his cheeks, pressing an ever so gentle kiss to his lips

This, as well, was another first for the night.

His entire body was ridgid, before melting into the feeling of your lips against his slightly chapped ones. As you pulled away, Bokuto hesitated before leaning in once more, pressing a quick, simple peck on your lips, then retreated as well, noses just barely brushing against each other.

That was the only response he needed.

The night the both of you had a little too much to drink, another favorite of the two of you.

The both had downed just enough beer to get tipsy, having celebrated Bokuto's 21st birthday the night before, and still having some alcohol your friends so gracefully left over for you both, you decided to not let it go to waste and chugged down a couple bottles.

Drunken words and kisses were exchanged in the living room of your shared apartment, giggles and hiccups echoing through the home. Bokuto, whose head was resting on the couches arm, perked up, looking at you, whose body tucked away between his slumped over form and the cushions on the couch.

‘Y’know...I want...a tattoo…” he muttered, returning his focus back to the ceiling which for some reason had him entranced. A laugh shook your body, causing him to giggle as well. shrugging , you asked him why he wouldn’t get one, to which he responded, eyes wide, with “I...I dunno…” before jolting up and running, or more stumbling, to your shared room to grab his phone and wallet.

“Lets go now! Now let's go!” he yells, bouncing up and down excitedly. Seeing no problem with it in your intoxicated state, you agree, pulling on shoes while Bokuto called an uber, then driving, at 9pm on a Saturday, to a parlor. As you arrived, Bo hesitated at the door, turning to you with a pout. “Wait..” he grumbled, hunched over in thought. “if i get one you have to get one as well!”

And that's how he convinced you two to get matching tattoos, the first letter of your name etched into the side of his ribs, and a big “K” etched onto yours.

The morning after, the killer headache and soreness from your ribs woke you. Barely remembering what happened, you stumbled to the bathroom, waking Bokuto up in the process, and pulled your shirt up in the mirror. It didn't even surprise you. A breathy laugh left your lips as Bo entered the bathroom as well, lifting his shirt off to see what his looked like. The biggest grin stretched across his face, sprinting back to the bedroom to get his phone, promptly taking pictures of your tattoos and sending them to Akaashi.

As the years progressed, and Bokuto had his rise to fame as a professional athlete, stories like these dwindled. He had a job now that required him to be away more than not, and loneliness creeped in every once in a while, despite Bokuto’s determination to call and text you every day before bed.

Offhandedly, the week he was home, you mentioned that its weird feeling for him on his side of the bed and it being empty and cold. That same day, maybe an hour later, Bokuto left. Then, two hour later, he returned home with a small Shiba Inu puppy.

“I didn’t know which one to get...but I saw you liked a meme with this dog in it on instagram...so I got him…”

And so, without even questioning his antics, the two of you named him Taro, and spent the next week with your new addition to the family to get him accustomed to living there.

Now, seven years have passed, and here you lay, the morning of your anniversary, Taro's large sleeping form warming the bed next to you, while your boyfriend worked hard in a training camp in America so he could obtain his dream of being recognized as one of the most powerful players in the Japanese league.

The ceiling seemed especially appealing as you recounted the last seven years, a faint smile on your face. Even though Bokuto wasn't able to be here today, he sent you a short: “I love you, relax for me today, happy anniversary!” text, presumably as soon as he woke up, which was enough for you.

You sat up, bare feet hitting the cold floorboards of the apartment the two of you have, more recently, began to pack up as to move into a new house. Your first house, together.

Standing up, you shook your head, rubbing your eyes and made your way to the bathroom. There you took a long shower, taking more time than usual to cool yourself down. Afterwards, breakfast was made and served for yourself and Taro, and the two of you laid comfortably snuggled up on the couch for more than half the day.

As 3pm rolled around there was a soft pounding at the door down the hall, Taro got up quickly, trotting to the door and waited patiently for you to open it, standing alert in case it was an unwelcome guest.

You unlock the door quickly, not expecting anyone to show up today, and as the door swings open you notice a line up of the MSBY boys you’ve come to love, all standing at the opposite end of the hallway from you, facing you as you open the door, each holding a couple roses, some holding stuffed animals and others holding boxes of your favorite snacks, adorning nice button ups and jeans, all with somewhat tired expressions (presumably from being jet lagged), but big smiles. (excluding Sakusa)

As you look around, taken aback, but an excited look amongst your features, you finally notice Bo, standing at the end of the line. He smiles widely and rushes in to hug you, spinning you around excitedly before laying the sweetest kiss on your lips. “I know you weren’t expecting me home, but I may have lied just a bit about when the camp would end...I couldn't miss our anniversary.” he chuckles. Too shocked to speak, he gently grabs your hands, drinking you down one last time before he takes one hand off of yours, moving to his back pocket. “So...I wanted to keep this a surprise...mostly because I felt like seeing you shocked like this would be really cute- but also because It’d make doing this..” He mutters, slowly kneeling down on one knee in front of you. “A little bit more romantic.”

That was your breaking point. Sobs fall freely down your cheeks as you watch him kneel in front of you, the most genuine, loving smile on his lips. The one that never changed or altered even after all these years. There he knelt, rambling on about how much he loved you. How he was so happy he could spend the last seven years with you, and that calling you his wife would be the greatest privilege you could grant him. The man you loved the most, the man that single handedly changed your future the day you met him, wanted you, and only you, for the rest of your lives.

You said yes, of course.

And as he slid the gorgeous diamond onto your finger, he pulled you in for the tightest hug. Soft sobs leaving both of you as he held you. And seconds later, the rest of the MSBY boys tackled the two of you in a hug as well, all either sobbing (Hinata and Atsumu) or somewhat teary eyed but would always deny it when this story would, ultimately be retold (Sakusa).

Out of all the stories you reminisced upon today, you just knew that this one would be your favorite.

#bokuto kotarou #happy birthday bokuto #kotaro #haikyu #haikyuu #bokuto haikyuu #haikyuu bokuto #bokuto kotaro #bokuto kotarou x reader #bokuto x reader #x reader #haikyuu x reader #haikyu x reader #fukurodani #fukurodani x reader #haikyuu fukurodani #bokuto kotaro x reader #bokuto birthday week

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tessadoesstuff · 3 years

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Sunset Queens - Chapter 3

For Naboo Review Day 3 - Diversity (sort of. The wrong parts of this fic got really long. I promise it comes into play at the end!)

Chapter 1 and Chapter 2

on Ao3

“We’ll figure something out,” Sabé says from where Padmé’s handmaiden stands beside her. Padmé wishes that she could share Sabé’s confidence. The weight of her position as Queen of Naboo has never felt heavier than it does right now, with the trade federation bearing down on all sides.

“Senator Palpatine will sort this out.” There’s Yané on her other side, and Padmé wishes she shared the other girl’s faith. Senator Palpatine has been trying to get the Senate to hear Naboo for weeks now to no avail. Padmé wishes she could bury her face in her hands, but since today she’s actually in the queen’s regalia, and more importantly, the queen’s makeup, that’s hardly an option. Rabé might actually snap and murder her if she ruined all of her hard work on making Padmé’s face appear perfect.

“We’re going to have to put our faith in negotiations with the Trade Federation,” Padmé responds. She doesn’t have to explain how her thought process reached that point. It’s just her and her handmaidens in the room, and they all know how her mind works.

“Will they even negotiate?” Rabé asks from her seat across the room. Padmé bites the inside of her cheek. They have to. She doesn’t know what she’ll do if the Trade Federation follows through on their threatened embargo and then refuses to negotiate.

“Your Highness.” The door swings open, and a member of Captain Panaka’s guard steps through and snaps to attention. It isn’t anyone Padmé recognizes; she’ll have to send one of her handmaidens to find out who is on guard duty right now.

“Carry on,” Sabé speaks for Padmé. The character of Amidala uses as few words as possible since she has so many different voices, so her handmaidens take turns speaking for her.

“A guest to see you, Queen Amidala. She says she comes to advise you.” Amidala keeps her confusion off of her face – she has not called for any of her advisors, and her handmaidens wouldn’t do it without telling her. (Barring one incident, but that was more of an intervention when Padmé hadn’t slept in seventy-two hours. Padmé slept last night, that isn’t the case here.) Only the former monarchs traditionally show up to offer advice without being summoned, but Reillata is off-planet right now, touring with the show she is in.

“Skip the commentary and just announce me!” A feminine voice calls from outside the door. It’s familiar in a way that Padmé can’t quite place or describe. A quick glance at her handmaidens shows that most of them are having a similar feeling.

And then the doors are opened, and she steps through, and Padmé instantly knows who she is. Queen Sanandrassa is dressed in a long, beautiful dress of golden lace which forms elaborate geometric designs as it falls around her form.

“Sanandrassa. Welcome.” Amidala herself speaks this time, trying to cover her surprise. It hadn’t even occurred to her that her guest could be Queen Sanandrassa because this is the former queen’s first visit to the palace during Amidala’s reign. She supposes it makes sense, though. Sanandrassa has more experience with the Trade Federation than anyone currently serving in the palace.

“Queen Amidala.” Sanandrassa curtsies before walking into the room to stand in the center of the circular space. She looks Amidala in the eyes, and says simply, “I understand you are having some trouble with the Trade Federation.”

If Padmé had been dressing as a handmaiden, she would have allowed her lips to twitch at that understatement. As it is, she simply inclines her head a little.

“They are threatening a full trade embargo on the whole planet unless Naboo pays all of the fees they have pulled from nowhere to add to the debt we have long paid off,” Sabé speaks from beside Padmé.

“The debt that they were owed for their financial aid following their role in providing financial aid to your programs to repair Naboo from the damages done by King Veruna’s reign was paid off by Reillata, as was agreed on in the contract. They are, predictably, attempting to scam and threaten their way to a cheap fortune.” Eirtaé adds from where she sits, next to Rabé and across the room from Padmé’s throne. Padmé suppresses a wince. Eirtaé is a vocal member of the portion of the population that believed that Sanandrassa’s decision to go to the Trade Federation was the cause of this mess. Padmé continues to reserve judgment.

“That is not why they’re doing this,” Sanandrassa says, and now she has everyone’s full attention, Padmé’s sure. She remembers suddenly that for all Padmé disagrees with some of her diplomatic decisions, the older woman is a gifted orator. “I reached out to one of my old contacts in the federation. The blockade exists to punish us because they disagree with Naboo’s recent legislative choices.”

Amidala is sure that she’s making a face right now, although she isn’t sure what it looks like. She hopes it doesn’t appear to undignified, as unlikely as that is.

“None of Naboo’s recent legislation should affect them at all,” Saché speaks this time. Sanandrassa snorts.

“If you truly believe that, you are far too naive. Everything affects the federation because they have their hands in everything.”

“Which piece of legislation do you believe they are objecting to?” Sabé cuts in before Eirtaé can say what they all see is on the tip of her tongue. Padmé doesn’t know what it is, but she suspects it will not be particularly diplomatic in this situation.

“This is surely a result of Naboo’s new diplomatic, immigration, and refugee policies.”

“Explain.” Sabé says exactly what Padmé would have said at that moment.

“As a result of this new approach, new trading partners are being developed, and now we are trading less with the Trade Federation. They are punishing us for that.”

“They’re throwing a fit,” Yané murmurs so that only Padmé and Sabé can hear her. There are similar murmurs from the other handmaidens in the room.

“What then is your advice?” Padmé speaks aloud and notices that Sanandrassa straightens up.

“Pull away from those deals. They’re new, we can say they simply aren’t working out. Naboo is currently suffering for everyone else’s sakes.” Padmé knows that Sanandrassa is famously isolationist. She just hadn’t realized until now just how isolationist the former monarch really is.

“I suppose you also think we should close our borders.” Eirtaé bites back. Padmé remembers a skit that used to be done during Reillata’s reign where they would have the queen give a speech during the show and then have a handmaiden stand behind her to act as her ‘anger translator’ and say what the queen is really thinking. Padmé thinks Eirtaé would be her anger translator.

“In fact, I do believe so. The people of Naboo stand alone against the trade federation. We cannot keep taking on the burdens of those who will not come to our aid, it isn’t sustainable. Once we end those ties, the federation will leave.”

“Just bow down to the will of the Federation, while we’re at it.” Eirtaé fires back. Amidala raises her hand, and everything her handmaidens were about to say drops off. Sanandrassa stills.

“I will not abandon our trading partners, not when the deals are hard-won and fair. Nor will I close the borders. That is not who the Naboo are.”

“You will make a mistake.”

“Look around you. The people in this room come from all parts of Naboo and are descended from those who came to Naboo from worlds across the system and across the galaxy. We are all here because we are striving to preserve the Naboo we love. The vibrant art and music and culture, which is that way because of the vibrant peoples who create it. I will not compromise what I swore to defend in order to bow to an invading force. I will stand by the promises I made to Naboo.” Amidala spoke, and it’s the most Padmé has said as Amidala in a long time. Sanandrassa’s face falls.

“I refused to compromise on my ideals as well, Queen Amidala. I refused to give up on the promises I made to Naboo as well, and look where that got me.”

“You made different promises,” Saché speaks again.

“You will be like me, then, remembered for what your choices cost Naboo and the decisions your successors undid. That is all the legacy there is for queens who stand by their ideals through their predecessor’s messes.” Sanandrassa bites out, and Padmé does understand her anger. As news of the federation’s threats spread, much of the people’s anger has been directed, largely unfairly, towards the former queen who once dealt with them. Such anger led Naboo to forgot how much Sanandrassa had fixed and repaired after she had been handed the destruction of her corrupt predecessor. Still, Padmé does not find that she agrees.

“I do not care how Naboo remembers me, so long as they are still able to do so in the ways I have long loved about Naboo – in Naboo’s art, in Naboo’s architecture, in Naboo’s music.”

Notes:

I have not read any of the new Padmé novels so if the characters seem out of character that's why :/

#nabooreview2021 #naboo queens #Naboo Handmaidens #naboo politics #Tessa's Soft Wars #sunset queens

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innuendostudios · 4 years

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Thoughts on Even More Games

[vague, unspecific spoilers for Heaven’s Vault, Later Alligator, and Life is Strange 2]

Thoughts on Heaven’s Vault

Heaven’s Vault is a game about archeology, which means it’s also a game about incompleteness. This is very clever. Inkle - also the developers of 80 Days, which I will play someday! - specialize in deep narratives that can be explored many, many ways, allowing for a lot of player choice. You make a lot of small decisions - do you share a discovery with the trader in exchange for a valuable item, or hide it so he doesn’t plunder it? do you go looking for your missing friend, or let her stay missing in case there are people trying to follow you to her? These all have their own little arcs and resolutions, and there are so many of them, and so many ways they can play out, that the game can never be played the same way twice. The overall story begins and ends in the same place and theoretically hits the same major beats, but the journey is tailored broadly and finely to each player; it’s a style of design Aaron A. Reed refers to as “not... a branching tree but a braided rope.”

Making a narrative about archeology is how you dodge the exponentially complicated nature of that design: if there are dozens of locations, characters, plot threads, bits of color, which can be engaged with at many points in time, or ignored, or dropped by the player halfway through, how do you avoid telling a story full of gaps and dead ends? Well... you don’t. Having only partial information and having to infer the rest is what archeology is.

The protagonist of Heaven’s Vault, Aliya, is digging up the secrets of an ancient civilization, having been sent by her academy to find a researcher who’s gone missing, and stumbling into his incredible discovery. Everywhere she goes, there are holes: she has partial understanding of the researcher’s journey and motives; he, in turn, had partial understanding of the mystery he was uncovering, and Aliya has only fragments of his knowledge; the ancient texts she translates are usually fragments of larger works, and she is guessing at the meanings of many of the words; the game’s constantly updating historical timeline has entire centuries with nothing but question marks. Aliya arrives in a new location and wonders aloud to her robot companion about what this place was, when it was founded, when it was abandoned, how her predecessor found his way her and where he went next and what he took with him.

The constant feeling of discovery - of unearthing - is magnificent. Site after site, I asked, “What is this place?” Always thinking, if the eventual answer is any good, this is going to be one of the best games I’ve ever played. And, in the end, it doesn’t give you an answer, it just give you enough to make the story feel complete. It answers by not answering.

Also, translating alien texts is just extremely my jam. I’m the weirdo who enjoyed the ending of Arrival but secretly wished the whole movie had been about xenolinguistics like the first half. I guess Inkle felt similar.

The game’s by no means perfect. I think I enjoyed the sailing between worlds more than most - it’s slow, but very pretty - but it’s going to discourage a replay. I don’t think the relationship between Aliya and her robot, Six, ever gets terribly interesting. Some of the archeology is a little too obviously game-y - sail around, wait to find a random ruin, beam Six down to grab an ancient doodad, translate a bit of text, lo and behold it’s from one of the sites you’re looking for and it’s narrowed your search radius somehow. (It gives Star Trek explanations the first few times - e.g. “it has radiation that only exists in one part of the nebula” - and then stops bothering.) And the game sags a little in the middle; it could’ve hacked out 3 or 4 dig sites and still given me the same experience.

But, all told, there’s magic in it, and it just feels good to be there. Do not sleep on this one.

Thoughts on Later Alligator

There’s not a ton to say about this game except that is charming as hell. Lindsay and Alex Small-Butera have build a beautifully animated world of cute alligators, one of whom is having a birthday party where he’s convinced he’s going to be murdered. He wants you to run around getting information out of everyone who’s going to be there, which you get by completing minigames. It’s a cast of weird and funny characters with weird and funny dialogue and there’s not much more to it than that.

The design can be a little frustrating. Some minigames, if you lose, you don’t get to try again. Some are annoyingly finicky. You need to complete them all to get the true ending, which means, in my case, playing the game three times to complete all the bits you missed or got locked out of. The ending was a little different each time, so it wasn’t a total wash, but the game’s on a timer that only advances when you play a game or take the bus, and once you’ve completed most of the games there’s a lot of traveling back and forth from one nowhere to another just to advance time to the next unskippable plot beat.

(It’s also a little unclear what you’re missing as you try to get the final ending, as some of the ongoing puzzle are optional.)

But I can’t get mad. The game is too damn cute! Each character is lively and unique, with tons of personality, and the dialogue is just clever enough not to fall into empty adorkability.

It good.

Thoughts on Life is Strange 2

Somewhere, early in the development of Life is Strange 2, some Dontnod employee wrote in a design document “Episode 4 - cult?” (but in French) and nobody told them “no.”

I will not forgive them for this,

After twenty minutes of LiS2, I was ready to yell at everyone who had reported it was boring. It has one of the most powerful, gut-punching openings of any game I’ve played in recent memory. And all through the first, second, and third episodes, I was in love. Unlike Before the Storm, this was its own creature, willing to make dramatic departures from the original game’s template. Instead of controlling a character with supernatural powers, you play as the superpowered character’s older brother. The one with the magic is a 9-year-old, unable to fully understand or control his abilities, suffering a recent trauma, and needing to be guided through a dangerous and racist world. All the ambition missing from Before the Storm is back, and this time the animation isn’t creepy and the writing is wildly improved (thanks to some journeyman script work from Fullbright’s Steve Gaynor) and I even have a computer able to play it on higher graphical settings.

