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iriswords · 1 year

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Febuwhump Day 14 - Captivity

You can also read this on ao3 and find the rest of my febuwhump fics here

tw: ptsd, threats of torture, non-consensual drug use, hallucinations, mention of past trauma (Kaz’s), corpses (hallucinated)

Fandom: Six of Crows

Words: 2315

"If you want to beat me and take from what belongs to me and the Dregs, you’ll have to outsmart me," Kaz tells Geels. He does not expect the man to actually manage it and abduct Kaz.

Black Tips members hurriedly move out of Kaz’s way and watch him with wary eyes as he progresses through their headquarters building. None of them ever so much as begin an aggressive movement, like a hand going for a knife tucked in the belt, or a body tensing and readying itself to lunge. Kaz’s cane hammers rhythmically on the ground as he walks, an instrument to serve his reputation and the fear built around it rather than a source of humiliation.

Kaz came alone to the meeting. Anika frowned disapprovingly when he told her, but she knows better than to offer to come with him. But Kaz is in no danger. The Black Tips are too stupid to outsmart him, and should any of them try anything, he has his cane firmly held in his hand, the heavy crow waiting to smash itself into skulls, and several knives hidden in his coat, a reminder of Inej. People may be hurt tonight, but it won’t be Kaz.

“Shall I remind you all the times I defeated you, Geels?” asks Kaz, his voice glacial. Geels barely represses his flinch. The meeting between the two gang leaders started not even five minutes ago, and Geels is already going off-track. Perhaps Kaz should take more radical measures to make sure he stays in his place. Now, the only problem is that Kaz isn’t quite certain where exactly Geels’ place is, whether it is at the head of this miserable group he likes to call a gang or six feet under.

“And I am not even counting the times the Dregs beat up the Black Tips. You are an idiot, Geels, and none of your whining will get you anywhere. If you want to beat me and take from what belongs to me and the Dregs, you’ll have to outsmart me, which we both know will never happen. If you ever had a brain, you lost it long ago.”

Anger sips in Geels’ sigh. “I’ve decided to be civil, Brekker, and organize this meeting before attacking you.” Kaz rolls his eyes. The only reason he organized this meeting is because he knows perfectly well he would never manage to get what he wants any other way. “You’ve been stealing from the Black Tips. Both territory and clients.”

“The Dregs have merely been asserting themselves. The only one you have to blame for the Black Tips losses is yourself and your utter incompetence. I just told you: if you want to take what is mine, you’ll have to outsmart me.” Geels opens his mouth to retort something, but Kaz raises a hand and the older man shuts up comically quickly. “You’re older than me, Geels, and you’ve been living in the Barrel since you were born. You know what is the law there. Kill or be killed. Eat or be eaten. You should be grateful I haven’t killed you and taken over your gang. Ghezen knows I would have been more than able to.”

Kaz stands up from the uncomfortable chair Geels offered him.

“Where are you going?” asks Geels, standing up and reaching out to grab Kaz. Kaz smacks his hand away with the crow of his cane.

“This meeting is over. You tried to negotiate, it didn’t work. I have to admire your ability to put your pride aside. But the fact remains that what I took is now mine. There are no rules in the Barrel. Words will not make me yield back what used to be the Black Tips’.”

No one tries to stop him as he exits the building.

Kaz does not notice them until the sharp prickle in his neck. He knows immediately that his skin has been penetrated by a syringe, and he swings his cane back, crow head first. It hits its mark, if the strangled shout of pain one of his assailants give is any indication. In the end, it is of no use. Kaz stumbles on his next step, the world already growing hazy around him. A fast-acting drug, then. He collapses to the ground with a thud and does not hear the way his cane crunches under a violent foot.

Kaz wakes painfully, in a room so dingy it makes even the Slat at its worst look like a merchant’s house. Water leaks in heavy drops from a waterlogged wooden ceiling half eaten away by rot and insects. The floor hasn’t seen a broom in an eternity, and the air is rank with dust and humidity. Kaz will catch pneumonia and die from it before his captor has the chance to do anything to him, at this rate. A rat peeks out from a hole in the miserable, barely-standing wall, catches Kaz’s glare, and scurries away.

Besides a harsh headache pounding in Kaz’s skull and the drug-induced fog wrapped around his mind, Kaz is not injured. His bad leg throbs viciously, but it is nothing he hasn’t endured before. His wrists and ankles are unbound—his captor’s first mistake, and certainly not their last—but he finds as he tries that he cannot stand, his limbs too weak and uncoordinated. Kaz curses under his breath as he lowers—a kind word to say he falls back onto his ass—himself back to the ground.

He hopes whatever they gave him is not a derivative of jurda, because that shit is a pain to come off of.

His captor was at least smart enough to take away everything that could have been remotely useful to Kaz. He has been stripped to the barest of his clothes, though they had the decency not to leave him in his underwear (another mistake, he would have stripped his captive naked). The pockets of his pants have been picked, and his coat is gone. They even took his gloves off, his pale hands exposed, a source of vulnerability that makes Kaz’s stomach churn. He shudders at the thought of all the hands that roamed his body looking for his tools.

The door of the room—if it can even be called that—opens with a plaintive creak. Geels appears on the threshold, and Kaz nearly bursts into laughter from the sheer surprise of it.

“Not so arrogant, now, are we, Brekker?” asks Geels, smugness painted on his face.

Kaz scoffs. “You won’t hold me for long, Geels. Don’t give yourself false hopes, that’s how you end up disappointed.”

Geels steps into the room and closes the door behind himself. A knife glints in his hand, caught in a loose grip. If only Kaz had enough strength in his miserable, useless limbs, he could easily lunge and grab it. Geels would be done for, and Kaz would be out of this pitiful place in a matter of minutes.

“You sound very certain for someone who has been kidnapped,” comments Geels. He approaches Kaz fearlessly, a sly, satisfied smirk playing on his lips. “Can you even stand?”

Kaz doesn’t answer. If Geels thinks he can get under Kaz’s skin so easily, he is sorely mistaken. Kaz has years of experience of being mocked and doubted at every turn, of being belittled and pinned into the mud by the shoe of someone who felt superior to him. Of being looked at as though he were a mere cockroach, a stain on an otherwise-perfect masterpiece. His shell has hardened into an armor of steel; Geels’s pathetic attempts at taunts cannot pierce it.

And yet the man is right. Kaz is too certain. Inej always repeats it is his biggest flaw. He is too certain of himself, too arrogant, even in times he should not be. He boasts and taunts, and makes enemies of his opponents. It is how he built his reputation, it is how he built his empire in the Barrel, and how he asserted his domination. He would taunt and boast, but he would always come out on top. Not thanks to his strength and ability to fight, but thanks to his cleverness and utter lack of morals. The nickname ‘Dirty Hands’ did not appear out of thin air. Before he could let others do the dirty work and focus on more important matters, he had to do everything himself.

But now his mind, clouded and burdened by the drug, cannot help him, and his body has failed him.

“What do you want?” he asks Geels.

“I already told you what I want the other day, Brekker. You were quick to deny my demand. So I took your advice. I outsmarted you. How does it feel? I know for my part it will feel amazing, to be able to brag all over Ketterdam that I captured and killed the infamous Bastard of the Barrel. But first, I’d like to make you pay.”

“Get in line,” retorts Kaz in his usually cold tone. His composure is perfect, a true comedian’s mask. Geels, stupid as he is, blinded by the swell of his ego, will never notice the doubt swirling in Kaz’s chest.

“Ah, but as you said yourself, the Barrel doesn’t follow rules. There is no line. I was the first to manage to capture you, it is only normal I am the one who gets the pleasure of inflicting you some pain. But if you insist, I can surely arrange for all your enemies to come and partake in your torture before you leave this world. I’m sure I’d gain quite a hefty sum from the whole affair.”

He would, undoubtedly. People all over Ketterdam, merchants and criminals alike would run over one another trying to get here first or argue until blood trying to see Kaz to his most pathetic. But Geels isn’t quite idiotic enough to do that. If he reveals where Kaz is held, the Dregs will come. Jesper and Wylan, the only two Crows in town, will come. And Geels doesn’t stand a chance against them. Kaz’s abduction was only a stroke of luck. It will not last.

“What makes you think I will agree to give you the territory just because you abducted me? I don’t fear torture.”

Geels bursts out laughing. “That’s what they all say. In the end, they all do fear it. Pain is a potent thing, Brekker. The fear of it, even more so. You will break, like all the others. But that is not why you’re here. How long do you think the Dregs will last without you at their head to command them? How long until my Black Tips get back the territory that is rightly ours? How long until they take all of yours?”

Kaz rolls his eyes. “The Dregs are not incompetent fools, Geels. The Black Tips have nothing on them.”

“That’s what you don’t understand, Brekker. Leading people with a hand of steel does make for a good empire. But it also strips them of all initiative. You control everything, and this way you ensure things work like you want them to. But take out the head, and it crumbles. They will not last, without you.”

Kaz represses a smirk. If Geels wants to believe the Dregs are incapable of ordering themselves, it more than suits Kaz. He will rejoice in watching the man come crying to him when his plan inevitably fails.

“We’ll see who’s right,” he simply says. Something in his nonchalance makes Geels snap. The man lunges forward, his naked hand grabbing onto Kaz’s shoulder, the tip of his blade pressed against Kaz’s throat. The hand is all Kaz can focus on, the touch so abrupt Kaz flinches back and hits his head against the stone wall of the room. In barely one second, Kaz is back in the harbor, soaked in icy water, held up by a sea of corpses. Jordie is beneath him, serving as a plank for his brother.

Kaz doesn’t hear what Geels says. It is the sting of a blade breaking skin that brings him back to the real world. Out of the nightmares of his mind. A pearl of blood rolls slowly down Kaz’s neck, and stains the white hem of his shirt.

“I want to do more,” Geels whispers. “So much more. But I need you somewhat cognizant if I want to show you how much you’ve lost.”

His hand still firmly clasped on Kaz’s shoulder, he takes a syringe out of his pocket and stabs it in Kaz’s arm.

Jordie appears in the room about thirty minutes after Geels left. His silhouette wavers, shaky and blurry around the edges. He does not talk as he paces around Kaz, his eyes wide and never leaving his brother, but Kaz can hear every single one of his words anyway. Phantom hands grab his body, corpses press against him. He curls up tight to avoid them. It does not work.

Geels and three of his men come into the cell. They break three of his fingers. Kaz does not scream; he is too focused on the hand Geels keeps on his wrist the whole while. When Jordie comes back later, his skin hangs off him in tatters, muscles and bones gruesomely exposed. Kaz’s tears lull him into a restless slumber.

He wakes to a shadow sliding into the room. Her lithe step is familiar, her silhouette silently graceful, moving as though on a rope suspended high in the air.

“Inej,” Kaz murmurs and looks around for the hallucination of his brother. Jordie is nowhere to be seen.

“Can you stand up and walk?” asks Inej as she crouches down before him.

“You’re not real,” says Kaz childishly.

Inej’s expression softens. “Yes, I am. Come on, Kaz. Can you stand up or do you want me to help?”

He tentatively grabs onto her, and she does not touch him back. They make it out of the building slowly, Inej adjusting to Kaz’s pained pace.

Geels does not live to tell the tale of Dirty Hands’ capture.

@febuwhump

#my writing #creative writing #fanfic #fanfiction #whump #febuwhump2023 #febuwhumpday14 #soc #six of crows #crooked kingdom #kaz brekker #kaz brekker whump #hurt kaz brekker #ptsd

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novantinuum · 3 years

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Hi, I was just wondering if you had ever thought about what would have happened in your story "Hollowed Moon" if you had continued it. I always thought it was such an interesting setup that could have gone in so many different directions. And there really aren't other stories focusing on Stevonnie and Spinel, so it was unique!

Hiya!

So, I do have some half-written, half-plotted out material to share. I gave this story some consideration the other day, and came to the decision that I don't have the desire to finish it out, alas- I have far too many other active WIPs to add it to the list. There's a few good reasons why I discontinued it, anyways... intimidation over the huge surge of attention it was getting back in 2019, some rude comments from overzealous Spinel fans, (I know everyone isn't like this, but a certain segment of the Spinel side of the SU fandom kinda burned me over time, hhh), and a future chapter containing a sensitive topic that I wasn't in a good headspace to write about at the time.

But! Anyways! Below the cut is all the existing material I have for Hollowed Moon past chapter 14, consisting of a mixture of descriptions, sketchy dialogue, and prose. It honestly feels nice to finally be able to put this story to an official rest.

Chapter 15

“I... I saw her.”

“Who-?”

“I saw Pink Diamond. I saw you, in this exact garden, in a dream. I- it was like I was experiencing everything through her. She explained your game, tapped your nose and told you to smile, then warped away—“

“That’s it, that’s what happened, almost exactly! But how could you even know that, I never—“

“I don’t know,” they blurt out. “I have empathic abilities, and sometimes that makes dreaming a little weird, but I have no idea how or why I saw any of this.”

[Pause for Stevonnie to think]

“Spinel, I’m so, so sorry,” they whisper brokenly. “But I think... she left you here.”

“What...?”

“She said she’d return, but before she warped away she whispered goodbye, like she didn’t actually intend to make good on that promise. She was lying to you,” they choke out, voice thick.

“No. No,” she says in clear denial, “no she’s not. She can’t be! She told me she’d come back! I can wait! I just have to wait—“

“But she’s not! She... she can’t, because Pink Diamond is gone. She- she was shattered, Spinel. Five thousand years ago, on the Earth. I- I should’ve told you this from the beginning, and I didn’t, and I- I’m so, so sorry—! But she left you behind, and now she’s never coming back.”

[Silence. Tears brim in Spinel’s eyes. Her eyes grow dark, pained, and then she glares at Stevonnie with such venom it almost knocks them backwards in alarm. ]

“NO!” she screams, tears streaming down her faded pink cheeks.

[She tears her feet up from the roots and runs away, using her arms like an orangutan to vault herself forward super fast so Stevonnie can’t catch her.]

___

Chapter 16

AN: Content warning for self-shattering attempt. Part of the reason why I had to stop writing this story at the time. I considered pushing the plot another way, but it didn't feel authentic to how I believed this scenario would play out for Spinel when she didn't have a direct target for her anger. Without someone to actively be jealous and upset AT, I could only imagine her breaking inwards instead of outwards, feeling that she's utterly failed in her life's purpose. Nothing more than a description for this chapter... and it'd be a short one.

[When Stevonnie finds her, she’s smashing her fists against her gem in her sheer anguish. She’s already cracked it. She’s glitching. It looks terribly painful. She’s about to strike her gem again when Stevonnie intervenes.]

___

Chapter 17

[Post timely intervention. Spinel is still cracked at this moment, though... her form glitching as she cries.]

“I was... her best friend,” she cries, fat, glistening tears streaming down her cheeks. “I was supposed to make her happy! Why wasn’t she happy? Why didn’t she come back?“

[Spinel reasoning that maybe if Pink came back for her, she wouldn’t have been shattered in the first place]

“What did I do wrong?” she whispers hoarsely, gazing pleadingly into Stevonnie’s eyes. “Wha- what am I doing? Why do I wanna hurt myself so badly?”

“Shh, now,” they reply, tears of their own brimming at the crease of their eyes, and pull Spinel’s head to their chest. “I’ve got you...”

___

Chapter 18

They know their throat is tight, and their voice scratchy. They know they’ve never sung this song in front of another living being, since it’s something personal they composed alone on one of their late nights back on Earth, thinking about all the difficult days Steven and Connie have had to face over the months. Pair this with their active crying, and there’s no way their singing will be anything pretty.

But pretty doesn’t matter right now.

Stevonnie opens their lips, and— clutching the broken hearted Gem close, rhythmically rocking with her back and forth— lets the wandering melody emerge from within.

“I guess I have to face That in this awful place I shouldn’t show a trace Of doubt...”

“But pulled against the grain I feel a little pain That I would rather do Without...”

“I’d rather be Free, free Free...”

[Hoarse, Spinel starts singing with them.]

“I’d rather be Free, free Free...”

“Free, free Free...”

“From here...”

[Stevonnie holds her tight while crying, their tears healing it back up.]

___

Chapter 19

AN: Don't have anything but a single bit of dialogue in this chapter note- I'm assuming I intended it as being a good few hours after the events of chapters 16-18... when Spinel has calmed down a little and has a moment to reflect on the upsetting news she's just received.

“I think... I always knew,” she says, voice hoarse. “In a way. It was so obvious how she felt about me.

___

Chapter ?

AN: From here on out, the plot hasn't been split into individual chapters.

[At some point shortly after chapter 19, Lars and his crew locate Stevonnie in the garden, and pick them and Spinel up. The next few bits of dialogue and description takes place on the ship.]

Rutile twins: “I haven’t heard of Spinels being produced in over five millennia.” “Me neither!”

Rhodonite: “Yeah, I heard they stopped making them entirely after the rebellion on Pink’s colony.”

[A bit of overwhelming conversation later, no one really noticing Spinel's conflicted emotional response to so many Gems hovering around her at once.]

Padparadscha: “I predict that you’re both going to make Spinel feel very uncomfortable aboard this ship.”

Rhodonite: “I’m sorry, we don’t exactly meet new Gems every century.”

Rutile twins: “Yes!” “It’s just been us until we met our captain!”

Fluorite: “Our new huuuuman friend helped us escape the tunnels on Homeworld. Now... we’re slooowly making our way back... to Earth.”

Spinel: “Earth?? You’re going to Pink’s world? But why? I heard she... was shattered.”

___

[Spinel feeling a sense of kinship with the idea that there’s other Gems who didn’t serve their rightful purpose and are now escaping their life on Homeworld to be free of that. Because now, without her Diamond, since she was unable to keep her happy, she’s an Off Color too. She failed her given purpose same as them.]

[Discussion of Earth, and the rebellion, and how there’s Gems living free there. And how Pink’s colony was siphoning life away, and that’s what these Gems were fighting to protect. Stevonnie points out all the plants and wildlife that used to live in the garden, and asks her if she felt happier when it was around. Spinel says yes. Stevonnie says that this is what the Diamonds are destroying, with each lifeless colony they forge. Everywhere they go, dead wildlife lies in their wake.]

Spinel: “I... guess I never thought of it that way.”

[(Stevonnie adds...) And while they’re very sorry for the personal connection there, and can’t imagine how painful that must be, that’s why Pink Diamond was shattered.]

[Spinel is given an open choice... Lars gives the invitation to stay with him and the Off Colors, and Stevonnie offers for her to come with them back to Earth. It's not a hard decision for her in the end, though. She's always dreamed of seeing what was once Pink’s planet, ever since she heard the Diamonds bequeath it to her.]

___

Stevonnie: “Okay, so… before we go, I need to be honest with you about something." [deep breath] "I’m actually a fusion of two separate people who are close friends. You... know what fusion is, right?”

Spinel: “Duh, o’course! What, d’ya think I was made yesterday?”

[...]

Stevonnie: “But even with that, I can’t be together as me all the time. Steven and Connie, the two who come together to form me... they love hanging out with each other so much, but they also have their own lives! Other friends, other hobbies, their own families. They still talk when they’re apart, but they know it’s okay to do things alone, too. Do you know why I’m telling you this?”

Spinel: [shakes head no] “No...?”

Stevonnie: [sighs] “I understand you’ve been left behind. Believe me, I know how bad that feels. So the last thing I wanna do is make you think I’m doing that too.”

