#and i understand there were constraints they had to adhere to | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

shihalyfie · 3 years

Text

Adventure and 02′s production philosophy and its impact on the storywriting (or: “a series made with love is best understood with love”)

It’s hard to really judge a series too much by its production details, but Adventure and 02′s staff has been very open about discussing background and production to the point we’re able to involve it in discussions. In fact, to a certain degree, we’ve gotten rather reliant on said production notes to explain too many things that weren’t clearly depicted or stated in the series -- I’ve spent a fair share of time complaining about how frustratingly subtle this series is -- and you see a lot of strange conspiracy theories or myths about production that circulate in all sorts of different directions. Undeniably, it’s a series that spoke to a ton of people, but there are still so many things that have perplexed people over the last two decades, and when you ask someone “what’s good about this series?”, people struggle to say it in clear words, often only able to resort to a rather oversimplified explanation like “the character development is good” (but what is character development, anyway?). A lot of times, some small things that initially don’t seem to track have led to some pretty wild, far-reaching fanbase-endorsed theories, when in fact the actual reality of the situation is much more mundane.

I think, in general, the best way to “understand” Adventure and 02 is simply to have an open mind about everything in regards to it. This is something I can only say because we currently have more than enough evidence, given production testimony, that this is the kind of series that was made with that kind of philosophy -- I will not shy away from the fact that there are things in this world that are made maliciously, meant to “one-up” the audience or using half-baked explanations as a way to cover up the fact that it wasn’t well thought-through. But in the case of Adventure and 02 specifically, almost everything we have heard about it is to the contrary, and, in practice, I find one can get much more out of the series by adjusting one’s mindset to think about what they’re looking out for and not, because once you have, the beauty of the series opens itself up even in places you’re not looking for it.

Let’s talk a little about the production philosophy behind Adventure and 02 and how it shaped a series that left such an impact on so many kids, and what we can learn from it!

“Something important that we wanted to tell the kids who were watching”

The two most important figures to know when it comes to Adventure and 02 production are its producer, Seki Hiromi (who would eventually go on to produce Tamers and Frontier as well, along with being supervising consultant on Kizuna), and its director, Kakudou Hiroyuki. I would say that both of these figures are probably the most influential people in shaping the series as we know it, but in different ways -- Kakudou was the one most responsible for building the world of Adventure and 02 and setting up the standard for having all sorts of background worldbuilding details that weren’t shown in the series, whereas Seki was the one who pushed for them to include family backgrounds and things that ought to be relatable to the average kid, so that they could empathize with the problems shown on screen.

Both of them had different ways of going at it, which is all for the better because it allowed the story to be enriched from both sides, but the common thread between the two was that they wanted to use this opportunity to “show the kids important things”:

Kakudou is the kind of person I would say is very “media literate” -- he was very well-read in books and well-versed in cinema, not just Japanese but also internationally, and also very in-tune with the Internet by the standards of a director in 1999. (Part of the reason we know so much about Digimon production now is that he still keeps up with everything on social media and throws in a few comments here and there.) His comments on the final episode of Adventure include a list of all of the things he credited for inspiring him during this series, and he later stated that he had a goal of conveying all of those “interesting things” to the kids watching, so that they could also find it interesting. So in other words, Adventure and 02 were basically his love letter to everything in media that he’d come to appreciate.

Seki was the one who pushed for humans to be involved in the series so that the audience could empathize with them, and for all of the “real world worldbuilding” like the kids’ family backgrounds. She’s also functionally responsible for the base premise of 02 at all, having been thoroughly alarmed by the story of a young boy skipping grades into university (to the point this plotline resurfaced a whole 20 years later in Kizuna). It can be said that the heavy “human drama” elements and family background emphasis continuing into Tamers and Frontier are probably her doing, and in terms of Kizuna, she also was responsible for personally vetting the dialogue to keep the kids in character, and it was said that it came off like she loved the characters as if they were her own children.

The result is that, firstly, Adventure and 02 is a series that is very well-thought through. Ridiculously well thought-through, in both background lore and character backgrounds and mentality. So many surface-level criticisms of Adventure and 02 come with an accusation that the writers were “lazy” or “did a writing cop-out”, but we actually have more evidence that the Adventure and 02 staff thought out so many details in the background that they kept forgetting that they hadn’t actually told the audience about it yet. (No, seriously, there’s a thread of official staff repeatedly forgetting that they may not have actually outright mentioned one of the background details they’d planned out in advance.) Even despite all of the extra information we’ve gotten since in the drama CDs and Animation Chronicle and such, it seems there’s still way more information that was planned out that we still haven’t learned about, and it’s presumably why there are so many little things that are too consistent to be coincidental and yet were still never actually stated. It may have been awful at communicating those details well, but those details were most definitely there, and both series have a shocking amount of consistency in adhering to them.

The second is that not only did the producer and director want to convey those important things, they also encouraged the rest of the staff to do it too:

One of the concepts behind the prior series was for us to pack in as many interesting things that we’d seen, heard about, or read about as we could into it, so for 02, we thought, what else could we put in beyond even that?, and so we looked over what we needed to have, and put in all the things we could so that they wouldn’t be left out, and the story became a multi-layered one, overlapping and accelerating. It was to the point that, after we’d gone through 02‘s story, the scriptwriters told me that they’d worn everything they had out to the ground.

So in other words, Adventure and 02 were basically a sort of potluck where they encouraged everyone on staff to come up with interesting things that they wanted to show the kids, and throw it all in -- and it’s presumably why the second half of 02 is so “crowded” (more on this later), because you had everything from all of the writers on staff adding another thing into the potluck, until everyone could get it out of their system. Yoshimura Genki, one of 02′s head writers, said outright that she used the famous 02 episode 23 to convey her concerns about some very real and horrible things happening to kids at the time, and it’s easy to imagine that all of the other writers and staff members were given similar encouragement to do so. Even the (in)famous 02 episode 13 was something originally created from Kakudou seeing Dagomon, thinking he was really cool and wanting to make an episode about him, and remembering that Konaka was good at Lovecraft and basically going “he’s gonna love this, we should get him to do an episode.” In fact, it’s said many times that a huge attitude behind production was to “not be ashamed of anything” and try whatever they wanted.

Which means that the result is a series that isn’t actually all that well-organized in plot or structure -- 02′s plot writing is of course an infamous pile of knots, but even those who are willing to be a bit more critical of Adventure often point out that its plot is simply more linear, being basically a video game-esque boss rush of “evil enemy, followed by even more evil enemy”. Most people do not watch Adventure or 02 for the actual plot writing. What they do watch it for is all of this stuff mentioned above -- that all of these different people on staff were given the question “what do you want to say to this audience of kids?” and took the opportunity to say something fun or meaningful. And, hence, why it’s best to understand Adventure and 02 not necessarily by the minutiae of its plot, but rather, “what was this series trying to say?”

Writing the series as it went along, under massive constraints

In general, Japanese anime is produced as it goes along -- even the character writing is subject to change depending on the voice actors’ performance (this was cited for Adventure specifically, but it’s well-known common practice for non-adaptation anime in general). That said, Adventure didn’t even have a guarantee of how long it was going to be at first -- it was generally expected that it’d be a one-year series (like most Toei series), but they weren’t even sure about it. This resulted in a very “loose mindset”, in which they decided to basically wing it, and the only thing determined for sure was that the epilogue (that we now know as the 02 epilogue) was going to be at the end of it.

As I mentioned above, scrutinizing the plot of Adventure too closely reveals that it’s not actually that coherent of a narrative, just more linear -- and, even by official admission, Hikari wasn’t planned to be the eighth child at first nor was the Tokyo arc of episodes planned to be that long, and yet this entire section is one of the most famous parts of Adventure. A lot of the best parts of Adventure and 02 seem to be the result of sheer accident...

...Or was it accident? Can you say that “going in with a positive mindset and a desire to do something meaningful” is accident? Even if you didn’t plan things out from the beginning, if you go into everything with an attitude of wanting to make the best out of something and make the best out of opportunities you see and hear about, is that really an accident? Couldn’t you perhaps say that this kind of thing is why Adventure and 02 hit so well with people to begin with?

By the time we get to 02, 02 started off as a very different series from the get-go, and it’s always struck me as very odd that people act like 02 was tacked on and didn’t have nearly the exact same staff. It was Kakudou himself who petitioned for 02 to start off with a light atmosphere, and the series itself was fundamentally meant to be addressing the new concepts of “relationships” instead of Adventure’s “self-assertion”, and explore concepts that hadn’t been covered in Adventure. The reason 02 is so different from Adventure is exactly because the staff didn’t want to rehash things for another year, and instead wanted to take the opportunity to cover stuff Adventure didn’t. And the fact that 02 is lighter than Adventure at first, but quickly gets darker, is also by design:

The story had gotten rather heavy by the time of Digimon Adventure, so we decided to make it come off as brighter. And then, it actually ended up getting even heavier somewhere down the line, but there was no way we could just avoid depicting important life problems.

Which is also a similar sentiment reflected by Seki herself, when thinking about how her suggested plotline ended up making the story darker:

An overly intelligent child, prone to falling into loneliness, cut off from his friends and family, and with a Digimon slowly coming and staying close to him…I remember that kind of image forming. We were supposed to have been aiming to have them going to the Digital World with the mood of a picnic, but the fact it didn’t end up so easy for them may have been my fault…or so I remember thinking as I reflected on it.

02 didn’t get dark for the sheer sake of getting dark, and in fact it’s not like the staff necessarily wanted it to get that way, but there were so many meaningful things that they wanted to tell the audience of kids that they allowed it to. It’s also kind of odd how the fanbase has this idea of there somehow being staff conflicts or people bickering in order to produce 02, but there’s no indication of this at all -- at most, 02 unusually had two head writers instead of one, Yoshimura Genki and Maekawa Atsushi, but it was even said that they had a clear division of roles, with Yoshimura on the “villains” side and Maekawa on the “protagonists” side, and there’s no sign of conflict.

(A lot of people also tend to give more credit to Yoshimura since the villains are some of the most masterfully crafted part of both Adventure or 02, but this is still somewhat reductive; Maekawa is very open about the fact that he was rather inexperienced during 02′s production, and considering the fact that the 02 protagonists aren’t nearly as underdeveloped as the fanbase claims they are, and Maekawa would later go on to write a PreCure entry that basically saved the franchise and a very well-acclaimed Super Sentai entry, both with many parallels to 02, his role should not be discounted, especially since 02 is often liked by its fanbase for the duality between both its lighter and darker sides.)

So we had the staff basically on a roll of throwing in everything important they wanted to say to the kids, both “fun” and “meaningful”, and then, two things impacted the way it ended: firstly, they weren’t allowed to go with their initial proposal for the final enemy because it was too gory, and secondly, the decision was made midway through that they would not be making a third Adventure series, and would have to end more quickly than expected.

I think, whenever you hear stories of “we were originally going to do this but couldn’t,” people generally tend to assume that they should have done the original plan (especially if the original plan was particularly gory or brutal, because everyone loves to think that edgy is better), but, perhaps fittingly for a series that’s about not drowning in past regrets of “what should have been” and learning to move on, the staff has never really shown any indications of really, thoroughly regretting any of the decisions they made for 02, even if the second half came out messy. If you look at that original proposal they had for 02′s final enemy, in which it would be an enemy “reduced to an idea”, it certainly explains a lot about why BelialVamdemon was defeated by the power of sheer positivity in the final ending -- obviously that would make a lot more sense with a conceptual embodiment of malice, instead of a returning enemy from the prior series -- but at the same time, that loss of that concept led to the creation of Oikawa, Archnemon, and Mummymon, which have consistently been praised as one of the most compelling parts of 02 and its finale, and Yoshimura herself even gushed about the concepts they got. So it’s not “we couldn’t do what we wanted,” it’s more “we couldn’t do what we initially wanted and made something out of it, arguably an even better something in certain ways.”

And as for the lack of the third Adventure series, all indications point to the fact that this was something by personal choice of the staff, not by higher-up mandate -- not that I enjoy speculating about other people I don’t know, but if you actually follow what Kakudou has said about his work on Adventure and 02, and the fact that he considers his later work on X-Evolution to functionally be getting everything else out of his system (even saying that he liked Bandai doing a lot of the work for him), Kakudou doesn’t seem to want to be the main leader of his projects for the most part, mostly seeing Adventure and 02 as the one time he got to dump all of his one-time ideas that he personally wanted to accomplish, and otherwise being satisfied doing episode direction work for others -- testimony as to the handoff between 02 and Tamers consistently depicts him as expressing sentiments similar to “please let me have a break.” (As of this writing, he still does work for Toei, but has never been lead director on a full series since.) Kakudou didn’t like having to deal with a bunch of increasingly canon-contradictory works because, as an infamously detail-oriented and consistent person, dealing with that kind of thing didn’t really seem to agree with him, and moreover it’s understandable that he (and the other staff) would feel that it was better to end it there instead of overstaying its welcome and stretching things out.

Certainly, when you look at the second half of 02, its plot is “crowded” in nearly every direction (not as incomprehensible as people like to claim it is, but definitely going in a lot of places at once). The infamous 02 epilogue is probably the biggest example of the disparity between staff thought and how it came off; remember that it was one of the first things decided about the series at all, meaning that the staff was deliberating over it and under the impression they were building up to it for a whole two years, but when it finally dropped everyone was blindsided and even often made accusations of the staff coming up with it at the last minute while drunk or something (not helped by the staff clearly being so fixated on their own production that they even included details that were completely incomprehensible to anyone not aware of the potential third series plotline). Yet, ever since then, many people who have sat down with it have figured out that it’s not that incomprehensible and that many of the aspects of it make sense on a theoretical level or are foreshadowed in the series -- it’s just that they tacked it onto the end of an excessively crowded finale with no warning and didn’t sufficiently communicate their reasoning for it, requiring people to spend the next 20 years puzzling it out and Kizuna to come around to drop even more clues, and also failed to realize that one of humanity’s most die-on-a-hill issues about media (shipping) would make people a lot more offended than they likely intended. (PreCure has successfully pulled off “adult timeskip” epilogues in recent years, and they’ve all been received well, but the difference is that they actually pad out the episode with a proper lead-up instead of just chucking it in your face right after Oikawa dies.)