But nothing good lasts.

Everything good about the series screeches to a halt in Episode 4, the one where some asshole said “cult?” and didn’t get a Nerf football thrown at their head. And it’s not just that it’s a terrible idea; it’s actually sort of amazing how much the game relies on an alchemy of plot, tone, theme, and writing, and how a slight imbalance can throw the whole thing off. Episode 4 has scene after scene that are powerful in their conception - brothers reunited after a violent rift; a boy having his first conversation with his estranged mother in nearly a decade; getting interrogated by the feds for a crime that can’t even be explained by physics - fall flat because the writers can’t think of anything interesting for the characters to say. (Steve Gaynor’s name stops appearing in the credits as of this episode.)

And here the game’s rickety bits, kept delicately together for three episodes, start to shake apart. Dontnod’s overly-earnest voice direction, which I didn’t notice in the early episodes, started to wear me down. (”Could you sigh mid-syllable, like you’re slightly overwhelmed with emotion?” “Sure, on which line?” “All of them.”) The thinness of the secondary characters, most of whom pop up for one episode and disappear, became more noticeable. The lack of a mechanical hook like the time rewinding of the original game, and the attendant commentary on choice-based games and power fantasies, made the game feel less substantial. The surreal imagery of the original, obligatorily evoked in the prequel, is sensibly absent, but there’s nothing equally striking that replaces it. Even the branching path decisions become less clear: the end-of-episode stat screens for the final episodes mentioned at least a dozen choices I didn’t even know I’d made, some of which were critical in shaping my younger brother’s morality and were not necessarily the choices I’d have made if I’d known I was making a choice at all.

Come the final episode, I got An Ending that seemed right for the way I’d played, but much of the way I’d played felt accidental.

So what are we to make of this? Life is Strange is a beautiful disaster, an ambitious disaster, where Life is Strange 2 is almost less interesting for being more competent. It has a huge mess of charged topics - American racism, teens losing their virginity, raising a child outside the nuclear family, grief and trauma - and, while it handles them without the gracelessness and sledgehammer subtlety of the original, it doesn’t come to any conclusions about any of them. LiS1, for all its jank, had some opinions, where LiS2 falls into the category of “this sure is some shit, innit?” games.

It starts with a powerful premise, deeply relatable characters, fine writing, beautiful art, but can’t even manage, in the end, to be a disaster. It is the only game in the series so far to be forgettable.

#Adventure Games #capsule review #heaven's vault #life is strange 2 #later alligator

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ellewritesathing · 5 years

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So Close - S.S III

Summary: The universe has a funny way of putting the things you want right in front of you, but just out of reach. Stiles and Y/N have been best friends ever since Scott brought him home, but when Stiles realizes that he might want to be something other than best friends, she leaves to go to some fancy private school up North. Now that she’s back though … maybe he’s got a shot? A Teen Wolf AU in which the reader has always been so close to Stiles and yet so far.

Prologue - S2E1

Part 1 - S2E2 + S2E3

Part 2 - S2E4 + S2E5 + S2E6

Part 3 - S2E7 +S2E8

Wordcount: 3.6k+

A/N: So Tumblr is being weird and won’t let me use part of this GIFset by teenwolfedits from Raving but here’s one of Stiles and the mountain ash so!! Anyway, feedback and constructive criticism are always welcome. Hope you guys like it!

After your fight with Isaac, you’d gotten out of the car and started walking without a particular destination in mind. A small part of you kept hoping that he’d come after you and make some grand gesture to make everything better, but he never did. Neither did Scott or Stiles, so clearly they weren’t as worried about you as they’d pretended to be. With the sun setting, though, you knew you had to go home. Being alone in Beacon Hills was dangerous enough, but alone and in the dark?

You unlocked the front door as quietly as you could and tiptoed into your room. Once your door was closed and you were faced with both familiarity and unawareness, you curled up on your bed and sobbed. You couldn’t go back to the pack after how you ended things and you’d completely ruined what you had left with Scott because you were too stubborn to listen. Although you’d been lonely since coming back, this was the first time you’d felt alone.

The creaking of your bedroom door caught your attention and you quickly wiped away your tears and sucked in a breath, turning so Melissa couldn’t see your face. “Mom, I’m fine,” you lied with a faltering voice. “I just watched a sad movie and with my hormones-”

“Can we talk?” Your muscles tensed when you heard Scott’s voice. You nodded and shifted again, listening as he stepped inside and closed the door behind him. The edge of your bed sagged under his weight and he took a deep breath. “I’m sorry I lied to you,” he started gingerly. “This all started like two months ago and I haven’t been able to slow down since. And then you came back and I- I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want you involved in this. Any of it.”

You bit your lip and turned to get a better look at him. You took in his tired features as you formulated your response. “Scott, I was already a part of this long before I came back,” you confessed. “Two months ago I was attacked in the woods behind my school. I wasn’t bitten, but it did change me. The reason they kicked me out is because I completely withdrew myself from everything. I spent days locked in my room, not leaving to go to classes or eat or anything.” You took a shaky breath. “The only thing I did was draw them. All over my body in harsh lines, on the walls in deep gashes, on my books-”

“I didn’t know.” You looked back up to see the exhaustion in his face betrayed by disappointment in himself. He didn’t know you were hurting and yet the first time the two of you had spoken you asked if he was okay. “I didn’t help.”

You reached forward and held his hand. “It’s not like we were completely honest with each other,” you said gently. “I thought you’d think I was crazy.”

Scott chuckled under his breath and squeezed your hand. “There’s nothing you can say that would make me think you’re crazy,” he smiled. “Can you show me what they looked like? The ones that attacked you.”

You looked down again but nodded. You went to your desk and pulled out one of your old books - they were too damaged for the school to take back. You watched as Scott worked his way through the pages, taking long looks at each of the different drawings. You wondered if he felt the same fear looking at them that you did.

“You’re pretty good at this,” he said a little breathlessly. “But you shouldn’t have had to go through that. I should’ve protected you. I should’ve-”

You leaned over and closed the book. “What could you have done, Scott? I was like two hours away and you were human. You couldn’t have protected me even if you knew what was going on.”

“I know now,” Scott urged hopefully. “And I can protect you now.”

You rolled your eyes at his determination to protect everyone. “Okay,” you conceded eventually. “But this time I get to protect you too, deal?”

“I don’t think that just because you can beat up Stiles means you can protect me,” his joke made your heart stop. You’d hurt Stiles. “But it’s a deal.” After a few seconds of you not answering him, he added, “He’s okay, you know. You should talk to him.”

“He doesn’t want to talk to me,” you shook your head. That made him roll his eyes.

“Yeah, he does,” Scott told you. “He spent the whole day complaining about-” he shook his head and took a breath before looking at you. “Tell him what you told me. He’ll understand.” Reluctantly, you nodded and he put a hand up to squeeze your shoulder encouragingly. “Get some sleep. It’ll be okay.”

You watched as he got up to leave. You weren’t going to tell him but you had to. “Uh, Scott?” you blurted out. “I- I’m not with Derek anymore.”

He looked like he was going to ask why but decided against it. Instead he said, “Oh. That’s, uh, that’s good to know,” with a goofy smile. You returned it and watched the door come to a close when he left.

---

So it turned out that the reason no one on Team Scott came looking for you was because everyone was too busy kidnapping Jackson - a terrible decision that never would’ve been acted on had you been part of the team, or at least that’s how you pointed it out to Scott before leaving for the police station that morning. Your leg bounced as you waited, and you were out of your seat as soon as you heard Scott and Melissa arguing. You stopped a few feet away when you saw Stiles and tried to give him an apologetic smile, but he didn’t return your gaze.

“Then no computer,” Melissa said, snapping your attention back to the two of them. Scott argued that he needed the computer for school and she looked around as she thought of a new punishment. “Then no, uh …” her gaze fell on Stiles. “No Stiles.”

“What?” Stiles whined, rushing forward to argue. “No Stiles?” He came to a sudden stop when your mom pointed a finger and raised her voice.

“No Stiles!” she yelled. “And no more car privileges. Give me your keys.” Scott began searching his pockets as she held out her hand, but he wasn’t quick enough. “Give them to me!” she repeated. It hurt to see her frustrated like this. She wasn’t even this mad when she got the call to collect you from Willow Creek. You shrank into the corner as they continued to talk.

“Okay, you know what, um …” Melissa’s voice was quiet as she spoke as gently as she could. Frustration replaced with guilt over her outburst. “We’ll talk about this at home. I’m gonna go get the car.” She gave you a smile as she walked past, but you could see her heart was breaking.

“I’m the worst son ever,” Scott declared while moving closer to Stiles. You did the same, though without the added commentary.

“Well, I’m not exactly winning any prizes either,” Stiles confessed, gesturing vaguely to where Jackson’s dad was berating Noah. You bit your lip as you caught Scott’s eye.

“I’m gonna go smooth things over with my mom,” he said cautiously. “You guys, uh, you talk.” Subtlety wasn’t his specialty.

“Yeah, yeah, okay,” Stiles exhaled, looking over at you for the first time since your argument. You smiled but he looked away again as Scott retreated, saying that he’d tell Melissa you’d be a few minutes. “So what did you want to talk about?” he asked, clearly not in the mood for another confrontation.

“More of an apology than a talk actually,” you corrected lightly. You were fiddling with your hands and avoiding eye contact. “I was upset that you guys were shutting me out, and I-I lashed out. I hurt you and you’ve gotta believe me when I say that’s the last thing I ever wanted.” You stopped to take a breath and still your shaky voice. “And I’m sorry. I felt so alone and they- they gave me a place where I fit. It’s not an excuse and I get if you don’t want to see me again but I-”

“Stop.” Stiles put his hand over your shaky ones, stopping your fidgeting. Old feelings bubbled to the surface as he continued, “You’re gonna unravel that whole sweater.” You smiled and listened to him take a deep breath. “Look, I mean, yeah, you messing up my shoulder didn’t make me feel great but … how could you think I wouldn’t want to see you again? Y/N, you and Scott are my best friends.”

“I know but Scott didn’t literally twist your arm to get his way in an argument,” you said pathetically and shrugged your shoulders.

“No, but he did try to kill me,” he replied. “Like more than once.” He used his other hand to scratch his head. “He also, uh, made out with Lydia for this weird power thing.”

You pulled a face and tried to stop yourself from laughing. “He made out with Lydia?”

“Hey, don’t laugh!” he pointed a finger at you and then moved his hand to his heart as he feigned offense, which only made you laugh more. “My nine-year-old self was heartbroken.”

“Mm-hmm,” you hummed, smiling up at him. “I’m sure it took many juice boxes and sleepless naps to get over, huh?”

“Yeah, something like that,” Stiles said quietly, looking down to see his hand still covering yours. He took a breath and pulled it away, taking his warmth with it. “I guess we should head to school.”

“Yeah, I guess,” you echoed. You looked up at him again. Something was different. “You’re sure we’re good?”

“Yeah, I’m sure,” he smiled. “See you at school.”

“See you around, Stilinski.” You touched his arm lightly and added, “Take care of yourself, okay?”

“God, Y/N, I’ll see you in like half an hour at school. Relax,” he laughed and punched your shoulder playfully, making you roll your eyes and mumble something before walking off. As you did though, you turned to get another look at him. He was watching you and sent you a little wave before you rounded the corner and went to find your family.

---

“Wait, so what’s my job?” you asked. Deaton had already given Scott the ketamine to sedate Jackson and put Stiles on mountain ash duty, but he hadn’t said anything to you.

“You could, uh … run interference,” Scott said, looking at Deaton and Stiles for confirmation. They didn’t answer.

“Interference,” you repeated, folding your arms over your chest.

“You know, make sure everything goes smoothly and everyone knows what they’re doing,” Scott explained what he meant while simultaneously giving you absolutely no information about what you actually had to do.

“Make sure Erica and Isaac don’t kill anyone,” Stiles clarified, making you roll your eyes.

“Yeah, ‘cause I have the necessary skills to keep them in check,” you mumbled. You checked your attitude when you met Deaton’s eye, he didn’t say anything but it made you realize that at least you were a part of the team this time. “Okay,” you agreed. “I’ll run interference.”

---

The plan changed pretty much as soon as it was in motion. Allison had told her dad about Jackson’s murderous tendencies, so the hunters were there as well. Scott got Derek and Boyd to keep them occupied and trusted Isaac to sedate Jackson so he could help with the fight. Despite everything you’d been through with them, he and Erica refused to let you get close to Jackson, and it’s not like you could do anything to the hunters, so you ended up with Stiles and the mountain ash.

“Is it always like this?” you asked teasingly as you walked along the inner arc of the boundary Stiles was creating. Outside was surprisingly quiet considering the rave inside, gunshots and growling breaking through the night occasionally.

“Yeah, pretty much,” Stiles answered with a sigh. “Hey, does it look like this bag is getting empty?” He brought it closer to his face to take a look, but before you could answer, he’d poured what was left into his hand. “Crap, crap, crap, cr-”

“Stiles,” you interrupted. “Calm down.” You put your hands on his shoulders and shook him lightly. He was looking straight at you now and looked extremely freaked out.

“Calm down?” he repeated. “Y/N, there’s like fifty feet of ground to cover and I’ve got like three sprinkles of magic fairy dust left!” He took a deep breath. “You know what? I’ll call Scott. Scott always knows what to do. I’ll call him.”

He started fumbling for his phone and you moved your hand to catch his wrist. “Stiles,” you said gently. He stopped moving. “You don’t need to call Scott. You’ve got this. Plus, he probably won’t answer anyway.”

“Y/N,” Stiles repeated, mimicking your tone of voice. “We don’t have enough mountain ash. Scott will help us.”

“Stiles!” you sighed exasperatedly, dropping your hand. “This is your job. It’s all on you. You’ve gotta believe you can do this. Scott believes you. Deaton believes in you. I believe-” You were cut off by him pressing his lips to yours. The hand that was still on his shoulder moved up to cradle his neck, your fingertips lightly covering his jaw. “What was that for?” you breathed after he’d pulled away.

“For believing in me.” Stiles sounded more surprised than you did that he’d kissed you. He cleared his throat and looked down at the mountain ash. “I, uh, have a thing to do. So I’m-”

“Yeah, say no more,” you took a few steps back. You watched him turn and take hesitant steps away, and you moved your hand up to your lips. That was … odd. Kissing you was a frantic action, but the actual kiss was soft, tentative. A small moment that went on forever. You were probably reading into it because you used to have a crush on him, but this was Stiles. Stiles! And after everything you’d been through-

Your train of thought was interrupted by his cheering. “We did it!” He clapped and jumped on the hood of a car in his excitement, setting off its alarm. You winced and held out your hand for him to take as he ran over. He grabbed your hand and pulled you forward as he ran to meet Erica and Isaac at the rendezvous point.

---

Stiles opened the storage room door and immediately put his hands out defensively to block your way in. The sudden stop made you walk into him. “Uh, no, no, no!” he exclaimed when Erica almost attacked him. “Just us. It’s just us.” You peered over his shoulder before the two of you came inside and caught Isaac’s gaze. Stiles told them not to freak out as you turned to close the door behind you.

Turning back, you looked over to where Jackson was passed out on a metal folding chair. It didn’t even look like he was breathing. “Is he okay?” you asked, aiming a finger in his direction.

“Well,” Isaac exhaled and walked closer to him. “Let’s find out.” He raised his hand up with his claws out and moved to slice Jackson’s chest, but he caught Isaac’s forearm and tightened his grip. You rushed closer when you heard bone cracking and saw Isaac begin to twist down. You wrapped your arms around him and pulled him back to the group. He sat on a crate and you moved your arm up to his shoulder, using your other hand to examine his injury.

“Okay, no one does anything like that again, okay?” Stiles warned, waving his finger around to emphasize his point. You rolled your eyes at him and rubbed Isaac’s back gently. The two of you hadn’t really spoken since you broke things off, but you’d made a silent agreement to look out for one another. Stiles didn’t know about that, though, and just noticed how close the two of you were again.

“I thought the ketamine was supposed to put him out,” Isaac groaned, still very clearly in pain. Your comfort couldn’t do much to ease his suffering.

“Yeah, well, apparently this is all we’re going to get,” Stiles exhaled. You looked up to see him looking at the two of you and pulled your arm back to your side. Was he jealous? “So let’s just hope that whoever’s controlling him decided to show up tonight.”

As if on cue, Jackson’s eyes flew open. You sucked in a breath and pointed to Jackson to make sure the others saw it too.

“I’m here,” Jackson told you all. His voice was distorted and deep. “I’m right here with you.”

Despite your protests, Stiles moved closer to him. “Jackson, is that you?” he asked.

“Us,” Jackson answered. “We’re all here.”

“Are you the one killing people?” Stiles’s voice was just above a whisper. Erica moved closer towards you and Isaac.

“We are the ones killing murderers,” he corrected. His blank stare at the wall creeped you out, and when Erica was close enough you reached out to hold her hand.

“So all the people you’ve killed so far-”

“Deserved it,” Jackson snapped.

“So we’ve got a little rule book that says you only go after murderers,” Stiles started cautiously.

“Anything can break if enough pressure’s applied,” Jackson replied.

“Okay, so the people you’re killing are all murderers, then?”

“All. Each. Every one.”

“Well, who did they murder?”

“Me,” Jackson growled.

“Wait. What? What do you mean?” Stiles asked, voice rising slightly.

“They murdered me!” Jackson yelled. Isaac stood up and moved closer to you and Erica as Jackson started shifting. “They murdered me.”

“Okay, maybe we should try upping the dose?” you squeaked out, pulling Stiles closer to where the three of you were huddling. You held onto his shoulder protectively.

“We don’t have anymore,” Isaac answered, holding up the empty bottle as evidence.

“You used the whole bottle?” Stiles asked, clearly annoyed with him now. You were about to tell them not to argue when Erica started patting Stiles’s arm frantically and pointing to Jackson. He stood up and hissed at you.

Stiles started stammering some words, but you pushed him and Erica towards the door. “Go!” you yelled, pulling Isaac forward and shoving the others. “Go! Get out of here!” You all ran out and Isaac slammed the door behind you, the four of you flattening yourselves against it to keep Jackson inside.

“Okay, find something to move in front of the door,” Stiles huffed. Wedged in front of Isaac and behind Stiles, you began to look for something but couldn’t see anything. It didn’t matter much anyway, because before you could say anything, Jackson burst through the metal wall and into the nightclub.

“Okay,” you took a deep breath and felt everyone collapse a bit more into each other. “It’s okay. We’re all okay. We’re okay.” The four of you gathered yourselves and shared a look before immediately splitting up to find Jackson. Stiles grabbed your hand and the two of you ran to the front of the building.

The two of you were arguing over the best way to handle it when Derek strode up. “So we kind of lost Jackson inside, but it’s-” Stiles started telling him as you looked up at Isaac and Erica staring down at the mountain ash. They couldn’t cross it. They were trapped in there with Jackson. “Oh my god!” Stiles exclaimed. “It’s working! Oh, this is-”

“Stiles, ne quiet,” you warned. You were worried about them and you didn’t even know where the others were.