Spinel: “Y-you— you’re going away?” Stevonnie: “Unfusing, yes.” Spinel: “But Stevonnie, you—“ Stevonnie: “Spinel. No matter what, you are my friend. Steven and Connie consider you a friend, too. And my hope is that you’ll keep making a whole bunch more on Earth, so you’ll always have people around who know and love you. But that can’t always be me, okay?“

___

[At home... on Earth. There's a bit of a close call for Pearl when Spinel arrives, and recognizes her as Pink's second pearl. This is news for Garnet and Amethyst and Steven, the first of which had somewhat suspected that Pearl used to be in the diamonds' service, but never knew for sure. Pearl, of course... can't say much on this due to her gag order... not that anyone else knows about that yet... but does manage a very concise and PD=RQ free explanation about her past in Pink's court, and her transition towards being a Crystal Gem:]

Pearl: “Rose Quartz set me free, and I’ve been a part of the rebellion ever since.”

___

[At some point between the last scene and the next, mention how Spinel had a bit of a relapse... she ended up poofing herself, and reformed differently. A little bit closer to the smudged mascara and frayed pigtails look of canon, but no rotated heart. Unlike in canon, she has a solid support system amongst the Crystal Gems, and she's working hard to recover from the heartbreak of Pink's abandonment.]

___

[Final scene is set post A Single Pale Rose. Steven and Connie fuse, and Stevonnie goes to find Spinel to check in on how she's taking the news. The final line of the fic is as follows:]

Spinel: “I know you’re not her, not really. And I know you’ll always be a better person than she ever was. But in some silly cyclical way... back in that garden... it’s almost like Pink came back for me after all.”

#su #spinel #stevonnie #su fanfiction #my fic stuff #hollowed moon #this isn't REALLY 'my fic stuff' since it's unwritten but #i think it deserves to be here. this is the full unfinished plot of a fic that got the most exposure of anything i've ever shared in fandom

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howaboutalittlehelpneos · 4 years

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YGO! Questionnaire

Tagged by @cipher-wise

Pleasantly surprised to be in one of these, so let’s go

Favorite series: *Gestures to icon* Is it any surprise I’ll be picking GX? I love GX with all my heart and soul. The story’s pacing is very good and never feels like it’s dragging its feet to get to where it’s going, most duels are over in less than a full episode with the longest one being three, there are so many good characters to get invested in, and this boy right here is your protagonist.

Look at him blow kisses to the audience after beating Crowler, how could anyone not love Jaden Yuki? I care him so much. Even the filler episodes in GX are pretty fun to watch most of the time, and it’s the good kind of filler that may not advance the plot much or at all, but it’ll give you plenty of good memories to take with you. Who could possibly forget the eggwich thief? Not to mention the soundtrack fucking slaps.

Favorite protagonist: I mean...

Yeah it’s Jaden. GX hooked me immediately when I started watching it because of how much I loved this boy. He’s that perfect mix of cocky and sweet when it comes to dueling because he’s confident in his own abilities, but he never stops having fun and being amazed at what his opponent can do, he cares about all of his friends and does his best to help them with their problems, he’s kind to strangers, and he has exactly half a brain cell.

I feel the gif speaks for itself, but Jaden’s dialogue when he turns around here is “I’m such a sucker for things like this! I’ll help you, ma’am!” Dorothy says “No, you’ll be late... Don’t you have a test today?” And Jaden replies with “Who cares if I’m late? I couldn’t leave a lady in trouble!” Jaden Yuki is my absolute favorite protagonist.

Favorite rival: Oh man is that a tough one. Am I allowed to pick two? It’s a hard call to make between this dumb edgy bitch-

And this dumb gay bitch

Honestly they’re tied for favorite rival in my book. I absolutely loved Chazz when I watched GX, and I thought his arc about breaking through his inferiority/superiority complex and learning to accept loss as a part of life without letting it define him was wonderfully written, and seeing him grow as a person throughout the show just made me feel happy for him. Shark... I really thought I wasn’t going to end up liking Shark at first, but god he just gets so much better as Zexal goes on, starting out as this mean spirited middle school bully in episode one, and slowly ending up as Yuma’s boyfriend closest friend. It’s incredible to look back at how Shark acts when he’s first introduced and compare it to... season 3, I think it was, where just hearing the words “Yuma’s in danger” is enough to send him running to his rival’s side. Chazz and Shark. They are my favorites.

Favorite BFF: Him

Crow Hogan is an absolute treasure and he was my favorite part about watching 5Ds. This little bird man first gets introduced by stealing cards for his kids and clowning on Sector Security, and he’s a source of so much good throughout the show. Excellent best friend (technically brother but I’m counting him), wonderful father, 10/10 person all around. Plus the fact that the only thing stopping him from berating his bitchass brother even more was Yusei having to literally pick him up and pull him away is definitely extra points in my book. What a powerful little bird. His only weakness is people that are taller than him, which is unfortunately most people.

Favorite GFF:

Yuzu. Have I actually watched Arc V yet? No, but I’m still picking Yuzu for my number one here. Tea and Tori are just awful characters, I’m neutral towards Alexis, and Akiza... Did have potential to be something interesting on her own, despite how uncomfortable she made me in seasons 1-2 of 5Ds, but her relevance is alllll downhill from there. I’ve seen one clip of Yuzu yelling at a man eating pie and calling him a 100th rate duelist, and that was all I needed to know she would be my favorite. (Clip here)

Favorite villain: Oh boy

The fuckin carrot is my favorite villain, and I say this as someone who fully believes he didn’t deserve to be in the last episode. Vector did some fucked up shit in his day, and he only continued to do fucked up shit in Yuma’s day, but I have to say he was pretty effective when it came down to his goals. He got things done and went right for what he wanted by taking direct action to seize Don Thousand’s power, and he manipulated Yuma perfectly by preying on his kind nature and love for Astral to use him to further his goals.

...Plus I mean just look at his subbed dialogue God he’s such a slut. Evil slutty alien.

Tl;dr Vector was a horrible horrible person, but he was a good villain, and he was so entertaining whenever he was on screen that it was impossible not to like him. Still kinda wish he got what he deserved though, and what he deserved definitely wasn’t another chance.

Speaking of Don Thousand though, can we talk about how unfairly pretty he is? If I had to pick a runner up villain in terms of looks alone, it would definitely be him.

God it was not fair how pretty the big bad of Zexal was. He’s fucking gorgeous, and in my opinion, the best looking villain at the very least.

Favorite card: *Sweats in Duel Links* Favorite? There’s so many cards out there to pick from, but since I’ve already broken the rules with my two favorite rivals, I’ll be picking two of each card type: Spells, traps, and monsters. One for the aesthetic, and one for how often I make use of it.

First up, the Aesthetics group

What can I say, Vampiric Koala is such a cutie, Dwimmered Path has some really pretty card art, and Rainbow Life is an eternal flex on any heteros I may encounter while playing Duel Links. Nothing better than a gay trap card.

Now for usability

Dragon Knight of Creation is suuuper helpful in any dragon themed deck and has a permanent slot in my decks for Mokuba and Kaiba, PoG is always a fun way to boost up weak monsters to ridiculous heights, and Dark Bribe just lets you block your opponent like “Okay I know you wanna hurt me but I will let you draw another card if you do not do that thing”, and they can’t refuse you.

Favorite episode: I’ll be copying cipher’s format here and picking one for each series, but this will still only total out to five for me since I’ve yet to watch past Zexal ^^; Soon I’ll get to Arc V! One day...

Season 0: Episode 16: Turnabout by a Hair's Breadth - The White-Robed Crisis I’m a sucker for my son Joey, and this was a good Joey episode about him and his sister, plus it was nice seeing that doctor get what he deserved :) Duel Monsters: Season 5, episode 12-14: The Deciding Match for Duel King - Yugi vs. Leon/Golden Castle of Stromberg/KC Grand Prix Ends Probably a weird batch of episodes to pick, I know, but a lot of DM was kinda forgettable to me, and these are some of the few episodes I do recall. I just... really felt for Leon’s situation, and I wanted good things for that boy. I care him. GX: Season 3, episode 34: Dark Fusion! Inferno Wing!! Jim. Jim Jim Jimmmmm. This was the episode that finally made me understand why saviorshipping was a thing because it hits you with all these memories Jim has of Jaden and shows how they bonded before all this Dark World shit happened, and the whole thing was very emotional. 5Ds: Season 4, episode 2-3: Recollections, Entrusted with a Friend's Dying Wish God Crow, my precious bird son. I really liked the backstory they gave him, despite how much it hurt. It was probably the best character development he got in the whole of 5Ds, and let you see a side to him you probably wouldn’t expect. I loved watching him get his justice. Zexal II: Season 2, episode 5-6: Alito the Silent Fighter - Reunion of the Passionate Duelists!/ Be Revived! The Duelist Soul That Transcends Life!! I picked these episodes for Nistro and Nistro alone. He was one of my absolute favorites in Zexal, and seeing how well he and Dextra were doing was good for the soul. Just look at this good lion man right here.

Look at him!!!

Favorite decks to use: Elemental Heroes, Aromages, Red Eyes, Six Samurai, and Crystal Beasts.

Fusion, Ritual, Synchro, Xyz, Pendulum, or Link: I’m a simple girl, I love fusion/tributes for how easy they are, but synchro can be pretty fun, too

Years in fandom: ??? Even I don’t know the answer to this one, friends. I used to be in the fandom when I was in middle school, wrote/read a few fanfics here and there, but then I fell out of it for... Well I’m 22 now and only got back into things 6 months ago? I started rewatching the abridged series of Duel Monsters in March, and from there I just wanted to consume actual Yugioh content and never went back.

Who am I tagging: @finding-fallen-petals @dizziedaikonn @chazzaroo Go wild y’all

#ygo tag meme #ygo dm #ygo gx #ygo 5ds #ygo zexal #jaden yuki #judai yuki #chazz princeton #jun manjoume #shark kastle #ryoga kamishiro #crow hogan #yuzu hiiragi #ygo zexal vector #ygo zexal nistro #gauche #probably the longest post ive ever made on this blog jesus christ

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lostinfantasies38 · 4 years

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Writer Asks

Thanks for tagging me @cartadwarfwithaheartofgold ! Tagging @theaiobhan @bigfan-fanfic @jacklyn-flynn @thejeeperswife @darlingrutherford @ginnyq

ao3 name: Lostinfantasies38

fandoms: Exclusively DA. Once upon a time I wrote for Harry Potter, as well, but I have deleted or lost them all over the years

number of fics: 13

fic i spent the most time on: Sun Touched - I started writing this story in Oct 2019 and posted the first chapter in December. It is not complete, because it is a novelization of DA:Origins, but it is my love child. Sirra Brosca/Alistair Theirin is my ride or die OTP and I love my feisty dwarf with all my heart.

fic i spent the least amount of time on: Careworn - a Tumblr angst prompt featuring Varric Tethras (another fave dwarf!) that I penned in a furious outpouring in an hour. Love this piece so much - it is heartbreakingly beautiful.

shortest fic: Careworn is also my shortest fic, so I’ll post my second shortest for a change of pace. Another angsty Tumblr prompt, Wait For Me, is only 811 words

most hits: Sun Touched has 495 hits! Say whaaaa?!? It blows my mind since it’s a rare pair AND an Origins storyline instead of Inquisition. Seeing how many people enjoy this story never ceases to amaze me since it is purely indulgent on my part.

most kudos: You Give Me That Lovin’ Feelin’ This is my collection of rare pairs for @scharoux 14 Days of DA Lover’s for Valentine’s.

most comment threads: You Give Me That Lovin’ Feelin’

most bookmarks: Sun Touched and Find Me Well Within Your Grace are tied

highest total word count: 89,761 words for Sun Touched (keep in mind this story is only 1/4 complete). I expect it to hit, if not exceed, 400k by the end.

favorite fic i wrote: This is hard because I love both of my current WIPs for very different reasons!! Sun Touched and FMWWYG are my faves - hands down.

fic i want to rewrite/expand on: I need to finish From The Ashes We Rise, but I do plan to go back and rework some of the earlier chapters. It was my first foray back into fanfiction and it’s a little stilted in places, which irritates me. It’s still good, but it's not my best and I hate that it's not a true reflection of my storytelling abilities.

share a bit of a wip or story idea you’re working on: From the next chapter of Sun Touched (since it seems to be the story everyone is most interested in): Read under the cut

Head held high, Sirra tossed back the hood of her blue-gray cape with more confidence than she felt, letting it settle around her shoulders to lead her companions into the market district. Zevran choked slightly at the motion and Sirra glanced uncertainly at him, painfully aware that Alistair was also staring at her.

“What?”

Her palms sweated and butterflies settled in her gut in a rush of nerves, unsure what to make of her male companion’s inability to tear their gaze from her new visage.

“My dear, you are –” The elf blinked in a daze, breathing deeply before continuing. “Not that you are not always becoming, mi dulce, but now –”

“It’s strange to see you without tattoos,” Alistair interjected quietly. “I know it’s you under the glamour. I can hear your voice, which is disconcerting because it’s coming from a strange woman’s mouth.”

Plump lips quirked involuntarily as she leaned toward the men gawking at her new identity. “And what does this other woman look like?”

Alistair shook his head, cognizant that any admission of finding her attractive with an unfamiliar face was probably unwise, but Zevran had no compunction to hold his tongue.

“Radiant waves of flame, eyes to rival sapphires, and lips so perfectly formed that not having another’s pressed against them is surely a sin in the eyes of the Maker.” Zevran murmured sensually while bending over her hand, ignoring Alistair’s warning growl and Morrigan’s irritated groan, maintaining Sirra’s gaze as his lips brushed her knuckles.

“Men would go to war for such beauty, Warden. If you hoped the glamour would hide your presence in the city, I fear it shall do the opposite.”

Alistair sighed in concession. “Zevran is right. At least, no one will suspect that you are a Grey Warden. That was the goal, but if we want to remain unnoticed, you’ll have to wear your hood.”

Sirra struggled to breathe after Zevran’s effluent praise. Sparing another glance at Alistair, she noted his flushed cheeks while replacing her hood, carefully tucking rogue strands of crimson under the linen. Rica’s stunning beauty flashed through her mind and she snorted at the irony.

“Well, I always wanted to know what it was like to look like my sister. Guess I got my wish.”

#writer asks #ao3 writer #ao3 fanfic #Sun Touched #find me well within your grace #sirra brosca #alistair theirin #sirrastair #cullen rutherford #cullistair #varric tethras

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homespork-review · 4 years

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Homespork Act 3: Insane Mindscrew Haymakers (Part 1)

BRIGHT: Before Act 3 proper starts, we see a message from Nanna to John, written in the front of the Sassacre’s joke book from Dad’s safe. The message is somewhat bizarre. For one thing, according to Nanna, the book it’s written in will end its journey on the day she dies...and still carry on for a while. For another, it talks about game elements we’ve encountered already, and hints at more to come. Overall it’s a nice bit of detail, enough to whet the reader’s interest.

You are no doubt reading this as a handsome and strapping young man! Why, the mangrit needed to lift the book is itself a sign of your maturity, not even to speak of the wisdom needed to grasp the nuance of Sassacre's time-tested mischief. I am so proud of you, grandson! How I wish I could have delivered this heirloom to you in the flesh. But I am afraid it wasn't in the cards! For you see, John, like you, this book must yet take a journey! Its journey will end on the Final Day of my life, and even then will continue some. Though I suppose that will be up to your Father. Perhaps he will discuss it with you one day, when he and you are ready. But it is your journey I am writing about to wish you luck! There will come a day when you will be thrust into another world. And once you arrive, that is only the beginning! You will soon delve even deeper into a realm of Warring Royalty in a Timeless Expanse. A realm of Agents and Exiles and Consorts and Kernelsprites. Of toiling Underlings and slumbering Denizens. A realm where four will gather, the Heir of Breath and Seer of Light, the Knight of Time and Witch of Space, and together they will Ascend. John, if only you knew how important you were! I regret my passing came so early in your life. And yet I feel in my heart we have already met. But what I know for sure is that we will meet again! Until then, John, I do hope your Father keeps you well fed!

FAILURE ARTIST: As I said earlier, Hussie has artfully defaced books, including one antique one about an expedition around the world. Defaced books show up again in this comic.

CHEL: Particularly, it implies that Nanna also had knowledge of the game during her lifetime, somehow, and refers to the gathering of four heroes. This is our first introduction to the classpect system, which now rivals Hogwarts houses as a method of personality description in fandom at large. I think at the time I didn’t realise who it was referring to… Anyway.

Next, we officially meet GG, the fourth and final member of our gang, a “silly girl” with a cheery grin, sleeping in a greenhouse full of vegetables and spirograph-shaped flowers. Since she’s sleeping and can’t object, she’s referred to for a while as FARMSTINK BUTTLASS, but she’s way ahead of us; under her hand is a note admonishing the reader and declaring her actual name to be Jade Harley. I think she’s the cutest of the kids, myself - just seeing her first appearance makes me happy! All its weaknesses aside, Homestuck’s pretty great at creating painfully cute character designs and attaching a good range of personalities to them.

FAILURE ARTIST: Jade Harley was considered a “Mary Sue” when she was first introduced. I don’t know why. Yeah, she has a lot of eccentricities and unusual possessions but so do the other characters.

Farmstink is a reference to an old comic Hussie did about this dude obsessed with the stink of farms. Hussie’s early work is really weird.

CHEL: The reader attempts to wake Jade by dropping a pumpkin carved with an animal’s face on her head, but the pumpkin disappears; as we know, WV now has it. Fortunately for the pacing, Jade wakes up on her own. Look closely, and you’ll notice the symbol on her shirt changes each page; that turns out a bit later to be due to her hi-tech WARDROBIFIER. If I recall correctly, Hussie intended to settle on one chosen by reader vote, but ended up on a cycle of three different ones.

FAILURE ARTIST: Jade settles on three icons to appear on her shirt. However, eventually just one icon stays on her shirt. The WARDROBIFIER doesn’t get much use with her, though a later character has the same thing.

CHEL: Jade is also wearing COLORFUL REMINDERS on her fingers, and when the view pans out it’s revealed by the view from the window that her GARDEN ATRIUM is on a high floor. She plays the flute badly for a while in a Flash game; apparently it’s not her preferred instrument. Also fortunately for the pacing, we think, she knows how to use her sylladex, and prefers to set its retrieval function in the form of a memory game because you seem to have a knack for always guessing right on the first try! On checking her reminders, she remembers to wish John happy birthday, gathers some fruit, and heads upstairs by means of a teleporter.

Jade’s bedroom proves to be full of various disturbing-looking plushies, albeit not nearly as disturbing as the Smuppets, hanging baskets and potted plants, a bass guitar, and G-rated furry artwork, including a piece obviously drawn by Dave. Franchises depicted in her toy and poster collections include GREEN SLIME GHOST (the apparent copyright-friendly source of John’s T-shirt and pogo ride), MANTHRO CHAPS (mustachioed human faces on plush animal bodies), and SQUIDDLES (adorable octopi with magnets in their bellies which stick together as Tangle Buddies!). Her favoured weapons are rifles, though she would never shoot an animal, and she has various gadgets on a worktable, including a thing that looks like a disconnected window not unlike those shown in Rose’s book, which she apparently hasn’t been able to get to work.

FAILURE ARTIST: Manthro Chaps is a reference to Hussie’s particularly disturbing set of comics where he plays around with anthropomorphization. Like having an anthro chicken man lay anthro eggs.

CHEL: The comic in question, Humanimals, can be found here; warnings for extreme body horror and general grossness.

FAILURE ARTIST: Jade is told by a forum prompter to Lose interest in fauna and never speak of it again. Jade refuses to in a beautiful little speech but she denies she’s a furry. Oh, if she only knew what was coming for her.

Jade looks out the window and we find out she lives somewhere next to a volcano.

CHEL: The very same one which appeared in the animation at the end of the last act, in fact.