And, ultimately, the staff has never shown any signs of having regret over this. Kakudou takes the stance that they were able to close out 02 in a good way, despite all of the circumstances. The rest of the staff, including Seki herself, and overall Toei as a whole, has doubled down further on the latter half of 02′s plot events and the epilogue’s place in canon despite the infamous controversy around it, and I have to say that I do at least understand why they’re like this when you consider the circumstances and their likely feelings on it -- regardless of everything, they’re proud of the work they did on it, and even if not everything went according to original plan, they loved taking the opportunity to use the sandbox to express things they may not have been able to in their other projects, and the epilogue was their baby that they’d been raising for two years. It’s the ultimate question of “satisfying the creators vs. satisfying the audience” -- not to say that I completely agree with the call to be this unaware of how people were going to read this, because it’s not good to blindside your audience or hurt their feelings, but at the same time, it’s said that you will never be able to satisfy an audience at all if you’re not satisfying yourself first. And in the end, despite everything, that something in Adventure and 02, built out of that earnest desire to say something, came across in some ways and touched the hearts of kids all over the world.

So the result was that the Adventure and 02 staff did everything they wanted, got it out of their system, and handed an imperfect but carefully-crafted baton to Seki, who decided that it was a good opportunity to do something completely new, and deliberately picked Tamers’s director Kaizawa on the grounds that he’d had no experience with the series before. Remembering that Seki was on Adventure and 02 and was clearly happy with it, her decision to do something new with Tamers was just that -- to do something new -- and it’s honestly kind of saddening that the series’ respective fanbases treat each other with significantly less respect than their actual creators do, since both series still shared a lot of staff, Kakudou went on to be an episode director for Tamers (and even calls it a “masterpiece”), and Konaka clearly has a lot of respect for his predecessor series as well, with Tamers being its own product made with conscientiousness and a desire to make things meaningful for kids (Kaizawa himself has expressed a lot of strong opinions on this topic). A lot of anti-02 folks have often spread a conspiracy theory that Tamers came out of a “writer revolt” because they hated being “restricted” by 02 and wanted “more freedom” -- but that is completely contrary to the above evidence where 02′s production process arguably gave the writers too much freedom, and Tamers head staff was picked deliberately due to their lack of connection to the prior series so that they could do something conversely new and fresh...

One thing that’s interesting about Kizuna is that its director, Taguchi Tomohisa, has spoken very often about his love for the original series, right down to respecting its ability to cover very serious topics. His recruitment philosophy for the movie also seemed to have “being a fan of the series” as a big plus factor, and he moreover shows a lot of respect for the staff members involved in production, both the people he recruited and the long-timers like Seki. “Being a fan of the series” doesn’t necessarily constitute skill by itself, but there’s a lot of similar sentiments in “let’s make something that shows respect and does something interesting and important” and “let’s make sure the staff gets to do something without regrets” also seem to be pretty huge factors in consideration here, rather similar to the original series...

What this means in terms of understanding the series

I do not think that, just because a creator clearly had good reasoning for putting in what they did, the audience necessarily has to accept that. It may have had good intentions, but "intentions” don’t justify things coming off the way they do, or at least, the 20/20 hindsight can make us all get together and think “if that was your intention, there were probably a million better ways to execute that.” And, as someone writing this blog, there are times I really think “if you could have please just thought a little harder about making those ideas clearer so we wouldn’t have to have these arguments...”

However, I do think there is something illuminating about the idea of “adjusting one’s mindset” in response to the above revelations, and going in with an open mind when trying to get something out of the series for one’s own sake. I mean this truly in the sense of encouraging others to find something interesting and new -- this is not a blog I write expecting people to see things the same way I do, as much as I like encouraging people to look out for things they might have not noticed beforehand.

I started writing for this blog regularly last year (I hadn’t even planned to start regularly doing it) after a rewatch of Adventure and 02 with some friends and some honest discussion about the series after it, and one thing we all agreed to do when we did that rewatch was “we are not going to go in with the intent to criticize it.” That is to say, we decided to throw out all of those sentiments that you have to “admit” everything wrong with any series when even bringing up its name -- which is not to say that we’re glossing over potential criticisms or their validity, just “we’re doing this rewatch to have fun and to enjoy and appreciate things, and that will be our priority going in.” After making that agreement, something really magical happened, and it was that we started catching things without even looking for it, things that had clearly been planned but hidden in the background, or things that were caught by one person in the group watch chat and pointed out to the others, and it turned out that a huge chunk of the “criticisms” we might have originally gone in with actually did have answers, we just hadn’t realized it because we were too brainwashed into the mindset of dismissing things as “well, that part’s just bad writing.”

Of course, we’ve seen bad writing -- it’s not like we were going out of our way to absolve everyone for every mistake -- but that base mindset allowed us to better appreciate things we might have missed earlier that weren’t immediately apparent. I’ve said many times that I don’t think the things I write on here are that huge speculation -- in fact, in writing meta, I often throw out a lot of stuff because I think “yeah that’s too absurd, let’s just stick with the simplest explanation” -- as much as I just thread things that are in the series but are frustratingly subtle, because I’m taking things that seem like throwaway details and going “hm, well, instead of just dropping it the first time like ‘probably bad writing’, let’s maybe look at this one more time and see if there was a reason?” And those reasons present themselves surprisingly easily without even that much effort, and after a while you come to realize: this is a really consistent series!

It’s actually very rare that things outright contradict themselves, because it really does not take long to piece together a rational explanation (because those things are in the series, just buried)! This was a detail-oriented series that had a ridiculous amount of attention paid to it, even if it didn’t communicate that! Whenever I post meta, I often get comments from people who say outright that they’d had the same impressions, they just didn’t know how to put it in words! There’s been multiple cases of people independently coming up with readings of the series that the fanbase historically dismissed as a reach, only for official to come out and confirm they were absolutely correct, and a common thread between all of these is that they were referenced in the series, it’s just that people kept wanting to dismiss them because “there’s no way they’d be that detailed”! A truly contradictory series falls apart when you subject it to higher scrutiny (even when you’re being optimistic about it), but there’s a strange thing about Adventure and 02 in that they actually fit together even more when you look closely -- and, again, things start coming in when you don’t even expect it, just because of your mindset.

I suppose the take-home here with all of this is that a series like this is best understood when you have an open mind and a desire to listen to what it has to say. As I said before: Adventure and 02 (and especially 02) are not series that most people watch for the plot, and, to be honest, it’s clear that plot wasn’t even a priority for all of the staff in the first place as much as it was about conveying important ideas and sentiments. And I’m not going to say whether not prioritizing plot or not is a “good” or “bad” thing -- for some people, that kind of thing is understandably very important, and a series like 02 can be very frustrating to deal with as a result! -- as much as, for those who have a genuine interest in sitting down and understanding these series, I cannot recommend scrutinizing the plot too much simply because it will not get you very far, and, to be honest, whenever I see a lot of analyses of Adventure and 02, I really do often wonder if they actually understand the core of the series and the sentiment and emotion behind it, or whether they’re just doing it on a technical surface level so they can say they did (which is usually partially as a bid to passive-aggressively dunk on later series to prove Adventure is superior). The entire concept of objectivity is a lie in itself, but this is not a series that you can get much out of if you try to evaluate it with that kind of detachment; it’s a series that spoke to you through theme and passion first and foremost, and to receive that message and “enjoy” the series is most effectively done when you detach all of those doubts and approach the series without malice.

(By the way, this is not me claiming I’m inherently a “better” analyst just because I also prefer to use this mentality when approaching it; it’s just that I’m a bit frustrated that this kind of approach is so hard to find, despite Adventure’s popularity, because losing out on the heart causes so much rich potential to get lost. This is also the reason I recommend @analyzingadventure‘s work so much -- I’m so sorry about tagging you for the third time here! -- because they’re as positive about Adventure as I am about 02, and their insight and thought into the series coming from the angle of “appreciating” it with genuine positivity is something I believe is truly valuable in a climate where this is very hard to find.)

And this is what I mean, “to approach it without malice”. I don’t mean that you should go in prepared to never have criticisms of it ever again, nor that you should just absolve everything and assume that everything is fine, but rather that going in with a mindset of “we’re going to look for things to love” instead of “we’re going to ‘look past’ the bad” alone has the magical effect of shifting your entire view of the series, way more than I would say with any other. And, again, that’s only something that can happen when the base product was made with this much sentiment and honesty to begin with, and moreover fighting against the mindset to criticize is tough when we’re dealing with a fanbase that’s acted like being “fair” requires “acknowledging” the faults of everything in the same breath you praise it until the horse is beaten for two decades and everyone’s exhausted. (And then yells at you if you dare criticize anything that’s put on the fanbase’s pedestal.) It’s kind of the question of: should this really be about media criticism and whether it’s “objectively” good or bad, especially since this has been brought up so often for two decades now, or might it be better to think about how to have a more positive experience with something that you may not have had before?

Once you get rid of that mindset of “critical by default”, you start to realize things that the series did knock out of the park, or were exceptional, that got too obscured by the distractions of fixating on its plot -- 02 is a plot mess for sure, but I have never seen any series that is so sincere and earnest about its actual themes and things it wanted to say, and it’s something I love it even more for. And buried under that criticism of everyone not getting “equal attention” from an evolutionary forms perspective is the fact that, from a story perspective, they deliberately went out of their way to make sure everyone gets mostly equal focus, which is something that sticks out especially when you start watching other long-running series that aren’t as good about this, and although it’s not completely perfect by any means, they do a damn good job keeping everyone in the 8- and 6-person groups relevant to the very end, which is pretty impressive! And, in the end, you end up having a much healthier relationship with the series -- again, it’s not glossing over everything to pretend nothing is wrong per se, but rather, you’re able to appreciate it and love it for what it is, instead of constantly feeling like you’re making up for its “mistakes”.

#digimon #digimon adventure #digimon adventure 02 #digimon adventure last evolution kizuna #shihameta

64 notes · View notes

mimik-u · 3 years

Text

Gloves, Ch. 1

Summary: There's a reason that Yellow Diamond doesn't take off her gloves.

A/N: The other day, as a part of my 100-word drabble word series for SU, I fulfilled this prompt, which required me to question what might be beneath Yellow Diamond's gloves. The headcanon I came up with intrigued me, and inspiration to write a seven pt. fic was thus born. Between school and other creative projects, I'm not entirely sure that this one will get updated regularly, but I do have a fairly firm outline in mind, so I hope the wait between chapters won't be too long! Enjoy!

AO3 Link

“Blue?”

“... yes, Pink?”

Though the other Diamond barely looks up from her screen, Pink Diamond can tell that she’s listening from the way that her long chin slightly inclines in her direction.

Good.

Because she has an important question to ask.

Attention is hard won from the likes of Blue and Yellow Diamond, so even half-victories are still victories that have to be capitalized upon with immediacy. Pink lightly hops upwards from her own throne to the arm of Blue’s, floating downwards into an expectant sitting position, happily ignoring the fact that her elder flicks away her screen with a sigh that filters visibly through her nostrils. If Blue was really annoyed, then she’d just have her Pearl usher her to her chambers... but tellingly, the imperial command never quite comes.

Pink takes courage from this implicit sign and forges ahead in a rush of breathless words.

“Why does Yellow wear her gloves all the time?”

It’s an observation that has increasingly captured her attention as the years have marched on with seemingly zero deviation in pattern.

Yellow Diamond never removes her gloves.

Pink wears gloves, too, but they’re nothing like Yellow’s—so stiff and armor-like, as inflexible as their wearer. Plus, she pulls hers off from time to time so she can feel flowers on her fingertips… their soft, delicate petals... those spiny, fragile leaves. Yellow, in stark contrast, never goes anywhere without hers—even when she joins the Diamonds in the pool on extraction cycles, even when she retires to her chambers at the end of a long day. Exceptionless in most things, so intransigent and firm, it’s no great surprise that the elder Diamond adheres to her own chosen mold, but still…

Even Blue Diamond lowers her hooded veil.

Even White Diamond occasionally unpins her cape.

Blue frowns thoughtfully, subtle lines striking themselves beneath her eyes as she peers downwards at Pink. There’s a look of calculation in her gaze, a sense of measurement, as though she’s already weighing how much she can get away with not saying.

“Have you ever asked Yellow about them directly?”

Pink briefly considers lying, but then thinks better of it. While she might get away with an occasional white lie to Yellow, Blue and White are far more discerning in their judgment—White especially.

(Sometimes, she swears that the matriarch can read her mind.)

“... not really,” she bites her lip. “I just assumed it would be rude to ask a Gem about her appearance modifiers...”

“And so you settled upon asking another Gem about someone else’s appearance modifiers,” Blue observes, a certain wryness in the slight tilt of her lips.

“Something like that,” Pink confirms, not entirely abashed. “I just figured that you would know, and that would save me the trouble from having to pester Yellow about them.”

But Blue’s expression recoils to its former solemnity again as she immediately shakes her head, her hair shifting heavily with the movement.”

“Yes... please do not do that, Pink... not unless she brings it up... Yellow—“

But now it’s Blue’s turn to be hesitant; she doesn’t blush, not in the way that Pink blushes—so furiously, all of her emotions scribbled across her face—but her cheeks aren’t as coolly colored as before, taking on a tinge less like her hair and more like the facets of her gem.

“Yellow what?” Pink asks insistently, pressing her momentary advantage. As subtly as she can, she leans forward a little bit on her blue perch, like an organic avian preparing for flight. “Please, pretty please tell me, Blue. I won’t tell Yellow that you told.”

(Probably.)

(Likely.)

(It’s a tossup of probability, really.)

“You’re being facetious, Pink,” Blue admonishes quietly, glancing away. “This is a serious matter that deserves the utmost respect.”

And though Blue is almost always serious, Pink instinctively intuits that Blue has rarely been more serious than in this conversation, which had begun so innocently, with errant curiosity. When she faces Pink again, her expression has returned to its usual placid coolness, but her fingers are interlocked in her lap, woven into a rigid temple that bespeaks far more about her feelings on the situation than the studious coldness of her eyes.