“You need to break it,” Derek rushed out.

“What? Why?” Stiles questioned.

They started arguing, but as soon as Derek said that Scott was in trouble, you bent down and broke the boundary. He looked at you briefly, for the first time since you’d left the pack, before running off to save your brother.

---

Derek took Scott to Deaton so Stiles drove you home. Neither of you were talking about what had happened, and you fiddled with your seatbelt to pass the time. When he pulled into the driveway and killed the engine, there was no avoiding it. “So, uh,” you exhaled. “The whole kiss thing-”

“Was super out of line,” Stiles interrupted, making your heart sink. He regretted it.

“Yeah, yeah, totally,” you lied, nodding your head.

“It was a one-time thing-”

“We were both freaking out-”

“It’ll never happen again,” Stiles finished.

“Right, never again,” you echoed before actually realizing what you’d said. He never wanted to kiss you again? You were quiet as you thought, and Stiles didn’t say anything else. “Well, I should, uh- I should head inside,” you started.

“Yeah, Melissa’s probably bugging out that you guys aren’t home yet.” Stiles’ attempt at humor meant he was at least as nervous as you were.

“And Noah probably really wants to see you after hearing what happened,” you nodded, unbuckling your belt.

“Yeah, uh, not so much,” Stiles mumbled. You weren’t sure if you were supposed to hear that, because he looked surprised when you asked why. “He got fired today. Because of me.”

“Oh, Stiles, that’s really rough,” you said sympathetically. You started reaching for his hand but stopped over the armrest. “Do you know why?”

“His son having a restraining order filed against him didn’t reflect well on the county,” he sighed. The way he said it must have been word for word what Noah had told him.

“I’m really sorry, Stiles,” you whispered. “I hope it blows over soon.”

“Yeah, me too,” he said, more to himself than anything. He looked at your hand and then up at you after a second. He didn’t make another move. “Have a good night, Y/N.”

You smiled. “You too, Stilinski.”

Part 4 - S2E9 + S2E10

#stiles stilinski #stiles stilinksi x reader #stiles slow burn #stiles stilinksi imagine #mccall!reader #so close #teen wolf #teen wolf au #teen wolf rewrite

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dailyaudiobible · 3 years

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11/03/DAB Transcript

Ezekiel 7:1-9:11, Hebrews 5:1-14, Psalms 105:1-15, Proverbs 26:28

Today is the 3rd day of November welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I am Brian it is a joy and an honor and everything good to be here with you today as we move into the Scriptures and take the next step forward together. And it’s so good that we can be together today in God's word. So, let's set let's dive in. We’re reading from the Evangelical Heritage Version this week. Ezekiel chapters 7, 8, and 9 today.

Commentary:

Okay. The book of Proverbs today tells us that two things are not good things - a lying tongue and a smooth mouth. And, so, I suppose this is as good of a day as any to talk about what the Proverbs are talking about. And yeah, we…we can certainly look out…outward and see all this stuff but as is always the case once we identify it in the world what's going on then, we need to turn it back inward to discover whether we’re part of the noise, whether we’re part of the problem, or if we’re part of the solution. So, a lying tongue hates the one it crushes. So, what is a lying tongue? I mean, we could probably say that’s sort of self-evident. It's…it's the tongue that doesn’t speak what is true. But there are so many nuances to the way that we lie to each other aren't there? Like we sort of think that we’re telling the truth as long as we have some sort of morsel of truth in the thing that we are fabricating but we have a…we are like being deceptive. So, if we’re willing to embellish and puff up or the opposite, to diminish or crush down the truth, the actual truth, in order to manipulate somebody or in order to hide behind something and try to protect ourself from exposure then we’re not only gonna be crushing people, we’re gonna be doing it with hatred. That is a massive, massive thing to realize. If we’re gonna flatter, if we’re gonna manipulate, if we’re gonna nuance the things that we’re gonna say and they aren’t really what we mean in order to kinda like get close to somebody or get into somebody's life because they have something that we want or they have something that we need, that we think that we need, we need to get close to them, then it's going to cause a ruin everywhere ultimately because it's foundation is false. It's a lie. It's gonna crush. And there's something in me that’s saying stop. Like don't keep trying to reexplain this with…with other metaphors or analogies. Like this is enough. Its stark. A lying tongue hates those it crushes and a smooth mouth causes ruin. So, if that's you, then this is where the road is going. If that's not you, then this is what to avoid because it brings destruction.

Prayer:

Father, we come before You on this and it rings true and it's convicting, and it does penetrate. It makes us reflect. It makes us consider but the deeper that we consider the more we realize that our entire culture is based on this kind of sidestepping. We are a world of people so afraid of being exposed the truth of who we are that we do everything possible to nuance and to hide when we are all guilty. Like, were any of us, anybody to be fully exposed then we would be fearful of the judgment that would come against us, but we are all in the same boat. It would happen to anybody. And You have invited us into the light. You have essentially said, “that's the world. That's how it works. It's a system built in falseness and held captive by the author of deception and lies.” You have invited us to be free, to walk into the light, to be in the truth. And no matter what that may bring, to know that we don't have a divided heart or a divided mind. We don't always have to figure out which personality we have to put on depending on what circumstances we’re in. We just get to be who You made. This is freedom indeed, but it flies in the face of the structures of the world that we live in. And, so, living like this…well…it would indeed be living like You lived Jesus. It would look like You. And we can see the raging of the world against You. And, so, we scratch our heads because it doesn't make sense because freedom is available, but the system is so rigged against freedom that we find ourselves just trying to find ways to cope and manage when You are offering freedom, that we can live in the light, that we can live in the truth. So, come Holy Spirit and help us over these coming days as we meditate upon this, as we catch ourselves being false or as we become more and more aware of the falseness around us, as we begin to see it. We need Your help to navigate it. There’s no way we’ll be able to figure this out. So, come Holy Spirit we open ourselves to You, well up within. Lead and guide our steps, the thoughts and intents of our hearts. We pray in the mighty name, the victorious name of Jesus, we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is home base, it's the website, it’s where you find out what's going on around here. And there’s always something or another going on around here.

Kind of have to be under a rock to not know that today is election day in the United States. Probably no matter where you are in the world. And, yeah, we’ve been on the radar kind of all year, with all kinds of stuff and Covid hasn't helped and there’s just a lot of swirl going on. And I make it a very, very specific, very intentional point to do what we do here, to take the rhythm of the Scriptures and let it be a part of our lives every day. And I feel like the Scriptures In our lives can comment on what's going on in our world better than me being some…just another noisemaker. So, I would like to give as simple, as trivial, as obvious of advice as I can give you. Maybe you’re one of the people who have already voted. Great. Awesome. If you’re going to the polls today, pray, listen, obey and then walk away in peace. There's nothing else to do here. I mean I've lived long enough that I've been through several elections and even from my youth I cannot think of an election where the rhetoric hasn’t amped up to the point where we are led to believe that what we are about to do is the most pivotal thing we have ever done in the nation's history, maybe in the history of all humanity. That's…that's not true. The most important thing we have ever done is to become a part of the family of God. We are a part of a kingdom that is upon this earth that spans and crosses every single border. This is our allegiance - the kingdom of God. And God will not be toppled my brothers and sisters over this or anything else. And, you know how this goes. This ends at some point and somebody is…is the winner and that's gonna leave about half the people bumbed and about half the people rejoicing. And we can all do what people do these days - get on the Internet and just start making noise, start sending out memes. Take all of the divisiveness that has been amped up this entire year and really live into it, like really live into it and make this country an “us versus them” understanding that we are making the body of Christ, then divided in “us versus them” because so many of us are believers who are completely and totally opposite in their political convictions. So, the last thing that I have to say isn’t my opinion, isn't anything to do with me other than it's my voice reminding you. We have a Savior. His name is Jesus. He loved us when we were still His enemy. He loved us as a people despite our animosity and he laid his life down that we might live. And just mere hours before He did that, He was sitting with his friends having his last meal. And at that last meal He said something that must reverberate through everything about our lives, including all of what happens today. He said a new commandment I give to you, that you love one another as I have loved you. So, friends it gets pretty simple then. When you pray and listen and obey and walk away in peace and love one another as we have been loved as we come out of this, the most divisive of all seasons that we experience as a nation every four years. If there...if there ever were a time to be a city on a hill, to be the salt of the earth, to be light in the darkness, to be the hands and feet of Jesus to love one another as we have been loved, well it that would be coming out of this wouldn’t it. And, so, let's walk through this day at peace loving one another as we have been loved.

And that's it for today, I’m Brian I love you and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Hi everyone, this is Lisa the Encourager. I’m calling tonight to pray for our elderly parents or just our parents in general. I’ve certainly called in for our children many times, but I definitely want to focus on our parents today. I know Howard called in about his mom being in rehab and how difficult that was and how she looked very weak. And I just want to pray for him and his mom. And I have a similar situation with my dad going through that. So, I can empathize with your situation Howard. And also, Charlie called in about his parents and them being diagnosed with Covid. So, I want to also pray for his parents and anyone else out there that is going through a difficult time with their parent’s health and how stressful that can be and making a lot of hard decisions. And I’m just gonna pray that God is gonna guide us through those things and that they will be as peaceful and as comfortable as possible. So, let’s go to the Lord in prayer about all of our parents. And also, I wanted also to just say, I respectfully admire Brian for what he went through with his mom and continued to be a ministry to all of us. So, I just thank you again Brian for that because I know that had to be a hard time when you lost your mom. Dear God, I thank you so much for Pastor Brian and what he means to all of us and also thank you God for these…all of our parents Lord that are getting older in life. And I just pray God that your hand will be upon them, that they can recover, and you can comfort them where they need your comfort…

Hey DAB family this is Danny from Southern Oregon I wonder if you could please pray for my 15-year-old grandson Christopher and his friends. The other day these four friends skipped school and they were heading to one of the boy’s houses. And Christopher’s not allowed there. And anyway, shortly after he left school the school called my son and his mom, and they immediately began looking for him and texting him and calling him. And it appears that Christopher got a little bit worried that he was and I get into trouble so when he was about two blocks from this boy’s house he ended up going home to his mom’s and that was about 11 o’clock in the morning. And at 1230 the police were dispatched to a fatality. One of the…my grandsons’ best friends accidentally shot and killed one of the other boys and the third boy was standing right next to him and I’m sure is suffering a lot of PTSD from what he witnessed. And I know…I’m so thankful my grandson was not there but he’s so upset that he’s lost his best friend and they ended up arresting the boy for murder because some things just didn’t add up. And so please…please pray for Tony. He was the one standing next to him and ended up just covered head to toe in brain matter. It was point-blank. And…and pray for Dustin who’s been arrested for murder, that the truth come out and maybe they would all come to know the Lord through this. Thank you.

This is Kathy from Kentucky. I have a different kind of prayer request. I’m gonna take a test in martial arts specifically, Shaolin in two weeks. If I pass, I’ll be a 2nd degree brown belt and well on my way to black belt. When I was a girl growing up, I was not allowed to play team sports __ passed after I got out of high school. And I would’ve been good at some kind of sport. I trained on the swim team the summer before I graduated from high school and then after that I was too old. So, it’s important to me to be able to do something at my age, 67. So, please pray for my martial arts test Shaolin on the second Saturday of November the 14th.

Hi this is Julie from California I just started listening to the Daily Audio Bible about a week and a half ago. It was recommended through another podcast that I listen to and it has been up total and complete godsend. The last three years or so have been just really horrible. My marriage was almost at its end. My father-in-law passed away. We sold everything and moved out of state to take care of my mother-in-law at a very remote place where I had no support and found out she had Alzheimer’s and ended up staying for 2 ½ years when our plan was to stay a year. And then my dad passed away while we were gone, and my mom was diagnosed with leukemia. She’s in remission and doing phenomenally well praise God, but also there were issues with my son and now he no longer talks to us and I lost my job and we filed bankruptcy. Like, just thing piled on after thing piled on after thing and really kind of wrecked my relationship with God for a long time because I really couldn’t read my Bible, I couldn’t focus, I couldn’t do journaling. I mean I was on…I was on a regular track of reading the Bible in the year every year for like three or four years and then I just stopped. And this is miraculous because I actually am feeling like I’m getting the word in me and feeling more joy and I just am really thankful for you guys and I would just appreciate prayers where…where you feel like praying for me and a…a word. I’m happy to hear a word if you have a word for me because I need God so much right now. Thank you. God bless.

Hi family this is Peggy in California. And I, like so many of you, just absolutely love this community and appreciate it so much. It’s a place to share our deepest hurts and our joys and it’s just wonderful and I thank you all for participating and making it what it is. I’m calling today like many others who have called for my adult children. In particular one of my sons, he’s a twin, actually. I got a call from his twin yesterday telling me that his brother’s not doing well, he’s very depressed and seems to be disinterested in…in life, in not moving forward. Recently had a breakup with a girlfriend that I think what’s…he’s exhibiting is actually something that started before that. So, of course, I’m heartbroken and I worry about him. And he was raised in the church, but he doesn’t seem to have a very strong connection if any. So, I just pray that would lift Mason up in your prayers. And I thank you for doing that for me. Have a good day.

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mozartwasajungkookstan · 5 years

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An Analysis of @markswoman’s ‘Touch’ - The art of blameless tragedy

Spoilers ahead for ‘Touch’ by @markswoman (the first couple paragraphs are just a explanation into why angst exists and the problems with it but you should still read ‘Touch’ all the same)

In order for any piece of fiction to be entertaining, something has to go wrong. Conflict between characters, tragic accidents, misunderstandings, anything where characters are forced into unpleasant situations will do. Writers are sometimes reluctant to write unenjoyable events for characters that they’ve grown attached to, but without them their work simply won’t be interesting. Why is that?

It’s not because audiences enjoy fictional suffering - quite the opposite really. Many people read things with the knowledge that it will probably make them cry, only stopping because their tears are damaging the pages source: me reading the last Harry Potter book. Miss you, Dobby. Our curiosity really gets the better of us despite all the negative emotions we feel because we want to see things get better for our beloved characters, so we read on.

So writers decide to throw in this thing called “angst”. Shake things up a bit. Pull in the audience. Throw the characters of their rhythm. Character A thinks Character B has feelings for Character C, so Character A becomes distant. However, Character B actually has feelings for Character A and is hurt and confused that Character A cold and distant now. This is a common trope that when done right provides a satisfying moment when the characters finally get together. However, when done not-so-right, there can be many problems, with the main one being the audience constantly screaming at the screen/book saying “Jesus Christ just communicate like normal people!”. The writer is trying to create conflict so the story is interesting, but the way that it develops is too unrealistic - the audience has already thought of 5 different solutions to the “problem”, so watching the characters struggle can become irritating. It’s as if the whole “he’s behind you!” thing that they do in theatres was the entire show. Just 2 whole hours of “Where is he?” and getting an increasingly angry audience to shout “Right behind you!”. Not fun.

The solution seems pretty simple: don’t create angst from misunderstandings that can be cleared up in a single conversation... Easier said than done. Using car accidents and terminal illness is almost cliché and conflict between characters is difficult to create. Hell, even Shakespeare had a difficult time solving this because the characters in pretty much any of his plays could have just talked to each other to solve their problems (he found a little loophole because he made ‘Much ado About Nothing’ so frustrating it turned into commentary on society on how many problems could be solved by talking it out instead of acting impulsively). But a way I found was to have no characters at fault, so the audience sympathises with them. That’s where ‘Touch’ comes in.

FINALLY. I’ve gotten to the main subject at hand: a god tier fic. Now, you might be wondering why I just spent a few paragraphs babbling on about plot devices and common problems people have with them. But it’s important; it wasn’t just an excuse to complain, I swear. Markswoman does an incredible job of handling conflict and angst in ‘Touch’ - in all their work, in fact. But ‘Touch’ in particular deals with a source of angst that is normally irritating: miscommunication and a misunderstanding between characters. But this time one is mad at Jaemin or the main character for it.

Markswoman does this by showing the reader that this miscommunication can’t be solved by a simple conversation. Jaemin’s thought process right before the main character touches him for the first time makes it clear that Jaemin has so many doubts about telling our character about his seemingly cursed hands that a simple conversation that normally would’ve solved any problems is now a risky move on Jaemin’s part and we understand why he’s so reluctant to reveal anything. It also makes us sympathise with the poor guy. Is this the first time he’s had these thoughts? Our character isn’t at fault either. Logic and reasoning would’ve never brought her to the conclusion that Jaemin is basically modern day King Midas, so her reaching out to him is perfectly understandable. The idea that neither character is to blame makes the ending so much more tragic because there’s none of what I’ve coined as “The Friar Lawrence Feeling” - Friar Lawrence being the only character in ‘Romeo and Juliet’ who could’ve saved everyone by sitting them down and having a little chat. The characters in ‘Touch’ couldn’t have been saved by a little chat, so the Friar Lawrence Feeling isn’t there and all that is left is undiluted sorrow. The reader knows that the characters took what would have normally been rational and more importantly, the correct decisions. Jaemin tried his best to protect the girl he loved and the girl he loved tried her best to help and understand him, but it still ended in Jaemin’s ‘murder’ streak going back down to 0 days. There’s nothing more heartbreaking than doing everything you can for the one you love but it all being futile in the end anyways.

But of course, ‘Touch’ is so much more than just a fic that isn’t irritating. It’s so much better than “not bad”. For one, it really gets the audience on Jaemin’s side (although Jaemin’s adorable personality in real life definitely helps). At the beginning, the descriptions of the unlucky people that Jaemin accidently touches almost have a sense of innocence, as if it’s from child Jaemin’s perspective because he doesn’t quite understand what’s happening. The focus is on something else - the teacher’s smile, the chocolate bars and daisy chains - and the narration almost sounds hopefuI, like when the narrator suggests that “maybe she’s making more daisy chains”. The idea that he’s the one unintentionally causing these deaths doesn’t cross his mind at his point, so he doesn’t focus on it too much. He’s still hopeful and naive, but as a reader, we already know what’s happening and the fact that it starts off with Jaemin being young and oblivious makes us feel terrible for him because he’s just a child. We just want to give this poor boy a hug and tell him it’s gonna be alright. But we can’t. Mainly because we’d be lying and also because... well...

What this shows is Jaemin’s childhood being tainted by this ability. Moments of joy in a normal life have been ruined. Making friends as a young child, celebrating with people he loves and his first love now all have bad connotations with Jaemin and when he finally realises why, it’s particularly heartbreaking. He’s absolutely disgusted with himself, to the point of being physically sick, despite the fact that he didn’t even know about his strange ability himself. This, coupled with the language choices - his hands are “bloodstained” and he sees it as “murder” - makes it clear how disgusted Jaemin is. He views himself as a murderer even though he has so little control over these deaths. It’s not really his fault but he has no one else to blame.