Your grandfather is a WORLD RENOWNED EXPLORER-NATURALIST-TREASURE HUNTER-ARCHEOLOGIST-SCIENTIST-ADVENTURER-BIG GAME HUNTER-BILLIONAIRE EXTRAORDINAIRE. He has taught you everything you know.

Grandpa is heavily coded here and in his appearance a bit later as a Great White Hunter, an upper-class European guy who goes to faraway countries in order to shoot the animals there. Of course, non-white people can certainly do that, but white is what people will immediately picture upon seeing the trope. Also note we have another ridiculously wealthy family here. Since all four of the kids have now been introduced and we’ve had a lot of WSP points from their races and financial statuses already, here we get another HOW NOT TO point as well.

The Country Club Here every single character is white and middle-to-upper class. Unless your novel is taking place in rural Sweden, this will eventually give the reader the eerie feeling that some form of ethnic cleansing has taken place. HOW NOT TO WRITE A WEBCOMIC: 14 WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 7

One could argue that some form of ethnic cleansing is taking place, since these are the kids who are surviving the apocalypse, though that’s not actually fair because there are plenty of other SBurb sessions all across the world which might also succeed.

Jade opens her GADGET CHEST and produces several more items pertaining to her interests, including her computer, which she keeps in a Squiddles lunchbox. Several fortune-telling items are included among them, but according to Jade they are not the source of her abilities. The Magic 8-Ball is apparently usually wrong, responding to being asked whether it’s John’s birthday today with NOT EXACTLY, and the Magic Cue Ball is supposedly always right but is impossible to read, making it completely useless.

FAILURE ARTIST: There’s another Problem Sleuth reference (or rather Problem Sooth) but what’s important is the Magic Cue Ball. Unlike her Magic 8-Ball, it has no window where one can read the prediction. If only Jade had a special vision. Perhaps an eightfold vision.

Jade goes to feed BEC. She has some sylladex trouble until she finally just takes a steak out of her fridge.

CHEL: Once again, the sylladex shenanigans waste several pages.

GET ON WITH IT!: 9

Bec’s identity is as yet unknown, but recall that Dave called him a “devilbeast” in an earlier conversation, and when he suggested shooting Bec Jade said she didn’t think she could if she tried. He also apparently eats nothing but steaks (lucky Grandpa’s a billionaire), so Jade is living on an island with apparently minimal supervision from her guardian and an allegedly dangerous carnivore running wild outside. Like Dave, at this point it seems to be very lucky she’s a cartoon character.

FAILURE ARTIST: Using a special oven she irradiates the steak. Umm, I think Bec can take that but I worry about Jade.

Jade finds and plays her elaborate bass and she’s much better at it than with the flute. During the flash, the camera pulls out and we find out where she lives: in a tower on a small volcanic island with a frog temple in the lagoon. An airplane goes by and drops a package.

Jade uses her super high-tech “lunchtop” to have a conversation with John. Nothing special about that but we see on her chumroll a bunch of unfamiliar handles. Hmm.

CHEL: The unfamiliar handles are listed in the “Trollslum”, which one presumes is a blocklist. I think you have to see just how hi-tech the lunchtop is:

"Jade: Get down to business." (Watch on YouTube)

Hussie’s really coming into his own with the animations by now.

FAILURE ARTIST: Dave has sent her some messages begging her to wake up and unfortunately one line has the f-slur in it.

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 7

In the end, he decides she’ll probably forget what he says.

CHEL: Begging her to wake up” doesn’t exactly cover it.

TG: youre asleep again arent you TG: or do you even know if you are TG: i still dont know how that works TG: its like nothing means anything

Apparently Jade sometimes talks to him while she’s sleeping.

FAILURE ARTIST: There’s a little flash where you can listen to some of Dave’s tunes. When you’re done with that, you can join her in looking at mspadventures.com. A crude John wearing a wizard hat is sitting on his lawn with the caption

It begins to dawn on you that everything you just did may have been a colossal waste of time.

What the hell is going on here? Is Jade reading what John is doing right now?

CHEL: I think it’s just a fourth wall joke, but it’s certainly accurate, considering our GET ON WITH IT count.

FAILURE ARTIST: Next, we get this flash called Midnight Crew: Act 1031. If you are watching it in 2019, the song playing is Dead Shuffle by Mark Hadley. However, the song was originally Nightlife by Bill Bolin. Unfortunately, Bolin had a dispute with Hussie over Hussie using music that Bolin considered WIP. Bolin blew up and called Hussie “unprofessional” and in a very professional move posted a photo of himself giving the double deuce. It’s a shame this happened since Nightlife is a jauntier and more appropriate tune.

CHEL: The Midnight Crew, to be specific, are gangsters with card-themed names who bear a striking resemblance to WV, living in a mysterious purple city full of towers, pitted against the Felt, another gang of odd-looking green fellows who wear bowler hats with numbers on them, in the colour schemes of a set of pool balls.

Hussie did make reference in the previous page to a “weird tangential intermission [which] clearly advanced the plot in no way whatsoever”, implying that it actually is relevant, and the purple city and its shiny black beady-eyed inhabitants look very familiar, but since as far as we know at this point the Midnight Crew is just a comic-within-a-comic, you know which counts get added to.

GET ON WITH IT!: 10 WHAT IS HAPPENING??: 2

Just for the record, the leader of the gang is named Spades Slick, and yes, we’re aware that “spade” is a slur against black people, which makes it slightly unfortunate to be applied as a name to a black-shelled alien creature. However, we’re not counting that as PROBLEMATYKKS because Hussie and the Crew’s original writer certainly did not intend that. It’s not that commonly used a term from what I’ve seen, the playing cards would be the more likely immediate association, and with the other characters being Clubs Deuce, Hearts Boxcars, and Diamonds Droog, it’s just an unfortunate coincidence. If he was a black human, then I’d object more strenuously.

FAILURE ARTIST: Jade talks with Dave (I think the conversation is a repeat?)

CHEL: Yep.

GET ON WITH IT!: 11

FAILURE ARTIST: Finally, we get the flash we’ve been waiting for: Dave strifes with his mysterious guardian. Or rather, he strifes with Lil Cal while Bro is a speed blur.

BRIGHT: Unlike the other strifes up to this point, the reader can’t do anything other than watch, because Bro slices the command box in half right at the start.

TIER: In the world of Homestuck, the parental units are overall just really weird! Like dad Egbert severe overabundance of cakes and mom Lalonde's drunken dysfunction. It's overall all hilarious, fitting with the tone and humor of the story well!

But then we have our lovely outlier. The one, the hated, The. Bro “a huge bastard honestly” Strider! A.K.A basically the one guardian whose questionable parenting gets the Real Consequences treatment later on in this tale. Peculiar that.

CHEL: Now, under most circumstances, an adult man beating the hell out of a barely-teenage kid, on the precarious rooftop of a high-rise building no less, would be horrifying. However, Bro chooses to hit Dave with his puppet, which… is frankly hard to take seriously. Obviously it would still hurt if a real person did that, but it looks so stupid that the immediate assumption is that it’s a joke.

BRIGHT: Particularly when earlier strife moves like Rose’s ‘Empty Suicide Threat’ were intended to be humorous. This is about on the same level as that, in terms of severity!

TIER: Being smacked around by the flopping noodle limbs of a freaky puppet is honestly hard to take seriously. Hell, this entire sequence is chock full of outlandish “Rule of Cool” bullshit and I am Peeved that I was apparently supposed to look at this sequence of ridiculous events and go “OBVIOUSLY THIS IS FUCKED UP AND ABUSIVE”.

ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY?: 7

CHEL: I could kinda see that with hindsight from the rest of the comic, but definitely not “OBVIOUSLY THIS IS A LOT MORE FUCKED UP AND ABUSIVE THAN THE OTHER AWFUL FAMILY CIRCUMSTANCES”, which is what was apparently intended. And we also get another HOW NOT TO point, which we’ll give now even though the official “reveal” comes much later.

A Novel Called It - wherein an abusive parent exists Bad parents are everywhere in unpublished fiction. Whole cities of abusive fathers and sneering mothers live in the pages of books that can’t be sold. While occasionally, and notably in the horror genre, this sort of material can be made good (Carrie, V. C. Andrews), most cruel parents in fiction are just as much fun as they are in real life. HOW NOT TO WRITE A WEBCOMIC: 14

That damn puppet gets creepier every time, admittedly, more so now that Bro is moving so fast that the thing appears to be dancing on Dave’s head under its own power. Dave’s expressions look more annoyed than afraid or hurt, however, in my opinion.

FAILURE ARTIST: Anyway, we go back to Jade. Rose is pestering her.

TT: I require a font of frighteningly accurate yet infuriatingly nonspecific information. TT: Do you know where I can find a wellspring of this sort?

Very business-like, isn’t it? Rose and Jade’s relationship is a big missed opportunity in this comic. They’re more like friends-of-friends than friends.

CHEL: I don’t know, that sounds to me like how Rose talks to the boys too; facetiously formal. Still, they don’t converse nearly as much as the boys do with each other or them. Male writers in particular tend to do this, and it’s not entirely their faults. People are socialised to think women talk a lot more than they do, so he probably didn’t notice.

TIER: A real shame honestly, we were fucking robbed of some peak interactions between a sunshine flower child and a “dark and brooding” baby goth. Fucking. Robbed.

FAILURE ARTIST: We find out that Jade was the one who had the idea of playing Sburb. She had told Rose that the game would answer some of Rose’s unnamed questions. Rose wants more information on this Big Day. Jade says the game will not be what Rose thinks it is and will answer questions Rose hasn’t thought of yet. On that mysterious note, Jade says goodbye.

CHEL: We check in briefly with Rose in the present, confirming that she’s found the secret passage and is escaping the fire, bringing the corpse of her cat along with her, then to John, who is doing much worse. The ogres (the giant tusked imps) have cornered him, and while he flails frantically about with his Pogo Hammer it doesn’t do much good. They beat the snot out of him with the old Sassacre book and the tire swing, then send him flying into the abyss; fortunately, Nannasprite is able to catch him on his bed and provide healing, allowing him to flail uselessly at the ogres again and get beaten up again, ad infinitum.

Back in the desert, a giant worm-like creature emerges from PM’s bunker and chows down on the cart full of mailboxes. PM is displeased, and puts a hand on the hilt of an ornate black sword.

Cut back to the FAQ, which John has found time to edit with information about the punch card system. He doesn’t know if anyone is left alive to play the game, but Rose asked him to add to it, so he will. He’s figured out with his 133t h4x0r 5k1llz that the captcha code on the back of the cards is converted into a binary-based pattern on the cards, 0 being blank and 1 being a punched hole. Overlapping the cards functions like a bitwise AND operation, causing both to be enacted. The 48-hole card system allows for 300 trillion combinations, but John lampshades the fact that this couldn’t possibly cover every conceivable captchable item, and that various combinations of overlapping cards would just produce the same combination. This is just adding to my conviction that the system ought to be reworked; the totems alone would probably allow for a much wider range, if one gets down to the atomic level of their shape. Then again, those would be a lot harder to merge… Still, I’m sure there’s some way to work it.

BRIGHT: This section was kind of surprising to me because up to this point we haven’t had much if any description of John being into coding, so the section came out of left field somewhat. Not bad, necessarily, just jarring.

CHEL: Actually, he did mention in his intro that he likes to program, albeit not very well, he had some coding books on his shelves, and the icons on his computer are named in a way which implies they’re some of his attempts at coding. However, this interest never really comes up again later that I remember.

Meanwhile, the secret passage Rose followed led to her mother’s laboratory, which bears the logo “SN” with a stylised atom and a spirograph pattern in the loops of the S. It seems Mom Lalonde knows more than she’s letting on about the game. Inside the laboratory is an enormous HUBGRID of devices into which the laptop can be plugged.

FAILURE ARTIST: Rose uses that ol’ r-slur when she says she won’t go on the pad so that’s another point.

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 8

CHEL: Jade uses the TRANSPORTALIZER to travel most of the way down to the ground floor, but not all the way down because the one on that floor is blocked. As she walks down the last couple of flights of stairs, we see Grandpa’s own collections of stuff; taxidermised animal heads, suits of armour, mummified corpses (made by pasting in photographs to the cartoon background, it’s creepy as hell), and his BLUE BEAUTIES, or the DAUGHTERS OF ECLECTICA; sun-bleached portrait photographs of beautiful women. On the final floor, we are confronted with the thing blocking the final portal; a gigantic preserved monster with a white head and green serpentine body. It took me till just now to figure it out but I think the white part is supposed to be a human torso on the snake tail; at first it just looked like a snake wearing a stocking mask. That’s what happens when the humans don’t have arms.

Jade thought she had logged off from Pesterchum, but suddenly it pings again, and here we are introduced to an entirely new section of the cast. We’re probably not spoiling anything by not being mysterious about them at this point in the fandom’s history, but just in case, we’ll stick to doing the reveals when the comic does. The person talking to Jade is one of the names from her TROLLSLUM, under the handle carcinoGeneticist; they gloat about being “BETTER AND SMARTER THAN YOU, FOREVER” when asked how they’re still contacting Jade after being blocked, and mock her about today being “FINALLY THE DAY YOU FUCK EVERYTHING UP”. Angry, Jade blocks them again.

FAILURE ARTIST: I had forgotten that “they” appeared so early.

CHEL: Well, “appear” is stretching it; the TROLLSLUM only make contact through Pesterchum for a while yet. And when they show up, we’ll have both plenty of skilfully-written points to pick out and plenty of counts to apply.

#Homespork #homestuck #literary critique #sporking #Let's read #let's read homestuck #homestuck let's read #homestuck review #homestuck meta #homestuck reread

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thanatosbananatos · 5 years

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The Ultimate EruHan Meta

Oh boy.

So, I feel that first, I must preface this long-ass meta:

First, bless your heart if you read this.

Second, this is just for funsies. Yeah, for some reason, I find this kind of shit enthralling! I have no idea why. Regardless, this is not meant to shit on EruRi shippers, LeviHan shippers, or anyone in-between. This is simply something I've been wanting to do. Erwin and Hanji have a very underrated relationship, and I've wanted to highlight it for a long time. Years.

I also use “she” pronouns in this meta, but I think Hanji can have whatever pronouns. Isayama has said it doesn't matter to the story, so run wild.

This ship is incredibly important to me, and I hope to share my feelings with the fandom in a light besides incessant fangirling and stupid art.

OK. Let's do it.

I have read through the series thus far (right now, it's late April of 2019) completely in Japanese, and I've done my best to read through English translations of each chapter as well. Why Japanese? Well, I'm an elitist.

Just kidding.

There's actually a very specific reason that I prefer the Japanese to the English, and it has to do with the linguistic structure of the languages. In English, there are certain things that we cannot change in our writing to emphasize something--the word “I,” for instance, is always “I,” and “you” is always “you.” Right now, as I type this, I realize how limited the written English language is. I can only show you emphasis by bolding or italicizing the words, and even then, there are things left up to interpretation.

Japanese is quite a bit different, and though there is plenty of ambiguity used in this language (trust me, I've done studies lol), there are also parts that are more specific than in English. There are, for example, numerous ways to say “I,” “you,” and other pronouns depending on the speaker, the listener, and other circumstances.

It's because of this that I prefer Japanese dubs and prints of anime and manga, respectively.

The last time I went to Japan, I came home with the first 14 volumes of Attack on Titan in Japanese, and this was the shit that dragged me into EruHan.

As is the case with most Americans, I assume, I saw the anime before I read the manga, but it was not until I read the manga that I started to ship Erwin and Hanji. Why?

I'll explain the details later, but one of the biggest reasons is that the bulk of their interactions occur in what will be season two and beyond.

However, they do have really important interactions in season one, aka chapters 1 through 33 of the manga. Those moments serve as a great base for what to eventually expect in the latter chapters, when all of the heartbreaking shit happens. c':

We never know for sure how Erwin and Hanji met, but we know that at some point, Erwin came to trust Hanji enough to consider her to be a competent Squad Leader, and eventually considered her as one of his right-hand men, along with Mike, and after a few years, Levi, too. Hanji's squad has a specific focus: to study Titans as closely as possible. It seems like a pretty dangerous job, but Hanji is a dangerous person in general.

Erwin is generally known as a strategist both in canon and in the fandom, but for a strategist to do their job, they have to have facts to base their plans on. As we learn later, Hanji is the source of those facts.

One of the most glanced-over scenes in the entire first season is when Erwin and Hanji are leading the Corps back to the wall after failing to secure Annie in her Titan form. Hanji questions Erwin's decision to send Levi off only after making him refill on gas and blades; Erwin reveals that his plan was based on Hanji's information in the first place.

In other words, Hanji is someone that Erwin trusts implicitly.

But, we see the same thing with Hanji toward Erwin when they corner Annie in Stohess.

If you recall, Erwin and Levi are with Nile and the other Police soldiers during the rampage--Erwin left Hanji to call the shots. Again, proof of trust in her abilities as a leader.

However, I find it hard to believe that Hanji would have followed Erwin's plan if it had been anyone else besides Erwin that proposed it. Why?

Think of how much destruction the fight in Stohess caused. It's almost inexcusable, considering that in the end, Annie seals herself up and is useless as a test subject to Hanji and her squad. Hanji's first job is actually not a soldier, but a scientist; however, she trusted Erwin enough to not only agree to his plan to stop Annie at all costs, but also enough to be the one to carry out the dirty work.

Additionally, Hanji questions EVERYTHING. As a scientist, it's only second nature. I've admittedly seen a lot of people shitting on Hanji for questioning Erwin from time to time, but NEVER should it be interpreted as insubordination or disrespect. Rather, Hanji is trying to acquire more information from Erwin to gain knowledge of as many perspectives as possible. And, by questioning Erwin, Hanji serves as a double-check system. Levi tends to follow Erwin blindly, whereas Hanji will question him almost as a test--as if to ask, “You sure? You thought it through? OK, then let's go.”

When thinking of all of this in anime context, there's one more thing I'd like to point out:

The first OVA, Ilse's Notebook.

In this particular OVA, most of the focus is on Hanji (thank god), and it expands upon what is briefly shown in the manga when Hanji, Levi, and his squad find the journal lying around. The OVA starts with Hanji basically drooling over the idea of capturing a Titan--and no, it's not just because she's obsessed with the Titans themselves, but because she's obsessed with answering the many unanswered questions in their world, of which, the Titans are often the subject. However, when she confronts Erwin with the idea of capturing one, he turns her down--according to the dialogue, this isn't the first time they have this discussion, either.

But, perhaps you noticed Hanji's argument to Erwin? When he mentions the lives they've lost in the Corps?

“Without making any sacrifices, we can't gain anything!”

Doesn't that sound familiar?

“Someone who can't throw something away can't change anything!”

Armin said something similar--do you remember whose ideals he based his quote on?

Erwin's.

But, maybe, also Hanji's?

It is entirely possible that Hanji and Erwin have had the same thinking from the start, or that one of them influenced the other.

We don't really know for sure, since we've yet to receive Hanji's backstory (Will it even happen? Sigh), but regardless, they think similarly. OK. That's a thing.

As I mentioned previously, the bulk of their very important and often overlooked interactions are from season two (i.e. the Clash of the Titans arc) and onward in the manga/anime, up until...that thing called the serum bowl that none of us like to talk about.

If you recall, at the tail end of season one, Erwin was briefly arrested by the Military Police, then released. Once again, you'll notice that Hanji is the one calling the shots, along with Mike. Erwin has effectively split them up (presumably Erwin, I'm actually not sure if it's confirmed that he was the one to send Mike's squad to watch the 104th?), with Mike doing the physical work, and Hanji being left to the strategic end of things--to a point. I mean, it's not as if Erwin is completely out of commission at that point (unlike Levi lmao). Instead, he's working on his “big” project--to overthrow the government and get those traitors out of here--from more of a behind-the-scenes perspective. So he surely knew that things would get crazy on Hanji and co.'s end, yet he trusted her to follow through and lead the Corps while he worked separately for a while.