Pink cowers beneath the weight of this silent gesture, leaning backwards on her makeshift seat.

“Sorry, Blue,” she mumbles shamefacedly and hopes that the apology is sufficient. She doesn’t want to go to her chambers for the rest of the cycle. It’s so rare that Blue allows her to accompany her for the day.

Thankfully, though, the other Diamond seems to accept her contrition as sincere, nodding slowly, the ice melting from her eyes in degrees.

Pink can’t help but wonder at these microscopic exchanges, so subtle but undoubtedly there—who knew that gloves could wring such excess of emotion in the nigh emotionless Blue Diamond?

“Yes, well,” she says, each word doled out carefully, with all the air of internal constraint, “I can give you the basics... but as for the rest, you’ll have to wait until Yellow is ready to tell you—if and when that ever is. She doesn’t like to dwell upon the matter... even with me... perhaps even especially with me...”

Blue trails off, an aching concern seemingly troubling her brow. Pink think she’s know why. Of the four Diamonds, Blue and Yellow emerged from the same supernova some hundreds of thousand years ago, sharing atoms and stardust and precious intimacy in a way that has always made Pink feel a little lonely. They’re bound to each other by far more than simple affinity, tangled, intertwined, and enmeshed.

Naturally, any breach between them doesn’t settle right in Blue Diamond’s gem.

Pink forces herself to be patient, to allow the other Diamond to find her words again.

“But that is no matter,” she finally says—rather unconvincingly. “I know enough… I know how it began.”

“And how is that exactly?”

Blue’s arctic gaze settles upon the younger Diamond again, and there’s sadness in her eyes, ancient and unfathomable depth.

It strikes her suddenly, with all the force of blow, how much older than Pink that she is.

That they all are.

White and Yellow and Blue and all the very stars which surround Homeworld in their bright and intangible embrace.

“It begins as we Diamonds all do,” Blue whispers, reaching upwards to glance her fingers across her gem. “As entities with nearly infinite power, inexplicably constrained within the boundaries and volatilities of our emotions…”

Pink’s immediate confusion must show in her face because the other Diamond immediately clarifies, frowning softly.

“Which is to say, think about your own powers, Pink—how, at the height of your emotions, they can inadvertently manifest in strange ways…”

“Like, a few cycles ago”—Pink can’t help but smile—“when I accidentally made those pebbles come to life.”

She’d cried on a few decorative rocks—upset that she couldn’t accompany Yellow to her Jungle Moon colony—and within mere seconds, they were animated with life, growing arms and legs and expressive faces, clumsily moving around on her vanity, knocking things over.

Now, they live in her chambers, parroting the words she says.

“Yes, precisely,” Blue nods approvingly, in that way she only does when Pink manages to get something right. “The general theory—according to White—is that when we Diamonds feel any strong degree of emotion, we generate those emotions into tangible consequences, whether we intend to or otherwise…”

Pink tilts her head curiously. It’s hard to imagine any of her three elders showing a “strong degree of emotion.” In their own ways, each of them—White, Yellow, and Blue—are so meticulous in their chosen facades, bearing their regality on their faces with a modicum of control that they often scold their most junior Diamond for lacking.

But Blue is perceptive in this front, too, her frown slowly shifting into the slightest, most incremental of smiles.

“Constraining yourself, learning to manage your emotions, will come with time and age,” she promises gently. “But it is essential that you learn this lesson sooner rather than later because, well, there are some consequences of our feelings that we can rationally accept, and others…”

“Not so much?” Pink guesses astutely, beginning to have a burgeoning idea of what this entire story must be about.

“Aye,” Blue Diamond affirms with a measured nod of her head. “Aye… Yellow Diamond’s powers are electric, you know. When we were younger Diamonds… when we didn’t have all that much possession over ourselves and our emotions and everything in-between … she couldn’t touch anything without hurting it.”

The finality of the statement bruises the entirety of the throne room with its magnitude. Pink stares upwards at the other Diamond with wide, disbelieving eyes.

“What?”

“You must understand, Pink,” Blue returns emphatically, her voice strained beneath its own quiet urgency. “Yellow then was very much like she is now—stoic, temperamental, quick to action and reaction—but all of these qualities were amplified by her youth and relative impulsivity—and so she was nigh constantly creating her own energy. It pooled in her fingertips. It sparked in her eyes. It electrified her entire body. When she was frustrated, she could barely touch a screen without short-circuiting it. When she was furious, she could destabilize an entire court of innocent gems. Even when she was happy, joyous after conquest or battle or victory… she couldn’t even touch—“

But Blue Diamond stops short, her breath hitching.

It only takes her seconds to recover, to regain at least the semblance of composure across the smooth facets of her face, but Pink isn’t entirely naïve.

She knows that the completion to that self-interrupted sentence must have been me.

“After one especially harrowing incident,” Blue continues, closing her eyes against what appears to be a painful memory, “she tasked a group of Bismuths to forge special gloves for her that would insulate her powers more efficiently. The gloves helped. Absolutely. She could lean her hand against a pillar and not char it to dust… and since then, of course, she has become more… practiced in tempering her emotions, so much so that I have a sneaking suspicion that the gloves are less functional than they are habitual… but still, she wears them…”

Blue doesn’t say anymore, but the implicit completion to her speech needs no articulation to be known.

And she’ll continue to wear them.

Forever.

For time immemorial.

Pink Diamond scarcely knows what to say, how to process this terrible truth, how to feel.

Silence presses upon the cavernous throne room like the weight of a palm sinking downwards and downwards still, and she can’t help but stare downwards at her own gloved hands, wondering if they, too, have the capacity for engendering such violence.

She hopes not.

Stars, how she prays.

“What was the turning point?” She dares to ask when the quietude gets to be too much, the invisible hand too oppressive.

And yet, her own voice is quiet.

Solemn.

Terribly afraid and equally curious.

The oxymoron twists the gem in her stomach. She half-wants to know and half-dreads the answer.

Thankfully, though—(disappointingly?)—Blue Diamond shakes her head firmly, her brow lowered sternly over her eyes.

“That is not my story to tell.”

#bellow diamond #blue diamond #yellow diamond #pink diamond #s: steven universe #mimiku #hisoisoaihdfhidhfiofhsio #do i have time to be writing a seven pt. fic #no #am i doing it anyway #yeah #gloves

94 notes · View notes

yarrowleef · 3 years

Text

Read Darkness Within all in one sitting last night and then passed out so here are my scattered thoughts i wrote down as i read, (afterthoughts in parenthesis)

Darkness Within Spoilers, obv

UGH GOD THE SECOND HAND EMBARRESMENT FROM SQUIRREL FAKE FLIRTING WITH ASHFUR IT HURTS

Just remembered Sandynose died and got a small boost of happiness (will Hawkwing and Plumwillow ever be allowed to talk again now? I mean probly not b/c they aren’t protags and non-protags don’t rly have friends but I can hope. Sorry, Hawkwhing and Plumwillow’s short-lived friendship in Hawkwings Journey was one of the last times I felt something)

Ghost fleas lol

Mothwing: i’m rude now. (but more importantly, Fuck Tigerheartstar for forcing his son to be around the cat that hurt him so badly, like he HAS to know how upset everyone is regarding Shadowsight and his accidentally helping the imposter, and he’s making him be the sole one to tend to him??? There is NO REASON Puddleshine couldn’t have done it. You think Puddleshine is going to try and murder someone?? )

Oh no don't make this a traveling book, and a ROOTBRISTLE traveling book this is going to be insufferable

BACON AND EGGS

Lightleap Is Good (Hey didn’t Shadowsight have another sister? lets be real we all knew Pouncekit was going to end up as the forgettable 3rd one)

Bristlefrost’s crush continues to feel unnatural to me. It’s like she’s grasping at straws romanticizing the most generic things.....wow....I love how ur just so...bare minimum competent....being polite to the loner we came all this way to ask for help like any somewhat reasonable person would....How admirable...I love the way you just *clenches fist* exhibit some basic traits of loyalty and skill that literally every warrior has (I s2g I’m this close to head canon-ing Bristle as a clueless aromantic who doesn't understand what romance is actually suppose to feel like so she just looks at feelings of low-bar admiration and assumes “oh I guess this is that “romantic attraction” everyone’s always talking about? guess I must be in love???” because both her crushes have felt out of nowhere and like. Idk fake/forced sounding like she’s just telling me that that she’s In Love Now while I continue to not actually feel it at all from her end. I know it’s just that I hate the way Erin’s write female characters in love but this head-canon makes me laugh)

Got scared because I thought they were going to villainize Spotfur for not wanting kits for a minute, but also excited at the concept of maybe exploring a female character that doesn’t want to be a mother, but it turns out she was just pulling a Sparkpelt and actually DID want the kits all along and was only hesitant because she’s sad. Shrug oh well. (the only female character in warriors that was distinctly upset about pregnancy and motherhood was Lizardstripe and as we all know she was eeeeeevil and abusive and “overly ambitious” because why else would you not come around to being happy about motherhood?? YES I’M STILL SALTY ABOUT YELLOWFANG’S SECRET, BAD BOOK) Whatever it’s fine so long as Spot doesn’t lose her rebel leader spirit forever and default to “soft mom” personality for the rest of her life, I gotta have hope because I actually like Bristle and Spot’s current relationship. Also I am actually very grateful they never made Bristle resentful at Spot for getting with her crush, as lots of middle grade/YA media has a very bad habit of demonizing female romantic “competition” and its super gross, so I rly do like that Bristlefrost is so protective and caring towards her instead. )

This series is trying to tell me that Rootspring is actually Big but I refuse to accept that. he has dumb scrawny bitch energy and we all know it

Sunrise: “Thunderclan may be better with a new leader” lol go off (i mean........they right tho...It’s unfortunate that the tension in this whole plot is a bit dampened by the fact that i DO in fact want bramble to die v badly. I don’t even have special hatred for him, I’m just bored of him.)

Yes Lionblaze beat the shit out of Ashfur

*HOLY SHIT THAT’S FUCKED!!!! (I wrote this in reference to the ghost summoning scene, this was all I could manage at the time, that scene was WILD and I am VIBING WITH THE HORROR OF IT ALL)

* Brashfur: Oh yeah? Could Ashfur fake THIS? *stands up with slightly better posture* Shadowsight: oh damn you got me there...... (asdfhhfhhgh im sorry that was really funny, how did that prove anything?? ONLY A ~REAL~ WARRIOR COULD STAND UP STRAIGHT WE ALL KNOW ASHFUR IS INCAPABLE OF GOOD POSTURE!)

End of the book: *LAUGHING NERVOUSLY* WHAT THE FUCK??? (I thought he was just gonna kill Squirrelflight right there holy shit can you imagine the RIOTS that would ensue in the wake of all this Squirrel/Bramble discourse I was so scared for a second.

But it’s fine, she just....went to super hell instead......Warriors has come so far lmao WHAT IS HAPPENING

Final Notes:

*On Mothwing, I don’t think her behavior struck me as “CHARACTER BUTCHERING” as much as it did for other people? I mean.....Warriors fans will say that literally any time a character does ANYTHING less then perfectly nice I think her actions just seemed that much harsher because we are reading from Shadowsight’s POV, and Shadowsight is taking everything 10x more personally right now (understandably so, but Mothwing isn’t inside his head) she wasn’t trying to hurt him. Also... like... Shadowsight DID get his name too early. It’s not Mothwing’s job to put his feelings above everything else, she’s not even his mentor, Puddleshine on the other hand, as his main mentor, I don’t understand what his deal is ignoring Shadowsight, that’s not how you help an apprentice but I suppose I chalk many of his mistakes up to also not being the most experienced medicine cat (he barely even had his own mentor.) Maybe he’s distant because he feels guilty and actually blames himself for not guiding Shadowsight better?? the two of them haven’t communicated about it yet so idk

any way I give Mothwing a pass to be a little short tempered right now as a cat who has had her abilities periodically questioned all her life no matter how hard she works or how much experience she has, just because she doesn’t vibe with the spiritual cult side of the clans, I can understand why she’s a bit defensive of being questioned and frustrated watching so much hurt happen Yet Again due to reliance on StarClan visions over common sense, and I for one still stan her for slandering StarClan and refusing to accept Mistystar’s bullshit banishing like everyone else. Sometimes a character is at the end of their rope and can’t manage to be 100% nice 24/7 and that’s maybe not inherently bad writing? idk just my hot take. At a certain point we all gotta reckon with the fact that our perception of most popular supporting characters in heavily colored by fanon and we can’t always get mad at the authors for not adhering to it

*The sisters magic shit is my fav worldbuilding warriors has had in AGES, I love the way it’s described and it actually feels like it adds something to this world. I love this horror imagery with the ghosts, very excited for that.

*still won’t be thrilled if Ashfur is working alone, because his motive doesn’t make sense right now. I mean the trying to get Squilf thing, sure, whatever, but the “I will make everyone pay for what they did to me”???? cause like?? Who??? they didn’t do anything to him?? Ashfur’s grievance was very specifically JUST Squilf. He has no other cause for revenge, he had no other beef or complaints about the clans to my knowledge? The cat that killed him is dead, and she’s like, the only other one that I could see as having “wronged” him?? I guess he also didn’t like Firestar much according to Graystripe’s Vow (and on account of how willing he was to kill him w/ Hawkfrost) but Firestar is ALSO dead. I don’t understand his angle. Will have to see last 2 books to judge i suppose.

*All in all I am interested to see where this is going!! but also the pacing as I feared is becoming a major issue. It’s better then ending the main conflict on book 3 like Vision of Shadows did, but omg. Hardly anything happened in all these pages. I realized I was over half way through and nothing about the situation had actually CHANGED or advanced at all in all that time. Similar to the past 2 books which I believe could have been combined, this plot felt like it should have been the first half of a book. Discussing whether or not to kill the imposter isn’t much of a standalone plot, it’s just the set up to a plot. Finding the sisters didn’t need to be a whole long thing, the debates about the Imposters fate didn’t need to be repeated 10 times, all those chapters illustrating that “Shadowsight is sad” were also drawn out, repetitive, and interchangeable, we probably only needed 2 or so chapters showing his struggles to get the necessary information across. It felt like a lot of padding, it was really slow and I did a lot of skimming. I am still very interested in the overarching plot and mystery behind the ghosts so that kept me reading but man this “will they won’t they kill him” plot did not justify it’s own whole book. Alas this is a persisting issue that will never be resolved while they continue to force 6 books into 1 series that doesn’t need 6 books. I’m sure the writers are doing the best they can with these unfortunate constraints but still, it’s a wonder this slow padding isn’t more of a detriment to their younger readers that the books are supposed to be marketed to.