Then he meets our character. The chemistry between the 2 is there almost instantly but with the knowledge of Jaemin’s past, you can’t help but feeling a sense of impending doom. For good reason as well, because unfortunately, you’d be right. He tries to be cautious, he really does, but our character gets too close. He wonders what would happen if he just told you and he asks himself rhetorical questions that have answers he doesn’t have or necessarily want. He’s torn between telling you and keeping a safe distance from you. For good reason as well, because he desperately wants for there to be an exception to this rule and for there to be a happy ending. We do too and some of Jaemin’s thoughts have a tinge of hope to them, but the sentence “he’s so scared” after it’s too late to go back fill us with fear too. For good reason as well, because unfortunately, there is no happy ending.

But who’s to blame? No one, that’s who. For such an unhappy ending, there is no villain. No one rubbing their hands together nefariously in the background, no one plotting the downfall of the pair, no one to truly blame for the tragic ending and Jaemin’s aftermath. Except for the writer, I suppose.

‘Touch’ is many things, but a happy, feel-good fic is definitely not one of them. I love it for that. “All’s well ends well” is a perfect description for it. Nothing is well from the very beginning, so it makes perfect sense for it to not end well. I suppose I got what I was expecting, but goddamn, I’ve never wanted to be wrong more in my life. Thanks for destroying my heart.

10 leather gloves out of 10 (go read ‘Touch’. Your heart WILL be in pieces by the ending, but you won’t regret it.)

- [redacted]

#nct #nct dream #jaemin #na jaemin #nct jaemin #nct angst #nct dream angst #jaemin angst #kpop #kpop scenarios #kpop imagines #nct scenarios #nct imagines #review #markswoman

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arigatouiris · 5 years

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out of my league // t.h — 01

Pairing: Tom Holland x Critic! Reader [I use female pronouns]

Warnings: swearing; eventual fluff; angst; hurt/comfort; a little bit of cliche because come on.

A/N: Thanks for all the love, everyone! It means so much to me because this is my first story on here and this support makes me want to write more. Do check out my revised masterlist for more upcoming stories. You guys are the best~

Also, Birds of a Feather and Canary Mountain are all fictional titles, I just decided to make this sort of fictional (as if it isn’t already) with Tom’s filmography. Jean is no real writer, he’s an OC haha. Also, if you want to be in the taglist for the next chapter, just leave me a message or a note and I’ll add you ^^

Also, I have no actual idea how offices (fictional London Post) works, so do cut me some slack if some of the mechanisms of worklife don’t match. Apologies are due~

Word count: 2485

Series Masterlist

00 | 01 | 02 |

Ch. 01

(y/n) wouldn’t ever consider herself a workaholic, although, she sometimes tended to bounce in and out of being one when time seemed fit. It wasn’t as if she hated her work, it was in fact the opposite; however, on some days, she’d prefer relaxing to working.

Like today for instance, she enjoyed her cup of warm tea, gazing at the showery skies of London, from inside her comfortable room—decorated with fairy lights and pictures of herself and her friends, people she doesn’t even speak to anymore, from college. She was a fairy lights kind of girl, she’d tell people who’d enter her room; however this number declined over the years, as being an adult took preference over being inviting. On the days she rested, she told herself that her mind was rather kind to her. It gave her solace and kept her from thinking dark thoughts. Days like these allowed her focus on bittersweet memories from the past, filling the aura around her with a dash of forgiving nostalgia that was comfortable to think about within the confines of her own home. This comfort, she was grateful for, but not anymore.

Currently, her mind was flooded with the thoughts of the hate mail that came toward her from thousands of Tom Holland fans; for ruining or trying to ruin his reputation, for being too cowardly (she couldn’t understand how this could be called cowardly) to understand the ending that was chosen for him, for being too critical (this was her job!) regarding movies or books or TV shows, for being unforgiving over narrative differences and finally, this one she found most absurd, for being an absolute A-grade bitch.

Because (y/n) was many things, but bitch was not one of them.

Tom fucking Holland, if she were given the strength of Diana Prince she’d have broken the cup she was holding but she had the strength of a hamster so the cup was safe. It’s just a goddamn critique, why the fuck did he have to make a commentary out of it? To save his friend’s ass? Jean A. Marcel’s known to crumble under the pressure of making final seasons. I even wrote the critique for his previous failure of a show, Canary Mountain. What’s Holland’s fucking problem now?

(y/n) didn’t understand the sudden need for Tom to defend Jean. This was Tom’s first time with this writer (who took over another writer to write just the final season, a move that the whole world dreaded, and even wrote petitions to stop; but now it didn’t matter, because Jean’s reputation was saved by the beloved Tom Holland, who chose to ignore every fact on earth before defending his friend). I didn’t even say anything bad about his acting! In fact, I complimented him! She found it easier to defend herself in her head rather than the internet, because it honestly scared her. Death threats came pouring in, five or more (no less) each day, something she’d learned to ignore over the years. However, Tom’s fangirls seemed to be serious. They loved him, and they let it show.

Groaning, (y/n) finished her cup of tea before heading over to the kitchen to place it in the sink. All the while, she missed the solace her mind usually gave her—which were now muddled with anxious thoughts, and thoughts circling around self-pity, unusual for her, but they were there. Prominent, angry, yet very, very present.

She almost failed to notice her phone buzzing in the room when she walked in, frowning as she thought of the time she had turned her phone on silent, not remembering why. Ah yes, she answered herself as she held the phone in her hands. It was to silence the fucking notifications from all those hate mail. She picked the call and put the phone against her ears.

“(y/n) darling, how are you doing?” Her manager Susannah Davies was a goddess.

Susannah Davies, a lovely 39-year old woman was the kindest soul on the planet according to (y/n). She was understanding, caring, and would always encourage (y/n) to do her best.

“Oh you know… The usual. Any new movies that I need to review?”

“Hahahaha, right erm… Honey, we think you should take some time off?”

Why was it phrased as a question? (y/n) was normally not a very angry person. However, everything that she had thought of Susannah now crumbled in her mind. She was now a very angry person.

“Some time off for what, Susannah?” Gritting her teeth, (y/n) felt her fingers go pale.

“See, writing is such a tasking job! No one takes writing critiques as something that’s easy. Why don’t you instead work on the desk for a while? You know, it’d take your mind off things—”

“Off what things, might I ask?”

There was a sigh on the other end. (y/n) knew she had lost this round. Susannah sighing meant Susannah giving up. And Susannah giving up meant Susannah had made her decision.

“The comments are quite nasty, (y/n). You can see it, and we can see it. The whole world can see it. It’ll do you and our company good if you were off the radar for a bit. Jenny even talked about you on the 9 o’ clock show! They even put your picture! Not to mention how the HR and PR have been ignoring thousands of hate mail from Hollanders, it’s become too much to handle now. We need to issue a statement saying we’ve fired you—”

“What?!”

“Don’t worry, not actual firing. Just a statement.”

“That sounds very unfair, Susannah.” (y/n) moaned in displeasure.

“It’s only temporary! Until all this dies down. Anyway, I can’t take this lightly. I don’t want them hating on you more than this and as harsh as this sounds, there’s no other go, love.”

(y/n) felt her eyes well with tears. There was a soft burning sensation behind her eyelids, considering how the hate began to pour in two days ago, and hadn’t stopped in intensity yet, (y/n) had not given herself the time to sit down and cry out her disappointment and rage. But, now, she felt it was long due. She pressed a hand to her mouth and held back her sobs.

“Susannah…” Her manager was listening to her intently from the other end. “I really love this job…”

Susannah’s heart broke. She knew the moment (y/n) decided to publish the review that this was going to happen, but not to this extent. Hate mail and death threats (which weren’t too serious), along with false media representation, which could amount to slander or defamation, and the mere fact that (y/n) needed to take a break from doing what she really, really loved—all of these factors shattered her heart as well. No other review had gotten her this much hate. Not even the one she had written on A Game of Thrones. And if she were to compare, GoT had a larger fanbase than Birds of a Feather.

“Can I take a week off?” (y/n)’s tone was impossible to decline.

Ending the call, the journalist fell back on her bed and cried her heart out. I hate Tom Holland, she thought before forcefully wiping her tears, swallowing her sobs. I hate him and I hate his face and I hate his guts.

Sadly for her, hating Tom Holland did not aid her with her pursuit for an ease of mind.

Harrison normally never reacted with such surprise. However, the second he saw the news about a particular (y/n) having lost her job, it felt as if his mind went on overdrive. What the hell? He thought before characteristically dialling Tom’s number. Can they even do that? She just did her job! Sighing, he waited for Tom to pick the call so he could do something to rectify this damage.

“Tom, did you see the news, mate?”

It seemed that Tom was out with Tessa at the moment, having rented an entire park for the girl to run around happy. Tom had a smile on his face when he picked the call.

“News about what?”

“(y/n)!”

“What?”

“(y/n), you twat. The girl who wrote that review about the show.”

Tom then remembered. He was supposed to apologize, but he believed the whole ordeal would die down in a couple of days. He hoped it did.

“What about her?”

Harrison groaned. “Mate, she lost her job.”

Tom’s eyebrows shot up like someone had exploded a cake in front of him. He stopped moving and became rigid all of a sudden, and he was quite thankful no one could see him pale up at that second. He should have apologized.

“How can they—”

“That’s what I don’t understand. Apparently, your fans,” Haz stressed on the word, “sent not only (y/n) but the London Post some nasty mails in a couple of thousands. It got too much so they issued a statement to the media saying she was laid off a couple of days ago. Did you apologize to her?”

Considering the silence that came his way from Tom’s end, Harrison knew the answer.

“Tom… That’s her job, mate. A review wouldn’t have hurt anyone’s reputation here. Did you even read her review? It said nothing bad about you. Just that the writer wrote your role into the dirt,” Tom winced at his friend’s words. “Which is absolutely true because don’t deny it, you hated having Lionel killed too.”

Tom couldn’t deny it. Guilt washed over him like a wave under the full moon. He felt terrible, no doubt. He had no idea that this would happen. Now when he thought about it, Jean himself had more work writing for other shows now that Birds of a Feather was done. Tom sighed. He groaned. He ruffled his own hair. He looked at Tessa running around in the field.

“I fucked up, didn’t I?”

“Yup. You did. Big time.” Haz was brutal.

It was at that second that Tom decided he’d talk to her. Ask her out for coffee and apologize like a decent person would do. He’d make sure she got her job back as well, but first, he needed to tell her those important three words.

“Haz, can you give me her—”

“Already on it, mate. I’ll send it to you in a jif.”

Once the call was over, Tom knew what steps he had to take. After he reached home, he quickly browsed through (y/n) (l/n) in Google, looking at the results. News articles over news articles about her spread in his face, before finally finding one from the London Post. Her review on Birds of a Feather. He was surprised this was still up, and clicked on the link. There was so much written in this review that he knew would take over 8 minutes for him to read. He was a bit of a slow reader, but that didn’t mean he didn’t pay attention when he read. Tom’s eyes scanned over the descriptive words, and his heart almost stopped when (y/n) wrote about him.

“...while Tom’s performance in this season has been remarkable, it’s sad to see his role being written into the dirt. Lionel, one of the main protagonists of the whole show, deserved perhaps a more bittersweet end—something Tom could have delivered with a bat of an eye. With such talent streamlining the entire show, it’s a mere disappointment to see it fail in the eyes of a fan. Poor Tom deserved better himself…”

Tom sighed. Brushing a hand through his head, he came down to the comment section.

TomLoverxox wrote: What a bitch she made Tom sad I mean come on go home criticize your own face

LaserTeaser15 wrote: Listen slut let me see you write a show as great as this one

Tom grimaced. I did this, he thought before looking at the contact details that Harrison sent. Gulping the bit of hesitation that was previously stopping him, Tom made the final move. Three rings was what it took for (y/n) to pick the call.

“Hello?” Her voice was pleasant. It gave Tom the impression that she may forgive him and all might go well.

Smiling, Tom replied, “Hi. Is this (y/n)?”

She recognized him. Honestly, she wasn’t expecting his call to come at that second, but she knew it’d come. Considering how so many of her reporter colleagues would flaunt over how nice he is as a person and how decent he is and how he’d definitely apologize if he hurt anyone and how he would definitely give her a call too. One of her colleagues even went as far as to say he’d ask her for coffee where he’d be nice to her and apologize in person too. She didn’t think that was necessary, because she knew the answer.

“Is this (y/n)?” Tom’s voice was as sweet as sugar.

But (y/n) liked her coffee black.

“Tom Holland.” She spat, like it was poison on her tongue. If she could see him, she’d see him flinch.

“Hi.” He said, and nervously let out a laugh.

“What’s made you call me, Mr. Holland?” (y/n) specialized in sarcastic conversation. It was her forte, she often put it.

“I’m terribly sorry about—”

“Making me lose my job over a review I wrote for a TV show you acted in and had nothing to do with writing the script? Terribly sorry about me being slandered all over the internet and being called a whore to someone who’s better called a dunce? Terribly sorry about me doing my job and being reprimanded for it? Mr. Holland, tell me. How would that review have affected your job?”

Tom had no idea how to respond. He figured she’d be feisty and aggressive, but this was a whole other level. He knew if she pressed him any more than this, he’d perhaps stammer out of guilt.

“I’m very sorry about—”

“Making a public story on Instagram trashing me and my work where I didn’t even criticize you but the writing of the show? In fact, did you happen to read—”

“I actually did. I want to say sorry for—”

“Acting out before having read the entire piece, right?”

Tom didn’t blame her. That’s what he was telling himself.

“(y/n), I just… Listen, I feel terrible for what’s happened. Can we meet over coffee and talk this out—”

“Tom, I didn’t deserve what I got. Thank you for calling me. You’re a very good man. But what you did ruined my reputation online and in my career. Slander must mean something to you, you’re an actor. You understand better than most what I feel at this moment. So, leave me be. And no. I don’t want to meet you for coffee.”

And that was how the call ended. Tom turned to Tessa, who was now looking right into his soul.

“I know, girl. This isn’t done.”

taglist:

@strangemaximoff, @aestheticgaybish, @noobmaster63, @why-are-all-the-teens-gay, @wonders-of-the-multiverse, @boushalaivre, @jackiehollanderr, @nerdypisces160

#tom holland #tom holland x reader #tom hollander #tom holland fic #tom holland imagine #tom holland x you #tom holland fanfic

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mugen-monogatari · 5 years

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Kabukimonogatari - Shinobu Silence; Humanizing a Monster

This post is the second part of my Kabukimonogatari posts. In the first post, I talked about Hachikuji and her key scene, while in this post, I’ll be talking about Shinobu and her important scene. To me personally, this climax of the arc was probably one of the best scenes in Monogatari as a whole. This entire exchange, was so satisfyingly, unsatisfying. It left me feeling empty, and almost disappointed (which sounds like a bad thing), but that’s what makes it so great. The crushingly painful realism. This entire arc was a commentary on how even our smallest actions and decisions can affect the greater world around us. It shows how we take even the smallest things for granted, with some pretty insightful commentary on depression and being in a dark place.

So with that brief introduction out of the way. Lets talk about shinobu and her climactic scene in Kabukimonogatari. For this analysis, I’ll be potentially spoiling all the way up to episode 10 of the Monogatari second Season. Keep that in mind if you haven’t yet seen up to that point. Also, this is all just my interpretation, none of this should be taken as fact.

Ironically, this arc was the first which made Shinobu, a vampire, an aberration, feel the most human in the entire series. She demonstrates, while seeming like a transcendent being, she’s very much so susceptible to the same problems everyone faces. Jealousy, pride, depression. They affect her just as much as they would anyone else. Which was top-notch characterization for this point in the story. Up to then, Shinobu was almost an enigma, being incredibly cute and wise, but having very little going for her in terms of emotional depth (that is unless you watched or read Kizumonogatari before this).

This entire humanization is what leads to the apocalyptic events of Kabuki. Shinobu’s jealousy. Her envy for the people around Koyomi, her pride and child-like stubbornness. Most of you probably didn’t remember until it was mentioned, Shinobu was missing at one point in the story, only returning upon seeing Koyomi’s efforts to find her. She saw this as an act of mutual affection. Him searching for her demonstrated his need or care for her, so she returned the kindness by helping him with the Hanekawa situation. However in this reality, Hachikuji had never incentivized Koyomi to go search for Shinobu, prompting her to destroy the world in her solitude and envy.

And that was one of the really heart-wrenching things about this arc- It shows even that little ounce of effort is enough to save someone, or to change things, even fix things. In our case, Koyomi actively put that effort in, going out of his way instead of settling for the easy route of just waiting for her to return. Shinobu while having lived for hundreds of years, still has the mind of a spoiled brat. She felt as if it was Koyomi’s job to come searching for her. She refused to be the one that put the effort in. She acknowledges this herself- “If I had only made one tiny compromise.” She realizes that you can’t expect things to happen for you, if you’re not willing to put some effort in yourself. She comes to terms with the unreasonable nature of her actions, having created this entire situation and forcing Koyomi to search for her, to see things from her perspective. But in this alternate reality- He never did.

I feel that's a painfully accurate depiction of human emotions. A lot of the time, we expect things from people that aren’t entirely fair. We can’t always admit we’re wrong, and we’re often too stubborn to just apologize. We instead run away and blame it on everyone else. “It was his fault for not chasing me-” That’s the sort of mentality she had. And that’s a mentality a lot of people have. But this entire arc shows you have to compromise. You can’t rely on one party in a relationship to fix everything. You both must actively work towards whatever happiness you seek.

“If I’d only opened up my heart to this boy a little more, Believing and entrusting…”

It also shows a slightly nihilistic view of our actions. Running away, destroying the world was completely pointless, she accomplished nothing in doing so. The void in her heart was not filled, she was just left feeling even more empty and depressed. Had she just waited slightly longer, or better yet, compromised, she would’ve had the happiness she sought after. Which is a good message told in a depressing way. Patience is key. Don’t run away from the problem and expect everyone else to fix it. If you’re not happy with the way someone acts or a situation you’re in, you can work on improving that, even when it’s hard, time and effort will help you ultimately achieve happiness.

This was a very rough scene for me personally. Your actions aren’t permanent, but your mistakes are. Running away isn’t the end of it. Had she just returned everything would have been okay, while never returning led to the end of our world as we knew it. Her world too. She was left with nothing but regrets. “My running away from home caused me to lose you… Making me feel like I had lost a wing, A half of myself.” A quote that just goes to demonstrate her pain. Her misery at making one, small, stupid, stubborn choice, which led to everything she knew ending. Leaving her with nothing but a destroyed world and a void in her heart.

Which leads me onto my second part of this scene. Depression. I know it’s a little cliche to talk about it, but I think this is a fairly accurate depiction of it. It’s not a switch or something that happens overnight. In the case of Shinobu and most people, it’s a downwards spiral, one bad day leading to another, before they pile up. In her case, she was stubborn. Taking her anger out on the world, before realizing in feeling alone, she truly became alone. She destroyed her own life, with her own hands. As DJ Khaled once said; “Congratulations, you played yourself.”(Had to get one meme in there to lighten the mood plsdontkillme).