He doesn't think to check in on her, either, until the report about Wall Rose and the traitors finds him. I'm sure he didn't quite predict all that, especially because Reiner himself was flying by the seat of his pants lmao. He hears that Hanji and company suffered injuries, and that Eren has been taken away, along with Ymir, so obviously, being the Commander and all that jazz, he goes to check in on the Corps soldiers atop the wall. Until he arrives, Hanji does not move--it's only when she hears Erwin's arrival that she moves, and it's to talk strategy.

This admittedly brings up something else I want to talk about with them: both Erwin and Hanji are so goddamn willing to put everything and everyone else first besides their own well being.

I know a lot of EruHan writers play with this trope, but we didn't even have to add it in. It's there. All the time.

I think Erwin is especially obvious, considering how far he was willing to go to reach his goals, and his dream. However, Hanji is the same way when it comes to obtaining knowledge. And, both of them want to win. They are fighting to win. In season three, Erwin refers to himself as a gambler--the same is definitely true for Hanji, if not even more so.

So, Hanji gets her ass in gear long enough to tell Erwin what she can, and once again, using the information Hanji gave him, and not straying from it once, Erwin formulates a plan, and the Corps sets off.

Erwin did not stray from her information, used it to fuel the plan, and lost his arm in the process.

Flash-forward to Erwin in the hospital. Beardwin.

Wait, no omg.

Go back to when they brought him back to the hospital.

We don't see that, right? No, we don't.

But you know who else would've been in the hospital receiving treatment for burns and possible concussion, etc.?

Hanji.

Hanji probably saw the direct results of her instructions to Erwin.

Now flash-forward to Beardwin.

Remember, back about forty years ago when you first started reading this meta? Remember what I mentioned how the Japanese language has different types of pronouns? It also has different kinds of politeness.

In the Japanese version of the scene where Beardwin does the creepy-ass smile, Hanji enters the room speaking pretty casually, like “hey what's up Erwin--oh shit Pyxis is here too” might as well have been the actual translation. Her speech goes from casual to formal the second she sees Pyxis. Of course, up to this point, Hanji had always used casual speech with Erwin, but the stark contrast to how she speaks to Pyxis, who is a pretty easy-going guy around the Corps veterans, just drives home the fact that they are familiar with one another.

In addition, we once again see Hanji give Erwin information, and boy howdy. Does he take it and run with it.

So begins the Uprising arc.

This is the arc that just pushed me face-first into EruHan, to be perfectly honest.

This is also the arc where the language usage is the most important.

At this point, the three veterans (Erwin, Levi, and Hanji) are split up for a little while. Levi and Hanji are sent to watch over the 104th while Erwin does his thing (again). However, Hanji has a little “side project”--she is still keeping watch over Pastor Nick, until the Central Police murder him. She and Levi torture them, and that's a thing.

Due to the heavy focus on Historia and Eren, things are kind of quiet for the vets for a while, until Eren remembers some information from a dream, and yet again, Hanji brings that information to Erwin for him to put to good use.

This is one of the most important scenes in the arc, and for this ship.

First, note how calmly Erwin receives the flustered Hanji. He offers her food and water without question and immediately listens. (An aside: Erwin is probably one of the most patient characters in the series.) After explaining everything, Hanji then asks Erwin, “What should we do?” (Another aside: Don't forget how much these vets trust Erwin. Ever.)

Erwin's at least one step ahead of everyone at all times, of course, so he has an answer, but part of that answer is pretty startling: Erwin names Hanji as the next Commander of the Survey Corps. He then promptly leaves, with Hanji staring after him (be still my heart) and is soon arrested once again.

This is a scene that I can't help but dissect, simply because there's just so much there.

I'm also going to be bitter for the rest of my life that the anime strayed so much from the manga in this arc generally, but that's not the focus right now.

So, okay, remember the pronouns example I gave earlier?

Hanji uses “watashi,” Levi uses “ore,” Armin uses “boku,” etc. Most of the characters are very consistent with pronoun usage, and most of them default to either “watashi,” simply because they are in the military, methinks.

Erwin, however (and unsurprisingly), is one of the characters who changes his pronoun usage. In fact, he is the one who changes it the most that I've seen so far in the series. He switches frequently between just two, “ore” and “watashi,” but what does this mean, exactly? What is there to gain from knowing the details behind his pronoun usage?

We see Erwin using “watashi” most frequently in two situations: he uses it in formal situations as the “Commander” towards people like Zackley, Pyxis, etc., and he uses it when speaking with a “softer” demeanor, such as early interactions with Eren.

Erwin uses “ore” as a Commander might--with authority. It also seems to be his go-to generally--in other words, if he did not have any social obligations to worry about, no public faces to protect, he would use “ore.”

So, toward Levi, Erwin uses “ore” pretty much exclusively. After all, though he respects Levi, he has no reason to be gentle or keep face--in other words, no reason to use “watashi.”

However, toward Hanji, Erwin almost always uses “watashi.” (I should also note, he uses “omae” with “ore” and “kimi” with “watashi” accordingly.) The speech is more familiar, gentler almost. I wouldn't have given it much thought if it weren't for the one time he does use “ore” toward Hanji.

That time happens to be when he names her the next Commander of the Survey Corps.

So, why the change?

If you recall, that scene takes place with them talking one on one about the note that Eren has left for Hanji to read regarding his memories of a conversation between Ymir and Bertholdt. Erwin eventually has summons--ones that he is sure will lead to his arrest, and he then names Hanji his successor.

To me, after seeing all of their interactions, I think that Erwin definitely shows some favoritism toward Hanji and holds a soft spot for her. After all, if you think back to the OVA, Hanji was the one to really prove herself and stand toe to toe with him. I think he admires such stubbornness, for reasons we can only speculate now.

When I think about how he previously had spoken to Hanji, it was always so...intimate? Like, “I value this person and their opinions. We are close.” Using “ore” breaks that down and instead builds a wall between them. It's like he was saying, “I'm serious. This isn't a joke. You have to listen to me this time.”

It's worth noting that I've spoken to a few other Japanese fans about this part, both EruHan shippers and not, and everyone seems to agree that it seems like he did it for the sake of seeming authoritative, to make sure that this time, Hanji would listen without questioning him.

Of course, after the fact, Hanji questions it.

And I think that just drives my point home.

If you think back, or rather, forward in the manga, we see Hanji get handed a lot of shit--from Eren, the general populace, supposed allies. After one particular event, where Eren grabs Hanji and treats her like a piece of trash rather than his own Commander, Hanji escapes with humor, but behind closed doors, she feels frustrated and lost.

“Erwin, this was your one mistake... Why did you make me the Commander...?”

Erwin did not want Hanji to double-check him. He did not want her to question him like she normally did. He just wanted her to listen to him and take the order, so she did. So it's even more natural for her to doubt it now. She didn't get that chance in the first place--Erwin took it away from her, and she let him, because she trusted him explicitly.

We hear about it constantly with Erwin and Levi, but don't forget:

Erwin and Hanji's relationship is also built on trust.

So, let's go back to after the political arc--they decide to go back to Shiganshina, and we have what has come to be known as the serum bowl. Yay! Sounds fun, right?

NO. FUCK THE SERUM BOWL.

But it's important to dissect for the sake of this fucking essay.

I'm gonna skip straight to the good stuff--it comes down to a choice between saving Armin or Erwin. Levi is pretty much set on giving it to Armin--until a soldier brings Erwin's body back, and he's clinging to life. Eren and Mikasa get hysterical, they fight, and it looks like Mikasa is gonna straight up become THE Ackermann, until someone interrupts them.

It's Hanji, and she's injured and all alone. At this point, she's lost Moblit and part of her vision, and now she could lose Erwin, too. This person she trusts and respects probably more than anyone in the world might die. I think it affected her on more than just a personal level too, obviously--the Commander she entrusted her life and well-being to is on the brink of death, and she is supposed to somehow take his place.

Hanji obviously takes Levi's side, insisting that Erwin should be the one who gets the serum and a second lease on life. She pulls Mikasa away, holding her closely, and tells her that she understands what she's feeling, what it's like to lose someone you care about.

But, “Erwin is the hope of humanity.”

Those are Hanji's words. They're heavy. So fucking heavy.

If you questioned the respect and trust and love in their relationship (even just platonically) before, at that point, you really can't anymore, unless you decide to be in complete denial.

However, if you're caught up with the manga, you know how it goes--Erwin pulls a last minute “stunt,” then retires (cough) as Armin is given the serum and transforms into a Titan. Levi chooses Armin in order to let Erwin die as a human and not as a monster, and tries to talk himself through the choice out loud.

Hanji, however, has her eyes only on Erwin, and she is with him until his last moments of...pre-retirement...

Okay, but here's a thing I really want to point out.

Flocke, the dumb bastard who brought Erwin's life back (he's not dumb for doing that, btw), is the one who brings up the notion that it should be Erwin who receives the serum, because only Erwin had the capability of becoming a monster who could save them. That thought scared Levi, who held and continues to hold Erwin in very high esteem, and is what essentially pressed him into giving Armin the serum instead.

Do you think that thought scared Hanji?

Though we never hear one way or the other, I really don't think so.

When has Hanji ever feared the Titans?

No, it's not even just that--Hanji saw the Titans as equals. She saw them as just a different kind of human, really.

Think back to Sawney and Bean, wayyyyy way back. Think about how she recognized their personalities, respected them, and loved them as the way that they were. And she had no idea what the truth behind them was. She had no idea at that time that they were humans.

Think about how she treated Eren as a Titan shifter (before he started being ...whatever he is now). She respected him, was kind to him, and she didn't even know him.

I think it's safe to say that her relationship with Erwin would not have really changed. She would have probably respected him even more than before.

...There's honestly so much more I could say about the ship on micro-levels, but I wanted to hit these big points because not only are many of them lost in translation, but they are highly underappreciated. I get tired of seeing them left out of the main fandom, when it's such a delightful, wholesome ship that has plenty to work with in both canon and AUs.

But, if you're interested in hearing the smaller things, hmu. I think about this ship all the damn time. Everyone should have some level of appreciation for it.

--Cat

#eruhan #snk #attack on titan #shingeki no kyojin #erwin smith #hange zoe #hanji zoe #erwin x hanji #snk meta #my eruhan #aot meta #aot #c-congrats if you read the whole thing #please reblob #I spent years compiling this #pls appreciate this healthy wonderful ship #snk spoilers #aot spoilers #long post

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darisu-chan · 5 years

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Marco’s Feelings (Or How He Lied to Himself Almost the Whole Show): An Analysis, Part 1

Alright

So I said I was going to write an analysis after Marco’s confession back in Here to Help and what it means about his feelings for Star throughout SvtFoE. Now, I’m sure some people have said this before, others might have refuted this already, but I’m going to start by saying I knew Marco had feelings for Star back in Blood Moon Ball. I wasn’t really in this fandom back then, so I didn’t make any posts about it. I honestly thought it was obvious, but season 3 and 4 showed me that a lot of people take things at face value, so naturally when Marco confessed, well, some things I’ll be analyzing in this post, a lot were confused, others misunderstood. I’m here to clarify some things.

So, let’s go!

(Long post ahead)

Disclaimer: although this is my opinion, I’m basing it on the subtext of the show and not on what I just want to believe. I know I’m a starco shipper, but, honestly, the plot made me like them and not the other way around. I’ve shipped Star and Marco with other people, although, ultimately, I do prefer them with each other because of what I’m about to explain in a bit. So take that in mind.

Anyway, let’s start with what Marco actually said, and then I’ll be analyzing it part by part:

“Marco. You told me you love me.”

“Ah... Okay...” marco.exe stopped working

“Maybe it was just a fragment of your subconscious mind, but─”

“No. It’s not a fragment of anything. That’s... the whole Marco. Y’know, the whole Blood Moon Curse? That ordeal? Well, it’s bologna. I’ve felt like this since the beginning. I mean... I’m not a little boy... I know that you just don’t fall in love at first sight! The way I feel... it’s just gotten more intense since we first met. And it was intense at the start and I know it’s in the way.”

“In the way? Marco, why does it have to be bad?”

“It is bad if you don’t want it.”

“Okay, can we kiss?”

“Uh... please”

“Marco, I want you to love me because I love you.”

Okay, the part everyone misunderstood is the following: “I’ve felt like this since the beginning.”

How could this be if Marco had a huge crush on Jackie-Lynn Thomas and even wanted to be Mr. Lynn Thomas?! There’s no way he fell in love at first sight with Star! They’re just trying to push Starco! Marco didn’t even like Star!

And, yeah, but that’s not what Marco exactly said. Most people ignored what he said next and, honestly, that’s the part which is more relevant: “ I mean... I’m not a little boy... I know that you just don’t fall in love at first sight! The way I feel... it’s just gotten more intense since we first met.”

Marco knows it was not love at first sight, precisely, but more of an intense feeling. And, yes, as we know, Marco did not like Star the moment they met:

He was scared of her magic and what it could do, because let’s face it, Star had no control over it at the start

He was also pretty much annoyed at her

He didn’t want to show her around school or live with her, and he didn’t even like the laser puppies!

So what changed?

If you remember on Star Comes to Earth Ludo attacks her at the end, right in front of the Stop & Slurp. Star attempts to fight him, she’s even raising her wand, when Marco steps between her and one of Ludo’s minions and attacks him with his awesome karate moves. Star is very impressed with his abilities and together they defeat Ludo and his minions:

@isaackuo has said before that Marco bonds with others through shared fighting, and the first time we saw it was with Star.

Think about it, when you’re fighting someone with another person, you need to trust that other person completely, trust that they’re going to cover your back, as you’re going to cover theirs. It also involves teamwork and learning to understand body language. Never mind the fact that there’s obviousy an adrenaline rush, which helps with the intensity of the feeling. In the fight, both Star and Marco are in sync and, most of all, they are having fun.

On the aftermath of the fight, Ludo leaves and they are alone. Marco says that “It was amazing! You were amazing!” excitedly. Then Star is sad cause she believes that after all of that Marco won’t want to live with her, but he says that he doesn’t want her to go, that he wants her to stay with his family. Then Star, who is a very affectionate girl, hugs him for the first time.

This is the actual start that Marco is talking about. This is when he felt that intense feeling. It’s not the moment when they first met, it’s the moment when they became friends. Or the moment when they truly met each other. Starco is heavily linked with the idea that true love is born from a great friendship, which is why this is the moment Marco first felt it.

It’s not love. I want to clarify that. Because love comes from turly knowing someone, flaws and all, and still trusting them, accepting them, wanting to be with them, and caring for them. This wasn’t love then. But it was the spark.

It’s hard to explain, but I’m going to do my best to do it. Sometimes, you meet people and you don’t click right away. In fact, it can take years for a friendship to blossom between you and this other person, let alone a relationship. It can also happen you meet someone and you don’t think anything about them at all. If they become important to you, it’s through a serious of secondary meetings when you get to know them. Other times, you are attracted to someone right away physically, and you intend to be more than friends (this is what happened with Tomstar when they dated for the first time). Finally, there are times when you don’t know what it is, but there’s a feeling that a person is going to be important to you. Maybe it’s not love, maybe it’s not even physical attraction, it’s just this intense feeling that this person is important to you. What will happen next? Who knows. But you want to be by their side, getting to know each other better. Because you feel it in your very soul that you won’t be the same person you were after meeting them.

I’ve been through all of the above situations with the guys I’ve dated/liked/fallen in love with. I’m an adult, I’ve lived through a lot romantically, and I can say that, although I’ve appreciated every single instance of falling in love, especially since it’s so rare as an adult, the one that marked me the most is that moment when I first met the guy who would later become my first love. I knew even then that he was going to be important to me. And he was. More important than I could’ve ever imagined. Easily the guy who has changed me the most. And it’s this feeling the one I’ve been craving ever since. That spark, that intensity, is like nothing you’ll ever feel. It’s not rooted in attraction or lust, it’s more about your very being saying “Hey, looks like I find you.”

This is what happened to Marco.

It’s not that he necessarily felt attracted to Star in the same way he was to Jackie, but there was this intense feeling that only got even more intense as time went on, as they bonded by living together, going to school together, and going on adventures together. And Star probably felt it too. Why do I say this? By Party with a Pony, Star already thinks of Marco as her best friend, and the sentiment is mutual. From then on, as they become closer and closer, so do Marco’s feelings.

So why didn’t he say anything? And why did he still have a crush on Jackie?

First of all, Marco had crushed on Jackie since he was in preschool, maybe even younger, as we can see in Freeze Day. Being 14 and all, it was unlikely for Marco to suddenly accept the idea that he liked anyone other than Jackie. But here’s the thing, Marco liked the idea of Jackie, he didn’t actually know her, as he himself admits in Sleepover. We can’t say, as of season 1, that he was in love with her. It’s easier to keep crushing on someone you don’t know because there’s nothing to lose. Marco could keep on just liking Jackie without any commitment or rejection.

Marco is deathly afraid of rejection. We have seen it numerous times. At the start of the series, Marco had low self-esteem and tried to be someone he wasn’t. He didn’t want to be known as the Safe Kid. He didn’t want to be known as this nerdy guy who never takes risks. He wanted to be a Misunderstood Bad Boy, which translates to being a daring guy who takes every risk, and that the girls as cool as Jackie fall head over heels for. That’s what Marco thought would get him the girl and take all of his problems away.

And who’s even cooler than Jackie?

Oh, I don’t know, maybe the magical princess from another dimension?

And Marco knows this, as he said in Cheer Up, Star

He also is very much aware of the fact that Star likes bad boys. She has a crush on Oskar, Mr. Skips-classes-to-play-the-keyboard and Guy with a Record. And Marco also knows all about Star’s ex demon boyfriend, Tom, as it’s made clear to us in Blood Moon Ball. These type of guys are cool, mysterious, dangerous and, yeah, hot. Guys so far removed from who Marco thought he was that he didn’t stand a single chance. Star did like the Misunderstood Bad Boy bit Marco tried to play. Because, back then Star was a rebel princess. She didn’t want to become queen and have responsibilities. She wanted to go on whacky adventures and live her life with zero attachments and commitments. Oskar, and even Tom before all his development, fell under this category. Marco didn’t. He never has. He’s always responsible and always worried about the future and the consequences of his actions. It’s not that he doesn’t let loose, but he knows when to and how to. Star didn’t back then, and she wanted a guy who was as rebellious as she was. If indeed, Marco had tried anything during the first season, he would’ve been ultimately rejected for these reasons... and he was, but I’ll talk about that later.

I’m not going to talk about every single interaction between Marco and Star, but just know that from the moment they fought together, they became closer and closer enough that Blood Moon Ball made a difference.

Honestly, when that episode aired I was surprised they had put in the minds of the audience the idea of romantic Starco. I had already known they would probably end up together, mainly because their crushes were untanaible and the kind you get before you actually mature and can fall in love for real. I just thought they would wait until the second season to explore that side of their relationship. But, nope, Daron Nefcy said “to heck with it” and boom! We had this episode. So, to dive into this, I could start with Tom and Star, but we’re not analyzing them. We’re analyzing Marco. So, to begin with, we’re made aware of the fact that Marco knew all about Star’s ex-boyfriend before Tom even made an appearance. I’m guessing that at some point they got around talking about their love lives, as teens will do, and Star vented about Tom. It hadn’t been that long since they broke up, or at least I got that idea from Lake House Fever.

Anyway, when Marco first met Tom, he saw him and Star together in the parking lot, and he immediately attacked and put himself between them, in a protective manner.