#warrior cats #the broken code #darkness within #the darkness within #darkness within spoilers #wc tbc #tbc #is that enough tags #yarrow speaks #wc criticism #long post #the broken code spoilers #warrior cats spoilers

55 notes · View notes

nerdygaymormon · 4 years

Text

A Letter to Elder Hamilton

Elder Hamilton,

Greetings!

I’m the stake executive secretary in the Brandon Florida Stake. We met this past Sunday when you & Elder Carter interviewed me as part of the process of finding the next stake president.

When he was leaving, Elder Carter said to me, “You really impressed us. We talked about you quite a bit.”

My response to him was, “Thank you for telling me that. You guys were tough on me.”

He looked surprised, and commented, “We ministered to you.”

I’ve been thinking about how differently we viewed the same interaction. I decided to write a letter to share my perspective and a bit more about my journey.

From my perspective, it felt like I experienced 2 different interviews done back-to-back. The first half was rough. You were asking very probing questions, one after another. I realize we were in a time constraint and weren’t having a proper conversation. I can see how the same questions could be intended as trying to get to know me and my background better. I’m not trying to say you did anything wrong, but I think our perceptions of the interaction were different.

You are someone in a position of authority. Upon learning I’m gay, you asked if I always adhere to the Law of Chastity, was I ever inactive, do I have a recommend, and am I worthy. I thought perhaps you were trying to determine if I should be released.

When I spoke briefly about why the temple can be a hard place for me, there was a shift in your body language, your face became softer, you replied that you could understand that. It’s that moment that I felt like you saw me as a person and felt my humanity.

The second half of the interview had a different tone. You asked how I felt about my calling, how do I help other LGBT members, what I’ve learned from my stake president. For me, those were questions that sounded like you wanted to know me rather than focusing on am I following the rules.

At the end you thanked me for sharing that I struggle and do my best and carry on, that you can tell I’m impacting people, thanked me for being visible, said you wish we were meeting in person so you could give me a hug, that’s when it felt like ministering because I could feel your love and that you cared.

As I think about it, I’m certain this difference in perception is because the interview was such where you asked questions but didn’t respond to the answers I gave. That didn’t give me any context for why you were choosing to ask the next question and the next one.

I am very honest with my stake president, he can ask me anything and I’ll help him understand, and I’ll also share what I struggle with. Part of what makes that work is I know he loves me and trusts me and cares for me and will help me. I hope the same is true of you and Elder Carter, but we didn’t have a chance to build that rapport. You asked questions, I answered.

I’m glad the things I said were heard, that you felt something for me. At the end, I felt love come from you and that was important for me. And I do thank you for those very kind sentiments, I wrote them down, they are meaningful to me.

I want to share with you, an important moment in my journey. In 2015 gay marriage was made legal across the USA. In November, the Church implemented a new policy about gay couples and their children. That hurt. It felt like the Church was so wary of people like me that even innocent children associated with us were poison and had to be cut off. I let God know how hurt & upset I was about this.

I heard a voice say that if I want to leave the Church, that’s fine, but if I’m willing to stay, there is a special work for me to do.

If I stayed, I would: * Help young gay Mormons accept themselves * speak to leaders and help them understand better * speak to youth of my stake about being gay * share my story as a gay Mormon

I knew staying came with a cost, but if I could be part of these things then I would pay that price.

I didn’t understand then how these things would happen, but I felt strongly this is what the Lord wanted me to do and I showed faith by staying.

Almost immediately my calling changed, the stake president said the Spirit was insistent that I have this new calling so that my unique viewpoint could be heard.

In time I came to see that by doing the work of my new calling, stake executive secretary, it opened up the ability to do the work that I’d agreed to do with the Lord.

Looking back at my notes from 2015, it’s amazing how specific the things were that the Lord said would happen and how all of them have occurred on a scale much larger than I imagined. I haven’t been trying to force these things to happen, instead I’m where the Lord wants me and His work follows.

For example, I don’t go out of my way to meet and talk with Seventy and Apostles. When they come to my stake, they find me here doing my calling. I don’t always bring up that I’m gay, it’s not always relevant to what’s being discussed, but when I’m prompted to share, the reactions are interesting.

Sometimes I can sense their unease and it takes time to break that down and have them see me for me. Other times there’s an immediate outpouring of love and caring. Sometimes I get invited to visit them when I next go to Utah and then we have more in-depth conversations and I’ve even developed friendships with a few of them.

While many wonderful things have happened over the past 5 years, it’s been a difficult road. I had a mental health crisis. I was suicidal and needed professional help. I stayed in therapy for a year working on a number of things such as low self-esteem, internalized homophobia, social anxiety disorder, and these all had root in my experience as a closeted gay man in the Church.

I have my struggles, and have my strengths. I try to do good. I’ve had hard times, I’ve been blessed. I spent a lot of time in the closet and it feels much better to be out and honestly answering questions, even if they feel probing or reflexive.

I get asked many inappropriate questions. I hear little comments made about me. I know some people have pulled the stake president aside to ask if he knew his secretary was gay. It’s easy to question the motivation of people asking questions, especially if they haven’t indicated they’re a friend or ally.

I want to believe you were genuinely curious and this is why you asked the questions you did. I hope you understand why I didn’t recognize that until half-way through the process.

I did feel genuine warmth and love from you at the end of our interview. I’m glad that Elder Carter said something to help me understand that my answers to the questions were heard and appreciated. I wanted to be understood but thought I was being judged, that is until you responded to my answer about why the temple can be a hard place for me.

I’ll pray for you in your ministry, and hope you’ll pray for me.

Your friend,

David

#Kevin S. Hamilton #tumblrstake #queerstake

49 notes · View notes

grandpasessions · 3 years

Quote

'There was nothing left for us here, everyone I knew felt reluctantly guilty for feeling lost, as if being lost was hesitantly, but most definitively, part of who they were.' 'The atomization had gone further than anyone ever thought it would, our own identities had fragmented into various abstractions of consumption; brands, shops, sexualities, traits, habits, software stacks, video games, TV series, cinematic universes, foreign food, reading lists, alternative spiritualities, ironic adherence to tradition, theological LARPing, this is what remained, ashes of reality scattered into the simulacrum for us to pick and choose from. Every morsel of personality and ego had become tethered to a commodifiable life-choice. I no longer knew any-one, only assemblages of pithy statements, purchases, and vices; what was anyone except a culmination of their hedonistic desires and shallowly pronounced social virtues?' 'Once your understanding has been replaced everything else falters rather sharply; meaning in general collapses and everything is transferred into a system of third-party checking, as opposed to personal investigation and belief. Nothing felt as if it were ever mine, nor as if I'd ever earned it, and that's because what was earned was backed by nothing.' '... It just did not stop, not for a moment; the clearest symptom of modernity is that all time was to be filled, and it didn't matter what filled it, as long as there was continual noise, static to be utilized as ignorance of [a] cosmic predicament.' 'Can it be considered sleepwalking if it encapsulates one's entire life? If one is asleep for the entire [e.d], then that quickly becomes one's reality.' 'The reason people purchased things relied on another abstract reason ad infinitum; the reason people did anything likewise relied on the will of another, rarely did one witness a man take it upon himself to act, buy or say something which arose from his wellspring of authenticity, there was always something else controlling his strings. And that's what modernity is, a material labyrinth of puppet-masters who are all interconnected and cordial, a multiplicity of effects trying to hide their causes, because once you get to the cause you can start to question it, until that moment of apprehension, anything you attempt to grasp immediately disappears. At all turns, man is left with another turn.' 'There is a difference between knowledge and understanding and the academy laps up the former without paying a moment's notice to the latter. To understand something is to take one's time, it is to draw its breath, and potentially act in accordance; the academy is bodies without souls, vessels to be filled, and upgraded. Graduate, post-graduate, and lecturer are beings of their own kind, molded by the suffocating atmosphere of strict interpretation. How can one talk of interpretation if there is only one?' 'I could not stand the paths I needed to take to supposedly acquire that which I desired, what I desired among all things, or so I believe at the time, was to gain an understanding of the world which allowed contentment, a teleology towards a personal peace. ... into the heart of familiarity I desired to go.' 'To think for oneself had become increasingly difficult, every structure and institution since birth had been constructed in such a way as to covertly remove all personal responsibility for individuals, and from there had since set up a monopoly where a heart and vision once laid.' 'The plan was a form of neo-asceticism, strip it all back; throw it back in their faces by way of refusal.' 'And therefore those who took interest were these [weird, odd, strange, peculiar] things also, and as such, status did the rest; eventually, all that came of the academy was an acceptance of those alike those accepting, dry, strained, professional and meek; I could call it a racket, but that would be too exciting, for its reality was one of a waiting room, the texts I once loved became cheap magazines strewn over its floor whilst I waited for my bureaucratically monitored acceptability rating.' '... one should only laugh at those who proclaim that truth is on the side of misery, for what can misery be but only understood as a solely human affair; the cosmos doesn't understand misery as much as we don't understand the passions of a boulder. To align misery, suffering, and decay with an abstract bleaker-than-thou truth is to make the same anthropocentric errors as those which you proclaim to hate. Many, myself included, wish there was more horror, for at least then there would be interest in the world.' 'To betray the pro-herd is to revere the anti-herd.' 'What the herd yearns for is not a life, but a pen. Who could blame them? With a pen comes purpose, something easy to moan about. Lyotard was right in Libidinal Economy when he declared that the working-class desire their subjugation - 'the English unemployed did not become workers to survive, they - hand me tight and spit on me - enjoyed the hysterical, masochistic, whatever exhaustion it was of hanging on in the mines, in the foundaries, in the factories, in hell, they enjoyed it, enjoyed the mad destruction of their organic body which was indeed imposed upon them, they enjoyed the decomposition of their personal identity. ... man finds his meaning in the collective in the very same way he finds meaning in masochism, by perpetually perusing his mandatory service, he seeks a greater and greater denial of his desire and potential. Yet, even if he were to go looking for it he'd be too scared to confront it.' 'This is what is comforting about the collective for your common drone, the ongoing, incessant, and indulgent whining and moaning, the oh-so-cumbersome depressions and anxieties brought about by the most minor of stresses and tensions, the adherence to a blank slate of tranquility and extravagance a priori. Lo-and-behold the user finds a shit-smeared socius, bulging at the seams with repressions, constraints, containments, rules, laws, taxes, usury, masters, cutbacks, limitations, diminutions, and attentuations, all of which are gorged upon by willing individuals, not in moments of begrudging compliance, but as purpose, as meaning.' 'I had no connection to nature, to family, to tradition, to root or stem, I was -- as all are now -- my own personal atom of modern ecstasy, economics, and envy. You could state with ease that this was some form of nihilism personal to me, or my immediate surroundings, except it wasn't, that's not how nihilism works. Nihilism is behind it all, there is the gloss of objects and apparel and the illusion of the subject. ... If there is such a thing as nihilism it's so indiscernible from the actions of the average modern man that it eventually begs no division of definition.' 'Where everyone was headed was precisely nowhere, but this too was an empty truism that helped precisely no one.' 'Also, one must cast off all material pleasures, a feat easily achieved for it feels like a virtue, but one must too cast off all material sufferings, the ones they most enjoy, depression, anxiety, malaise, melancholy and despair, those sufferings which are so indulged in on an almost constant basis, so much so that they covertly become pleasures; there's little meaning for modern man other than a common depression; Oh, the suffering! Oh, the despair! Oh spare me your shivers and whines and submit your body to all that is chthonic.' 'I found nothing that could offer me suffering, let alone relief or contentment.' 'I had burned through life's most basic settings at the rate of modern man in overdrive; I wanted more of the more. This had left me feeling alienated and lonely and listless. People who want something have a direction, those who have lost something do too, any cessation can give man meaning rather quickly, but what about an apathetic cessation of apathy brought about by apathy?'

The Methodology of Possession // James Ellis

#james ellis #nick land #methodology of possession #theory #theology #magick

11 notes · View notes

creativejourneysbct · 3 years

Text

My Very First Vlog (assessment)!

For our first Intro to Creative Tech assessment we were tasked with creating a 4-minute vlog explaining why we chose the Bachelor of Creative Technologies, what we expect from it and what we plan to do with it in the future. After weeks of consistently adding ideas to a rolling list of points to include, I spent ages trying to tidy up all those ideas into a coherent script that I used for my final video.

For the video itself, I decided to go with a simple vlog style format consisting of me talking to the camera. Initially, I did this to try and avoid having to do too much editing and use my presenting skills to my advantage. In the end, I did a bit of a mix as I still incorporated a bunch of additional clips and photos for added visual content to help illustrate the points being made.

In the end, I created a video that I’m proud of, but wish it could’ve been longer.

I definitely had a range of mixed feelings throughout this project. During the initial creative process of just putting down ideas of things to include, I was really enjoying it. I only felt a sense of stress when it came time to put all those ideas together and realized that it was way too long for four minutes. It was challenging having to pick things to remove as I had become so attached to all the different points over time. It took me way longer than expected to get a script together that was short enough- this was the most stressful part of the process by far. Especially since 40% of the grade depends on this video- I was so scared of cutting points that would potentially cost me marks. I often just wound up reading and re-reading the script a dozen times to only take out a couple of words each time. It was only when it came crunch time as the deadline approached that I really started slashing away at the word count to get it to a more reasonable length. Again, this was kind of disappointing to me, and I feel as though the result may feel a bit shallow as a result, but that’s the nature of adhering to a time constraint.

The filming part I actually loved though, as this mixes well with my background in performance and acting so that was probably the most fun.