Shinobu feels truly alone. She struggles with the fact that Koyomi is surrounded by all these girls, forcing him to divide his attention between them all, making her feel unneeded and desperate. So she flees. She runs away with the hope that he’ll chase her, and when he doesn’t- She kills everyone. In doing so, she realizes that she truly has become alone and is prompted to take her own life.

But then upon seeing her alternate self, it becomes all so painfully clear the futility of her actions. This could have all been avoided if- you guessed it- she compromised. There most definitely was a reality where she was happy. There was a certain almost guaranteed chance that everything would be okay, had she just waited or tried to put effort in herself. It’s a very touching moment actually, when she has the tragic realization that everything she did was pointless. She had ruined everything for no reason. That there was a reality where both her and Koyomi could happily snuggle together.

While that may sound bleak, I think the real hidden message is that things get better. Life will improve, and even when it’s difficult or hard or stressful or lonely, it’s not the end. There’s a lot of people out there who suffer from very serious, very real problems, and many see no way out of it. It can be draining and scary. But it does truly get better, with some time and effort, you can make a life for yourself. It’s unfair, yes, but if you just work at things, one day you’ll be able to look back on you life and wonder why you ever even worried. I think this arc was kind of like a really really depressing way of saying- “Hey. It’ll be alright. Just stick with it. It’ll pay off, your hard work and effort will be rewarded,” which is both sweet and touching. If this was truly the author’s intentions, I have to give him kudos, since I think that’s a good message to give people.

To relate this to my own life, me and my own Girlfriend argue sometimes. Occasionally the topic of breaking up will come up, but we never do. She always puts it best saying; “I won’t break up with you because that’s a permanent decision. This argument isn’t, we’ll move on and forget about it at some point.” And I think that applies perfectly with this entire arc.

Kabukimonogatari was another fanatastic arc in an amazing series, and I’m just glad I got to experience it and share it with you guys. If you take anything away from this arc, just remember, no matter where you are in life, one day it’ll get better.

Thank you so much for reading this, if you made it this far, maybe consider sharing this with someone. Next up I’ll be doing some stuff for the Fate franchise, as well as more Monogatari character stuff, don’t forget more Bleach posts too, So keep your eyes peeled.

Take Care of Eachother, Saki~

#monogatari #anime #shinobu oshino #araragi koyomi #monogatari series #discussion #kabukimonogatari #hachikuji mayoi

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commentaryvorg · 4 years

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Danganronpa V3 Commentary: Part 5.22

Be aware that this is not a blind playthrough! This will contain spoilers for the entire game, regardless of the part of the game I’m commenting on. A major focus of this commentary is to talk about all of the hints and foreshadowing of events that are going to happen and facts that are going to be revealed in the future of the story. It is emphatically not intended for someone experiencing the game for their first time.

Last time as we began the conclusion of trial 5, Kaito was doing his best to keep everyone’s spirits up even now that they know he’s a murderer, then he started recounting Kokichi’s plan, in which Kokichi still did not remotely acknowledge any of his responsibility for Miu and Gonta’s deaths, was still keeping several bits of truth from Kaito and only told him what he needed to know to understand the plan, was brokenly obsessed with “winning” the game despite how stupid an idea that was, didn’t really sacrifice all that much since he’d been convinced from the start he wasn’t going to survive anyway, and cared more than anything about not having been boring, leading to his whole plan counterproductively giving the audience exactly what they wanted.

We’re still in the midst of the conversation about Kokichi, just after the bit in the flashback where he said he wasn’t boring.

Maki: “Then… he blackmailed you by using me?”

Kaito: “No. I agreed to his plan once I heard the words ‘ruin this killing game’.”

This is important and I really appreciate that Kaito makes this point. He’s not saying he wouldn’t have done it just for Maki’s sake – he shouldn’t even need to explain that obviously he’d do it for that reason because of course he’d give his life for one of his sidekicks – but if it was solely to protect Maki, there would have been no need to hide in the Exisal and lie to them for the whole trial. Kaito is making it very clear here that even if Maki’s life wasn’t on the line, he would still have done this for the chance to ruin the killing game. Either one of those two things alone would have been enough to make him kill Kokichi – but only this was enough for him to go along with the rest of the plan. He was in on this plan for its own sake. (While still not for the same reasons as Kokichi.)

Kaito: “He was crazy, but that let him come up with some crazy plans… And we needed a crazy plan in order to stand a chance against Monokuma. I bet on that chance.”

Kaito is quite readily acknowledging by now that Kokichi’s plans are better than anything he could have come up with. He just relied on Kokichi’s plan a tiny bit too much, since there were flaws in it too that Kaito overlooked because he assumed Kokichi knew better.

Kaito: “I didn’t have any other choice… Cuz… I’m outta time.”

He would ideally have liked to do something less drastic and less murderous and less painfully deceptive towards his friends for his chance at saving everyone. But just like Kaede, he was on a time limit, and that’s why he took the only option available to him.

And, okay, so I’ve been complaining this whole time about how stupid it was of Kokichi to use Kaito as his accomplice and not Shuichi. But, to be fair, he did have a reason for doing so, and it’s this. He knew that Kaito would agree to this plan under these circumstances, even without Maki being a factor, because he knew Kaito was dying and desperately wanted to be a hero in the time he had left. It’s likely that Kokichi giving Kaito the option of using the Electrohammers on the escape tunnel earlier this chapter was partly a test run to see if Kaito was desperate enough to swallow his pride and accept a plan of Kokichi’s if it seemed like the best way to save everyone – which he did. It is also possible that Kokichi’s efforts to jab at Kaito’s issues and contribute to his breakdown during trial 4 were him playing a very long game to increase the chances that Kaito would be desperate enough to prove himself after that disaster that he’d be willing to do this. I don’t think I want to give Kokichi’s forward-planning skills and manipulative string-pulling quite that much credit, though.

Meanwhile, getting Shuichi to agree to this plan would have been a lot more difficult because none of the factors that made Kaito willing to do it despite how murderous and deceptive it was applied to Shuichi. Still, even given that, having Shuichi do it would have been the better option by far. The chances of getting Kaito to agree to the plan may have been essentially 100%, but the chances of the plan actually succeeding in that form were something like 1% thanks to Shuichi’s awesome detective skills. Meanwhile, getting Shuichi to agree maybe stood only, at most, like a 50% chance of happening, but the plan in that form would have been pretty likely to succeed, maybe 50% again, if not more. That adds up to still have a way greater chance of success than the Kaito version of the plan. But nope, Kokichi massively underestimated Shuichi’s detective skills and massively overestimated his own totally-genius schemes in the face of Shuichi’s deduction (whether genuinely or just through fervent lying to himself that he couldn’t possibly lose), and so he decided it would be better to go with the version of the plan that would definitely happen in the first place.

This also means that, essentially, Kaito was manipulated into going along with this plan by Kokichi. Kokichi knew Kaito’s personality and weaknesses well enough to know that if Kaito was put in this particular position and presented with this plan as his only chance to save everyone, he would never choose anything else. It’s a lot like how Kokichi also knew that, if presented with the despairing “truth” and told that the only way to save everyone was to mercy kill them, Gonta would never have done anything other than what he did. At least Kokichi didn’t lie to Kaito while presenting him with this, but he still deliberately manufactured the situation so that this was his only option, when there were any number of other, better ways Kokichi could have helped Kaito to be a hero and save everyone if he’d wanted to do so.

It’s kind of similar, actually, to the way Tsumugi has been manipulating the “characters” in her story to act according to her script, in order to cause the first three murder cases and also Maki’s attempt to kill Kokichi in this chapter. Tsumugi knows how she wrote her characters to be, and then she engineers circumstances and Flashback Lights to push them into acting in a specific way because that’s the only thing that character would ever do in that situation, even though they’re still acting of their own free will. The motives in cases 1, 2 and 3 (and an attempted one in case 5) were crafted by Tsumugi, while the real motives in cases 4 and 5 were crafted in just the same way, but perhaps even more expertly, by Kokichi.

Not that that should diminish Kaito’s decision to do this, just like we shouldn’t diminish that Gonta was in fact willing to kill everyone to protect them from the despairing truth even if there were lies and manipulation involved. Just like we also shouldn’t for any of the choices made by anyone in this game simply because they’re “fictional” and were written to always act that way – everything has always been real to them.

Maki: “Time…”

Shuichi: “Kaito… You mean, your health…?”

Upon hearing this, Shuichi joins the dots and immediately realises that the illness they all knew Kaito still has really is fatal after all.

Maki: “But you said you were fine! You told me not to worry about it anymo—”

It’s about time you learned a thing, Maki: Kaito saying that he’s fine should never be taken as evidence of anything at all.

Kaito: “Ah, my bad. That was a lie.”

At least he’s apologising for lying, though! He does so very briefly and casually, probably because he doesn’t want them to think too hard about just how much he was lying to them about this, but he does feel bad about it, even if it was all for the purpose of not worrying them and continuing to support them.

Kaito: “Haha, yeah it’s pretty bad. Honestly, I’m at my limit just talking.”

Kaito is wearing one of his biggest smiles as he says this, still acting like nothing’s wrong even as he admits that things are very wrong. This is what a Kaito who is willing to admit weakness to his friends looks like – and he still looks like exactly the same Kaito! Imagine if he’d acted this way in chapter 4: admitting that he’s sick and dying and in a lot of pain so that everyone knew what was up and could prepare for the worst and help him if he needed it (and work towards saving him), but still continuing to be his usual cheerful and encouraging self on top of it all anyway. He wouldn’t have sacrificed any of his ability to inspire them by admitting this! Seeing him that way while knowing what he’s fighting through to be like that would be even more inspiring than Kaito normally is! He really is such an idiot about that; he never had anything to fear from showing them his weakness at all.

Also, despite that it apparently hurts Kaito to even talk at this point, he’s not going to let that stop him from continuing to talk at length right up until the end. Words are the best thing he has, and he’s still got so much he needs to tell them.

Kaito wonders how he got sick anyway, and Shuichi suggests it’s the virus from the meteorites.

Tsumugi: “But weren’t we supposed to be immune? We were selected because we didn’t—”

Monokuma: “Perhaps the virus was dormant when you were selected for the Gofer Project…”

Tsumugi, of course, already knows the story of Kaito not being immune since she wrote it, so really this is her setting up Monokuma to be able to explain it, since one of the students explaining it would look kind of suspicious. They make a good double-act.

Kaito: “I dunno what you’re talking about, but… I guess I’m pretty screwed, huh?”

It is really impressive how Kaito is able to sound so casual about the fact that he is definitely going to die and there’s nothing he can possibly do about it.

Kaito: “Well, I knew this was coming. That’s why I agreed to Kokichi’s plan.”

This is the second time in this conversation Kaito has said “I did it because I was running out of time”. Which is true, but it doesn’t explain what he was running out of time for. Unlike Kaede, this time limit only applied to him, but it’s not like this plan would ever save his life. The reason Kaito agreed is that, having felt like he’d failed so much up until this point, he desperately wanted one last chance at being a hero and playing a part in saving everyone before he died. He couldn’t bear to just die for nothing.

But Kaito doesn’t tell them that it was about himself wanting to be a hero. Because he doesn’t need to. This was never about letting everyone else see that he’s the hero; it was simply about actually being one, even if nobody else ever fully realises it. It’s exactly like what he did earlier in the chapter when he gave up on his own escape plan and took on Kokichi’s instead. Kaito can be quietly satisfied with what he’s done here without having to gloat about it, unlike a certain someone who ruined his own plan by doing just that.

Kaito: “Kokichi left me with a whole outline of it. I freaked out when I read it.”

Kaito shows a thing with diagrams and flowcharts which is a separate thing from the script. I kind of wish we could get a better look at it. From what I can make out, the diagram seems to be a very rudimentary depiction of someone getting crushed, but not by the hydraulic press, so maybe this was an earlier version of Kokichi’s idea before the hangar opened up and he realised exactly how he could do it. I imagine the flowchart describes all the various possible events in the trial and how each of them could be directed towards the desired goal. Predictably, the flowchart appears to end on only one possible outcome, because obviously Kokichi’s plan was definitely going to succeed no matter how the trial played out and there couldn’t have been the slightest chance he was ever going to lose.

Kaito: “It was a pretty good plan. I thought we might be able to trick Monokuma. But I knew Shuichi’d see right through it in the end!”

Of course he did! Because Kaito has unshakeable faith in Shuichi’s detective skills!

Kaito: “Haha, and that’s exactly how it went! Nice job, Shuichi! You’re really something!”

This is wonderfully at odds with what Kaito was just explaining about the plan and the lengths he and Kokichi went to for it. Shuichi ruined it all, but that’s awesome of him! It’s so lovely that Kaito doesn’t once blame Shuichi or act angry at him for doing this even though it did mean that they missed out on the best-case outcome. He knows that Shuichi just did what a detective should do, and he probably realises that it’d be unreasonable to expect Shuichi to have figured out his motive for the plan and therefore not try and dismantle it until it was already too late. No matter what, Kaito does not want Shuichi to feel guilty and responsible for what’s happened here. Shuichi already has enough of a problem with blaming himself unnecessarily when bad things happen, so there’s no way Kaito’s going to make that worse.

Kaito: “That’s why I was able to get on board with Kokichi and lie to you like that.”

That’s not why he got on board with Kokichi – he did that for the chance that it’d succeed, which is the complete opposite of the fact that he believed Shuichi would make it fail. Still, it was probably a little emotionally easier for Kaito to tell all those lies when he believed so strongly that Shuichi would see through them all in the end.

Kaito: “Even if I messed stuff up during the trial, I knew Shuichi’d see the truth.”

This does not actually make sense. He’s saying that Shuichi would have compensated for his mistakes to keep the plan on track, when really Shuichi would have capitalised on Kaito mistakes to ruin the plan more and reach the truth quicker. But I think Kaito probably realises it doesn’t make sense and is just trying to present things in as positive a light as possible to prevent Shuichi from feeling bad about what he did.

{Later addendum edit: Whoops, never mind, I misinterpreted this line. Because Kaito often uses the phrasing “messed up” to mean making mistakes, I assumed that was what he meant here too even though it didn’t quite make sense. It turns out, based on the Japanese version of this line, that Kaito actually means “messed stuff up” in the sense of “made everything confusing”, in which case, yeah, of course that makes sense.}

Kaito: “Heh. Just what I’d expect from my sidekick.”

Kaito is still calling Shuichi his sidekick!!! This is an extremely important thing to note considering that it’s the first time he’s done so since trial 4, when he was questioning that idea. That ended with him being convinced that Shuichi was stronger than him and didn’t need his support and therefore wasn’t his sidekick any more. But now Kaito’s back to calling Shuichi that, even though he’s also still fully acknowledging that Shuichi’s more awesome than him – so it seems Kaito really does understand now that despite being the bigger hero, Shuichi can still benefit from his help, if only a little. That’s so good! That’s exactly the kind of thing that it always was, even when Kaito didn’t believe it. Heroes are not flawless and invincible and are allowed to need support too.

(It’s… a lot less clear whether Kaito has properly realised that that also applies to himself. He might have done, but the fact that he’s also somewhat separately convinced himself that his suffering is irrelevant means he’d never ask for help at this stage anyway, even if he had realised that doing so wouldn’t make him less of a hero.)

Shuichi: “Wh-Why…? If you knew I’d see through it, why—”

Maki: “If you knew it was pointless from the start, then you shouldn’t have gone that far…!”

Kaito: “Nah, it wasn’t pointless. It ended up being a huge success.”

Himiko: “Why?”

Kaito: “Because of this plan and Kokichi pretending to be the mastermind… We got closer to the true mastermind’s lair…”

While honestly I think Kaito is so stubborn and determined that he’d have gone through with the plan just for the sake of trying, for the tiniest chance of success, that isn’t all. He is not just lying to make everyone feel better when he says it succeeded anyway, because he very much did succeed in proving that Monokuma can’t get away with breaking the rules and so there has to be an audience. That was a fact nobody knew before this trial, but they’re sure of it now, thanks to Kaito’s efforts, and that’s something Kaito was always aiming for here.

Kaito: “Behind this truth, there’s gotta be a hint that leads to the real truth.”

And Kaito knows that Shuichi can use that fact to reach the “something beyond the truth” that he was telling him about yesterday through the window – the idea that maybe what they saw outside somehow isn’t the whole truth and there’s somewhere out there for them to escape to. Proving there’s an audience proves that, after all. Kaito managed to turn his completely baseless desperate optimism into something actually concrete, thanks to this plan.

Shuichi: “The real truth?”

Kaito: “Yeah, no doubt. That’s why Kokichi gave his life.”

This line almost sounds like Kokichi also cared about proving to everyone that there was an audience so that they could have hope, to the point that he gave up his life for it. But that doesn’t make any sense – if Kokichi cared about letting everyone know there was an audience, he could have just told them why he was so sure about it from the beginning, and definitely not perpetuate the lie that the outside world was dead. Presumably what Kaito really means here is that Kokichi was sure there was something beyond the apparent truth and therefore he was sure enough of the premise his plan relied on that he was willing to give his life for it. After all, it’d be a huge risk to give your life for a plan when the very premise it hinges on might be flawed from the outset.

Keebo: “You talk as if… he was your partner. When you hated him so strongly before…”

Kaito: “Oh, I hate his guts. Honestly, I’m still pissed off at him. He made us go through so much crap. To the end – no, even beyond that. He was a lying sack of shit.”

Kaito is not pulling his punches. He’s about to recount the last words Kokichi said to him, which was the closest Kokichi ever got to showing anyone how he really felt – but even though Kaito knows about that side of Kokichi now and understands him better than ever before, that doesn’t change the fact that Kokichi was a really shitty person. He still killed two people and made everyone suffer immensely for what was ultimately just a tiny part of his grand plan, and he was never willing to admit to any regret or remorse for doing so. And there is still no indication that his plan was for anything other than his own petty revenge and self-satisfaction. Kaito knows for sure now that Kokichi was definitely suffering like the rest of them and was therefore pitiable – but the awful way he dealt with that and hurt others in doing so makes him entirely deserving of everything Kaito’s saying about him here.

Kaito: “Hey, can I ask one thing? You want to ruin this killing game, but… You kept saying how fun this game was.”

I wouldn’t be surprised if Kaito already had a pretty good idea of what the answer to this question was going to be. He spent all of this chapter not being convinced by the evil sadist line, after all, and now upon seeing the lengths Kokichi was willing to go to to ruin the game, he probably already had a pretty good hunch as to what was up. He was just asking because he was hoping that here, at the very end, Kokichi might actually admit it.

(It’s notable the way Kaito asks if he can ask, which isn’t something Kaito usually does given how straightforward he is. It’s like he knows that what he’s asking is something deeply personal to Kokichi and there’s still every chance he might refuse to answer. Kaito’s really just asking Kokichi to finally be honest with him.)

Kokichi: “That was a lie… obviously…”

I like how he says “obviously” here. It’s the complete opposite of what he’s been saying this whole time that obviously this game is loads of fun and he’s enjoying it immensely. But now he’s actually tapping into how he’s really felt about it deep down this whole time, and he’s hated it so much that obviously any claim to the contrary was a lie, how could it have possibly been the truth?