Then, when he finds out Tom wants to take Star to the Blood Moon Ball, he doesn’t want her to go with who he assumes to be a predator. And, throughout the episode, Marco does not want Star to go. I assumed before a certain scene when watching this episode for the first time, that he was just being protective of his friend. Friends don’t let friends go out with their exes, especially when they have hurt them. It’s not explicitly said, and I believe it also has to do with the way they turned Tom from abusive to an actually misunderstood guy with anger issues, but I always thought he had hurt Star a great deal by the way she refused to see him. However, Star liked bad boys, and was rebellious to a fault, so when Marco told her “hey, maybe this isn’t a good idea”, of course she wanted to go. And she went even if Marco didn’t want her to go. Up until this point, I wholeheartedly believed Marco was just a worried friend, he even says that he will have his own Blood Moon Ball in Star’s bedroom with blackjack and h**kers and then freaking Alphonse the Worthy says:

“Blood Moon tonight... The moon of lovers...”

That’s when Marco stands up and has the idea to go to the ball to save Star.

Now, again, that could have been misunderstood as the actions of a worried friend fearing their friend was about to go back to their ex. And yes, to an extent that is true of Marco. But listen closely to Alphonse’s lines, and you’ll notice there is an emphasis on the word lovers. It wasn’t put there as a mistake. That, paired up with Marco’s immediate reaction, leads me to think he was also acting as a guy about to lose the girl he likes. He was jealous of Tom. Of the fact he got to spend time with Star at the ball, but knowing that it was meant to be an incredibly romantic event, as the word lovers suggest, was the last straw. He didn’t go to stop the Blood Moon from happening, Marco didn’t even know that it’d bind the souls of two lucky souls together. He went there to get Star.

Although the beginning of the dance was incredibly romantic, I believe that Marco’s actions of wanting to get Star out of there speak more than the dance itself. Even after the dancing and escaping Tom, Marco believes he did the right thing and even goes as far as to say “I hate to say it but I warned you about Tom.” All of his actions don’t really speak of just a worried friend. A worried friend would have tried to stop her, but, ultimately, let her do what she wanted. Marco didn’t do that. He reacted to the word lovers and flipped. It wasn’t a coincidence. But what cements this argument the most is that, when Star explains why she’s mad at him, she says the following:

“I know you’re trying to look out for me, but you have to let me figure things out on my own. I don’t need a hero. I need a friend.”

A hero is the person who saves a damsel in distress and, normally, gets with her in the end. Star didn’t want to be saved. But, knowingly or unknowingly, she also shut down any possibility of romance between her and Marco. Because what she needed back then was for Marco to be her friend and nothing more. And Marco has a dawning realization during this scene, you can see it on his face:

So that’s what Marco chooses to be, Star’s friend:

However, the episode ends with the note of “but maybe they could be more” with the final scenes, not only showing that the Blood Moon has, indeed, bonded them together, but that their relationship is what is important:

I never, not even for one second, thought it was suppossed to be a curse. Just a traditional soul mates take on a pairing, as it’s been done before. In fact, by the way it barely even appeared in seasons 2 and 3, I don’t think it was that much of a curse, but they had to make it a curse and retcon it so that Starco seemed more legit to the audience, because they probably knew the fandom had begun calling it a curse, and the more they dragged out Tomstar, the more Starco seemed to be invalidated by the fans. I could go on and on about CotBM but I’ve done my ranting before. But this explains why I was not even surprised when Star said:

“What if it was never the Blood Moon?”

Because of course it was never the Blood Moon. The two of them already had feelings for each other. Star’s feelings for Marco are more hidden in the first season, and are mostly found on her diary entry “My thoughts on Marco.” But now we know that Marco started feeling something for Star back when they fought together with Ludo on the first episode, and that Marco went after her on BMB because the feeling got more intense and he was jealous. The Blood Moon chose them because they had feelings for each other, and not to force them to fall in love. They already liked each other, it was a matter of time before they actually fell in love. That’s why Marco says the whole ordeal is bologna, because it is. It had no real influence on his feelings for Star, because it didn’t start them. We can argue they intensified them, but that’s confusing because there were only like two instances in which we can say “yeah, definitely his actions were being intensified” and those were on Booth Buddies when he and Star kissed, and CotBM, at the beginning when he’s crying to Eclipsa about how adorable Star is. I also don’t believe he went back to Mewni solely because of the curse, but I’ll talk about that later.

This also explains why when they broke the curse with the severing stone, their feelings didn’t stop, because I’m going to argue there is no one memory of the moment they fell in love. Marco, and most likely Star too, developed an intense feeling after fighting Ludo and during that hug, but Marco says that, though he felt something from the start, it just got intense from then on. In another post after CotBM I said that, in reality, there’s never a moment that makes you fall in love with someone. It’s the little moments you share together that make you fall in love with someone. The Blood Moon Ball wasn’t the moment they fell in love, it was just one of the many instances in which their feelings started growing for each other. I’m going to go ahead and say that the decisive moment for both of them was Storm the Castle. That episode was the game changer not only plot-wise but in their relationship. Their hug at the end was the longest that season, and it’s one of their most important ones.

Resuming the events of BMB, after Star told him she needed a friend, Marco did an amazing job repressing his feelings and just being the best friend he could be. We weren’t shown Marco feeling anything romantic for the rest of that season, and even the first half of season 2. He acted like a friend to Star and he fooled not only the audience, but he also fooled himself. And it’s not like the two didn’t share very important moments together, they did!, but they could be interpreted as purely platonic. And you’d be alright with that assessment. Marco continued crushing on Jackie and Star on Oskar. The status quo wasn’t broken.

Of course this couldn’t last forever, which is something we’ll be tackling on the next part of this analysis.

I hope you have enjoyed this read so far. As it is getting extremely long, let us stop here right before season 2, and I’ll be continuing in another post. If you have any questions and comments, feel free to ask, my inbox is always opened.

If you disagree with anything I’ve said or you have something to add during the first season, also feel free to tell.

I will not, however, accept any curse words and hate in general. I am not claiming you all should like Starco or like the ending for that matter. I am just trying to explain the fact that his feelings did not come out of nowhere. The writing in this show has not always been the best, but the writers are professionals, so let us give them the fact that a lot of the show was foreshadowed in season 1, including Starco.

Anyway, this is it from now.

I’ll see you guys again in Part 2.

#starco #marco diaz #starco analysis #long post ahead

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dragonofyang · 5 years

Text

From the Sock Puppet’s Mouth

Well folks, good news and bad news.

Good news: the ABTV interview on March 4th confirmed for us that WEP is the reason for the last-minute changes and that certain things were fought tooth and nail for until they came down and axed it.

Bad news: WEP is still using the EPs as their meat shields to hide behind, and despite not being really able to refuse, Joaquim Dos Santos and Lauren Montgomery still said some fucked up shit in this interview and the one before. And we probably should gird our loins for the next interview with Let’s Voltron!

But Yang, why in the fuck are we not going after the EPs, then?

The answer to that and why this is happening is three little letters, my friends.

NDA.

Non-disclosure agreements.

AKA the bane of your existence. And ours. And almost certainly JDS, LM, voice actors, animators, and literally anybody who has to comply with the season 8 we got back in December and the resulting fallout.

These are fairly standard in lots of situations where you’ll be working with confidential material, stuff like stories, military paperwork, movie production, that sort of thing. They generally tell you that you can’t spill the beans until a certain date when the contract expires, or when the information becomes public knowledge and the need for secrecy is lifted. Pretty standard in the entertainment business, keeps people from getting spoiled to trade secrets or important plotlines and ensures that you can trust your employees with whatever you need done for the project in question.

One other thing that these pesky little pieces of paper do is give your employer (say, the owner of a franchise or a superior officer), the ability to order you what to say just as easily as what not to. Don’t believe me? Look up interviews with the people who were in The Last Airbender (yeah… THAT movie). During production and when it was new, they all said how excited they were to work on the movie and be a part of it, but once those magical dates came by to free them of their legal obligations, they spilled more tea than the American revolutionaries did back in Boston. As soon as they wouldn’t get sued, they changed their tune about working on TLA.

Sometimes you just don’t like a project, sometimes your boss is a dick, whatever, but the fact is, if you sign one of those little things titled “Non-Disclosure Agreement”, you are bound by law to say whatever your boss tells you to. It’s very much a “they say ‘jump’, you say ‘how high’” situation. The only time this sort of shit doesn’t apply is if it implicates you in a crime. So like, your boss can’t embezzle money and then tell you to say you did it, or that you helped, or whatever. If it means you’ll get pressed charges, then you’re free to stand up and say “fuck this noise” and leave.

But JDS and LM aren’t being forced to admit to a crime, as heinous as some of what they’ve said in the past two ABTV interviews was. I’ll admit, I saw red the first time I heard the interviews on February 25 and March 4, but ya know fuckin’ what? That was the goal. Those interviews were meant to be a targeted blow against those of us in the VLD fandom who want the real s8 and for the characters to get their stories told correctly, rather than the slipshod stoic nonsense that ultimately created a story with zero meaning.

WEP/World Events Productions/Bob Koplar holds the Voltron intellectual property. JDS and LM are their puppets right now because unless they’re ordered to admit to a crime or otherwise break the law, they could be ruined legally, financially, and closed off from their trade. Would it be nice if they stuck to the scruples they displayed back when the show first started? Fuck yeah. I’d love it if they said, “screw it, here’s the real s8 with the heroine’s journey and the parallel storylines and the ending you deserved to see and get catharsis with.”

Fact is, they can’t, but we, who have never signed an NDA with WEP, DreamWorks, or Netflix or whoever the fuck else is involved, can.

They’re lying, yes, and they said despicable things that would make anybody’s blood boil, but the fact is they’re just the unfortunate human shields that will let WEP get away scot-free and it sets a very dangerous precedent about what happens when a story is being told and someone up top doesn’t like what they see. The narrative LM and JDS are being told to spin is that when the writers left, they went ham and ruined the story and that the real season 8 would be worse than the concoction we got on December 14. LM and JDS have said awful shit as WEP tries to demoralize fans and chase them off from going after the original season 8 and deflecting blame off where it should be aimed. But why would they have to write a story that’s animated and would have been completed before the writers left? LM said it herself that animation is extremely ahead of schedule compared to releases, and if you’re a fan of HTTYD like myself, you’ll know that the third movie’s release date had to be pushed back multiple times to account for the animation schedule because they failed to accurately project when it would be complete, and so pushed it back as opposed to releasing a shoddy product.

It’s simple enough to realize that the story being spun is just logically fallible and factually untrue, but because so much of what’s been said has been attacking the fandom, it’s easy to believe it. I almost wanted to believe that, too. It’s easy when there’s already a face and a name to blame. It’s harder to dig through stinging nettles, even if you know there’s a pot of gold under it all. Luckily I brought work gloves and have friends who know how to wield gardening shears.

We knew before that there was last minute edits to season 8, and @leakinghate did an excellent breakdown of that here in case you want to settle in for a nice read to see what should have been. But the interview on March 4th confirmed multiple times that the problem with the changes and story didn’t come from the EPs or even Dreamworks. The pushback came from the IP owners. JDS says so right toward the beginning, about 12 minutes in when he’s talking about Adam and Shiro’s romance. JDS and LM both discuss how it was the IP owners who gave the order to change an already-storyboarded and approved plotline for Shiro, which directly negates their tweet on March 1 claiming that the store has no creative control and the letter Bob Koplar wrote to a few fans, also written March 1, which claimed the same thing and seemed intent on absolving him as a responsible party for s8. Sure, the person tweeting and the person handling orders might not have to approve things, but that account and the store are both owned by WEP, which is easily proven if you dial WEP’s number. But the IP holders got discussed multiple times throughout the entire episode, more towards the first half than the second, which is when what they’re saying gets really screwy in terms of logic and what they’ve said before and general bullfuckery. Until JDS and LM are thanking the hosts for the unprecedented two hour interview and JDS says, “I don’t agree with myself” at 43:03, they were thanking the fans and apologizing for what happened and explaining that it wasn’t them or Dreamworks, but rather the IP holders who were pushing back.

Don’t believe me?

Click to 12:10 of the March 4 interview. JDS talks about Adam and Shiro’s relationship and how it was originally meant to be portrayed, and at the 12:50 mark he says that they got pushback about their relationship, not from Dreamworks, but from “other controlling parties with Voltron.”

Click to 18:52, where JDS mentions how they didn’t have the position as being creators of the IP. He also points out that, “We were, for all intents and purposes, like, started as a show for boys 6 to 11 to sell as much toys as possible.”

Does that phrase bother you as much as it bothers me?

Because it should.

Ever since VLD ended and the fans started pushing back against what got published as season 8, the EPs have been silent, at least for the first two-ish months. They didn’t say a word anywhere publicly about the show or if they liked it, because their NDAs probably had an “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all” clause. Generally, that’s the case because part of your job is to build good PR and hype up your project. Don’t believe me? Look at how they were after literally every other season, they came out immediately saying how much they loved it and how much they hoped the fans would too, and when there was pushback about Lotor’s abuse and the colony plot they were like, “please trust us, we want to do his story justice” even when it probably would have served them better to remain silent.

Not with S8.

Until these interviews, nobody talked. And when they finally did start talking?

They all kept saying the same things.

“This is a show for boys and their dads” and “this is a show meant to sell toys to little boys.”

At no point before this did anybody on the production team say anything even remotely related.

You can look for yourself, but I guarantee you won’t find anything. “Boy toy show” has been the go-to phrase for everybody ever since the silence around season 8 broke, and it’s not their words.

It is, without a doubt, from the IP holder.

We were promised that Lotor’s arc would continue and that “there’s a lot that is at play in his brain and his mind,” in the GeekDad article about him. Narratively, Lotor and Allura were meant to foil Zarkon and Honerva/Haggar. We should’ve gotten an alchemist-versus-alchemist showdown and a cool Lotor and Lance arc. Many things that were built up in seasons 1 through 6 were dropped, and if you refer back to Hate’s meta “Seeking Truth in Darkness”, you’ll find her analysis on what was cut, why, and the plot she pieced together based on the inconsistencies in the details of the season 8 that got released. In the latest interview, JDS said, “We were just trying to break the trope, our own trope. You know what I mean? Like Voltron was its own trope and the sort of little nook that we inhabited was, like, sort of boys toys was its own weird tropey situation.”

And despite all this talk of family and love and complexity and breaking barriers, we received two things from December 14 and on: VLD season 8, and silence.

Complete and utter silence.

The VAs were trotted out to face the wrath of the fans at SAC Anime 2019 and there was nary a word to be heard from the EPs, Dreamworks, WEP, Netflix… Nobody had anything to say about the final season of Voltron. The VAs even commented that there were things they were and weren’t allowed to say. And if they wanted to say anything, their NDAs and general social etiquette prevented them from saying whatever was actually on their mind, because I guarantee you nobody happy about the season would have kept silent. Even when all the season 7 backlash happened, JDS and LM asked us as a fandom to please wait and see, because there would be narrative payoff.

Which is why the latest two interviews with ABTV are all the more rightfully infuriating.

In the February 25 interview, LM specifically says that the initial pitch was to kill everybody, everybody would die and that would be the end of it, and that they had to back off from that. After the broken promises of season 8, that’s pretty damn believable to a fandom who’s rightfully hurting and grieving what could have finished a great show. But then with this March 4 interview, she says that she wanted to go Sailor Moon with it and have Allura come back as a baby after sacrificing herself. Kind of hard for those two stories to mesh when the person LM says would raise Allura would also have been one of the ones to die in the initial pitch.

So what exactly is the truth there?

Frankly, I think neither of those ideas is the truth. At least completely.

Why? A) It sounds like a super early pitch idea and B) because their general behavior disagrees with every interview leading up to season 8. Because if LM and JDS were proud of this product that got released, they would have said so and behaved as normal, if maybe a little more reserved due to fandom backlash. Because they wouldn’t be silent and only coming out with interviews after two months and several of #TeamPurpleLion metas that poke massive holes in what exists of season 8, CallVoltron has been sending letters, and #FREEVLDS8 garnered over 30,000 signatures. WEP has been trying to do damage control ever since we as a fandom started putting two and two together about where these disastrous last-minute changes came from, and only when the petition got updated to include WEP as a point of focus did WEP start trying to discredit the fans and meta writers who were coming too close to the truth. Here is a complete list of everything that’s happened since December 14, to give you an idea of just how wild of a ride this has been.

One main consistent thing throughout everything that’s happened since season 8 dropped is that everybody from the EPs up is lying, whether by omission or outright or through someone else, people have been lying like mad. WEP doesn’t want you to know that they own the IP and have strong input, despite confirming it by liking a tweet on February 13 and how you can be directed to their store if you call WEP’s phone number. WEP doesn’t want you to know that they gave the original season 8 the axe. WEP got scared that we got close and so they trotted out their EPs after two months of silence to try and break those of us hunting for the truth. These two interviews, which, mind you, came after what was scheduled to be the last one.

The official story continues to fall apart with every word of these last two interviews, too. JDS says that they were crafting the epilogue for season 8 during the aftermath of season 7, but according to him they completed season 8 back in June.

Again: which is the truth?

I stand with @leakinghate and the rest of #TeamPurpleLion and think that the original season 8 was completed back in June, but that the backlash from s7 and the general disapproval of a story of empowerment caused the truly-eleventh-hour edits to s8. The EPs are being forced to lie to you due to their contracts, WEP wants to keep hiding and lying and calling their customers liars and mocking them. But the funny thing is that the more intricate the lie, the harder it is to keep it straight versus the truth, as evidenced by how JDS and LM seem to be confusing what was in s8 versus what was pitched versus what they were told to say.

So what’s it all mean, then?

It means you should be watching and writing letters and calling WEP and calling them out publicly whenever WEP and Bob Koplar lie to the consumers and customers that express dissatisfaction with their service and their products.

WEP forgets that there is more to fandom than diehard dads and young boys.

The more they ignore the majority of their consumers, the more money they lose, the more faith they lose, and the less people will want to follow their future projects (like if they decide to do an MFE spinoff). Let’s Voltron is coming up with a new episode with JDS and LM, and they’re hoping to get it up soon. I’d just like to remind y’all that it’s scripted and pre-recorded, it’s not live, and it benefits from being the official Voltron podcast and has to keep good relations with WEP in order to retain that status. So don’t stop calling, write letters, hell just leave a Facebook or Twitter review of the business to express your satisfaction or lack thereof with how WEP treats customers and its show and everything. After all, the road to s8 is paved with honesty.