The second most fun part - that I wasn’t expecting- was the editing process. I actually quite enjoyed lining up all the additional clips to align with the dialogue and cutting down the footage whenever I paused to make it sound smoother. The tinkering and playing around part of the process engaged me more than expected.

Thus, even though the content may have been a bit shallow compared to what it used to be, I was really happy with the final product as the filming and editing went well. It actually inspired me to potentially make more of this kind of content for my own personal projects as there were a lot of things that I would’ve love to have included but couldn’t due to the time constraints.

Some areas that I could’ve improved on are as follows;

The initial script should’ve been shorter from the start. As mentioned earlier, I constantly added ideas to it since the assignment was announced, so when it came time to finally sit down and finalize the script it was way too long, and I consequently spent most of my time cutting it down. This resulted in more breadth than depth than I would’ve liked, and next time I’d focus on fewer points and unpack them more. The issue is that I had become attached to all the ideas I’d written, so I couldn’t remove enough. And I’m still somewhat annoyed by the points ideas that I did have to remove. Going forward I’ll try and start with a select few points and expand on them, rather than having kids and shortening them all.

Another area that could’ve been improved on for the script is the style of writing used. I found that when I wrote the initial script, I just wound up writing an essay, which sounded very robotic and unauthentic when being read out to the camera. I found that writing the script while saying each line out loud did wonders in creating something that sounded more natural. Next time I’ll use this approach from the start, as this is something I found out towards the end and would’ve saved me a bunch of time had I implemented it from the very beginning.

Editing- I’m quite happy with the editing I did but would’ve loved to add a backing track for the dialogue -as it can sound quite eerie talking against pure silence - and maybe a cool song at the beginning and end. I also would’ve played around with text in the videos for headers to add more structure. In the end, I decided to leave these elements as we aren’t being graded on the editing, but I’d still like to learn those skills for my own personal gain.

Even with the limited editing I did on this video, I spent ages tweaking all the additional clips to align exactly with the points being made through the audio. And I honestly loved it, even if it was time-consuming. I have to say that this project probably stressed me out the most but it was also the most enjoyable

So it’s something I can look into for future video-based projects, whether for this course or just personal enjoyment.

The equipment used was also very basic and I would love to have been able to use a proper microphone and a decent camera. For this, the only equipment used was a phone stand, with my phone’s selfie camera being the main camera. Again, we’re not being graded on this, but as a personal improvement for future video based projects, I’d love to have proper crisp audio and video. Of the two of these I’d say audio is the most important, so I might invest in a reasonably priced microphone down the road. The lighting also could've been improved, and I’ve seen decently priced ring lights that would enhance the lighting dramatically, so maybe one of those too. The iPhone camera quality is good enough that it doesn’t justify spending large sums of money on a high quality videocamera, so this would definitely be last on the priority list.

All in all, this project was an interesting introduction to the world of vlogging that - while stressing me out a tad - has inspired me to potentially do something more like this further on in the degree or in my personal life. Without the same level of restriction, or having a better understanding of what to do script-wise, it would be a lot less stressful and time-consuming so I’d be able to spend more time having fun with the filming and editing, which were easily the best parts of this project.

TLDR; I had fun with this one but wish it could’ve been longer. Irony

Here’s the final product! - https://youtu.be/5YruZeokUGI

#ctec502

2 notes · View notes

fallen029 · 4 years

Text

Familial Partings

They were both asleep.

The kinda sleep you get when you're tangled up in the blankets (and another person), after having been so tired, so exhausted the night before that you just passed out, eventually, and were dead to the world. The kind of sleep you got when you were completely free of all responsibility the next day and had no intention of awakening at the dawn. Perhaps even noon.

The kind of sleep that typically eluded the cantankerous dragon slayer and pretty eyed bartender.

Mirajane usually had to be down at the bar just as the dark sky began to lighten, in order to properly open up the place for daily business. Laxus, on the other hand, typically either found himself out on a technical S-Class that required him to be up early and, when this wasn't the case, adhered to a strict regimen of training that involved early morning attention. Both were rare to escape these constraints.

But when his woman, his demon, told Laxus the afternoon prior that she was going to be off the entire next day, well, fuck, all his plans went right out the window and all he wanted to do was be with her. In ways they typically couldn't. She giggled at the idea of sleeping in and then going out to brunch together while Laxus imagined their evening together, later that night, with a fancy dinner and, hopefully, a happy ending.

It was perfect. It was great. It was...flawed, because they forgot one essential thing.

"Well, it's over, boss. I'm packin' it in."

They had the least accommodating family/friend group in the world.

"Bickslow, what?" Laxus grumbled as he stood there, still rubbing sleep from his eyes, as he held open the front door to reveal one of his bodyguards. "What's going on? And what's with that box of stuff in your hands?"

"It's for you," he said simply. "And Mrs. Boss. To remember me by. Nice skivvies, by the way."

Laxus refused to be shamed for his special heart adorned boxers from his love in his own house. Still, he did step behind the door a bit more, a snarl in his tone as he questioned, "What's going on? You offin' yourself or somethin'?"

"Nope."

"Right, couldn't be that lucky."

"I," Bicslow informed him as, when the man wouldn't take the box he outstretched to him, the seith instead moved to drop it on his doorstep, "am hitting the road."

"I'm going to hit you if you don't fuck off."

"Ah, boss, you sly dog, you," he snickered as, the five wooden babies to circled the man's head, gave off their own unsettling chuckles. "I loved ya, you know that? The entire time."

"Bickslow," Laxus complained as the seith pushed up his sallet. "Seriously, are you fucking dying or something? Because if this is some kind of ruse-"

"No ruse. Just some man to man loving."

"Yeah, that's great, but I was having some dragon to demon loving and snuggling going on before you started knocking at my door. So if you're all set-"

"After you take this box of my belongings, I will be."

"If that's all it takes-"

"Dragon, what's going on?"

Mirajane was there then, peeking around the door as well. Bickslow whistled lowly, at the sight of her in her robe and Laxus, immediately, took to dragging the woman closer to him with a glare.

"Bickslow here," Laxus grumbled, "was just leaving."

"Mrs. Boss," the seith greeted instead. "Ah, this is so hard. I'm tearin' up, out here. I hoped to just speak to the boss here- No. You know what? I can't anymore. Do this. Call the two of you that. Mirajane. Laxus. Two of the dearest friends I know. We've had some ups, we've had some downs, but I just want you both to know, throughout it all, I saw you both for what you really were; my girlfriend's sister and her sister's boyfriend."

Again, his sallet was pushed up, to wipe an eye, and while Mira was staring in awe of this, Laxus only narrowed his own eyes.

"What exactly is going on here?" he questioned the other man. "Bickslow? What's up with you? Are you high? Or on some sort of illicit drug? Because Freed's the guy you go to with that shit. Not us."

"Illicit- Ah, Laxus. You always were a bit outta touch, eh? Me and my controlled substances. You and your alcoholism."

"I'm not an alcoholic!"

"Well," Mira began and ugh.

"We were quite the pair at one time, weren't we?" Bickslow questioned. "Why, it feels like just a few days ago, we were slinging back shots up at the guild and getting shitfaced while mackin' all all the hot girls."

"We've never done that. Together. And you've definitely never done that at all, with anyone." Then Laxus glanced to his side at the frowning Mirajane and insisted, "Neither have I."

"And Mirajane. Blessed Mirajane." Bickslow sighed softly, his dolls somehow harmonizing with this. "Feels like only yesterday I was sitting up at the bar, while you were there, working the bar."

"I mean," the woman remarked, "that's such a generic memory it probably did happen yesterday."

"Long were the days, huh, guys?" Bickslow whistled low. "I remember, Laxus, the first time we met. There I was, knee deep in your grandfather's pants-"

"What?" Mira asked as Laxus growled.

"Pockets," the slayer complained. "You were trying to pickpocket him and I caught you."

"I'm glad you look back on that fondly as well," the seith snickered. Then, looking to the woman, he said, "Then us, Mira, we were always clandestine, huh? Never could get that timing down."

"What are you talking about?" the woman questioned as Laxus was trying to decide if it would be worth it now just to strike the other man down with some lightning.

"Don't play shy," Bickslow insisted. "Coy. Obtuse. Dense."

"I'm not playing anything," Mira assured him and Laxus, though not wishing to, had to nod at that.

She wasn't.

"I was the one you were originally after," Bickslow went on. "Remember? In the beginning? You were this close to bein' mine and then the bo- Laxus. Laxus swooped in and stole you away."

"I...don't remember that at all."

"'cause it ain't what happened," Laxus assured her.

But, of course, Bickslow only shrugged as he insisted with varying inflection, "Tomato, tomato. What's important is that, after all this, all the ups and downs, all the secrets and stories, revelations and rendezvous. The trips! The adventures! That time I passed around your sex tape like it was a hot commodity."

"Alright, time to leave." Laxus didn't even sound pissed. Couldn't force it. Just took a step towards the other man, menacingly, while Mirajane made a face. "Now."

"I'm goin', I'm goin'," the other man insisted, taking a step back of his own while his babies, always fearful of being struck down by the slayer, flew further back as well. "I just, uh, wanted to give you guys this." And Bickslow kicked at the box then. "It's some stuff, you know? For you guys to keep? Give it to your kid. When you have one. 'cause oh, man, I just know you'll have one. Or two. Or three. But give 'im this. In remembrance of me and all. I probably wouldda been his favorite uncle."

"Bickslow...are you sick or something?" Mirajane asked as Laxus, still tense, eyed the other guy with uncertainty.

"Nah," he told her with a shake of his head. "Nothin' that sad. Just the sadness of partin' from your friends. Your family."

"Parting for where?" Laxus questioned, suspect of the seith's motives.

"Dunno yet, honestly, bo- Laxus." The man frowned then, looking at his feet with a shrug. "Where does a dark knight like me go, eh? When he's done here? A place like here? Fairy Tail. Can't rightly force myself to walk into the hall, get this old thing removed." And his stuck out his tongue, flashing his guild marking. As it was slurped back up, between his teeth, he said, "Think I'll probably keep it for now. A member in name. In spirit. But-"

"Where," the slayer questioned again, sounding more serious now, "are you going, Bickslow?"

"Wherever the big open road takes me." He laughed then, humorlessly, as he shook his head. "My parents were wanderers, you know. Travelers. With a circus! I'm not much one for that sorta thing these days, but I think their restless spirits, their travelers hearts, their wonderlust, its all built up inside of me, leading me on, yeah? I came here, to Magnolia, to Fairy Tail, because I needed a home. And friends. And family. But I've gotten that. I've tasted that. And while I'm thankful for it, for every single person who showed me any portion of that, throughout my years here, it's just time. For me to move on to the next phase in my life. The road's callin' and me and my babies are answering. I'll miss you. Both of you. Especially you, Laxus. But if you came to me, with the same request, I'd grant you with the warmest send off I could think to give. So I hope you return the favor."

They all stood there for a moment, the three of them, while the dolls floated about aimless, but captivated by their father's words. Mirajane and Laxus felt that, honestly. Captivation. He'd never spoken so eloquently, so from the heart, his true heart, not that character he chose to portray when they all got together. This was the real Bickslow, speaking to the real Mirajane and Laxus, and though their relationships all intersected and entwined so heavily, the idea of him unweaving his abruptly didn't bring them hesitance, but rather understanding.

After all, who knew better about the metamorphosis of one's life and standing more than Mirajane Strauss and Laxus Dreyar?

"Oh, Bickslow," Mira gushed as she jumped forwards then, from her place in the doorway, to go hug him. Tripping over the box at their feet in her gusto, she fell into the arms of the man, who hugged her tightly in return, and they weren't the most strained relationship of their Thunder Legion/Strauss sibling power group, but certainly one of the more underrated. But as they embraced that day, tightly, there felt like there was nothing stronger than the bond between them. Into his shoulder, she whispered, "I hope you find whatever you're looking for. Out there. And come back, of course, to visit. And definitely sooner before Laxus' and I have a kid. We haven't even had our wedding yet-"

Laxus cleared his throat then, feeling it necessary, because atop all the other chaos their morning had provided so far, he was not looking forward to either of those discussions again. But as Mira and the seith broke apart, but made something of a face and, stepping over the box, came to at least pat the man on the shoulder.

"You'll do well," he insisted to the man. "Wherever you go. I expect you to. Here or there, you'll always be a part of the Thunder Legion."

He sniffled then, Bickslow did, but didn't raise his visor to wipe his eye. Instead, he nodded at both the duo who were just realizing they were rather undressed to be on Laxus' front porch step, and were slinking back into the house.

"Oh, the Thunder Legion," Mirajane recalled to the man then. "Have you broken the news to them yet? Have they taken it well? I can't believe you're leaving them behind."

"Freed and Ever are both very understanding people," he told the woman simply. "Or, at least, I think they will be. When I tell them."

"Bickslow," Laxus warned, but the man only waved a finger at him.

"Na-ah, man," he chided. "You have no control of me anymore. Remember? I'm going to be a man of the streets again. So keep check of your pants, eh?"

It felt storybook. A fitting end. And though both Mirajane and Laxus, still rather sleepy and dazed by what happened, could stick that moment in their mind and treasure it always. A snapshot of their frequently aloof, but (not) always well-meaning friend. They'd all grown so close, in a new way, the past few years, as the Strausses incorporated themselves with the Thunder Legion, and become much closer to a blended family than groups of friends.

And if anyone in the family were the mother and father figure, it was the demon and the dragon.

When she moved to pick up the box, however, something crossed Mirajane's mind and, as the man wasn't completely off the property yet, she called out to the seith, "Hey, Bickslow, what about my sister? Are you guys going to try and stay together through this?" Then, frowning, she asked, "You're not trying to leave town wtihout telling her, are you?"

"Ah, no, you know it's not that," the man insisted as he glanced over his shoulder. "Me and the kid are destined to be."

"Then-"

"She's coming with me."

And Laxus didn't know why, after so many examples of this never being the case, that he ever thought he could just have a peaceful day at home, with his woman, and no interference from the rest of them. The morons they called their friends. Their family.

How naive. How idiotic.

There was a mad rush then, as Bickslow left, for Mirajane to change into her dress before tugging the still attempting to get dressed Laxus out of their home and all the way over to Bickslow and Lisanna's apartment where she didn't even knock.