Kokichi: “H-How could a game… that you’re forced to play… be fun…?”

So, okay, in Japanese this line instead says “How could a game where you kill people be fun?”. But I really don’t think it’s that huge of a deal that it was changed. It should already be clear from the way he’s been acting here and the fact that he hates the killing game that Kokichi never actually enjoyed people being killed and his claim at the end of trial 4 was a lie. He doesn’t need to explicitly say so to make that apparent. Meanwhile, the idea of hating being forced into this game is also in line with Kokichi’s character, because he hates not being in control and the idea that things aren’t on his terms, which is why he tried to take control of it and force Monokuma into playing his game this trial. That might be something that the localisers decided it actually made more sense for Kokichi to mention here, since hating killing people should be so obvious that he shouldn’t feel the need to say so, and so they changed it to something which was a bit more specific and nuanced. More on this when we get to that one other localisation-changed line regarding Kokichi in chapter 6.

(It’s also possible that this line is just a genuine mistranslation, because the verb used for “kill” in Japanese there is spelled the same as a verb for “do”. I’m not sure how much the rest of the sentence’s context makes the meaning clear, as my Japanese is patchy, but I think it’s at least vaguely possible that the localiser just thought they were directly translating the line here. I may be wrong, but I feel like that’s worth mentioning.)

Kokichi: “I had to think this game was fun to survive! I had to lie to myself!”

Everyone else who’s survived so far didn’t have to tell themselves they were enjoying this in order to stay alive. What Kokichi really means is that he had to lie to himself to continue functioning and not be a broken, terrified, paranoid mess. But maybe he thinks that such a broken mess would be a clear target for any evil backstabber looking to prey on the weak (totally the kind of person this game has been full of, right), which is exactly why he tells himself that this was obviously for the sake of his survival.

Kaito: “You little…”

This sounds like Kaito being frustrated and exasperated upon realising that Kokichi’s behaviour that caused everyone so much annoyance and pain was all a huge defence mechanism to selfishly protect himself and hide his weakness. There are so many better ways Kokichi could have dealt with things if he really was that scared all along – reaching out to everybody for help, working together with them to end the killing game in a way that actually benefitted everyone else too and didn’t throw people’s lives away in the process. But of course, his massive trust issues got in the way, very much like how Miu’s did. I think Kaito is realising here that things could so easily have been different if only Kokichi wasn’t so thoroughly messed up.

(I guess this is also at least a little bit similar to how things could have been very different for Kaito and he might have survived if he hadn’t had so many of his own issues and been doing everything he could to hide his weaknesses from everyone. They’re still total opposites in why they were hiding everything, of course.)

Kokichi: “The bastards who created this game to toy with our lives… and the shits enjoying it… They all… piss me off! Th-That’s why… I’m willing to do whatever it takes… to end this game!”

This is all very, very genuine – but apparently Kokichi managed to keep himself oblivious to the idea that he just gave those people he hates so much the best damn time of their lives by creating two such entertaining cases like he did. It would have been so, so much better for his purposes to just actually work together with everyone in escaping and end the game in a boring way like that. But that would have involved trusting people, and that wouldn’t have counted as winning the game on his own terms as the perfect revenge, and it wouldn’t have been something he’d have been able to convince himself he was totally having fun with as part of that defence mechanism he was so, so desperate to keep up.

Maki: “Kokichi said… that?”

Kaito: “That coulda been a lie, too. He probably just said it so that I’d cooperate with him.”

I don’t believe that Kaito really thinks it was a lie. He’s good enough at reading people that I’m sure his intuition is telling him that was the real Kokichi there, especially since he never believed the evil sadist claim in the first place. I guess he just doesn’t want to draw a firm conclusion while telling everyone else about it when it’s still just one of his hunches, and so he wants to remind them all that it’s possible Kokichi was lying and let them come to their own decisions.

Shuichi: (A lie… or the truth? Even now at the end, I don’t really understand Kokichi… But maybe that’s what lying is all about. The truth is in the eye of the beholder, huh? Kokichi… was the very embodiment of a lie.)

The writing makes a pretty overt point through Shuichi here that this is what Kokichi’s narrative purpose was. I’ve complained a lot about the way Kokichi has no concrete backstory to explain why he is the way he is, but I do realise that the reason they made him so ambiguous was in order to make this narrative point here. That said, I still wish he wasn’t that way. I’m not saying he’s a bad character, but Kokichi would have been a better character than he is if the writers had treated him as a character first before they treated him as a narrative device whose purpose is to be impenetrable.

I get the feeling that Kokichi was also a plot device before he was a character. His purpose in this story is to make that narrative point about lies, and to cause cases 4 and 5 to happen, and only after that is his purpose to be a character with his own consistent sense of psychology and motives. That’s why, even with all of his issues working to somewhat reasonably justify it, it’s still kind of a stretch that he went so far in murdering two people just for a tiny part of his plan, and then that he carried out the final part of his plan this chapter despite what should have been the glaringly obvious flaw in not using Shuichi as the accomplice, and that it never occurred to him that he simply shouldn’t have made these two entertaining cases at all. Because first and foremost, that’s how the plot was meant to go, and Kokichi’s character had to be stretched and squeezed into making him facilitate that plot. His ambiguity also helped the writers get away with that and make the somewhat forced nature of it harder to notice. It’s a shame, but the story of chapters 4 and 5 is so good, particularly in how it forms the core of Kaito’s character arc, so I’m really not complaining all that much that Kokichi’s character had to be put second to that.

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[Next post]

#danganronpa #danganronpa v3 #drv3 #ndrv3 #chapter 5 #class trial #commentary

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crystalrequiem · 5 years

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The Voice that Urged Orpheus

[Part 5/9(?)] [TRC]

Summary: Kurogane feels a lot of ways about things and accidentally goes shopping Tags: Kuro/Fai, Canon Universe, Post-Canon, Warnings: suggestive thoughts (nothing graphic), paranoia, so much fluff, Is it still slow-burn if they’re already in a relationship? because that’s basically what this is.

[Part 1] … [Part 4]

*Edited 12/22/2019

Well this one’s a bit of a slower chapter but it needed to be established and bundling it with the next part just made it too long so.... what can you do.

apologies for a very introspective chapter but we’re going places.

The next three days pass in a haze. He drifts from moment to moment, bored and fatigued. He has zero idea what to do with himself while they drag him hither and yon to stare at magic he doesn’t understand, and the desert heat disagrees with him on a level he hadn’t expected. Worry for Fai is the only thing that distracts him from the monotony; he catches glimpses of Fai’s darker moods in the quiet spaces between stints of teaching and study and he wonders whether he shouldn’t ask Mokona to hurry their teleportation along...

Still, he can’t begrudge them this world. People treat Fai with a rare and well-deserved respect, watching anything he demonstrates with rapt attention. Scholars reach out to explain things to Syaoran and praise his aptitude for learning. His family comes back to the apartment chattering excitedly about theory and completely engaged at the end of each day, and he would never dare to take that away. He only wishes he had more to do.

Of course, he can always practice his skills. He always has something to improve, and he needs to keep in shape if he wants to keep everyone safe… Only the apartment doesn’t have that much space, and so far any attempts at using the courtyards outside have been miserable affairs. The heat doesn’t relent for as long as the sun sits in the sky, and neither do the stares.

He hoped that after the newness of Fai’s magic wore off he’d have to contend with fewer watchers, but he has no such luck. Apparently his unintentional sword demonstrations and lack of magic both single him out as an obvious outsider if not an object of outright academic befuddlement. Occasionally a researcher looks his way with an interest and intent that makes his skin crawl. So far none have actually approached him. He suspects, but can’t prove, that Fai might have threatened them off. They certainly seem to disappear whenever Fai makes his presence known.

Worry and paranoia wreak havoc on his mood, only worsened by the fatigue that settles in like the portent of a bad cold. He feels wound up and tired all the time. He tries to blame it on the heat and the boredom and on constantly waiting for something bad to happen, but he starts to wonder whether he hasn’t just managed to catch some kind of illness. Feeling like this… he doesn’t have a lot of patience for Mokona’s antics, even when the manjuu means well. And as much as he loves seeing the Kid and Fai engaged and well-respected, there’s only so much sitting around he can take. So, that morning, amidst all the chatter of the rest of the group as they get ready for yet another day of magic, he escapes to wander the market instead.

He doesn’t want to find anything in particular, but the need to learn some kind of perimeter burns like an old instinct. Besides… he needs to clear his head. Even amidst everything, he hasn’t been able to stop thinking about all the questions he wants to ask Fai—not once. Is he just complicating this needlessly? In this world, anyone who so much as looks at them assumes they must be married, and it’s led to more embarrassing incidents after Caldina. They must see something that ties them together—magic or hitsuzen or whatever that might be. Maybe they’ve already made it. Maybe trying to force a more formal name on the whole thing will just ruin something really, really good.

On the other hand…

“People like me don’t deserve nice things,” The mage had told him in the dark, earnest and honest and Kurogane wants to prove him wrong so badly he can feel it like a physical pull. Normally, he’s not one for ceremony or overblown gestures of affection, but he thinks of Fai’s stupid self-derision and suddenly he wants to build the man a damn castle. He hates the fancy clothes and the meaningless traditions and Tomoyo’s brand of wedding, but he’d shoulder through all of it if for even one second he could get Fai to see how much more he deserved—how much Kurogane wants to give...

Ugh! This is idiotic. He keeps cycling through the arguments in his head as he storms through the market, barely noting the persistent stares and taking even less stock of the items for sale at their plethora of stands. He stomps down the full length of the central street before he manages to realize what he’s done and start doubling back, thoughts still driving themselves in circles. Kurogane has never been the type to linger long on any decision, so why does this one in particular present such an insurmountable challenge?! He could strangle himself for it in frustration, but well… he knows why, doesn’t he? Because it matters. Because it’s Fai.

“Oh, Hello! Fancy seeing you again.” Kurogane shakes free of his circuitous mind and finds himself blinking beneath the market shade at the pink-haired shopkeep from a few days ago, tense and ready to strike. His head aches distantly. He needs to get a grip. He can’t keep spacing out like this—what if something happens? An enemy could have—

No enemies here, he reminds himself, and tries not to think too much about the fact that his personal voice of reason has started to sound a little like a certain magician.

“Yes,” he hazards, focusing on Caldina as he sets himself back to rights. He lets his false arm relax, all too poised to pull his sword free from Fai’s charm. The area around him is entirely unfamiliar, and he realizes with embarrassment that he wandered far enough in his distraction to get lost. Caldina stands before him expectantly, but he doesn’t see her shop’s façade anywhere nearby. With the city’s tall, cramped buildings, he can’t see the academy on the skyline. He has nothing to orient himself with, but consoles himself with the realization that he can still understand the chatter around him—he can’t have strayed too far from Mokona…

“Not one for small-talk are you?” She teases with a wink, openly laughing when he only shrugs in response. “How did things go at the Academy?”

“Fine. Thanks for the directions.” Kurogane manages to stumble through an attempt at gratitude. He feels the lack of Fai or Syaoran here keenly—they know how to talk to people far better than he does.

To her credit, Caldina takes his awkward communication in stride. She simply laughs again, letting the buzz of those shopping nearby fill the stretch of silence.

“Oh, it wasn’t any trouble. I was happy to help! Don’t see foreigners too often.” The woman admits with a smile, fanning herself absently as she talks. “So, visiting the market for anything in particular? Or did the academics toss you out on your own?”

Kurogane eyes her sideways and tries to gauge her intentions. She probably means well? She helped before and he doesn’t know of any reason she might have to trick him now.

“I’m looking for sake,” he lies, giving her the same excuse he gave Fai when he wandered out this morning. The idiot had sent him out with half their money and a knowing grin. "Buy me something too, Kuro-sama?" He'd teased, eyes half-lidded, and Kurogane had to storm off to the tune of laughter before the blush on his face could show. Just another thing to try not to think about.

“Well, I can help you find that! What do you say, need a guide?”

Normally, Kurogane might have tried to turn her down, but he has nothing to do, and he's lost anyway. He hazards a nod, already apprehensive at the way she brightens. When she tucks herself into his side and loops her arm through his, he very nearly shoves her sideways. Somehow he manages to contain his reaction to a flinch and a look of disdain.

"Oh, please," she hums, laughing. "I'm not gonna try anything strange, but how else am I gonna haul you around without looking weird?"

‘Haul’ is certainly a word for it. She marches him through streets and between stalls and alleys at pace. Her constant running commentary makes focusing on their position difficult, and before he knows what’s what, he’s heard a hundred useless factoids about the market and its vendors and feels somehow even more lost than before. He keeps checking in and out of focus, making sure her words still sound like words and he hasn’t strayed too far from Mokona just yet. He doesn’t know yet what he’ll do if the spell stretches to its limit….

Luckily, he doesn’t need to find out. Caldina leads him to a nice looking stand before long, babbling about changes in tax codes and merchant drama all the while. If he weren’t so bored in this world, he would never have put up with it, but she has him as a captive audience. Besides, her knowledge comes in handy when the time comes to haggle on the pricing.

The drink she persuades the stall-keeper to let them taste is interesting, but it won’t make a list of his favorite things any time soon. None of the samples Caldina acquires are as strong as he usually drinks, but at least they warm his throat like sake should. Most of it tastes far sweeter and fruitier than he prefers… maybe that’s for the best. Fai never admits it out loud, but he thinks the mage enjoys this kind of drink more than Kurogane’s drier favorites.

He winds up grabbing two bottles of the too-sweet drink and tries to tell himself he doesn’t just do it for the chance to see Fai smile his way.

Caldina does all the bargaining for him, so he makes sure to hand her a few coins as well when they turn away. He certainly couldn’t have saved so much on his own. He doesn’t have the energy to interact with people like that. Even without anything to do today, even with Fai’s still-active cooling charm threaded into his cloak, he still feels exhausted. Between that and the dull aching of his head, he worries that he really is in for a hell of a cold... Or maybe the constant squinting has just started to take a toll.

“Aw, you don’t need to do that!” she cheers as she palms the currency, even though she’s already stashing the tip into her own wallet. Kurogane rolls his eyes at her antics… and catches sight of a glittering stall across the way.

It’s all jewelry, he thinks. More precious metal and shining stones than he’s ever seen in a single place at once. Just looking at it makes the part of him used to providing security to the Princess uncomfortable… It really says something about this world that a stand like that can exist here with such minimal protections. Whether the value of gems is low, or people here are simply well-off, he can’t decide.

“Ah,” Caldina follows the line of his gaze, mouth quirking in a grin he doesn’t like the look of as she processes his behavior. Kurogane tries to ignore her, watching as the vendor behind the table engages a customer in a rousing round of haggling. The desert sun sees all the stand’s wares gleaming, even beneath the market shade. Delicate detailing and elaborate engravings are lost in the lighting, so bright he can hardly tell them apart. Still… he does manage to spot the thin, white-gold bracelet inlaid with a single blue gem. The way its design flows and doubles back on itself… He can’t help thinking of Fai and the looping designs of his old coat.

“Thinking about proposing sometime soon?” The pink-haired shopkeep leers, staring him down sideways with a terrifyingly mischievous expression.

“What?!” He nearly knocks backwards into the liquor stand in his shock. How in the worlds—

“Come on! You’re looking at the engagement sets, right? I could tell.”

“Engagement… sets?” Caldina’s self-satisfied smirk skews toward confusion.

“Yes… you know, the kind you buy as a gift when you propose?” They stare at each other in blatant bewilderment before something dawns on her. “You folks have that where you’re from, don’t you?”

“No,” Kurogane chokes. He bites his tongue and looks away for a moment, regaining his composure. It’s bad enough that the whole damn world assumes them married when he hasn’t figured out how to ask. He thought somehow she’d learned to read his wavering intentions too. But if the jewelry simply serves as an engagement tradition here, then it’s just an odd coincidence. He tries to relax, resting a little easier knowing his thoughts aren’t magically on display for the world to see.

“Oh.” Caldina sighs with dismay, tapping one foot and sending the gentle chime of her own jewelry echoing into the market air. Her eyes glitter as mischief makes its return and Kurogane begins to worry for his continued sanity. “Well, is it a tradition you’d like to start?”

#TRC #tsubasa reservoir chronicle #Kurogane #KuroFai #fanfic

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scarlettlawyer · 5 years

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Part 6 of my commentary/reaction of the fanfiction series Phantoms & Mirages by @renegadewangs And uh – there’s actually a small (but relevant) commentary on Turnabout to the Past in this post too… :P

Also looks like I’d better start organising the links to the previous posts more properly, so:

(Chasing Phantoms): Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

(Haunted Specters): Part 4 | Part 5 |

So picking up with the same chapter, swiftly and subtly over the course of the fic, the phantom has been dramatically repositioned by the narrative. And now, all of a sudden, as the connections get made… Just after being shown Actual Child Phantom and having that sympathetic image fresh in our minds, the narrative suddenly goes “Haha! So anyway! Bobby and Simon parallel the phantom’s parents! :D” and throughout this chapter, because of the severity of the phantom’s injury and their weakened state, Bobby and Simon have been forced to make sure that he, well, doesn’t die. So now all of the sudden the phantom is kinda like… their child that they need to look after…

It’s almost as if… the narrative is equating the phantom with being a child… their child… And that alone is… really, really amusing. It was very funny to me. It was just about hilarious. It was the best thing. I couldn’t get enough of it. You actually managed to construct these parallels wherein the narrative positions the reader to see a direct parallel between, on some level, this fully grown man guilty of countless murders and a child. To see him as a kind of child that needs vital assistance from Bobby and Simon, rendered momentarily weak and helpless by circumstance.

Time and time again, the phantom has been built up by the series as extremely intimidating, scary, DANGEROUS, what have you, but in this moment, in one fell swoop, at least in terms of how I saw it, the narrative appears to dish out a kind of retribution. The phantom’s character is, to an extent, made fun of in the best possible way, amidst his transformation into protagonist and beginning to grab at the sympathies and concerns of the reader, Bobby and even Simon. Because however much our perspectives might have shifted somewhat at this point, no one is under any true illusion here: we all know that the phantom is a colossal jerk who has done terrible, terrible things. For the narrative to point at him, an adult, a criminal and a murderer, and say to the reader, “oh, just look at this poor little child” is on some level to outright mock him, and to strip away much of the character’s ability to intimidate in any real sense at this point. It is also a repositioning that mainly only the reader is privy to; he is not being made fun of directly in the story or being subjected to any true retribution directly over this outside of the karmic frustrations and indignities of being temporarily unable to properly fight back against Bobby and Simon’s assistance. But Bobby and Simon are not provided with the insight into the direct parental parallels. No, the “lol the phantom is a child” perspective namely resides with the reader, now, and its as if we are given every permission through it to dunk on him, as he should be dunked on, ‘cause he sucks and ruined lives lol.

The flashback to the phantom when he was a small child was nothing but angsty, make no mistake, but that does not make any narrative plays on his current adult self being a child any less amusing, and vice versa – it doesn’t in any way take away from the horror and awfulness of the child abuse flashback.