@felixazrael @leakinghate @crystal-rebellion @voltronisruiningmylife

#dragon's ramblings #vld #voltron: legendary defender #TeamPurpleLion #FREEVLDS8 #free vld s8 #vld meta #strafe

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illicreatxm · 5 years

Text

a list of total (current) verses offered on this blog! this is kinda long so read under the cut.

note: if you would like to know more about these verses, either check out the verses page or message me!!!

verses breakdown:

canon - {v: canon} - main, standard verse for all characters, follows what's written in the bio. most muses open to shipping here, and can form canon-divergent verses here too. all characters present in this verse.

pjo - {v: descendants of the gods} - percy jackson themed verse, where all of my muses are either demigods or legacies (only one is a mortal). set in the percy jackson universe, more info on specific muses in bios. all characters present in this verse.

harry potter - {v: just a little magic} - harry potter themed verse, where all of my muses attend hogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardry or ilvermony school of witchcraft and wizardry, each of them sorted into a house depending on their personalities and desires. which has a tendency to make them clash every once in a while. set in harry potter universe, post-deathly hallows. all characters present in this verse. (verse still under construction)

superpowers - {v: powered beings} - superhero-themed verse where most (all but one) muses have powers and use them to save others or hide them. can be mixed with marvel/dc universes, as well as any other superhero-themed fandoms. all characters present in this verse.

shifter - {v: more than just magic} - a shapeshifter-based universe, where individuals either do or don’t have the magical ability to shapeshift into their spirit animals. as such, they are required (by law) to register their status as a shifter... though not all are willing to do such a thing. 11/14 muses active in this verse, 3 to be added.

royalty - {v: we could be royals} - in a land where the royals rule their kingdoms, all of my muses have different parts to play in the royal and village life - from farming to waiting on princes and princesses, these muses have a variety of jobs that may or may not be tailored to their talents. all characters present in this verse.

siblings - {v: when we were young} - a semi-open verse where our characters are either related or childhood friends, set in the childhood of my characters. all characters present in this verse, subject to plotting and discussion.

actors - {v: the world’s a stage} - a semi-open verse where our characters are actually just characters... and the lives stated in canon/plotlines we come up with are just episodes of a tv show/part of a movie series. of course, this opens up to different depictions of muses, so please contact for plotting. [please note: i am not comfortable rping with “real life” people, e.g. rp version of chris evans, chris hemsworth...] (verse still under construction)

famous - {v: living in the spotlight} - fame is not so easy to obtain, but when you fight your way to the top you’ll eventually get there. a verse where my muses have reached the top in their various chosen skills and careers, leading to them living lives of relative luxury. characters in this verse tba. (verse still under construction)

band - {v: we’re actually famous} - being in a band isn’t the easiest thing; it comes with fame and fortune, as well as unwanted criticism and a permanent spotlight on you. a verse where some of my muses are in bands and are trying to reach fame in their own ways. 11/14 muses active in this verse. (verse still under construction)

supernatural - {v: that’s more than just natural} - set in a world where the supernatural exists, but not everyone knows about it. in fact, those that know are either supernatural themselves, or close to someone who is. and they need to keep the supernatural hidden from the public eye. characters in this verse tba. (verse still under construction)

the simple life - {v: the simple life} - verse created with @a-simple-rper, but open for threading. canon divergent verse where muses have moved to new york and now live there, due to befriending and becoming close to a particularly stoic bar owner and his overly playful doorman. 6/14 muses active in this verse.

family is what you make it - {v: we are family} - verse created with @mochafortissimo, but open for threading. canon divergent verse where allie does not move to new york with jake, but instead stays in boston after befriending sochi and falling for oliver, a man who eventually becomes her husband. 8/14 muses active in this verse, 2 to be decided/added.

to be a phillips - {v: to be a phillips} - verse created with @breaking-point-rp, but open for threading. verse where muses actually live in weston, near manchester, instead of near london, where a bunch of events lead to my muses becoming close to those they went to school with. 8/14 muses active in this verse, 3 to be decided/added

roadtrip - {v: we’re going on a trip} - a semi-open verse where our characters get to know each other and end up going on a roadtrip together around europe! a mix of personalities in a minibus is bound to be fun. set pre-brexit, and alongside the characters of @breaking-point-rp, so please contact for plotting. 4/14 muses active in this verse

#{v: canon}#{v: descendants of the gods}#{v: just a little magic}#{v: powered beings}#{v: more than just magic}#{v: we could be royals}#{v: when we were young}#{v: the world's a stage}#{v: living in the spotlight}#{v: we're actually famous}#{v: that's more than just natural}#{v: the simple life}#{v: we are family}#{v: to be a phillips}#{v: we're going on a trip}#[a lot of these are under construction #bc i'm adding them as we speak]#{psa: updates}

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eraisme · 5 years

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WIP Writing Asks. 10, 13, 14, 16, 29.

Hey there! Just realized someone actually participated! Thank you, Anon. <3

To answer, let’s do this by question. Hope you’re into some Berena Holby City fanfic.

10) Do you have an outline? Do you stick to it? Yes, kind of. I used to completely do a full layout. Now it’s mostly just a bunch of ideas I throw onto a notepad (like actual paper note pad with fancy pencils and everything) because I realized trying to stick with it just...confined my ideas. It also depends if I’m on my meds or not. As crazy as that sounds. I need the full “stick to the layout” mentality when I’m on them because I lack the creativity needed, as opposed to not taking them and fucking...crazy ideas everywhere. Double edged sword for me.

13) Are there scenes that you cut already? Yes! I currently have two active WIPs, which are BOTH sequels to their original stories. I actually cut about 9ish chapters on Adventures of Cole Wolfe because it included something that is going to still happen, but I made it much more graphic and much more violent than I originally intended. Then I had the chapters that followed up with the repercussions of the event and I just wasn’t happy with how things unfolded. The event still happens, but it’s more left to the reader’s imagination and I think it works out much better that way.

14) Tell us about an upcoming scene in your WIP, that you’re excited about. This question and your next question are about spoilers, so I reckon you just wanted a couple spoilers. That’s totes fine. Actually, in the next chapter of AoCW, there’s a great scene with Charlotte and her husband where she just...lays it all out for him. Tells him stuff and just...kind of lets him have it for not being there for their children. Not too damaging, but enough that it bothers her for chapters to come.

16) Give a spoiler for your WIP. From AoCW, Bernie is correct about a thing (I know, it’s vague, but it’s a LATE spoiler and you’ll know it when ya see it). Also, Guinevere displays her ability to manipulate, not necessarily in a bad way though. From The New Consultant, Xav doesn’t know what to make of Charlie’s behavior. Also, we’ll have a new day. LOL. The first 8 chapters all occur on the same day...and I didn’t realize that until the 8th chapter.

29) Five years from now, where do you see yourself as a writer? As much as I would love to make it a full time job, I love writing fanfic far too much to have an original idea with characters I’ve created myself that aren’t tied to that. Also, I need the benefits that my job now gives me. So...I mostly need to try and not be fired from that. I use writing as a coping mechanism and my life as of late (especially in this past year) has been incredibly difficult mentally for me, so that’s mostly where my time and effort goes in terms of writing. I could try to cobble something together because I know fanfic gets published all the time (I’m looking at you Doctor Who and Battlestar Galactica books...that I actually have on my shelf), but I don’t necessarily write for a fandom that has that freedom at the moment. I’ve had some thoughts about a Doctor Who something (well, let’s be honest, it’s mostly a UNIT book), but I don’t know about it. I need to figure out Kate Stewart and Osgood more without butchering their characters.

Thank you again, Anon! I know this was probably far more long winded than you wanted, but...here ya go.

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harrv · 6 years

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I saw this on my other fandom so I hope you don't mind. Make a list of your top 20 favorite fics. Then, tag 20 people (or as many as you like) ❤️

ooooh okay! i never made a long ass ficrec before so here we go *cracks knuckles*

[not in particular order!] [all are harry/louis]

~ also, i tag anyone who wants to do a fic rec! just say i tag u :)

1. Unbelievers by isthatyoularry / 136k

It’s Louis’ senior year, and he’s dead set on doing it right. However, along with his pair of cleats, a healthy dose of sarcasm and his ridiculous best friend, he’s also got a complicated family, a terrifyingly uncertain future, and a mortal enemy making his life just that much worse. Mortal enemies “with benefits” was not exactly the plan.

Or: The one where Louis and Harry definitely aren’t friends, and football is everything.

2. Young & Beautiful by Velvetoscar / 227k

Louis, to his horror, attends an elitist university in which the name Zayn Malik means something, Niall Horan doesn’t stop talking, there are pianos everywhere, and Harry Styles, only son of a drug-addled, clinically insane ex-rocker, has a perfect smile and empty eyes.

3. Gods & Monsters by Velvetoscar / 201k

The instructions were simple: seduce and destroy Harry Styles. Not once did they discuss the option of Louis actually falling in love. So, naturally, that’s exactly what he did.

4. all we can do is keep breathing by @avocadolouie / 149k+ (as of june 7)

“Harry, I-I’m so sorry…” Louis stutters out, trying to keep his voice level and even, to portray a depiction of strength, but with the way Harry is looking at him, staring at him like he has a personal passage way straight to Louis’ soul, it’s so hard, nearly impossible.

That simple opening phrase, that short introductory acknowledgement that is often rushed out so easily, painlessly, at a safe distance. Giving a doctor the ability to portray empathy without true emotion, without feeling the full brunt and sheer force of the underlying pain itself.

But Louis feels it, he feels the crushing agony laced behind the phrase, he feels the weight of the painful words slipping from his lips, the cause and effect that the three-word expression holds. The distantly empty “I’m so sorry” that doctors throw out in self-preservation, isn’t at all empty for him. Louis recognizes it, he understands it, he feels it.

a fated story of two broken and battered boys who barely survived the unimaginable and how the love of one little brave girl defies all the odds and somehow puts them back together.

[more under the cut]

5. Empty Gold by rainbow_kings / 148k

AU where Louis Tomlinson attends the vigorous, demanding performing arts school: Guildhall in hopes to complete his theatre degree. He is a scholarship student, always having to work twice as hard to prove his worth which has caused him to feel resentment and anger towards his subordinate position.

Harry Styles is the wealthy, naturally gifted actor who effortlessly snatches all the main roles within the class. The complete contrast to everything Louis is.Louis Tomlinson and Harry Styles have had bad blood and despised each other for the two years they attended Guildhall together, making each task a competition between each other.

In the final year, when Guildhall produces and performs an original play, Louis is heartbroken to learn the lead role has been been received to Harry and he’s the second role. He’s mostly terrified, however, when he realises he has to date Harry in the play as their characters. They come together through awkward stage kisses that transforms to hate sex, heated arguments, rehearsal times after lectures and baking carrot cake together.

6. Crave by @dimpled-halo / 89k

All eyes are on Louis Tomlinson to bring new talent to save Hanover Records from the mess the previous executive left behind. His newest artist, Harry Styles, is charismatic and everything Louis needs to revive the label. It’s up to Louis and his team to make Harry the star he was born to be. When Harry and Louis come face to face, it isn’t the first time they’ve met, and their worlds are about to be turned upside down.

7. Needing You More and More, Let’s Give Love A Try by supernope / 33k

When Harry gets pregnant after a one night stand, Louis helps him get everything together, from buying pregnancy clothes to taking him on a babymoon. Somewhere along the way, they realize that their feelings for each other are more than platonic.

8. The Night Sky is Changing Overhead by @domestic-harry / 124k

“Um, sorry, but I believe that’s actually mine,”

Harry said a bit awkwardly, pointing at the cup. The man huffed, slightly narrowing his blue eyes, “Nope, large Americano, dash of cream.” He held the coffee up closer to Harry and honestly, Harry knew exactly what was in the cup because it was his coffee.

“Right,” Harry slowly drawled out as if he was talking to a toddler, “Which would make that mine.”“

Look, I really don’t have time for this, I’m running late. And this,” he said before he took a sip from the cup, “Is mine.”

Harry’s jaw dropped and he held his hands out, failing them slightly, “Wha-you can’t just drink it!”

“Well I did, so, do you still want it or can I be on my way?” The man challenged.Harry shook his head disbelievingly, “Take it, but for the record, it says Harry on it.”

The man turned the cup around and a sharp laugh came out of his mouth, “Well, shit.” He looked at Harry, a smile stretched across his face as crinkles formed next to his eyes. “Thanks, Harry.”

9. the wonderlands by stylinsoncity / 150k

Harry’s daughter, Andy, is signed to Louis’ girl band. Her path to success is marked by competition, chaos, and for Harry, a love affair.

10. If I Was Stronger by haloeverlasting / 50k

Harry lets out a breath she hadn’t even realized she’d been holding. She feels tingly, and hot, and absolutely terrified, but the next time she looks in the mirror, she sees someone she knows intimately. She sees that girl with bright green eyes, and unruly hair, and parted lips, and she loses her breath a moment, because while she knows that girl inside and out, she hasn’t been honest with herself until… well, now.

“I might be gay.”

A Girl Direction AU where Louis holds universes inside her, and Harry just wants to hold her.

11. Now In A Minute by @avocadolouie / 150k

13 feels like yesterday for many people, but for Louis it actually was.More than anything in the world, Louis Tomlinson dreams of growing up. Simply skipping over all of the awkward, embarrassing years of teenage existence and getting on with life. Real life.

So when thirteen-year-old Louis wakes up in the body of his thirty-year-old self, he expected everything in his adult life to be picture perfect. And maybe it is. He has it all…or so it seems.

Except his favorite person and lifelong best mate, Harry Styles, is totally missing from the equation and Louis doesn’t understand why. He has a lot of catching up to do and as adult life turns out to be more than what he bargained for, Louis can’t help wondering why a life that seemed so perfect, feels so empty.

Or the 13 going on 30 au that should have been done years ago.

12. Fake It Till You Make It by @avocadolouie / 136k

In a twisted turn of events, Louis finds himself posing as the brother of his fiancé, Harry, for an annual company retreat.

Did he sign up for this? No.

Is he doing it anyway? Yes.

Can they actually pull this off? Probably not.

13. precious little thing by mercutionotromeo / 21k

Niall grins deviously and hits “make call”, putting his phone on speaker. They lean in close to peer down at the screen, heads knocking lightly together. Dull rings reverberate quietly around the room and mix with the monotonous buzz of the lights. It rings for a while - maybe six or seven times - then the other line picks up.

There’s a slow, steady inhale, and a low voice purrs, “Hi, sexy.”

Jesus - this guy has barely said two words, and both of them have made Harry’s cock twitch in his jeans. That’s not even getting to what those words are, and why he’s saying them, and how Harry’s stomach is dropping into his shoes at the mere thought of him saying… other words. Words like “cock”, and “please”, and “come”.

Also known as: a university AU featuring phone sex operator Louis, copious amounts of sweet, soft kink discovery, and Louis being Harry’s Daddy.

14. Say You’ll Remember by whisperdlullaby / 93k

au. louis and harry are best mates that are only half aware that they’re also soulmates. alternatively, louis goes to university and harry travels the world, and they always manage to find their way back to each other.

takes place over nine years, in which they love and hurt, make mistakes and learn, and above all, grow.

15. Grenadine Sunshine by @horsegirlharry / 18k

Harry’s only sixteen, it shows right now, and Louis wants…he wants so many things. He wants to taste the faint, sugary ghost of lip gloss, he wants to cup Harry’s face between his palms and swipe the shimmery wet shadows from beneath his eyes. He wants to show him everything he knows, even though he doesn’t know anything about this, about kissing boys or flirting with them or doing their makeup or even showing them it’s okay to want to wear makeup in the first place. Still, Louis just wants, wants and wants and wants. It’s what Harry does to him.

16. California Sold by isthatyoularry / 123k

Notoriously closeted boyband member Harry Styles is famous on a global scale, meanwhile Louis, as his best friend, is back home in Manchester, living the typical life of a 24 year old. When Harry needs Louis with him in LA, a publicity stunt gone wrong changes their friendship forever.

A fake-relationship AU between two lifelong best friends.

17. Do Not Go Gentle by afirethatcannotdie / 70k

“This is all a game to you, isn’t it? Well, it’s not for me. This is a real life or death situation,” Louis says, spitting the words at him. “And I just don’t think you’re cut out for it.”

For a moment, they stare at each other in complete silence. Harry can feel his blood thrumming between his ears, can see Louis glaring at him, feels red-hot anger. And then all he feels, oppressively and desperately, is lust.

Suddenly Louis is surging up to him to press his lips against Harry’s. Harry walks the two of them backwards, pressing Louis back against the door. Louis oomphs in surprise and brings his hands under Harry’s scrub top, scratching at his lower back.

“Lock — oh — lock the… fucking door,” Louis mutters.

When Harry Styles starts his first day as a surgical intern, he expects a lot of things: to treat patients, to observe a surgery, to feel a bit overwhelmed. What he definitely doesn’t expect, however, is that the handsome guy he kicked out of his bed this morning is also an intern.A Grey’s Anatomy AU where tensions are high, Harry and Louis are hooking up in secret, and no one has time for love. Or do they?

18. Finding Lou by stylinsoncity / 60k

Louis is the nomadic stranger who wanders into Harry’s bookstore. Harry is the skeptic who falls for him.

19. Coax the Cold by MediaWhore / 86k

England, 1897.

English Professor Louis Tomlinson’s passion for the occult has been a source of mockery and derision for most of his life. When he hears whispers of a travelling freak show newly established in London claiming the existence of a monstrous sea hybrid, half-man, half-fish, Louis sees it as his ticket to credibility amongst his peers. The summer he spends undercover working on the show, however, gives him much more than that.

20. Here In The Afterglow by @fondleeds

“If you hadn’t noticed, I don’t have many friends,” Louis whispers, the blossom of insecurity in his stomach unfurling and clawing its way into his throat.

Harry is silent for a long time, and then he speaks; a soft, slow uncurl that makes Louis’ stomach shake. “I’ll be your friend.”

-1970’s AU. In a tiny town in Idaho, Louis’ life is changed forever by the arrival of a curious stranger.

#anonymous #whew thats it #thats a lot #also i didnt tag anyone bc im too tired to think of ppl sdsj its 1 am #and these arent only my fave fics ive got more but these are the only ones i could think of rn dfhdfdj #fic

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insatiabls-a · 6 years

Text

( updated rules + mun 06.09.18 )

——MEET THE MUN ;

O1. heyo , my name is qonout ( she/her )

O2. i’m 15 years of age ( my bday is 12/17 )

O3. I’m a sophomore as of last Thursday ( O6.O7.18 )

O4. i have 3+ years of roleplay experience :)

O5. i am literate && sometimes i write more than i wish to.

O6. i’m an extremely positive person so ,, please let’s all be nice to each other here. if you ever need to talk to someone , PLEASE COME TO ME. i will help you with anything :)

O7. i am EST time zone ,, PA

O8. one more thing ; i have severe depression && anxiety. those things can affect the way i am sometimes so please don’t take it the wrong way.

O9. heads up ; these are a little lengthy and make me seem like an asshole but im not i swear.

—— RULES ;

O1. SELECTIVE ; my blog is selective and i will ONLY roleplay with mutuals. it’s nothing personal ,, just for the sake of my anxiety.

O2. FOLLOWING ; since i am private ,, i am picky with who i follow. it’s really just for the sake of my sanity. i have sever anxiety && so that does come into play with following.

O3. CROSS-OVERS ; i am most definitely cross over friendly but i can be a little selective about it! OC’s ,, i am also OC friendly but like i said ,, it depends on the cross over.

O4. NSFW & TRIGGERS ; anything nsfw ( other than possible blood , gore , darkness etc ) will not be on my blog. i know most of the rpc is older than 18 but as long as you tag your posts ,, we’ll be all good :) now as for triggers ,, i have suffered through a lot in my life. && sometimes i still do. if you’re reading this && could kindly tag these triggers it’d be greatly appreciated.

* rape

* suicide

( or anything relating to suicide )

O4. PATIENCE ; i am begging you to be patient with me. as school is starting up again ,, and me tending to hermit away into my bedroom ,, i still have a life. i still have friends && family. im extremely close to my mom so i am often bonding with her 95% of the time. so if i don’t reply to you right away ,, it’s most likely some of the reasons above. or because im just not feeling the muse okay?

O5. WRITING & FORMATTING ; i tend to write ,, a lot. sometimes i can write 5-6 paragraphs or more. sometimes less. it depends if im feeling it. i often have to visually imagine the setting, who, what, where, when, how, & so forth. my grammar is pretty good && so is my vocabulary. i often like to expand it so every now & then you’ll see me using a variety of text. i do format my writing a certain way. i will put some words in all caps ,, quotations , parentheses & so forth. i don’t always resize my text but when i do it’s probably just <small></small> ,, never anything below that. you don’t have to format your text a certain way ,, but that’s just how i do it :)

O6. GRAMMAR; i don’t feel as if i need to put this here but we should mostly have an idea that decent grammar should come into play. as long as i understand you ,, it really doesn’t matter. if you misspell a couple words im not going to hold it against you. && for those who’s english isn’t their first language ; YOU GUYS ARE AMAZEBALLS ! i would always love to write with you. && don’t worry about grammar that much :) i’ll understand. ++ english also isn’t my first language ?? i grew up speaking arabic but learned english so i understand.