Just threw the door open to come and stand just inside, her darkest gaze in her bright blue eyes, keyed in on where her sister was, at the moment, packing up a box in the front room.

Bickslow was standing before Lisanna, clearly having rushed right over to inform the woman of the impending doom that would soon be upon them. And oh, as Mirajane looked ready to wag a finger or two, Lisanna knew it was, without a doubt, upon them.

"Mira," Lisanna started, a frivolous hope to get out in front of something she, clearly, was going about to be steamrolled by. "I was going to tell you, but-"

"When?"

"Well… I was going to leave a note, I mean."

"Lisanna-"

"I have to be my own person now." She shot up, Lisanna did, from where she was putting away trinkets and things. Making a face over at her sister, she insisted, "I need to branch out on my own. Away from you. And Elf. And even Laxus. Natsu. Master. Happy. You've all become such a safety net for me, since I've come back, and it's stifling my growth. You all wanna bottle me up and protect me, but you can't. I'm a grown woman and I can do what I want. I have to do what I want. This has all been weighing on me, on us, me and Bickslow, for so long and we just feel like we've become stagnant here and we need to go, we have to go, to find ourselves, our real selves, and if you take that from me, if you stop me from doing that, then what was the point, Mirajane? Of me coming back? From Edolas? What was the point in any of this?"

While her plea was impassioned, it was not nearly as throughout or planned as Bickslow's from before which is probably why, without even a second of thought, Marianne retorted, "You're not leaving. End of discussion. Dragon-"

"Yeah?" He was standing behind her, hoping to fade away from what was about to be a huge sister blow up, he just knew it was. "Mira?"

"Lisanna is moving in with us. She's not ready to be on her own. Clearly."

"O-Okay, demon."

"No!" Lisanna had seemed nervous, ill-prepared, before, but now she was animated and stalking over to her sister while Bickslow and his babies quickly busied themselves with pretending to pack up as well. "You can't do that. You don't own me, Mirajane."

"I didn't say that I did," her older sister huffed. "But if you're making irrational decisions like this-"

"It's not irrational! I just told you that we've been thinking about this for a long time and-"

"Oh, have you?"

"Yeah!"

"Or has he? Huh? Are you thinking for yourself," Mirajane challenged. "Or are you letting your stupid boyfriend do the thinking for you?"

Bickslow, during this sisterly duel interlude, eventually found himself walking up to the woman, but still out of her perfrials, just to call out, "Hey, Laxus. I was meaning to ask you before-"

"Not the time," the man complained from behind his girlfriend as she stood, berating her younger sister, before him.

"-do you think you and the future missus would mind keepin', oh, all the shit in my apartment while I go on my lifetime sabbatical?"

"Bickslow, what?"

"Also, I'm behind on rent this month and if the landlord sees me leavin', he'll have my hide, so maybe either pay the man or take the stuff outta here under the cover of darkness?"

And suddenly, Lisanna wasn't the only one behind scolded for her dreams of a brighter future.

This was how, as neither the slayer nor demon had thought to close the front door, the others found them. Freed, Evergreen, and Elfman. Though an unusual trio, they weren't so unusual that day as Ever and Elfman had met Freed at the guildhall where, upon finding neither of his sister were working that day, the muscular man suggested they go around and see if each of them would like to do some sort of big, group outing that day. It had been a bit, since they'd had either a party or a nice group dinner. Just long enough that Ever and Freed, while hesitant, weren't completely oppose to that idea.

Which, like Laxus, was their mistake. For assuming they could ever just all exist, all of them, in their Thunder Strauss hybrid, as anything more than jumbled masses of moronic tendencies.

They'd heard the arguments brewing, both between the sisters and the two men, before they approached the still opened front door and, at the sound, all three hesitated for a moment. But then Elfman was rushing forwards because Lisanna and Mira fighting never spelled anything good while Freed rushed to defend Laxus (or save Bickslow; he wasn't too sure yet) and Evergreen had to sigh, the deep kind of sigh she reserved for just such moments where she realized, with certainty, that the choices in her life which led her to this very moment were surely punishment for some past life transgression.

Surely.

It was the only answer.

It took a bit to settle things out. Laxus was agitated, now twice over, and Mirajane was near hysterical over the thought of losing her sister, which only, in turn, revved Bickslow up and, for Lisanna, put her in the same state as her sister. Freed and Elfman, though they wished to help, did little as Freed, immediately, set in on Bickslow about irresponsibility and his proneness to it while Elfman, being a Strauss, quickly became just as hysterical and oh, Evergreen hated being the only level headed person in the group.

"Enough," she finally barked at all of them. It was less her voice though and more her slamming the front door of the apartment behind her that caused them all to pause, just long enough for the woman to give them all a harsh glare from behind her glasses, as if tempting them to remove the barrier. "Look at you. All of you. Why do we always have to be like this? It's almost as if we shouldn't all be around one another if-"

"Yes!" Bickslow, who at the moment had his shirt balled up in Laxus' fist, who was lifting him slightly off the ground. Turning in the slayer's grasp, he grinned over at where Evergreen stood by the door. "That's what me and Lissy are sayin'. It's time to move on."

"I'm confused," Freed admitted, taking a step back then. "I thought Laxus was berating you about rent?"

"I," the slayer grumbled as, anger fleeing, he tossed the seith back down to the ground, "am."

"But-"

"Who cares about their rent, Laxus?" Mirajane cut Freed off. Turning her dark eyes on her boyfriend then, she said, "They can't leave. Do you hear me, Lisanna? You can't."

"Where do you even wanna go, sis?" Elfman asked, eyes wide and pricking with tears already. "Huh? And runnin' out with him-"

"I'm," Bickslow complained from where his babies floated about his head, fretting, as he laid crumbled on the ground, "a catch."

"She risked catching something from being with you, anyways," Ever muttered with a frown.

"We're just going away," Lisanna insisted then. "For awhile. That's all."

"That is not all, Lisanna," her older sister retorted. "Bickslow came over and told us this big, long monologue about how he's going to go off, for years even, to go find himself or something. And if you're going with him, then what? You're planning on being away for years too? He gave us a box of things to give to our child to remember him by."

"Your what?" Elfman, suddenly, wasn't so focused in on his younger sister. Eyes darkening as well, he stomped over the small apartment towards Laxus. "You! Knockin' my sister up before even marryin' her-"

"You better stay away with from, Elfboy," Laxus retorted simply, turning to face the larger man with a glare. "I'm ready to fucking end all of you."

"A child?" Freed, who'd had his hand on his hilt before, when speaking to Bickslow, had drawn his sword at the oaf's approach of his idol, but lowered it some then as he looked to the oldest Strauss sibling. "Mirajane, are you with child?"

"I got a potion that can fix that," Ever offered her dryly as she inspected her nails.

"What?" She was wholly confused now. "No, I'm- Well, I guess you can never really know-"

"You better fucking know," Laxus retorted while Lisanna looked to her boyfriend.

"You did what?" she questioned as Bickslow only scratched at his head.

"I told you that I couldn't leave without seein' the boss one last time," Bickslow said.

"See," Lisanna insisted. "Not rile up. Or tell our plan."

"Your plan? So you were going to do it?" Mirajane shook her head. "Just leave in the middle of the night. Just like that. Just a note. And be gone."

"You don't understand," her younger sister replied simply. "The note would have explained everything. Probably way better than Bickslow would have."

"Yes," Freed mused absently. "As it is, I still cannot discern whether this imagined pregnancy has sprouted from."

"Don't care," Laxus retorted. "Better not leave this fucking room."

"Unless," Mira sang, thoughts drifting from her sister and to something far more precious.

"I'm telling you," Evergreen insisted to the slayer. "A few drops from this potion and-"

"So should I pummel Laxus or not?" Elfman griped.

"Not," Freed answered, "unless you want to be skewered."

"Don't worry," the slayer grumbled. "Wouldn't happen in the first place, Elfboy."

"You-"

"I'm not pregnant," Mirajane finally decided to declare for all of the interested parties. "And even if I was, that's not what this is about. Lisanna, if the two of you are going on some stupid vacation for awhile, fine, but Bickslow said it would be years before we saw you again. Is that true or not?"

This, finally, seemed to be the tense moment all the previous actions were building towards and Lisanna took a breath, a short one, before nodding her head at her sister and remarking, "It is."

"Lisanna." Elfman, finally, came to rush back over to his younger sister. Tossing his arms around her, his anger for Laxus was immediately washed out by his fears for his younger sister's future. "You can't do that. Just run off like that. For years? How am I supposed to go on, huh?"

"Well," Evergreen remarked simply, "you did get a trial run."

When this resulted in a look from Freed, she merely huffed and rolled her eyes.

"You're not thinking," Mirajane declared for her younger sister. "At all."

"You have no idea," Lisanna retorted, "if I am or not. You just don't like the idea because the tow of you want me to stay here forever."

"Yeah," Elfman agreed. "We do."

"Why," Mirajane questioned, "is that a bad thing?"

"We want it for ourselves," their brother kept up. "Don't we, big sis?"

"We do," she finished.

"But I," Lisanna insisted to them both, struggling her way out of Elfman's vice grip, "don't. I don't, okay? I like Fairy Tail. And I like Magnolia. But it's all I've known since getting back from Edolas. And that's not what I wanted for myself, when I returned. I wanted to see the world. To live. To really live. Again. And I have the chance to do that, with my boyfriend, who I love. We can travel around, experience new things, all together. The way I always imagined. And...I know I should have talked to the two of you about it before, that this is all so sudden and unreal to you, but the only reason I didn't is because I knew what you'd do. How you'd act. And look! You're doing it right now. I'm not...leaving to hurt you. I'm leaving because I need to. Fairy Tail's fine. My life here is fine. But I want something more. You both already found your more and that's great, but… It's my turn. And I need to do it without you. Both of you. I love you. And I'm sorry. But I'm going to go no matter what you say."

This felt like a rather touching moment for the Strauss siblings and, as Lisanna looked deeply into her older sister' similar blue eyes, she saw the flare die out in them before, eventually, Mirajane moved closer, dragging her sister towards her, and as the two embraced, Elfman only stood by, crying softly into his hands.

It was observed by Laxus and the others, silently for a moment, before suddenly, something seemed to occur to both Evergreen and Freed.

"You're," Freed questioned with a frown at the other man, who was finally shoving up and dusting himself off, "leaving?"

"For years?" Evergreen couldn't help it. She was hurt. And it was so hard to get her to that state, that painful reaction to the actions of another, but oh, man, she was reeling then. Coming closer, she was practically spitting as she accused, "And you were going to not even say anything? Just leave us a note? How dare, Bickslow? How fucking dare you?"

And suddenly, the humerous aspect of the Strauss siblings getting so worked up over something wasn't as funny or observational as it was previously. Experiencing it now for themselves, Freed and Ever both went through their quickly cycling stages of grief while Laxus, put out by both groups, watched with a frown.

"I'm not," he insisted when, in the end, Mirajane and Elfman released their sister and Freed and Evergreen both tapped their friend in the arm, "paying their back rent. Or keeping this shit in our house."

"Oh, dragon, yes you are," Mira decided for him with a frown and, though he didn't wish for it, he was weak to the woman's commands.

The demon still had some hold over her sister as well, as it turned out, and marched her down to the guildhall to give a proper farewell to her friends as well as explain her plans to her master. Laxus, however, got stuck on Bickslow duty, which meant helping him figure out his rent situation as well as, with the help of Freed and Elfman, carrying boxes back to he and Mirajane's place.

Evergreen was thankful for the attention never rightly being placed upon her and slunk away to escape either such fates.

Still, they all met when the time came, down at the train station that evening. Elfman was sobbing and Mira looked about ready to do the same, but both Bickslow and Lisanna felt far better with this arrangement than either had about sneaking away under cloak of darkness. Wouldda been fitting, Bickslow felt, for a dark knight such as himself, but sometimes, even the darkest of knights gotta tap into their emotional side.

And boy, Laxus seemed to have ruptured his own.

"Awe, dragon," Mira mused staring up at the man as he rubbed at the tears in his eyes, watching as Bickslow and Lisanna gave one last wave before boarding their train. "You're gonna miss them too, huh? You big softy."

But it wans't that. At all. Rather, after paying way more than just one missed months payment on rent, Laxus had a feeling it wasn't so much the oppressive nature of stagnancy the pair were escaping, but rather some other unpaid loans. Which, no doubt, Mirajane would stick on Laxus. And the second he paid them? The pair would return, but need money to do so, given they fled so far, and he was trying to start a life with his demon, have that little baby demon she was so craving, but fuck, how could he, when she was bleeding him dry?

Laxus wasn't crying for Lisanna and Bickslow's departure.

He was teary-eyed over their eventual return.

Still, it was rather lachrymose that evening, when they all went out to dinner together. Just the seven- Five. Five of them.

It felt incomplete.

"Well," Mira said after taking in a deep breath, seated at the table and looking around at all who were left. "This is for the better, right? Nothing happens without change. Progress. And they probably won't even be gone that long. I bet. So...we shouldn't be too sad. And Lisanna's right. She needs a chance to grow all on her own. Away from us. And it makes perfect sense to send her away with a man who plays with wooden dolls and seems to have some untreated, underlying mental deficiencies and… Dragon...tell me we did the right thing."

Dropping his menu, he moved to lay a hand on the woman's arm as he said, "Honestly, Mira, I have no idea."

"Laxus-"

"I don't," he insisted as the others frowned at him as well. "But I didn't know about gettin' with you. But I'm glad I did. I didn't know about hanging around with your family so much, once we were together, but that's turned out for the better. Wasn't sure how to feel about it, when your sister and Bickslow started getting so close. That's worked out fine. Wasn't sure about how I'd feel, when I came back to the guild, all those years ago, after my time away. I'm thankful I did. And fuck, I didn't know what to do when that stupid kid pickpocketed my grandfather all those years ago, but bringing him to the guild, introducing him to Freed and Evergreen? That was the best thing that ever happened to any of us."