The phantom’s trauma is not funny, nor is his suffering – rather, the narrative positioning him as Bobby and Simon’s child is.

I also want to expand a little on how Simon assaulting the phantom was to an extent mirroring him as a small child being assaulted by his abusive father, although I touched on it briefly in my previous post.

In one situation, the phantom is an innocent, helpless, actual child, just doing his own thing… In the other, he is, well, the opposite of “innocent”, as well as actively baiting and anticipating the attack. And Simon striking out, naturally, is seen by the reader as being so much more justified. It is the same person – the phantom – being attacked in both situations, but different in the ways I’ve iterated. And the attacker could not be more different either, with such a very, very different connection and history with the phantom. And the reader sees the two situations as they occur in such different lights.

And yet still, there manages to be a handful of similarities between the two occurrences, such as the phantom not fighting back in either.

It’s so interesting to think about.

Not to mention that this series has been saying over and over again, he’s a monster, look at this monster, what a MONSTER… and then flips the script, everything over and puts that word into this new light.

Continuing on…

“Lex Luster… He was killed.”

Me reading this for the first time: “LOL nice try author, but I know he isn’t really dead. This is just one of your bait-and-switches, your red herrings isn’t it? Let’s see… wasn’t the phantom only just saying that this Lex Luster would take advantage of the break-in to garner sympathy and spread lies? Well, he probably had his sights set on an even greater plan. He must have faked his own death in some kind of clever elaborate ploy that will only serve to benefit him!”

The narrative as it continued to chug along, with no hints of a sudden He’s Alive reveal emerging: Uh, no he’s… he’s really dead, dude.

Me: “…What? But that makes literally no sense. I… I know that Lex Luster is supposed to be an important character. Isn’t he supposed to like, be a protagonist in future or something? I guess not, unless it’s through flashbacks, or maybe this really IS all we get of the character… So like, wait, that’s all we get of the “Lex Luster” character? Were… Were we supposed to care about that guy?! Because I’m sorry but… I really don’t see it. That guy who just got killed off, Lex Luster? I didn’t care about him. I’m sorry. (Maybe even though he wasn’t featured much, maybe he’s a bit of an Ensemble Darkhorse and/or the author had his character fleshed out behind the scenes in ways they didn’t get to showcase?? Hmm… Well either way… At least based on what I know about the guy… Don’t see why he was important tbqh).”

…WELL.

Also, I love the three of them just sitting down and playing a little blame-shifting game over a murder. Gosh I love this trio.

Haunted Specters, Chapter fourteen

“… I don’t… I…” The Phantom pressed his palm against the side of his head, leaning forward in his seat. “How is this possible? Who would dare impersonate me? Who would dare use that face?”

1. The phantom being at a loss for words – I love it

2. HE SOUNDS SO FULL OF HIMSELF… THIS MAN WHO CLAIMS TO HAVE NO SENSE OF SELF… So imperious… “WHO would DARE impersonate me?!” Get a load of this guy! :D

3. I honestly didn’t think you could do another kind of “Bobby impersonates the phantom” in terms of ironic phantom impersonation reversals on the same kind of level. I was wrong. “Someone impersonates the phantom using the phantom’s real face” is a scenario that had never, ever crossed my mind before. BUT IT’S SO GOOD. IT’S SO GOOD. Delicious. The phantom gets a nice big taste of his own medicine.

4. Also, this curveball felt Ghost Trick levels of mindscrewy when first revealed. XD

[…] the ones who’d been in the courtroom the moment the Phantom was attacked by a sniper […]

Oh you mean Bobby’s thera- okay I’ll shut up now. He just gets so many early references okay.

“I’ve lost track. However, there are two names that I’m sure you hope to hear. Calisto Yew and Shih-na.”

YES. YES. YES. CHEERING SOUND EFFECT Y’ALL, SHE MADE IT! SHE MADE IT TO THE NARRATIVE

It had almost felt like the narrative was really dancing around her… It felt like a “dropping-references-but-no-role-in-the-story” type deal but like, really pushing it, with maybe one too many references... And I’ve read more than one phantom fic where the phantom had links to her… But I just told myself “well, not everyone’s gonna go that route. Duh. And it makes sense in a realistic way. I mean, it’s highly unlikely that Calisto/Shih-Na and the phantom would know each other or have ever interacted with each other. So I certainly respect the author’s decision to not include her at all in the story and have it so the two don’t have any ties, after all it can be seen as a little cliché and the author may want to avoid that, as a decision it’s bold and respectab- WAIT NEVER MIND SHE’S HERE SHE’S ARRIVED SHE’S AWESOME THANK YOU”

And then I’m like… WAIT… SHE’S KNOWN AS MIRAGE IN THIS SERIES?!

SHE WAS THERE… THE WHOLE TIME… RIGHT IN THE TITLE.

Me, a FOOL, reading the series Phantoms and Mirages: It kind of sucks that she isn’t in this because she’s such a great and fun character, but I certainly respect the author’s decision

GOOOSH…

I swear I’m confident I would have been more inclined to check out this series prior to this year if I had actually known this little fact.

AND ALSO????

Okay, okay… and like… Teenage phantom flashback??? Was NOT expecting it. It was an even greater shift. The interaction with Mirage… the banter, the neutrality of it… & the fact that this fic actually gives him someone who had affection for him like this way back in his past, despite his emotionlessness? It’s ah, humanising? Fleshing him out? I was finding it hard to believe that the story was really treating the phantom’s character in this way… Because it felt way too good to be true. Because I probably just had my phantom bias goggles on. Because of the way the last fic had treated the phantom’s character, I also found it hard to believe. But more and more, I could not deny it… I was really starting to nod along and go, hey. It’s not just me. The author is pulling these strings on purpose, constructing the character and the narrative in this way, in this light…

“Agent Fulbright. Why does it strike me as if you’ve got a dead animal on your face?”

Aww man, this is harsher in hindsight given the later reveal that Bobby’s so self-conscious of it… But this exchange following this line/the line itself was super funny

“Of course. It’s a method that was perfected over fifteen years ago. I believe the Hotti Clinic is one of many locations around the world that specializes in facial reconstruction.”

NICE ONE.

Me: that sounds a little farfe- Oh wait nvm that has a very solid basis in actual ace attorney canon.

Haunted Specters, Chapter 15

Perhaps, in a way, the spy even meant to protect a gentle person like Sam from a gunshot wound.

Hmm, food for thought! Oh, protect from a gunshot wound like Simon's inclined to protect Sam from risk of electric shock later?

“A need to craft?” “It keeps the headaches at bay. Aside from that, this has always been my preferred pastime. If I were to have something of a hobby, this would be it.” A hobby… How peculiar. The Phantom had shown a tendency to adopt the hobbies of his personas, from fixing clocks to pursuing justice, yet here he was with a pastime of his own. A rather disturbing pastime, yet a pastime nonetheless.

And you gave?? The phantom a kind of hobby??? The stuff only starts pilin’ on after this, let me tell you.

And this whole scene too is just… Simon talking to the phantom neutrally. It’s…!

And it’s so cool that we basically get to see child phantom pull off the equivalent of his Dual Destinies jump in this chapter.

Haunted Specters, Chapter 16

“What a ridiculous question. It’s because I am male.” “Identifying yourself as male implies identity, Phantom.”

I HADN’T BEEN EXPECTING THE NARRATIVE TO ADDRESS THIS I HADN’T BEEN EXPECTING THE NARRATIVE TO ADDRESS THIS. This was SO great and refreshing to see, especially since it had been a tiny little thing bothering me somewhat from the very start. I’ve already brought it up more than once in these commentaries. You might have noticed, but although I use he/him for your version of the phantom, I tend to use they/them when talking about the phantom in general.

It wasn’t always like that with me, though! When I first finished Dual Destinies I was constantly using he/him. I mean, it’s what the phantom is referred to with consistently in-game, after all. And I never reconsidered it at all until I saw it brought up/discussed among other ace attorney fans as an issue. But even then, my perspective was pretty much the same as Pengychan’s – there’s, if I recall correctly, an author’s note in Turnabout to the Past addressing the pronouns issue, where it’s stated something like “well, the phantom lacks a sense of self to the extent that they don’t have the self-reflection required to challenge the notion + they don’t care/aren’t bothered by it. They just stick with he/him because it’s the default that gets applied and don’t have enough sense of self to even question it.” And I couldn’t have agreed more. And I still agree? It’s a completely reasonable and justified perspective/interpretation.

But over the years, I’ve just slipped more and more into the they/them habit to the extent that it started feeling more “correct” to me. I’ve read really really great fic where the phantom is afab and they/them is consistently used by the narrative the entire way through. All of a sudden, he/him phantom started feeling kind of jarring to read, even when it had felt like the most natural version to me in the past. It was almost like I started becoming more fond of they/them phantom hahaha. But both sets of pronouns have equal claim. (And I tend to use they/them for general, all-encompassing phantom because it includes everyone’s interpretations and still doesn’t exclude he/him interpretations. So it captures ‘em all!).

“Effort? In what way?” “Women need to watch their posture. Their nails. Their hair. Their appearance is always judged.[…]”

Okay honestly, looking back, I think this was another statement I looked way too much into at the time and misconstrued. The brevity, and therefore lack of specification, leaves something to be desired to me here…

For example: Nails…? That feels like it reaches straight into the realm of stereotypical for me. Obviously – I mean, obviously he’s making a comically HUGE generalisation here, that’s just a given. Maybe the “nails” comment is more about… “some women” idek but when I first read this, it kinda felt like he was sitting there going “being a woman is so difficult, always needing to maintain perfect, painted nails blah blah blah…” Like dude. It’s nails. Nobody cares. If a woman isn’t preoccupied/obsessed with manicures or whatever, there tends to be 0 difference between men and women when it comes to nails and how they are maintained. And hair, too, it’s like… myself and plenty of women I’m sure hardly give our hair much thought at ALL in day to day life, even if on average the focus may be a little bit more than it is for men.

I realise that I probably read this the wrong way though, and what he’s actually saying may be more akin to “regardless of how a woman personally feels about her appearance, and how little she personally cares about maintaining her appearance, that appearance is still going to be more heavily judged”??? But that still seems kinda… Like that doesn’t really impact much how difficult it is to portray a woman. That’s only a comment on how other people would treat them… Like there’s a greater risk involved if the disguise itself is more closely examined cause he doesn’t want to be discovered, but…

Another thing though is he’s probably making general comments that aren’t supposed to be particularly accurate and/or specific. I just look into things and make assumptions way too much. :P

Like the one thing I’ll give him is the whole posture aspect… to an extent. Societal influences/expectations DO go both ways and men have their own expectations to comply with, even in the realm of posture. But I guess the takeaway here is that for the most part, the scrutiny for men is less + the posture of “men” is often stuff that would come more naturally to anyone, men or women. It’s women who, when it comes to femininity, tend to be required to actually modify in ways that don’t come as naturally. And also a lot of “men’s posture” is seen as default and/or they have more claim to default posture.

Even if he has some kind of a point… What he’s saying sounded, to me, ridiculously exaggerated. At the time on the first readthrough I interpreted him as kind of saying “as a woman, like ALL women, you have to be constantly aware of yourself, carefully adhering to femininity in everything you do in unnatural, practised ways.” And like… HAHAHA… nah? Women tend to just live their lives and most of the time they are acting in ways that come naturally. But there are times when this kind of pressure comes into play but not to that extent. Not constantly. It obviously depends on a given woman’s circumstances though… Because I’m sure for some, life circumstances do require putting on a constant show of hyper-femininity. Which would tend to be… exhausting.

And yes, women’s appearance and behaviour is subject to scrutiny by society, and such scrutiny, and being aware you are under such scrutiny, can modify one’s behaviour to the extent that it is less natural. But at THE SAME TIME this also struck me as being kinda bogus. “Women need to watch their posture” uh… I guess? To an extent, in that society reckons there are certain “ladylike” ways to sit and conduct oneself, but those instances are still quite specific and are not necessarily a CONSTANT, FELT presence… pretty sure most women going about their day are just living their life. Well, you could also say that being “trained” by society into conducting yourself in a certain way and having a certain posture and what have you so that it becomes what comes naturally and is no longer noticeable is also a factor.

There are valid points in most of what he’s saying, exaggerated or no. For a variety of reasons, portraying a woman comes with difficulties.

But also…

In a way, that justification struck Simon as a rather weak excuse to cover any traces of true identity.

The whole thing is that there is something buried away. And this is one form of that something bleeding through. The text lampshades the flimsy nature of the excuses, hints at this.

So at the end of the day… There is actual narrative reason in this series for the phantom being he/him from the beginning. It also arguably allows for a smoother transition between “the phantom” and Lex later on. So yeah… I’m fully on board.

Also like… Just like how women are people with a huge variety and spectrum of personalities… Men are equally varied and, depending on the personality, can potentially be very difficult & demanding to portray (like you know… BOBBY – original Bobby). Hands down there are men way more difficult to portray than an “average” woman, no question. PLUS… the whole self-awareness demands don’t apply when the phantom kinda needs to always be self-aware of his every action when in a persona regardless. Especially the more difficult and demanding ones. SO THE TAKEAWAY HERE at least for me definitely is… The phantom is a big dummy in denial about having some kind of self and the fact that this self has a sense of “maleness” attached to it.

Or perhaps the Phantom truly was looking at the matter so objectively that he couldn’t grasp the difference between biological and psychological. The difference between sex and gender.

Simon, pulling up a helpful and informative tumblr post: “You see, there’s actually a difference between the two!”

“…Simon Blackquill. You’ve no need to lecture me on such things, as I have done far more research than you on matters such as these. I know what applies and does not apply to me, such as the simple fact that I am aroace.”

“Don’t. Odd as it is, it’s grown on me.” A moment’s pause, then Bobby snorted. “It’s grown on me too. Literally.”

xDDD

Haunted Specters, Chapter 18

The only thing he could take comfort in was the fact that Sam Specter looked far more exhausted than he felt. It had to do with the recent migraine attack, no doubt.

Using “Sam Specter” but meaning the phantom… Sam Specter is supposed to be an act. Sam Specter has been said to always look tired. Yet Simon is looking at him here, seeing the phantom underneath, but still using “Sam Specter”…!

Not that either of them could approach him to ask whether he was holding up alright

APPROACH WHO? ASK WHO? Simon is referring to “Sam” but he knows that Sam is an act, a facade and there is no point… This is just a hypothetical sentence though; it doesn’t say that he wants to check on him… And even if he does it could be rationalised away with “well he needs to remain intact for the plan to go off without a hitch” but…!

Bobby seemed genuinely concerned for Sam. Seemed to be genuinely interested in the words of someone who wasn’t even real. Perhaps, after two weeks, the line between the Phantom and Sam Specter was beginning to blur for him as well. Perhaps he was foolish enough to believe that due to the Phantom’s utter devotion to his personas, Sam was just as real as any other human.

YOOOOOO

Same though. SAME. Because for so long I thought the author didn’t care too much about the phantom, I put way too much stock in Sam. “The narrative wants us to care about Sam, not the phantom. Because the other way around is too good to be true… right?” I also thought maybe Simon was still slightly underestimating the phantom’s level of self-deception at the time as well.

But guess what? Sam is a trap. You find yourself growing attached or caring about Sam in ANY way, you are in a roundabout way caring about the phantom. The person just behind the façade. And once you’re in too deep, all that’s left is for the façade to be yanked away. A sleight of hand wherein you realise oh, oh no…

Over the past few chapters, there’s been a sudden rush of information and situations that just, it all happens so fast, it seems.

“That’s why you need to remind Agent Fulbright not to get too attached to his new friend. You and I both know there’s only one acceptable ending to this sorry tale.” Only one acceptable ending… Execution. […] Either way, the Phantom’s fate was unavoidable. Unavoidable and of his own choosing. Death.

And when I read this, I grew very serious. I nodded to myself in complete agreement and internally said, in all seriousness… “yes.”

They were to head for Fulbright’s apartment, a location that was already known to the Phantom either way. He’d made it perfectly clear he didn’t want the spy knowing about his own apartment- Aura’s apartment- in order to have at least one safe location should things go awry.

Huh… I guess what it comes down to here is the phantom’s lack of memories… Because he should know about Simon’s apartment. But he wouldn’t now, due to the fall…

Haunted Specters, Chapter 19

“Nice beard!” she remarked, grinning so widely Simon wondered whether it might hurt her face. “Are you going for the middle-aged Obi Wan Kenobi look?”

THIS IS ATHENA’S SECOND STAR WARS REFERENCE IN THIS SERIES… what a tiny yet consistent running thread.

“Sam,” Bobby called, hoping to get his attention. In retrospect, that’d been a bad move. Sam started so badly that he accidentally shook the pocket watch, sending tiny gears and screws all over the floor. A few words of Cohdopian escaped him- perhaps curses that Simon couldn’t understand.

SDKBDSJBK HOW MUCH OF THIS REACTION IS GENUINE… PLEASE TELL ME AT LEAST SOME OF IT

He drew a steadying breath and turned to face them, eyes narrowing when his gaze fell on Athena. For a moment, there was nothing. Then his expression brightened to the point where Simon found it almost suspicious. Sam pushed himself to his feet with a flourish and approached her. He prattled something in Cohdopian and leaned forward in a bit of a bow. Then he took Athena’s hand with his own, pressing his lips against the back of it, causing her to giggle.

ASKJBADLBJADKLNADKNL?

OKAY THIS IS! HAHAHA, LET’S UNPACK THIS

I JUST… I

1- The phantom knows DAMN well who Athena is

2- The phantom ACTIVELY DECIDES to do this. Not only that, but he ACTIVELY DECIDES, on Sam’s behalf – a real person who used to be alive that he stole the identity of - that this is how Sam Specter would react to meeting Athena. That Sam would treat her like this and have this opinion of her. (Or, who knows… Maybe Sam just tends to be this way towards women in general and Athena isn’t getting singled out…?)

3- I JUST CAN’T BELIEVE HE DOES THIS OMG

4- HE KNOWS FULL WELL HOW MUCH THIS WOULD IRK SIMON AND BOBBY.

5- HE OBVIOUSLY HAS NO WAY OF KNOWING FOR CERTAIN THAT THIS IS HOW SAM WOULD REACT TO ATHENA, SO

6- THE PHANTOM IS A GODDAMN TROLL, ‘NUFF SAID

“What did he say?” “He uh… He said that she’s the most beautiful girl he’s ever seen,” Bobby rolled his eyes, mouth drawn in bitter distaste. Words failed Simon completely. His mouth opened, then closed itself. He gave Sam’s shoulder one last squeeze in warning before releasing him. This time, not even Fulbright seemed entirely willing to overlook Sam’s behavior, as he was watching the man closely as well.

Haaahahah. You did it. You actually put in brief joke phantom/Athena.

You know what makes this better? Much later, way after this scene, prior to the end of Vanquishing Mirages, I messaged another one of my friends basically saying “Hey… So I haven’t finished it yet so I can’t say for absolute certain… But so far, this may just be one of the best fanfiction series I have ever read.”

He replied something akin to, “LOL, yeah, imagine if you kept reading on only for it to suddenly turn into romantic Athena/phantom? Bet you’d kinda regret saying that then.”