O7. GOD-MOD ; just simply don’t do it. i write cheryl the way she NEEDS to be written. unless we’ve discussed that your chara has certain abilities that can detect the way she’s thinking/feeling , don’t claim you do. it is MY cheryl && i love her ,, don’t try changing her.

O8. NO TOLERANCE ; no tolerance for hate speech, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, racism & so forth. it’s just not gonna happen on my blog. as for call out culture ,, no offense but if you’re doing anything wrong ( as some of the things above ) I WILL SAY SOMETHING !! maybe not in the open but i will privately talk to you about it.

O9. DECLINING ROLEPLAYS ; listen ,, my fandoms are limited && so is my knowledge. so if i turn down your rp for that reason ,, don’t take it personal. i may also decline a roleplay because im either just not feeling it or i just don’t see it! it’s nothing personal bby. we can always try some other time.

1O. SHIPS ; oh my god ,, say hello the biggest ship whore on the planet. HOWEVER , cheryl doesn’t trust easy. she has went through a lot of traumas in her life that would be extremely hard to come back from. chem is key ! let’s build something beautiful <3

11. MEMES ; send all the memes. i promise you ,, ill be beyond happy about it. don’t think that i won’t. if you want to turn memes into threads , please make a separate post for it !! i don’t want to clutter up anyone’s dash.

12. EXCLUSIVES / MAINS ; if you’re down for mains , just hit me up ! HOWEVER ,, exclusives are v selective. it’s gonna take a lot for you to become an exclusive to me. or i may not even do it. we’ll see.

13. PLOTTING ; please! plot with me! i will most likely be down for it. but always come to me with an IDEA before approaching ?? it’s either that or we can brain storm. if you’re solid about your plot ,, throw it at my face. if you wanna brain storm ,, let’s do it. we can also turn a simple one line into something. even AU’s

14.VERSES; i do have multiple verses that are in the works. i have a solid teen wolf verse && I PROMISE ,, more are to come. the tw verse is also flexible. i mostly keep cheryl the way she is in different crossovers. ( twilight , tvd/to , & others ). i am compliant either way and we can most certainly work something out

15. VISUALS ; all icons are made by MOI , screencaps vary from screencapped.net & thetvshows.us. feel free to use icons && gifs ,, just nothing too big please? my icons are 100x100. && cut your posts please !!

16. that is all !! sorry if my rules are a lot ,, it’s just super important if you read all these.

#rules

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chamomilehoneytea · 6 years

Text

Kimi ni Todoke Chapter 123 Translation: “Final” Chapter

Hello Kimi ni Todoke fandom!

Here we are at the final chapter! But don’t cry too much – we’re getting a bit more of the story in April 2018! :D Over the next few months, Bessatsu Margaret will be releasing some “Kimi ni Todoke”-related goodies with issues of their magazine. The following were announced in this month’s issue:

1. January 2018 Issue (December 13): “Kimi ni Todoke” Special Tribute Book (will feature Kimi ni Todoke-inspired art by other shoujo manga artists)

2. February 2018 Issue (January 12): “Long” Interview with Karuho Shiina

3. May 2018 Issue (April 13): “Extra Volume”: I’m not sure what this will be exactly…the announcement says something along the lines of: “Maybe you’ll be able to see Sawako and her friends’ ‘afterwards’…?” This is either a really mean tease, or we’re going to get a glimpse of the characters’ university / post-university lives after all! This bonus story might be one long chapter, or a few chapters covering different characters / stories. Shiina will have a few months to work on it, so the length may approach that of a regular volume (hopefully); still, we probably won’t know more until April.

I’ll definitely translate the bonus story, and I may try to translate the interview with Shiina.

Soon I’ll also write a post about how I buy Bessatsu Margaret, in case any of you would like to collect these bonus items.

Volume 30 is currently scheduled for release in March 2018.

Lots to look forward to in the coming months!! :)

Now for my usual disclaimer. I’m not fluent in Japanese, nor am I an experienced translator; I study Japanese in my spare time, and I read a lot of untranslated manga. I do make mistakes, and sometimes I just can’t figure things out, but I always translate to the best of my ability. Hopefully my translation communicates the gist of what’s happening, even if it’s not 100% accurate. Thank you for your patience!

Before we dive into the final chapter, I just want to thank all of you so much for your support! I’m not the most confident translator (if I can even call myself that haha), but I’ve really enjoyed sharing my interpretations with all of you. You’re all lovely, creative, and intelligent people, and it’s always a huge pleasure to interact with you and to hear your thoughts on the characters and the series as a whole. I hope that, even though “Kimi ni Todoke” is technically finished, we can continue to celebrate this incredible story together. :)

Okay guys, go grab the tissues I know you’ve been hoarding for this chapter…we’re about to leave the nest! :’)

(SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT)

Thank you so much to @chanty015 for sharing these scans with me. Please follow along with these images; in the translation you’ll see a few places marked as Pages 0 - 1 (where two pages are meant to work as one), but in these scans the pages are all separate. I apologize if this is confusing, but hopefully it’ll be easy to follow.

As always, “This is a line of dialogue” and [This is a thought.] I’ve included a few (Stage Directions) and (Notes) as well.

Here we go! Enjoy!! :)

COLOR PAGE:

Narration: [Someday, will I reach you?]

PAGE 1:

Kazehaya’s Father: “…Hey, Martinez.”

PAGE 2:

Kazehaya’s Father: “Nice weather we have today, huh?

Sawako: “All right!”

PAGE 3:

Sawako’s Father: “Are you sure?! You really don’t want us to go with you?!”

Sawako: “Yes. I’ll be fine! Thank you!!”

Sawako’s Father: “Even though we’re saying we’ll only see you to the station? At least!!”

Sawako: “Well…”

Sawako: “…I think I’d like to be seen off from this house…”

Sawako: “Thank you for looking after me these 18 years.”

PAGE 4:

Sawako: “…I say that, but I’ll still be in your care after this, too…”

Sawako’s Father: “Sawako!”

Sawako’s Father: “Tell us whenever you’re in trouble! Rely on us!!”

Sawako’s Mother: “Sawako ~ we’ll go visit you! We’re going to the university entrance ceremony too.”

Sawako’s Father / Mother: “Take good care of yourself.”

Sawako’s Father / Mother: “Do your best!!”

Sawako: “…I will!”

PAGE 5:

Sawako: “I’ll treasure the first gift I received from you, and continue living!”

Sawako’s Mother: “The first gift? I wonder what that could have been~?”

Sawako’s Father: “Sawakoooooooooo!”

Sawako’s Father: “18 years really does pass in the blink of an eye…!!

Sawako’s Mother: “Really? 18 years is exactly 18 years!”

Sawako’s Father: “You’re so unemotional, dear…!!”

Neighbor: “Ah!”

PAGE 6:

Neighbor: “Sawako-chan! Are you leaving home today?”

Sawako: “I am! Good morning!!”

Neighbor: “I can’t believe what I’m seeing! You’re still at it!! Carrying garbage around on a sunny day!! Hand that to me and I’ll throw it away for you!!”

Sawako: “Oh – you don’t have to – !”

Neighbor: “It’s fine, you don’t have to be so modest!! I know that you were always picking up trash for us!!”

Sawako: “Huh? Thank you!”

Neighbor: “I should be the one thanking you!!”

Neighbor: “Call home once in a while! Be careful on your way!”

Sawako: “I will!”

Sawako: “Thank you!”

Sawako: “I’m off…!”

PAGE 7:

Neighbor: “She’s become a completely refreshing young lady…”

(Sawako arrives at the train station.)

PAGE 8:

Chizu: “…Sawa.”

Chizu: “I’m finally seeing off the last one! Haha.”

Sawako: “Chizu-chan…”

Sawako: “…Thank you…”

PAGE 9:

Chizu: “Sawako, I’m glad we could be friends.”

Flashback Sawako: “…I want to be friends with you…”

PAGE 10:

Chizu: “Thanks to you and Yano-chin…my high school life was fun!!”

Chizu: “Thanks!!”

Sawako: “…Chizu-cha…”

Chizu: “Ah!! Stop, stop!!”

Chizu: “Wait – I said today for sure I would send you off with a smile…”

PAGE 11:

Chizu: “…Whenever we see each other, we’ll be able to go back…!!”

Chizu: “We’ll be able to do it, right? Because we’re friends!!

Chizu: “…Do your best!!”

PAGE 12:

Sawako: “…Yes. I think so too. I’ve come to believe that!”

Sawako: [We talked a lot, didn’t we? About many different things…]

PAGE 13:

Sawako: “Thank you, Chizu-chan!”

Sawako: “Let’s stay good friends!!”

Chizu: “Of course!! Ahaha!”

Chizu: “Ah – you did it! Now I’m laughing!! Ahahaha!”

PAGE 14:

Chizu: “Okay then, I’ll see you off from the platform!! Wait, where’s Kazehaya?! What’s that guy doing?!”

Sawako: “He moved!”

Chizu: “Moved?! When’s he seeing you off?”

Sawako: “Oh, today.”

Chizu: “Well, never mind!! I’ll more than make up for it!! Let’s get going!!” *

Kazehaya: “Kuronuma!”

* She’s actually saying that she’ll “see Sawako off a lot” (I think?), which I feel implies that she’ll make up for Kazehaya’s absence. This was my best guess lol! Basically I think she’s trying to cheer Sawako up since Kazehaya isn’t there (yet).

PAGE 15:

Kazehaya: “Sorry I’m late!”

Sawako: [He always comes running for me.]

PAGE 16:

Chizu: “You’re late, Kazehaya!!!”

Kazehaya: “I said I was sorry. I had a small delivery.”

Chizu: “What did you have delivered?”

Kazehaya: “Hm? It’s a secret.”

Sawako: “Oh, uh…even though you were far away you came all this way…thank you!!”

Kazehaya: “What are you saying? I’ll come! Let me come!!”

Sawako: “…Ah!...”

PAGE 17:

(Chizu kicks Kazehaya.)

Kazehaya: “Ow!!”

PAGE 18:

Kazehaya: “What are you doing?!”

Chizu: “I wonder!! I don’t really get it, but just now I had a feeling that I had to kick you or something!!!”

Chizu: “All right!! Let’s go to the platform!!”

Ayane / Chizu’s Intuition: “…Chizu?”

Chizu: “But you’re finally going too, huh Sawako? I’ll be lonely being the only one left!!! How’s your new place, Kazehaya?”

Kazehaya: “Pretty good!”

Ayane / Chizu’s Intuition: “Chizu?”

PAGE 19:

Chizu: “O-OH!!!”

Kazehaya: “What is it?”

Chizu: “I-I-I…”

Chizu: “That’s right, I had things to take care of!!! Things!! Very important things! Gotta hurry!! No big deal, don’t mind me!!!”

Chizu: “Well then, I’ll leave the rest to you lovebirds!!! Go ahead!”

Sawako: “N-No big deal?! Chizu-chaaaan!!”

Kazehaya: “She…took the hint! Kinda suddenly and not subtle at all…Thanks, Yoshida…”

PAGE 20:

Kazehaya: “She did it for us!”

Kazehaya: “…Right?”

PAGE 21:

(Kazehaya kisses Sawako.)

PAGE 22:

Sawako: “…Ka-Kazehaya-kun, people are…!!”

Kazehaya: “I don’t care!! This is an important situation!!”

PAGE 23:

(Sawako and Kazehaya hold hands as her train approaches.)

PAGE 24:

Kazehaya: “…I wrote you a letter!”

Kazehaya: “…Read it later!”

PAGE 25:

Sawako: “…Okay!”

PAGE 26:

Kazehaya: “…Oh! And this too!! It’s late but…”

Kazehaya: “…keep it, Kuronuma!”

PAGE 27:

Announcement: “…The train door…”

PAGE 28:

Announcement: “…will close shortly. Please be careful.”

(Sawako kisses Kazehaya.)

PAGE 29:

(Sawako’s eyes fill with tears as she boards the train.)

PAGES 30 – 31:

Kazehaya: “Sawako!!”

PAGE 32:

Kazehaya: “…I love you! No matter what happens!!”

PAGE 33:

Sawako: “…Shouta-ku…”

Sawako: “Shouta!”

PAGES 34 – 35:

(Sawako gives him a bright smile through her tears.)

Sawako: “Me too.”

PAGES 36 – 37:

The Letter:

“…To Kuronuma,

This letter is a reply to the one you wrote me for my birthday last year.

When I met you, my world changed…”

PAGE 38:

Letter (continued):

“I’m impatient, and I always end up running for some reason or another. When I was with you, Kuronuma, I also learned the joy of walking slowly.

“The four years we spend at university will be longer than the time we’ve been together up until now, and there might be times when we feel anxious or lonely, but…”

PAGE 39:

Letter (continued):

“At those times, I’ll contact you! I’ll email you, and I’ll also call you! I’ll tell you about the fun things too! I’ll go see you! I’ll go meet you…”

PAGES 40 – 41:

Letter (continued):

“Surely the next time I see your face, distance and time will be blown away! I’ll be able to enjoy the uncertain things too, if I’m with you, Kuronuma.”

“I love you.”

(Kazehaya gave her a key to his apartment.)

Sawako: [We’ll change.]

PAGES 42 – 43:

Sawako: [Even so, we have feelings that won’t end.]

(Sign Reads: “Entrance Ceremony Assembly Hall”)

Sawako’s Mother: “Hehe, Sawako, are you nervous??”

Sawako: “Y-Yes!!”

Sawako’s Father: “It sure is a sunny day, isn’t it?”

(A female student sits next to Sawako. Sawako takes a deep breath.)

Sawako: “…It’s nice to meet you…!”

Sawako: [I love you.]

Sawako: [You destroyed my world, and showed me a new landscape.]

Coach / Head of Baseball Club: “All right, introduce yourselves!”

Kazehaya: “My name is Shouta Kazehaya. I played as an infielder in middle school!”

Kazehaya: “I look forward to playing with you!!”

PAGE 44:

Sawako: [Wherever you are, and whatever you’re doing, whether you have a connection with me or not…]

Ayane’s Classmate 1: “Ayane-chan, you’re so nice!”

Ayane’s Classmate 2: “Yeah! We thought you were a scary person!! Ahahahaha!”

Ayane: “Aha! Yay!”

Pin: “Ack!! You first-years are so…young!! Aren’t you just a bunch of stupid kids?”

Students: “What’s with this teacher?” “He’s terrible!”

PAGE 45:

Sawako: [As long as you’re alive and as healthy as possible, that’s enough for me.]

Chizu: “What?! Toru’s wife is having another baby?! Seriously?!”

Ryu’s Father: “She is!”

(Chizu’s text to Ryu says: “Congratulations, uncle!”)

Sawako: [But…]

PAGE 46:

Sawako: [The next time we meet, you’ll surely smile again for me, won’t you?]

PAGE 47:

Sawako: [With that unchanging smile, you’ll effortlessly unravel my heart, won’t you?]

PAGES 48 – 49:

Sawako: [I want to reach you.]

Sawako: [Always, no matter what…]

Sawako: “…I’m home!”

Sawako: [I’ll reach you.]

~ The End ~

#kimi ni todoke #kimi ni todoke spoilers #knt spoilers #sawako x kazehaya #translation #thank you so much everyone!!#and sorry for the long wait on this #I can't wait to see what happens in the bonus story #I'll post my thoughts on this chapter soon

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tinypurpleparrot · 6 years

Text

Fanfiction Writer Asks

Fuck it, I’ll do it myself, because I know I can’t count on you nerds to actually ask anything. :p

1) How old were you when you first starting writing fanfiction?

I really don’t know. I’ve been writing creatively since I was like 6. I don’t really remember writing for fandom until Pokémon, but I’ve been in fandom since the original Sailor Moon and Ronin Warriors/Samurai Troopers.

2) What fandoms do you write for and do you have a particular favourite if you write for more than one?

I guess the Yogscast. Except I only really like a few of them, and it sure as shit isn’t the main channel people. I haven’t found a new obsession because I can’t sit still for tv anymore, and I’m a patient gamer/reader. So once I find something I like, it’s probably old and everyone’s already moved on.

3) Do you prefer writing OC’s or reader inserts? Explain your answer.

OCs. I am boring, shy (and thus no fun), and quite good at ruining the moment.

4) What is your favourite genre to write for?

Action/Adventure. Fight scenes. Getting out of dire as fuck situations. Underdogs.

5) If you had to choose a favourite out of all of your multi chaptered stories, which would it be and why?

I have so many… XP I guess a story I wrote in called Royal Infamy. It was literally hundreds of pages long, spanned at least 4 different fandoms, and could’ve been a standalone series if I just changed the names. Unfortunately it’s been lost to the ooooolllllddddd (and I mean 2001) internet. I like to think that maybe it’s on some ancient server, saved by those sorts of people who try to archive the entire internet and have literal exabytes of hoarded data. It was also how I met my SO of 13 years.

6) If you had to delete one of your stories and never speak of it again, which would it be and why?

A Prince of Persia fic. I don’t even like Prince of Persia.

7) When is your preferred time to write?

I never get as much inspiration as when it’s 1am and I’m supposed to be going to bed like a normal person. But never at a normal hour in the evening unless I’m inspired at work and have to rush home before I forget.

8) Where do you take your inspiration from?

It used to be from all the anime I used to watch, now it’s cobbled together from fantasy books and video games.

9) In your xxx fic, what’s your favourite scene that you wrote?

Like erotic fic? Eeeh. I’m so terrible at it that I literally only have one, I’m writing it right now, I’m not finished, and I don’t particularly like it because I keep subconsciously writing away from the part where they hold hands because I’m conflicted and discomforted by the whole thing, to be honest. Like, even when I was adolescent and supposed to be thirsty as teenagers are, I just wasn’t and couldn’t. My ex tried to get me to write something for him, and I still couldn’t do it. *shrug* It doesn’t help that I’ve never been big on shipping. …Those characters sure are standing next to each other, yep.

10) In your xxx fic, why did you decide to end it like that? Did you have an alternative ending in mind?

Hahah… endings. That’s good. (Also see previous question.)

11) Have you ever amended a story due to criticisms you’ve received after posting it?

Not that I can recall, unless you count ‘stop doing that thing’, ‘okay’ *does it more*

12) Who is your favourite character to write for? Why?

Rythian. Fuckin’ edgelord. Just everything about him and his OC is *kisses fingers*.

13) Who is your least favourite character to write for? Why?

Unfortunately Rythian is usually entangled with other people from the Yogscast. :p

14) How did you come up with the title for the xxx?

Current project doesn’t even have a title, that’s how non-committed I am to it (she says even though it’s fast approaching a novelette.)

15) If you write OC’s, how do you decide on their names?

If it’s an OC of a particular universe, there’s probably a naming convention, and I go by many names. If it’s just generic freestanding story, I keysmash and pick through it until it rolls off the tongue.

16) How did you come up with the idea for xxx?

Classic ‘rivals who hide their sexual tension behind their distaste for one another.’

17) Post a line from a WIP that you’re working on.

“I haven’t seen your face since when you first came back from The End. And the … incident with trying to rid you of your curse.” He chuckled. “I’ve actually seen a lot more than your scars.”

18) Do you have any abandoned WIP’s? What made you abandon them?

Like 75% of my work is abandonware. I have ADHD, I get bored, and I usually take so long, the fandom “dies” before I can finish. And the moment is gone.

19) Are there any stories that you’ve written that you’d really love to do a sequel to?

Royal Infamy. And make it mine this time.

20) Are there any stories that you wished you’d ended differently?