"What Laxus is trying to say," Freed interceded, "is that you don't know, when someone's happening, if it will turn out for better or worse, but you must allow these things to take place. Or you turn out as Lisanna and Bickslow both feared; stagnant. It will be an adjustment for us all, but… I am content in Bickslow's reasoning and need for a departure. Should I return, I hope to welcome him with open arms. Should he not, I wish for the moments where I miss him to be filled with the same understanding I currently hold. Were our lives a reverse, I'd hope him, and all of you, to send me on my way just the same."

"We're mages," Evergreen offered simply though she did sound rather down and would spend the next few days staring into full wineglasses rather than empty. "We roam. It happens."

"Lisanna's such a man," Elfman insisted though, honestly, he seemed to still be attempting to assure himself of this fact, no doubt attempting to fight off the fading shock over the whole thing. "I bet she'll do great out there in the great unknown."

"It's part of life, demon." Laxus moved to pick his menu back up. "Leaving. Coming back. Going again. This might be home, but...sometimes you just need something else. Something you can't find here."

Mirajane nodded, a sad yet understanding one before, softly questioning, "But what happens if of the rest of us go? Or if we all go? Then what?"

"We pay less," her dragon tried to raise her spirits, "when we go out to eat."

But it didn't seem to work.

Still, Mirajane had dealt with and lived through far worse sudden changes in her life. In the grand scheme of things, this one hardly felt that momentous at all. So the days went on and then it was weeks and, slowly, things fell back into a new normal.

A month was approaching when Mirajane was given another day off and, the night before, she and her dragon were sure to spend it well. Which led to them being rather lazy the next morning, in rising, and when they both did wake, even, it wasn't out of a desire to.

No.

Rather, they both felt it.

A presence. Multiple. In their house.

"Oh, gosh, Laxus, put some pants on."

"Oi, boss, don't flash my woman, alright? Lissy's innocent."

The slayer, in his haste, stumbled into his kitchen that early morning in the nude only to find the intruders that sat around his kitchen table, eating bowls of cereal weren't exactly strangers. In certain ways, as he uncharacteristically blushed and rushed back out of the room, he kind of wished they were.

"What," Laxus growled, "are you doing here?"

"We have," Lisanna retorted as she shoved her bowl away, no longer hungry, "a key."

"For fucking emergencies!"

"Lisanna?" Mirajane had strode into the room by then, thankfully in a robe unlike her counterpart. "Oh, it is you!"

"Yeah, sis," Lisanna giggled as the older woman rushed right over to toss her arms around the younger. "It's me."

"What are you doing here though?" Mira questioned before, as she hugged her sister tighter, deciding, "Never mind. I don't care. Oh, I'm so glad to see you. I just don't… Are you both okay? Or-"

"We're great," Bickslow assured her, his babies lying dormant on the kitchen table. "It's a strange thing though; after camping out in the forest for a few weeks, we suddenly realized we kinda, well, you know."

"I know?"

Lisanna titled her head back up in her sister's grasp. "We like living in an apartment."

"Or a house," Bickslow said. "The worst part of going out on a job, after all, is the campin'. Why'd we think that we'd like it as the entire entree? Who knows. But now we're kinda homeless and-"

"Mira, no!" Laxus suddenly began to yell from the other room, running in to stop what he could hear, could literally feel, beginning to start. "Don't do it! Don't-"

"You can stay here," she giggled as he was too late, always too late. "With me and dragon."

"You mean it?" Lisanna questioned.

"Until you get back on your feet, sure," she agreed and he'd been wrong.

To cry.

To allow his hubris to get in the way.

Because, yes, he wouldn't have liked to pay to get the pair of them out of a jam, but oh, this wasn't going to be a jam, was it? The two of them living with him? This was going to quickly turn into never-ending torture.

"Still can't call you boss, I guess," Bickslow snickered with his tongue out, babies floating about as they mimicked this noise in a haunting fashion. "Not Laxus' either. Nope. Landlord it is!"

He should have stayed asleep, the slayer should have. Always. Any time. Whenever they were near, whenever they were close, he should just shut his eyes and pretend they were there. Like a little kid thinking he'd seen a ghost. Or an adult knowing, yet forcing himself not to believe he'd seen a ghost.

It didn't quite matter. Whether your eyes opened back up or not. Reality was reality. And Laxus, after all these years, had finally been duped into becoming the thing Bickslow got over on the most.

A landlord.

"Everyone's back together," Mirajane cheered, that evening, when they had all the rest of them over to celebrate.

While Elfman embraced his sister and Freed and Evergreen grilled Bickslow on his misadenvuter the past, oh, less than thirty days, Laxus only sat sullenly on the couch, watching with his head in his hands as the demon patted him on the head.

"Yeah, demon," he grumbled softly to himself. "They are."

It had been a bit. And everyone knows the first rule of every sitcom; at the end of the episode, everything goes back to how it was before. This was inevitable.

#Miraxus #Bixanna #Elfever #Freed Justine #Thunder Strauss Tribe #Fairy Tail #Fanfiction

23 notes · View notes

intersex-ionality · 4 years

Note

I’m sorry for asking but I cannot seem to find any answers. I see a lot of stray anti posts complaining about hazbin hotel, and I can’t for the life of me understand them because I haven’t seen the show. I read a summary of the plot, but perhaps you could explain better. What is it and why do so many hate it (and why have I seen no fewer than 4 unique posts claiming it’s “what happens when you let billdip shippers make things”?)

Now, I was never a billdip shipper, but I suppose I can see the, like, similarity in vibes between Alastor (a demonic radio host with untold evil powers and who speaks in a 1930s radio jockey voice), and Bill.

And since antishippers hate Bill and they also hate Vivienne Medrano, the attempt to compare “billdip” to an entire original cartoon property is, I guess, a logical connection for them.

But let me be clear: there’s absolutely fuck or all that can be said to parallel the popular interpretation of billdip, in no small part because there no Dipper character, and in much larger part because of Alastor extremely rejects all romantic, sexual and even platonic advances.

Antishippers hate Hazbin Hotel because they hate the woman who came up with and spearheaded the project. They loathe Vivienne Medrano for being a successful independent artist capitalizing on the desperate need in the general viewing public for the bright colors, musical numbers, and zany antics that only animation can provide, but without the stifling restrictions of being targetted towards children. Most “adult” animation is focused on being drab or viscerally disgusting as a form of schadenfreude humour. And while children’s animation certainly fills that bright and zany niche, because it is obligated to adhere to the morality of various broadcasters, it’s often very suffocated in what it can or cannot do or say.

The aesthetic that HH/HB has created is clearly a callback to two major styles of animation: the adult-aimed slapstick of early Warner Brothers, and the long-and-lanky exaggerated flailing limbs that were popular as a design choice in low budgets (TV, off-brand film) and fandom animation in the late 2000s.

Since this style of animation is also associated heavily with fandom’s last big burst of creative and sexual freedom before the whole “no boundaries, no barriers, the search algorithms can and will put porn on every child’s dashboard” disasters of 2013-2015, some people are naturally off-put by it, because it reminds them of the time a bunch of corporate overlords decided that they should destroy their own platforms. For whatever reason (it’s the capitalism, probably), people blame individual artists for this trash fire rather than the platform holders that purposefully destroyed organization and boundaries between groups in a desperate bid for ad revenue.

Antishippers have a deep-seated reflex reaction towards hating that art style. You can see it in the hatred of HH/HB, but also in the hatred of things like, “cringey once-ler fans” and of “people who draw all the homestuck like twinks,” and "people who draw Pearl like a man” and all kinds of other places.

Additionally, Vivienne Medrano was at the centre of a few other antishipper fiascos, because her previous projects involved what they call a “pedophilic student-teacher relationship between a child and an adult.” Of course, in truth, the relationship in question is between an 18 year old student and her 19 year old student-tutor, but when have anti-shippers let facts get in their way.

Likewise, she made a living for a while taking commissions for (SFW) furry art work, and has always had a very positive relationship with the furry community (despite not being a furry herself). People upset by her success as an artist are also quick to say that she has sex with animals, “like all furries do,” because as we all know, calling queer artists sexual cirminals is Good Praxis that has Never Caused Harm /sarcasm.

In effect, Vivienne Medrano is a perfect storm of things anti-shippers hate: successful queer creators who refuse to assimilate to heteronormativity; successful creators of color who refuse to assimilate to white respectability; unrepentantly proud of her art; unafraid to engage with sexual themes in a fun rather than puritanical and hateful way; popular in the late 2000s/early 2010s; an ascended fan who was able to turn her fandom credentials into a successful professional project.

Their hatred for all of these facts about her are presented in a way that lets them feel good about lashing out at someone they dislike/are envious of. Namely, by saying that her work is an act of sexual, racial, or gendered violence, rather than, you know, fictional and fun.

HH/HB is not somehow a perfect piece of art. I have made my own discomfort with facets of it very clear. And there are flaws other than my wariness of rehabilitation themes.

Some of the sound design is overwhelming, with a few scenes bordering Johnny Test levels of excessive sound effects; in some cases the editing has clipped too much quiet-space between the presentation of a joke and its punchline; those traits combined with the lack of closed captioning can make the show very hard to process for someone like me who has difficulty with speech.

The immense budgetary constraints of the animation can sometimes be seen in framerate dips or in peculiar background details. Zoomed out shots of the cast as an ensemble are particularly identifiable as places where what would have been filler art in a higher budget production were ultimately left in because there wasn’t time or money to replace them.

The show is extremely upfront about sexuality and especially queer and professional sexuality, which can easily be off-putting to people. Conservative Fox News hosts’ extreme homophobia and violence are put on full display--for the purpose of mocking them for being enormous sacks of shit, but on display nonetheless--which can likewise be uncomfortable.

At one point you see the clearly exposed brain of a cartoon egg, which I won’t lie, makes me gag every time it happens, no matter how stylized and brief the shot. (Why! Does the egg! Have a brain inside it!!!)

But, unironically, HH/HB is the best series of adult animation I have seen in probably a decade or more. Maybe in my entire life. Prior to this, the only option for adult animation that isn’t rooted in sadism or grey-beige palettes was anime, and the design direction and acting of anime are ultimately very different than that of western slapstick.

Obviously, not every anti-shipper is so outraged because they envy the success of an artist other than themselves. But a great many are fuelled by envy, either that they aren’t the success story, or that someone they perceive as The Enemy is a success story.

This is far from the first time that anti-shippers have proudly taken the same side as anti-queer bigots and as open and avowed racists, who also hate the show (for being gay, for featuring an interracial relationship, etc). It won’t be the last. But, for all that their actions are often indistinguishable from the queerphobes and the white supremacists, their motivations are at least meaningfully distinct.

#Hazbin Hotel #I suppose I'm the HHHB defense squad now #what a weird life #Anonymous

100 notes · View notes

snarksandsarcasm · 4 years

Text

World Trees and Akenash

It’s a big tree and a very fascinating one, too. It doesn’t have green leaves and it’s crown is small compared to the space its roots can inhabit. And it’s heart sits right there on the top, exposed to all sorts of elements, potentially, moving towards the sky as the tree grows.

Through its tree veins flows Amber, a golden sticky sap with many qualities. It comes in raw liquid amber, a distilled form fit for human consumption and a dried form.

Raw amber is acid and burns away human flesh (see young Aaron) and only elves and Styx/goblins can deal with that substance without any harm.

Distilled Amber seems to be used as a stimulant. It isn’t quite described what it does but it creates substance addiction. We know that guards yearn for it their boredom and possible loneliness in the tower and that Styx complains about the shared minds/thoughts. So consumption of Amber allows all users to share their thoughts. Like a magical Twitter. To the user this is all but a fantasy, so they just think anything (and we know how strange, exciting and disturbing thoughts can be) without constraint and find it enjoyable that others can join in their thoughts. If they substance users would talk to their peers, they would probably find out that they have in all reality shared the same thoughts, but I am sure that is beyond their understanding.

Dried Amber seems to be found widespread even after the Fall of Akenash. Another sign how big of a role the World Trees played in the environment of nature of this world in general. I imagine it to be a mix of a rubber and oil chalks. Brittle but also bendy. It’s like oil or rock minerals. Handling dried Amber doesn’t seem to cause any issues to humans. It can be brewed back into raw Amber and from that potentially into distilled Amber. Maybe it can be grated and further worked with to create explosives and to provide light and warmth.

The Tree seems to be a structure of twisted roots, stems and branches, intertwining and growing into a shape resembling a common tree. It is not quite as big as the Home Tree on Avatar, where it’s Navi people live in its giant structure, but certainly seems to have the same potential. Akenash’s tree is big enough for several such small levels, one of which is location for the final boss fight.

The roots are much larger than the rest of the tree. This may be the case for this particular World Tree as they ‘need’ to grow that long and large to find a place to take nutrients from. On the other hand, they don’t get anything from stone walls so what would those nutrients be in the first place? Certainly not water. Similarly the leaves don’t get any much light either, but how can we know the World Tree’s real potential if it’s looked up in a dark and dry place like this? Look at the initial cage structure to hold the tree in the picture. When we get to see the tree it has grown beyond and its roots reach into the lowest and darkest corners of the tower. In the roughly 40 years of Akenash’s lifetime. A big feat. Let this tree stand alone for 200 years and it will have outgrown the tower. Either way, it seems to live just fine without any much access to light or water. It does in fact deliver more to the outsides that it does consume in resources. It gives, it doesn’t take. The name ‘World Tree’ is a fair one. And if it’s not in such confinement it may just be a true and essential provider of life to all living beings.

The cocoons are marvelous. They are like large grapes growing from the roots here and there. Their cocoon wall is a see-through brittle substance but reusable. The human scientists refer to them as ‘embryos’ but I am not sure how accurate their understanding is. This would suggest elves grow from the Tree itself. But we also know elves where human once and we know how they reproduce (and SoD features both female and male elves). And looking how Styx was able to merely ‘rest’ in a cocoon and be ‘reborn’ … I see the cocoons more as rejuvenation and health pods. At any point any elve can rest in them to regain their health and retain their eternal life.