To which I was able to gleefully and jokingly reply, “…Oh, it’s been done.”

Haunted Specters, Chapter 20

He considered following anyway, allowing the Phantom to suffer for the sake of stopping Fulbright from doing something foolish, but then… It wouldn’t be the Phantom who would suffer. Most likely, it’d be Sam Specter, who had nothing to do with any of this.

BUT THE F

SAM ISN’T- THE PHANTOM IS-

Nevermind.

“If he can feel emotions now, maybe we can straighten them out! Maybe he can be rehabilitated to-”

Me: Bobby, no. Don’t.

Okay, so when I read this… the prospect of the emotions getting “straightened out” was something that piqued my interest. It was something I knew I would like to see. But to whatever extent they could be “straightened out”, although I figured it would be fascinating to see, I figured it would be very limited. Even something limited would be quite significant, but…

…I still agreed with Simon. It would ultimately change nothing in the grand scheme of things. That man – the phantom – would still have to die in the end. He needed to die. That’s the only way this could end.

I wouldn’t have denied wanting to see his emotions get straightened out before he meets his end though, however limited the results may be. I felt the same tug Bobby did – I wanted him to be helped. But helped prior to an inevitable death.

Let us return to this earlier segment that I commented on:

”[…] You and I both know there’s only one acceptable ending to this sorry tale.” Only one acceptable ending… Execution. […] Either way, the Phantom’s fate was unavoidable. Unavoidable and of his own choosing. Death.

And I’m going to expand a little more on what I essentially thought when I first read it beyond my simple “yes” that I supplied before:

“Absolutely. No way out of it. So narrative, make it so. He has to die. I’ll be waiting. I will hold you to your word. Everyone from Bobby to the narrative and the reader have been getting awfully familiar with and caring for the phantom with the new sympathetic slant the story’s been taking. Almost suspiciously so. But it changes nothing. He must die. It is the only acceptable ending to this story. Tragic? Sure. But there’s no real alternative. None.”

You might be a little like “whoa, whoa – hold up. Isn’t he your favourite character?! The whole reason you started this series?”

To which I’d reply: “Absolutely. And he needs to be executed and/or die, if this is the route the narrative ultimately seems to be heading in.”

“…By all means, allow Bobby and Simon to become unwittingly invested. Make the phantom sympathetic. Pile on the angst. But in the end…? Execution. Death”

Why? ...I’d been hurt before.

And to understand this oddly firm stance… Apologies, but I need to briefly talk a little bit about Turnabout to the Past. XD

Turnabout to the Past is a narrative that is constantly building up to the phantom’s inevitable execution – or rather, Robert LaRoche’s execution, by the end of it. We – the readers - grow to care. Simon grows to care. Athena grows to care. About him. This care, and LaRoche’s changes and regaining of identity, do not grant him full redemption. He is still required to pay for his crimes. This never changes.

From the way the story is set up and construed, Robert LaRoche’s redemption actually hinges upon his execution. In an odd kind of way, although he can make progress towards redemption, full redemption cannot be granted until he is dead – regaining his identity, changing his behaviour, and having other characters become invested in him on its own is not enough, even though they are all contributing factors towards redemption. Full redemption is still withheld from him until his execution can be carried out.

Like many people who read Turnabout to the Past, I bawled my eyes out. The “execution” scene left me a complete and utter mess. The whole ending – all of it – just ruined me.

In the end, he cheats death. In doing so, he cheats himself out of a full, complete and proper redemption. It is a huge act of betrayal. He betrays Simon, he betrays Athena, he fundamentally betrays himself. He is forced to leave the Robert LaRoche he struggled so hard to regain behind once more.

Simon wanted him to face death. That’s what he wanted him to do from the beginning. That’s the promise between them. But he doesn’t. The promise is broken.

I felt betrayed by LaRoche, too. I cried so hard and so much at his “execution”. And for what?

As much as the execution scene wrecked me, as much as it hurt, as painful as it was, however much I was crying, it felt right. He had to die. This was what the entire fic had been building towards. It was “the only acceptable ending to this story”.

But he cheats death. And I felt betrayed, and I felt angry towards the character for doing something like this to me, to Athena, to Blackquill, to himself.

Athena and Blackquill are grieving. They are grieving over him. And for what? For what?! How could he do this? How could I forgive him? How could he not only betray Athena and Blackquill but also cause them so much pain and suffering – grief – in the process?! Grief based on a false premise. Grief for… For nothing.

…Inevitably, I got the hell over myself, and came back to read the super cool sequel. :P We wouldn’t have gotten such a cool sequel if it wasn’t for that betrayal…!

Obviously, this fic is not that fic. This series is very different, so the exact same rules do not, cannot apply. But I still had some baggage lying around, and I was essentially (unfairly) taking it out on this fic’s version of the phantom. “Well, someone has to die. LaRoche didn’t die. He cheated death. So this phantom isn’t allowed to. So don’t let him get away.”

Well obviously, you already know that I’m happy with how things turn out, so… It’s a foregone conclusion that this perspective changes at some point as this series continues!

Simon hadn’t bothered to bid him farewell. He hadn’t truly gotten along with Sam either way.

!!!!

Bobby looked torn for a moment, as if he wasn’t sure what to say or how to even say it. “… But don’t hurt her, okay? There’s no real reason to injure her, so… Don’t. And try not to get hurt yourself.” “Yes, mother,” the Phantom droned. Bobby didn’t reply.

YOU JUST COULD NOT RESIST MAKING THIS JOKE COULD YOU, and I absolutely can’t blame you. I LOVE it.

ALSO I’M JUST SDJDSJLNLNDS? This is supposed to be a sarcastic quip right? But I’m NOT SURE HOW MUCH SELF-AWARENESS THE PHANTOM HAS WHEN MAKING THIS JOKE…

Haunted Specters, Chapter 21

The… The confrontation between Mirage & the phantom… The phantom was always the one in control during the flashbacks with Mirage. He was always the one who had power over her, both in the sense that he is the one teaching her new skills and is therefore “in charge” and kinda of a higher rank, and he also wields power over her – unintentionally so – in the fact that she holds affection for him.

And now that’s turned on its head. The phantom is on his knees, powerless, grasping, begging. Mirage has all the power. Mirage is the one in control. Probably for, well, the first time ever, she’s actually seeing the phantom losing control, powerless, weak, she is wielding power over him.

So on the one hand, part of me is kinda like “yeah, show him who’s boss, show him what’s what, it’s your turn to be in control now!” But on the other hand I was like. “NOO MIRAGE I THOUGHT YOU WERE COOL… WHY… I TRUSTED YOU… LOOK WHAT YOU’RE DOING TO MY FAVE… I THOUGHT YOU CARED?? HOW COULD YOU…” And ultimately, the second perspective won out.

Also, the casual way she talks about killing people coupled with how she treats the phantom towards the end of the scene is a reminder that, however much of a fun and exciting character she is, she is still a dangerous criminal involved in the facilitation of things like uh, HUMAN TRAFFICKING.

The Phantom had had another breakdown.

It started feeling like a running, constant occurrence at this point. Really felt like the characters could really start using one of these:

They’re definitely gonna have to reset it a few more times, too. :’D

SAM’S NOTE. SAM’S NOTE. OH NOOO. SAM’S NOTE. I AM FEELING KINDA SENTIMENTAL OVER A FICTIONAL FAKE PERSONA’S DEPARTURE FROM THE NARRATIVE GOD DAMMIT. How?!

Sam was a literary trap, aiding in dooming us all.

Towards the end, treating Sam Specter as a real person was no longer a knowing act of self-deception on Simon’s part, but had rather become a habit that he’d fallen into. A habit that comes awfully naturally now. One that he sometimes may not even be aware of, and sometimes may need to consciously wake himself up from.

The explanation that I’ve finally settled on… is that it was never about how “human” Sam is. Because Sam will always be artificial. He can never become 100% real or human. The real Sam is already dead and cannot be resurrected. It was never even about Sam. It had always been about the phantom. The phantom that was always hiding just underneath.

There’s something else, too, towards the end of this fic. Before, when the parents-and-their-child dynamic was set up, and the trio were all forced to live together in a temporary truce, I referred to it as a special liminal space wherein they were sectioned off from the rest of the characters and the rest of the world. In this strange little space, they and the reader had to ignore the extreme oddity of the circumstances to some degree in order to function properly and make sense of it. Simon and Bobby can tell themselves that this is only temporary, and that soon enough, everything can just go back to normal again once they abandon their little liminal space over in Cohdopia and everything wraps up. That is a false promise.

After an extended interval, their liminal space gets broken, intruded upon. First by Lang, who enters their odd little circle that is still being propped up. Then by Athena. And they return to America, too. They’re not in Cohdopia anymore in a secretive little apartment no one else knows about. The location changes. They’re not completely sectioned off from the other characters anymore. But things have changed. Things are changing. Bobby does not “snap out of it”. He only becomes more steadfast and entrenched in his support of the phantom. Simon is clearly, well…! He’s being influenced. And the phantom is still able to interact neutrally with the other members of the cast. The new light and perspective shed on him by the fic does not suddenly vanish, he doesn’t suddenly “change back” to whatever he seemed to be before. Of course not. There’s a line of continuity here, and the dynamic changes between the cast cannot be boxed away, sectioned off, erased.

The phantom’s child abuse flashback is a sudden, powerful jab that disarms the reader, however momentarily. Then there is parent-child dynamic in the current cast revealed. With the reader distracted like this, a sudden onslaught is unleashed in the chapters following. An onslaught of flashbacks, a whole host of neutral interactions the phantom is shown having, both in past and present. Neutral interactions, which on its own is quite a feat. Considering how, well, despicable he can be, HAS been. How he has always been “the enemy” before. And yet we are given so many neutral interactions. Not positive per se. Just… neutral. But that alone is enough. And in Mirage in the teen flashbacks, we actually get to see someone from the phantom’s past who cares about him. As a person. There’s other little things too, like the aforementioned sort-of hobby revealed. The flow, the outpouring of all these little things just starts and it does not stop. It will not stop. At the end of this fic, heading into the next one, we are already teetering on the edge of… Something. And it’s only going to increase in volume, become more palpable, grow stronger from here on out.

There’s also little scattered things here as well, like the phantom looking out for Bobby in his own way. And the mask… the mask that is not like the others. I feel that there have been many, many narrative sleights of hand that have come into play, subtle enough that it makes them difficult to document. And I can’t document them all, because there’s just so many.

And then in the epilogue, the bone sliver gets revealed, and it’s like HMM… HMMMM… Food for thought, folks. Food for thought!

…Oh and I forgot to comment on this under the appropriate chapter’s banner, but uh, I absolutely loved Bobby’s whole “call him back in fifteen minutes” exchange with Simon xDDD.

So that looks like Haunted Specters pretty much wrapped up, I think. Vanquishing Mirages up next!

#long post

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winterisfinallyhere · 5 years

Text

How season 7 should have gone...

...if they wanted a believable Dany/Jon love story.

____

Even the most dedicated of JonxDany fan must admit that there love story lacks finesse at best and at worst is not a love story at all. As a storyteller and watcher of way too much television, I decided to put together this little re-write of season 7 with an actual Dany x Jon romance. Mostly to demonstrate how easy it could have been done with this was the actual aim of the writers/ producers.

Let’s jump right in.

We’ll assume everything starts off the same. So we have 7x03 with Jon arriving and being stripped of his weapons. Because Dany is careful and so even though this is an impolite way to act towards someone you’ve invited as a guest, we’ll keep it

1# First meeting.

If I was writing it the first meeting would take place pretty much anywhere but a cold and mostly empty throne room. Maybe over a shared meal, where Dany could talk like equals (which they as Queen / King are at this point). Even her small council / the war room would have made it feel better. But let’s keep the setting the same because Dany of the Many titles likes set-up like this.

So yeah. It goes pretty similarly only this time, during their first meet, Dany tells him of the Red Woman’s visit and is a tiny bit more open-minded about the prospect of the White Walkers and the speech about how Dany managed it all because she had faith in herself gets taken out.

Jon x Dany would meet and talk and rather than having Tyrion tell her to give Jon the Dragon Glass, she would come to this decision on her own and while perhaps still a little doubtful (not sure why the girl who has three dragons isn’t willing to believe in magic, but I digress). Perhaps here, she’d ask him to bend the knee again (because she sure likes doing that) Jon would point out he’s been named king and can be unnamed(very true). The only way for her to win the north is for her to show the north she’ll fight for them. That if she truly believes herself the true ruler of all of Westeros seven kingdoms, isn’t it her duty to protect all of them? She’d come away from this talk a little unsure.

Next episode we have Jon finding the cave paintings as they mine for dragon glass. Dany agrees that this is something and rather than asking to bend the knee, she suggests he show her the army of the dead. He’d asks, “How? The Wall is hundreds of miles away.” She’d smile and say something like “Do you forget so easily? I have three dragons. I can go anywhere.” But as they exit the cave, Dany learns her forces have been defeated and that the Lanisters army is on the move with food and gold. This is where she gets annoyed with Tyrion and asks Jon’s advice. This time the advice would maybe be more like, “Send your army to handle this, but let us fly north and I’ll show you the true enemy.” She’d agree, because who wouldn’t want to spend hours cuddling with Jon Snow on the back of a dragon?

So this is where things would change majorly. Dany would not take part of the field of fire, but if the desired/ needed outcome here is to have both Sam’s brother and father dead (so he can be lord at some point maybe?) then having the Dothraki kill them would be just as effective. The coolness of a dragon battle would, of course, be lost and so would one of the defining Dark!Dany (bend the knee or die is pretty dark, an executing prisoners of war is a war crime) moments but if DxJ is going to have a happy ending this would just be a good thing.

So, now we have Dany X Jon, off on an adventure together. Possibly Dany just misses her reunion with Jorah, because that would just be for the best. Or it could be included and we’d have some much clearer parallels on how both Jon and Jorah has the hots for Dany but Dany only has eyes for Jon.

Anyways, JXD are off to see the WW’s army. So many chances for bonding and bantering and maybe some talk of succession. Maybe how they both can’t see much further than the wars. Maybe they’d still stop off at the wall and meet up with the Brotherhood + hound. Maybe not.

Back south the gang left behind could still be attempting to negotiate some sort of peace treaty with the most amazing royal bitch of them all (Cersei) which would be a chance for the Jamie / Tyrion reunion as well as Gendry’s reintroduction. Maybe this meeting could be set up to discuss possible terms for the return of the remaining Sand Snakes / Theon’s sister (which show!!Dany seems to just have forgotten were her allies since it’s no longer convient for her).

In the north, perhaps Dany’s dragons aren’t faring quite as well as she’d hoped. This could serve as a sort of reason to why they suddenly are super easy to kill. Let’s say they do a fly over and Dany sees the Night’s King’s army and is actually horrified by it and the implications.

This is the second big change. Because in order for Dany X Jon to work out, they need to get on the same page about who the real enemy are. Canon!Dany refuses to do this even after seeing the White Walkers and having lost one of her dragons to them.

Let’s say now Dany or Jon together come up with the crazy idea of getting a wight back south. Maybe to get Cersei’s army to help them. Maybe to just show everyone that the danger is real. Not just Cersei (my sweet darling Queen of evil) but the whole realm (because let’s face it, at this point no one really believes in dead men walking). Jon agrees, a little reluctant because he knows that Cersei is not to be trusted. But he tells Dany she can’t come on this mission and instead the Brotherhood without Banners tags along. Before leaving, Jon and Dany would share a romantic kiss and she’d tell him he had to come back to her safe.

Wight hunt goes the same as the show and they end up with one they can bring along. Gendry runs back to Eastwatch but instead of having to send a raven across a whole bloody country, all he has to do is tell Dany and she’s off to save her new boy toy friend. When she shows up, she gets to play the hero, one of the dragons still dies, and instead of being a heroic fool Jon actually takes her hand and get on the dragon. The “awwaaws” in the audience is deafening.

Still wanting to return home, Jon asks Dany to come with him to Winterfell, because even though he’s falling for her he still wants to see Arya and Bran who he hasn’t seen in ages (and maybe first now learn have returned to WF). Maybe at this point, we could have some Jon X Rhaegal bonding? Maybe jokingly suggest Jon could almost fly home himself. She would tell him she can’t leave with the dragons for fear of being attacked by Cersei’s fleat but that she’ll let him return home if that is what he wishes. He chooses to stay with her to go to KL to try to gather more support and awareness.

Yet another quite OoC move, as I believe Cannon!Jon would have gone home. But alas, he’s in love with Dany or at least getting there (because he’s a guy and all guy must fall in love with Dany) and wants to stay with her.

We all know how the rest goes. We’d have the silly dragon pit meet, Cersei would find some other excuse to not accept the treaty other than Jon having bent the knee to Dany. We’d still get the shady exchange between Cersei and Tyrion, which we still don’t know what he promised her to get her to agree.

We can still have everyone reuniting at once (because that was such a great idea) and have Dany x Jon talk about the dying of the dragons and her not being able to have babies. Only she’s as determined as him to fight the NK even if Cersei tells them she won’t help. The stakes are lower, but the still need Cersei’s men to fight for them.

Having gotten their peace treaty, Jon and Dany decide to sail to Winterfell together.

We can have something similar to boat!sex the original with Bran letting us all know just how doomed this love story is in the voice over (only let’s assume they’d have skipped that if JonxDany were endgame. because it made so freaking creepy)!

Thada!

We’ve almost everything happening the same way they did, except for a small few changes in the character’s choices and settings. This way we get Dany actually believing in Jon, Dany X Jon spending private time together, an emotional first kiss, a rescue of lover and we totally eliminate the whole “I am your prisoner” aspect (if she offers to let him leave) and we still end up with creepy boat sex. Jamie can still betray Cersei, Sansa and Arya can still cut LF’s throat and Theon hopefully would have gone to rescue his sister without a Jon Snow pep talk.

So yeah. That’s my take on how Jonerys should have been done if they were actually being portrayed as a romance. But clearly, they weren’t, because there were so many chances to actually add it and make it more believable.

Dany sharing about her brothers should have led to a bonding conversation. The cave scene looks pretty romantic but Dany ruins it by asking him to bend the knee again. Rather than share why he got the scars, Dany figures it out by peeking at him as he sleeps and then deduces from what Davos said about taking a knife in the heart. Jon fails to tell her he saw his Ucel Benjen out there and that he saved him. No first kiss before the sex scene. No emotional commitment/ admission beforehand. No marriage proposal. The list goes on and on.

Point is,DXD and their whole team didn't just completely forget how to write romance. Which means Jonersy is not the endgame romance we’ve all been waiting for. Jon might very well be attracted to her and in the commentary and in interviews they can tell us DanyXJon are in love as much as they like. But their story, what actually happened on the show was not portrayed as a romance and without changing much else in season 7 probably quite easily could have, begging all viewers to ask, why?

#anti targaryen restoration #anti-daenerys #anti-jonerys #notaromancepeople #pleasenoboatbaby #stark restoration #makingjoneryspossible

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