Probably Royal Infamy.

21) Tell me about another writer(s) who you admire? What is it about them that you admire?

Ilona Andrews. Her style is exactly what I aim for. …Okay maybe not the monster fucking, but the rest of it. Exciting, tense, a little bit scary.

22) Do you have a story that you look back on and cringe when you reread it?

The Prince of Persia fic. The first draft of the erofic. The weeb crack.

23) Do you prefer listening to music when you’re writing or do you need silence?

Silence. My brain goes 100% towards analyzing music and then I can’t focus on anything else.

24) How do you feel about writing smutty scenes?

Eeeeeeehhhhhh *whines* I don’t wanna…

25) Have you ever cried whilst writing a story?

Nope. I don’t write that kind of pain.

26) Which part of your xxx fic was the hardest to write?

The part where these two people who’ve tried to murder each other could even reasonably be in each other’s presence, let alone fuck. Also eternal hatred for evasive genital description brought on by a broken, puritan society.

27) Do you make a general outline for your stories or do you just go with the flow?

I should start making outlines. My current three projects keep going off the rails.

28) What is something you wished you’d known before you started posting fanfiction?

To go in with no expectations of people ever responding let alone giving feedback to anything. You’re just tossing shit in a hole and for every ton, one flower might grow.

29) Do you have a story that you feel doesn’t get as much love as you’d like?

I did a thing about how Lalnable Hector created Echo, and *crickets*.

30) In contrast to 29 is there a story which gets lots of love which you kinda eye roll at?

Twenty years later, I still get emails about a fic I wrote about Birdy the Mighty (C-tier anime about a dead boy soul-sharing an intergalactic cop’s body.)

31) Send me a fic recommendation and I’ll post it for my followers to see! (The asker is to send the rec not the answerer)

32) Are any of your characters based on real people?

Other than putting slivers of wish fulfillment in, no.

33) What’s the biggest compliment you’ve gotten?

Someone found a fic I wrote in two weeks in an archive over 20 years old and sent me kudos. Like, that shit should’ve been buried. But they found it.

34) What’s the harshest criticism you’ve gotten?

Mary Sue. And you’re goddamn right she was. And I’ll fucking do it again.

35) Do you share your story ideas with anyone else or do you keep them close to your chest?

Nope, not for fear or anything, I just don’t think to share before it’s done because I’ll probably abandon it anyway.

36) Can you give us a spoiler for one of your WIP’s?

You’ll be unsatisfied with the ending.

37) What’s the funniest story you’ve written?

You fucking made me open one of my old Gundam Wing crack fics to check. Now I don’t know because I’m still cringing.

38) If you could collab with any other writer on here, who would it be? (Perhaps this question will inspire some collabs!) If you’re shy, don’t tag the blog, just name it.

*shrug* Like… I haven’t done a collab in *checks calendar* 17 years. I don’t have any live fandoms. I’m not big on trying to meld with other people’s styles.

39) Do you prefer first, second or third person?

Third.

40) Do people know you write fanfiction?

No.

41) What’s your favourite minor character you’ve written?

Can’t think of one. I usually don’t have minor/background characters?

42) Song fic - What made you decide to use the song xxx for xxx.

…Okay, now I seriously can’t tell if xxx means erotic or a particular example. 😐 Anyway, I for some reason lost the ability to link songs to fics/personalities. I just don’t think of any particular person when I hear a song and vice-versa.

43) Has anyone ever guessed the plot twist of one of your fics before you posted it?

That would imply enough people cared.

44) What is the last line you wrote?

Despite the queen pushing him, he couldn’t move even if he wanted to (which he didn’t.)

45) What spurs you on during the writing process?

If I don’t fucking do this it’s going to bother the fuck out of me for weeks, even if I don’t finish. Just get it on paper so it goes away.

46) I really loved your xxx fic. If you were ever to do a sequel, what do you think might happen in it?

More action and intrigue.

47) Here’s a fic title - insert a made up title. What would this story be about?

48) What’s your favourite trope to write?

The antagonist finds the protagonist’s berserk button and realizes that maybe they should not have pushed it.

49) Can you remember the first fic you read? What was it about?

I can’t remember fics I wrote. And shit, that was at least 23 years ago. (She says even though she can perfectly remember her first fantasy novel 30 years ago. (The Gammage Cup))

50) If you could write only angst, fluff or smut for the rest of your writing life, which would it be and why?

Angst. I think. I’ve gotten good feedback from my more serious stuff.

#fanfiction #about #check out my fanfiction tag. :p

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strivingscribe · 6 years

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ILIC ~ CH 28

Happy Valentine's Day :)It’s Lost Its Charm by MsMoon

Chapter 28 ~ Finally Plugged In

Chapters: 28/?

Chapter Navigation: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15,16, 17, 18,19,20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28,

Fandom: Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age,

Rating: Explicit

Warnings: Violence,

Relationships: I feel like it’s a little early for that…

Summary: As dreams went, she supposed being inside Dragon Age wasn’t too bad… At least she wasn’t the Herald (again). Or the Warden (again). Or Hawke (again).

Notes: Hope you guys enjoy this one :)

Amy breathed. Slow and deep as she stared down at the peer post. It was so hard to believe so much had happened so quickly. In the dawning light, it seemed so harmless.

Heavy footfalls drew her attention to her far right. A very familiar silhouette was emerging from the mist there. When the Iron Bull’s eye landed on her...her stomach sunk.

“Bull?” her voice was reedy and rusted. Reasonably so after… whatever had happened yesterday. She took a single step back.

The Iron Bull began to jog towards her.

No… not jog. Charge.

“Katoh.” she said, her voice soft, his approaching charge steamrolled over it. “Katoh, Hissrad.” a plea.

She couldn't imagine a reply from the Qun would come so quickly. There was no way they’d already decided to eliminate her…

She turned to survey her surroundings better… only to freeze.

It was dawn. Still. No one was out here. It wasn't as if everyone in Haven needed to be milling about every day at dawn, but no one?

When she looked back to Bull, the space between them was farther than it had been before.

He was still running. She had not moved from her spot by the docks. Yet he was farther away. And the sun was still just cresting the horizon.

Still.

Everything was… Still.

She turned to face him fully, planting her feet and squaring her shoulders.

“I. Said. Stop.” Her voice was loud, echoing through the valley though she hadn’t raised her voice. His pace slowed, more of a purposeful saunter now, and within scant seconds he stopped three paces from her.

It didn’t make any sense! ...it was like…

Her eyes doubled in size.

“Holy frothing frogs, I’m in the Fade.” she said.

The Iron Bull that was most certainly not The Iron Bull smiled at her. It was… unsettling. A familiar expression in a familiar face that somehow... was anything except familiar.

“What are you?” She demanded.

“Long have I circled around you, always from my side of the veil.” The Bull’s voice, but in Fade-Acoustics, so it sounded distant-echoey-and-yet-near. “From others around you, I see you. But never you… like learning to look for an absence. And I know you.”

Amy tried to stamp down her fear response, but it wasn’t easy. Every time she tried a breathing exercise she’d get caught up in the fact that she didn’t need to breathe. She literally had astral projected out of her body for this genuine Theadosian experience. She didn’t have lungs!

But her brain thought she did.

...it was the weirdest ‘The Matrix has you’ situation… at least thus far.

“Name yourself.” She commanded. She refused to call it a demon. If spirits were or could be as malleable as Solas suggested, she needed to keep a clear head.

“I am Confrontation.”

Oh.

Wait.

...what?

Was she…?

…..okay, yes.

She huffed out an astral-breath. “Seriously.” She couldn’t help the solitary chuckle that plopped out. “My first trip to the fade, first spirit I see...is Confrontation.”

Their eye narrowed. “You do not allow excuses to stop you. You refuse to be intimidated. You act in spite of opposition. And you bring others together and force them to face what is between them.” They nodded, seemingly satisfied with their assessment.

“Gawhd.” Amy grunted. “I am in the Fade.”

“Yes and no.” The spirit said. “This is more… hm.” They tilted their head. “It is difficult to explain.”

“It’s like a pocket dimension.” Siheta’s voice startled Amy, making her nearly jump away from the dock.

Siheta squatted, perched atop the dock in an easy crouch, as though she’d always been there. Her entrance felt a lot like she’d somehow figured out how to be Batman in spite of all this brightness.

“How?” Amy asked as the Kossith hopped down.

“You’re technically still not quite in the Fade.”

Amy’s eyes boggled.

“So...So, I’m dreaming and there’s a spirit,” so motioned to the Iron Confrontation. “And a dreamer is here,” and she motioned to Siheta. “And yet, I’m still not in the Fade?” Siheta smiled at her indignation.

“You’re dreaming the way you normally did before your crossing. You didn’t need the Fade there, did you?”

Amy sighed, drooping. Of course Siheta was right. She knew she was right.

“No.” she droned.

“Well, whatever happened in your crossing that sealed up your magic...it’s…” she shook her head. “It's safe to say that Sam’s mark broke through it. So now your magic is ...loose. It touches the veil in a way that we don’t.”

“Reaching out to you was not easy.” Confrontation added. “Even for those who have no magic, I can easily visit them. This required… effort.”

Amy looked between them, worry puckering her brow. “You’re...you’re not trapped here?”

“No.” Siheta assured. “Surprised at this turn of events, and smug that Solas hasn’t found his way here. But not trapped.”

“I am not trapped either.” Confrontation assured. “Only this contact required effort.”

Amy nodded, relief filtering through her. “Do you think Solas will show up here?”

“As soon as he figures out how, I imagine so.” Siheta grinned. “I’ve learned how to listen for you. And we’ve all been rather preoccupied since you fainted.”

“I fainted?” Amy demanded, appalled.

“Right into Commander Cullen’s burly arms.” Siheta whispered, as though it were some secret to cherish always, her hands coming up to rest against her heart.

“Let’s just keep that between ourselves, shall we?” Amy grumbled, face flattening at Siheta's antics.

The woman's eyes widened expressively. “I’d love to, but Varric was nearby so…”

“Fantastic.” Amy spat, the word sour in her mouth.

Siheta smirked. “Had Cullen and Sam tripping all over themselves.” She muttered, shaking her head. “It was a sight.”

“They enjoy controlling the dance.” Confrontation grumbled. “Being coy, fainting right and left to avoid what they imagine to be unpleasant.” They grinned at her. “Even incapacitated, you deny them that.”

“Alright.” Amy murmured, having enough of whatever that was.

“You could probably change this you know.” Siheta said, gesturing to their surroundings. Confrontation glared from the corner of their eye. Probably recognizing the diversionary tactic, and not appreciating it.

“I uh… I’ll just learn to crawl before I run.”

“Amy it’s you. Your head, your power, your dream.” Siheta soothed, her purple eyes kind and filled with delight. “I know, technically you aren’t a dreamer, but very few non-mages have the ability to control their dreams.”

“I know I could try it, but I’d just...rather not.”Amy said, sighing down at the ice. “At this point… I’m liable to make it look like home, and that’ll only make me more heartsick.” Siheta nodded her understanding.

“Because of your mother.” Confrontation blurted out.

Amy crossed her arms. “Yes. I miss my mother.” her voice a challenge.

“You aren’t upset because you miss her. You’re upset because you feel guilty and cheated, because you never told her that she is the measure by which you judge all women. Including yourself.”

Amy’s expression darkened. “I will punch you in your not real face if you don’t back off.” she said plainly.

Confrontation relaxed back onto their back foot. “Even when you wish to retreat, it isn’t without demanding it.” The admiration in that statement did not go unnoticed... Only, Amy wondered if that was necessarily the best thing to focus on. Was she unbearably relentless?

“I suppose you aren’t wrong.” Siheta decided with a smirk, and Amy could only pretend to glare for so long before just letting it go. “Would you like a change of topic?”

“Please?”

“What’s the last thing you remember?”

Amy took in a breath, letting it out slow as she tried to remember. “The doors of the chantry.”

“That tracks…” Siheta murmured. “But is this.. I mean…” She squinted, trying to figure out how to articulate her question. “This is your first dream?”

“Uh. Yeah.”

Siheta’s eyebrows rose. “I went to sleep a couple of hours ago, and you fainted not long after lunch.”

Amy’s brow puckered, not sure what that meant.

“Navigating the Dreaming isn’t easy…” Siheta shrugged as though she were trying to dismiss whatever she’d started. "You'll learn. I have faith."

“How…” Amy stopped herself, unsure of how to phrase any question as so many were demanding answers. “Ok.” She wet her lips. “How can we make it easier for Solas to get here?”

Siheta pursed her lips. “It makes sense that if the Dreaming and parts of it can enter your sphere… parts of your sphere could enter the Dreaming.”

“Uhhh…”

“I’m just thinking out loud here.” Siheta assured. “For me to get here, it was a combination of listening and feeling. Traversing here isn’t difficult when one can open portals… But could you open your own portals?” she squinted. “I don’t know. Theoretically, the answer should be yes...”

“The Fade strikes me as the sort of place one shouldn’t stumble about in.” Amy murmured.

“Such things haven’t stopped you before.”Confrontation reminded. Siheta sucked a breath between her teeth.

“You know the more I know you, the less I enjoy you.”Amy grumbled. Confrontation’s only response was one of those ‘I-call-it-as-I-see-it’ shrugs.

Siheta was still smirking at this interplay, but it wasn’t an unkind sort of smirk. Amy cleared her throat in hopes of clearing the air.

“Are you certain you want to try getting Solas here? Siheta asked.

Amy took a breath. “You really dislike him.” The statement was an observation, of course, but it was also a call for validation.

“I dislike how I feel about him.” Siheta refuted. Amy’s eyes sharpened. She wasn’t necessarily surprised to hear Siheta speak openly about feelings. She wasn’t typically the sort to cage herself, after all. “What?”

“Just...that turn of phrase. It’s peculiar to me.”

Siheta nodded. “Solas is intelligent and intuitive. He’s also much older than he seems, and that comes with a vast deal of knowledge. I respect him even when I resent him, and I don’t like that.” she shrugged. “He’s also...well, dangerous obviously. Anyone that powerful who can remain undetected is... But, there’s something shifty about him. In this world of ours, I understand wanting to remain as unremarkable as possible...but it goes beyond that with him. That makes me most uneasy. You don't do that unless you legitimately have a reason to hide.” Amy nodded that she understood, and Siheta seemed to relax. As though she’d been waiting to defend herself. “I’m not the only one who thinks it even if others don’t articulate it.”

“Magpie?”

“Magpie.” Siheta confirmed. “And Varic. And Bull to some extent.”

“Ben Hass-hole.”

“Quite.” Siheta surveyed their surroundings. “But even they’re beginning to relax around him.”

“Hm.” Amy murmured. “Without revealing too much… I don't think it’s a bad idea to be mindful of Solas. At the same time.. I’d much rather keep him close. Even at the expense of my own feelings. Because…” she shook her head. “He isn’t an automaton. He has valid thoughts and feelings. And if he's close to us, and we form strong bonds and feelings with him, there’s a chance he’ll form bonds and feelings for us as well.” she shrugged, mouth scrunching to the side. “Doesn’t mean a break won't hurt, but he’ll have all that to inform him as he moves away from us.”

Siheta’s expression was flat, grim. “Risky.” she announced before heaving a lonesome breath. “But worthy.” she finally determined with a nod.

“So…”

“Right.” Siheta took a fortifying breath. “How to invite the old sage in.” she eyed their surroundings till her eyes landed on Confrontation. The spirit had gone quiet during their discourse.

...and Amy wondered for a second how much of their presence was influencing all of this abject honesty.

“How is this affecting you?” Siheta asked, and Amy blinked, her eyes darting between Siheta and Confrontation… it was only then Amy realized that Siheta was addressing the spirit..and Amy suddenly grew concerned.

“Well enough.” Confrontation pronounced, nodding towards Amy. “This one is very concerned with keeping to herself… odd, as this space is herself.” They blinked, looking up and then around. “Honestly… I expected some friction.”

Siheta nodded, her gauging gaze assessing Amy anew. “Commendable.”

“Oi.” Amy grunted. “I’m right here.”

Siheta chuckled, taking a long moment to corral her thoughts. “So… just so we’re all on the same page now. People in Thedas live in a physical world that is next to and within a realm of Dreaming that they call the Fade. It's seperated from them only by a very flimsy barrier they call the Veil. Mages have a stronger connection to that Dreaming and use its energy to manifest effects in the physical world. To be clear, everyone lives with the Dreaming overlapping them.”

“Mages are just aware of it and connected to it.”

“Right.” Siheta confirmed. “When you arrived here, you didn’t connect and the Dreaming didn’t touch you.”

“So… I was like a vacuum?”

Siheta nodded. “A void, yes. But as time passed, I realized it wasn’t so. The Dreaming adjusted itself around you, seeping in where it could… the physical realm, of course. The rest of you, your soul, it was encased in a shell, like an egg. But I could focus on you and feel you in a similar fashion to others.” She took a deep breath. “It took pointed focus to skim that eggshell of yours, but it was possible.”

“Like a needle on an old-fashioned record player.”Amy mumbled to herself.

“If it helps the explanation, why not?” Siheta said with a shrug. “I observed many things about your unique condition, and the more often I pressed in on that shell…”

“The better you got at understanding?”

Siheta winced, suddenly contrite. “Yes...but that wasn’t without consequence. You began to sing more and more, and it became clearer that your magic manifested through your song. And as you used your gifts, they became stronger. Whether that was from, natural practice or my interference… I don’t know.”

Amy hesitated, uncertain. “...Your..?” How did Siheta ‘interfere’ exactly?

“You mentioned a needle...well, my attempts to connect through your barrier isn’t unlike pressing a glass against a door… or… a needle through the wood to peek inside. And once there were cracks, parts of your magic cloud leak out...and parts of the Dreaming could leak in.” Amy stared at her, both shocked and something…a feeling she couldn’t quite name. There was fear, and she felt small and yet amazed at the same time. It was like… seeing a storm coming, and worrying that your house might not stand against it. “There’s no way to test if that process weakened the barrier, because it’s gone now.”

Amy swallowed thickly. “...the explosion?”

Siheta nodded. “The shell is gone. Now, it’s more of a...thin gooey barrier…”

“Semipermeable membrane.”

Siheta’s eyebrows nose and she nodded slow. “Semi-Permeable… a good name for it. Things don’t just float out or drift in, but it’s much easier.” Siheta smirked. “Like your own personal veil.” She sighed, softly. “That being said, you still aren't like other mages. That will make this instruction challenging. Not impossible… just difficult.”

Amy nodded, the shock so thick she couldn’t feel crestfallen.

“It will be difficult to invite Solas here, because it’s something that can be done, but it’s advanced. Also... I know how I would do it, but I don't entirely know what would work for you.” Siheta explained. “Instead, I think I should instruct you in the basics first. It will provide you with a better foundation to build on, and you would be safer.

Amy nodded. It felt like a bit of a let-down, but it made sense.

“Besides, once Solas is here, I doubt he’ll be interested in the basics.”

Amy smirked. “You think he’d disregard that?”

Siheta shrugged. “Solas can get rather caught up in forgetting that everyone isn’t like him, and that such things are normal. He’s like a qunari that way, confused how a woman can fight or a mage could be in command.” she sighed. “A fish can teach a bird to swim, so long as it remembers that they’re different animals and maintains respect for that simple fact.”

Amy chuckled softly. “The simple often confounds the wise.” She relented, relaxing as she resigned herself to Siheta’s basic instruction. “All right. Teach me.” she said, newly determined.

Happy Valentine's Day :)

#ILIC #It's Lost Its Charm #Dragon Age #Dragon Age Fan Fiction #DAFF #DAFF It's Lost Its CHarm #Amy McManus #Siheta Adaar #Confrontation #Basic Training

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