There are several World Trees but this particular one is the only one in human hands. One Akenash guard tells us as much. We know from OOAM that the humans occupy the centre part of the Iserian continent. In the North and West are the elves and dwarfs, the South is occupied by orcs, separated by a nice big wall. The East hasn’t been specified but I seem to imagine ocean for some reason. Styx left for an unspecified World Tree far away from where his Tribe lived. Upon finding himself changed he started his quest to undo the damage. Why not use the Heart of the Tree he studied? Why must he spend 200 years to ‘find’ the World Tree in Akenash? For some reason or other that previous World Tree wasn’t available to him anymore and he needed to locate another one with a functioning Heart. Musings for another time. Suffice to say, there ARE other trees, even more on the same continent, but they are not accessible to humans at this point.

It is not very easy to place all the races and determine their political positions. That would be musings for a different time. But we know that the humans don’t have access to any other World Tree, at least not unless they have good trade deals. So they protect their Tree and try to milk it as much as possible. Hence they built Akenash. It serves as a laboratory for Amber research and a factory for Amber resources.

Akenash was designed by Querberus, a human inventor. He refers to the tower as his masterpiece. It probably existed in his head for a long time before being used as a World Tree container and Amber factory. From my timeline attempts (I share them later) I figured that Akenash existed for about 40 years before falling. Orcs will build another tower in OOAM so I have little doubt they were also the main workforce for this one, too. Along with force-like magic in this world I can imagine such a massive structure was built in less time than we would think. Maybe a decade? Especially if Querberus is overseeing everything, knowing exactly what goes where, with the full support and resources provided by the human government for this project. Querberus went so far as even to design custom made, flying transport ships. Although, for that too, I am sure the inventor had some earlier prototypes at hand to finalize and perfect. From the final scene in MoS we can see the falling tower still sitting on a triangular patch of land, as if, some time prior, the whole tower lifted itself up from the ground. This may have been a desired result or an unexpected side-effect due to the powerful Tree housed inside the tower, we don’t know. That screenshot also suggest that the towers location was somewhere in a mountain range region.

We don’t know what else Querberus did before the tower of Akenash. But it seems his reputation is that of a Da Vinci even early on. He may have done many useful and practical inventions even before that at a younger age. He was a genius and it is a shame that after Akenash, he didn’t have the freedom to create many more projects. Shame on Aaron. (Side Note on the airships: They are designed with fire heating the air inside the balloon. I don’t think that is so effective, otherwise our Zeppelins would have functioned the same way …. but regardless of that, very little burning material is kept on the ship, unlike a whole coal wagon for early railway trains. I thus conclude that Amber might very well be used to keep the fire up one way or the other. I see it as a very essential, very powerful element full of energy in this world.)

We don’t get to see any females in the MoS game, for neither humans nor elves (whether the latter need them as such is also a question for another time). There are no family units or domestic areas. Therefore, the tower itself is a pure workplace, like an Off-Shore Oil rig. Shifts last for several months before one may return home. This applies to the humans and to the elves, although I can imagine the elves have less desire for intimacy with a partner than the humans do, when nothing really is private for the elves to begin with. But they may miss their original tribes and do their duty to this poor mistreated World Tree with honour and pride.

The infrastructure of the tower is massive. They have a library, a giant incinerator (does this keep the tower afloat?) and a huge prison complex. I think the humans had prisoners work on the tower construction itself and then in the tower to deal with the dangerous substance Amber and needed that area to house them all. Like a big prison/concentration camp. Only guards and high-end officials have the choice to go and work in Akenash.

Being vulnerable humans they can’t completely do their work without the help of elves. Styx referred to the last time humans died trying to extract the Amber from the roots of the Tree and reminds Barimen how the World Tree belongs to the elves, as a race. They have agreed to tend to the Tree on behalf of the humans. Hence the need for the elf ambassador to ensure good working conditions and to make sure the deal made is being adhered to. This also explains the human hatred towards the elves, who are here out of necessity, not nice company. And the elves don’t like the humans abusing a World Tree. Room for tensions!

We don’t know what exact Amber products are being made in Akenash. We see many containers full of raw Amber everywhere but that’s it. Considering the size of Akenash, there might be space to create huge items such as military weapons, vital airship engine parts or just silly little things such as light matches using an application of ground Amber on their tip. I guess this is another good topic for another time. Amber products!

Considering how much presence I give Amber in this world, the Fall of Akenash must have been devastating for the humans. Their primary source of Amber gone. Trading will continue and dried Amber is still largely available, but it’s not as convenient as having your own World Tree. But it’s consequences on politics and economics is something for another time. Especially as Styx suggested in the Intro that the World Tree is a big secret of the humans, hence all the locks and guards. But such a thing cannot entirely be kept secret. I can see how the government will not disclose it’s exact size/production capabilities etc to their citizens or trade partners but I am certain enough people know what Akenash is for. Why it took Styx so long to find this place? Good question. But we may equally ask why Styx went through such a pointless game anyway, considering he is strong enough to just go ahead to the Heart grabbing it. Hm.

Some questions I haven’t got an answer to:

Tree Reproduction

Is the Heart of the Tree a seedling? Do the new seeds sit in the glowing leaves in the crown? Does the tree bloom? Bear fruits? If it’s a tree this big, who does the pollination? Giant bees? Would it not be possible, that after the Fall of Akenash from the remains of the Tree a new one will grow? I would say that generally new trees are rare. There are many spread throughout the world, but I’d wager you can count them on two hands. If they’d grow like apple trees there would hardly be the need for the humans to put so much effort into guarding the one Tree they have.

Other Mutations

Humans mutated into elves many eons before. An Orc can mutate himself into a goblin within 2 decades. Roabies are mutated giant critters. So what else can and will mutate? Fruit flies? Little lizards? We haven’t seen anything else. Direct contact with raw Amber causes deformation and deterioration of tissue so that might be Cause Number 1. Digestion of distilled Amber seems to affect and open up the mind only. So really anything that has direct contact with raw Amber might change, which in actuality is less than what we think. Who would choose to do that? Death of the creature seems more like than the deformation.

#styx: master of shadows #my styx lore

17 notes · View notes

killmebutneverinsultme2 · 4 years

Text

Rules for mobile (Pinned Post)

The Code

Success. I’ve sufficiently pestered the wench to make me a blog, much to the cost of a certain behorned mischief god whose presence I must share. Follow the rules below, and there’ll be smooth sailin’, savvy?

This be an exceptionally selective blog. I was me mun’s first ever muse yonks back and I’ve pestered her into writing me again, BUT, she’s horribly pressed for time. Partners will likely be very few, else ones doubling up with Loki’s. Anyone is welcome to approach and enquire, but she and I will be leaning toward those either from me own universe or crossovers with which she’s highly familiar and characters in whom she’s especially interested. Ye have been warned.

Replies are like to be slow, up to a few weeks at most.

Partners must be 18+. Various themes of an adult nature may be found here. Sexual things will be tagged ‘#filthy pirate’ with whatever level/variety of sin I deem them. More details below.

Behave. There shall be no rudeness, no passive aggression, no hate, no censorship or generally being a twit. Do I make meself clear?

The Code - Extended (below the cut)

Hi, guys. I’m Pirate (oddly known as this long before I made Jack a tumblr). Here are my more detailed rules and guidelines for writing with me on this blog, though the absolute basics are at the top as, honestly, it’s never easy to remember everyone’s requirements.

Jack is a sideblog. If you’re being followed by a benevolentgodloki that means I’m following you back. I don’t need us to be mutuals (both following each other) for us to write together, but there is a greater chance of us having a partnership if we’re letting each other know we’re interested.

How I Roll

I note myself as ‘highly selective’. This isn’t to be an elitist bugger, it’s because we all only have a limited amount of time we can put in. I want to write what I enjoy with people I enjoy. I am married with two attention-seeking cats, two jobs, a slow-brewing intended writing career and a video game addiction.

Asks/Memes - I will usually answer these no matter who they are from but I may or may not turn them into a thread I intend to keep. Some memes are very much designed to be something that continues so context can be key. If you would like to know in advance whether I intend to answer and/or keep something, please do pop me a message and I will be kind and honest.

My Threads - While Jack’s blog is still exciting and new, I’m being a bit all over the place with who and what I reply to depending on which way Jack’s.. compass.. is pointing. I do have a rolling turn order that I adhere to (to the point that I can genuinely tell you who is next at any given moment) but it’s all piled in with Loki’s threads, meaning I can take a few weeks to get round everything. Every partner gets one of their threads answered within that ‘round’ and then I go round again. However, when I’m really into something/finding something easy to pop back, I treat myself to spamming certain threads or partners at my whim. I use rpthreadtracker.com to maintain what I have.

I will remind partners of threads that have not been replied to for more than three months. If I do not do this, I have either forgotten/lost it myself, I’m not too fussed about keeping it at that stage, or you were absent for a long period of time.

My Style - I will write in both past or present tense depending on partner preference. My default is past but I like either. Please kick me if I screw up and write the wrong one. I prefer using regular size font but I will make mine small on replies to people who use the smaller so that it looks neat. I will often match partners’ lengths and some formatting details e.g. bolding dialogue, but I struggle with doing novella-length posts for reasons below.

I have a bugbear to admit about role-play. What we call splicing. A good half of my partners write this way so I’m not about to tell everyone to stop but if you’re someone who does this, you will occasionally run into some frustrations when writing with me. ‘Splicing’ is when you retrospectively write dialogue or actions as having previously happened during your partner’s last post. These things are fine when they’re passive i.e. your character muttered them, thought them or you were writing what your character was doing at the time because that’s pretty much essential. The trouble comes usually when my characters talk a lot/ask rhetorical questions and partners choose to answer every single one despite the fact my character carried on talking. I know it’s an ass that I have talkative muses and you really want to respond to every point/get a word in, but putting words and actions into the past effectively godmods my muse into accepting they happened. If you feel your muse would have full-on interjected midway through their ramble, please ask me to edit my post/stop it at that point. Otherwise if you do prefer to splice, my muse will only respond to whatever it is your character did or said last in their post. This is one of the reasons I can’t write novella, because often there is only so much you can write before you’re stepping into the territory of changing what went before and not allowing your partner to do anything about it.

TL;DR don’t ever worry about your post being too short for me. If it’s one sentence long but it’s because something fast-paced is happening, I won’t be miffed.

Shipping! - no not that kind of ship, Jack. I love shipping. Ships all around. Let’s face it, romance can be one of the most exciting reasons we bother writing. I am open to a lot of ships for Jack, practically all of them. Yes, even that one. I will do downright nasty, toxic, horrible stuff, savvy? It’s fiction and Jack is a great indulgence for bad things happening to him as much as good. That said, of course don’t force something on him without prior agreement between us. Well, I mean, your muse can try and accost him and see what he does, just don’t expect him to definitely reciprocate. Jack and I are bi/pansexual. We’re open to everything. I will admit a heavy lean toward m/m but, that said, Jack is extremely fond of the ladies, more so than Loki. I am very into Sparrington especially.

Not Safe For Ye Olde Work

Sliding down from the above topic, I enjoy the occasional smutting. It is not a requirement from my partners. In fact, I’m warming very much to fading to black depending on the context/mood/if things feel a bit repetitive. I do feel a touch more comfortable with partners who don’t need that boundary but as I’ve recently figured ‘if it needs a cut, then it’s smut’ I know when to skip on.

Saucy material will go under cuts/Read More’s and be tagged as mentioned above with ‘filthy pirate’. Additional tags will be based on the citrus scale: ‘lime’ for general grabbing, ‘lemon’ for full on sexual content and ‘grapefruit’ if things get extra kinky. I will tag things such as ‘rape tw’ or ‘noncon tw’ or ‘dubcon tw’ where necessary. Please blacklist any or all of these at your leisure, or search them if you fancy :U I do NOT tag these as ‘ns.fw’ because tumblr just completely hides them from being searchable which is useless for my partners.

OC’s - Due to my time constraints I am extremely picky when it comes to OC’s. This is a good fandom for well-thought-out muses and I know firsthand how hard it is to make headway as an OC in the RP world. However, I also understand that for people like me, I want to dip in on this site to mostly play with the characters and worlds I’m really absorbed in and ship my weaselly black guts out. Some people have more time than others to really give your OCs the time and love they deserve. Unless I’ve played with you a long time and I really like the cut of your and your muse’s jib, it’s very unlikely I’ll bite. Apologies! The same goes for crossover muses from fandoms I’m unfamiliar with, but I will let you know if that’s the case.

Limits

Threads - I don’t have a strict limit on how many to have per person but please bear in mind that the more of these you have with me the longer it will take me to get to a particular one (unless I’m spamming it back and forth). This is more a mun/muse context how many I accept.

Exclusives/mains - I don’t do these although I may consider having a maximum of 3 or 4 of one muse depending on activity levels and to ensure plots don’t get mixed up or attention feel unfairly balanced.

Triggers/squicks - I don’t like body horror e.g. graphic detail of squishy bits having bad things happen to them. I’m writing a pirate so there’s absolutely allowed to be elements of torture/violence, just don’t stab him in the eye or chop bits off him. One torture-related thing sends me into a complete freakout which I’ll discuss with partners if we’re doing a thread of that ilk as needed. Kink-wise I’m not into mpreg, A/B/O or infantilism or toilet things. Just ask me/Jack if you’re after something XD

Who I Am/What I Need From You

Being yourself is the most important thing and I promise I am not a scary person (usually). We’re only human and it’s natural that we’ll get along better with some rather than others. This is more to give you a gist of the sort of person I am and who I gel with best.

So I’m a shy hermit at the best of times. I’m trying to be better at engaging and enthusing with partners over our threads because I realise more than ever this does keep things alive and make for a more enjoyable experience. I’m not always great at it. I work best with people who are patient and don’t worry too much on what I think of them and their writing, with people who are happy to keep threads going for the longhaul rather than keep dropping everything before I’ve had the time to get to the next post, and most especially people who accept that fiction =/= reality. I do need a certain level of quality, which doesn’t always mean perfect grammar, but it must be coherent, fun and creative. I like a relaxed approach, sharing mutual enjoyment in silly fantasy world sandboxes as escapism from (and exploration of) this complicated world we live in.

If you managed to read all of this, have a drink (even if it’s water). You’re a diamond.

Pirate xxx

#rules #pinned post

6 notes · View notes