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#and only editted the busy size or height to make the girls. The shading makes stuff look bad. The bloom lighting is gone.
uncaught-coolfish · 8 months
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unpopular opinion the Maya models don’t look bad at all. But at the same time the only ones that look good to me are the ones in darker clothing, with darker skin, etc etc because YOU CANT TELL THERES NO FUCKING TEXTURING!!!!!!!!!
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onebizarrekai · 3 years
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v3′s art is comically terrible for a professionally distributed game in a series: a compilation
in this not-essay I will list all of the mistakes and problems I have spotted in v3′s art. don’t worry, it’s entirely for fun and I’m doing this on a whim, so please feel free to not take this seriously but also it’s hilarious and embarrassing how ridiculous this is like what happened did they speedrun the whole production or what
see, there are some things you can take as meta like “they made it bad on purpose to allude to the downfall of tv shows that have been on air for much too long” but I have a very strong feeling this is not the case due to the nature of some of these errors
disclaimer, the more I study this art, the more I fear that the artists were underpaid and underslept, so if this is in fact the case, I am so sorry to all of them but also I’m going to make fun of the art anyway
anyway let’s get started!
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if you study this image for longer than 5 seconds, you will see that kaede is the only one fully shaded and keebo is literally just his normal sprite pasted into the image. every other character is just an ordinary ref, hence most of them facing the exact same direction with neutral expressions on their faces. it looks like a bad edit, and is probably one of the worst pieces of art in the game. it kind of gets better from here on, but my roasting will not.
with that out of the way, here’s the problem that officially bothers me the most and clarifies my viewpoint of “this is not meta and an actual lack of company communication”
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this freaking cg, which seems normal at a glance, but some wiseass was like “oh, kaede is a girl, so obviously she’s going to be shorter than the Male Protagonist™” ah, that’s funny. because if you look at the character bios, kaede is, in fact, one inch taller than shuichi and not like 6 inches shorter as she is shown here.
also shuichi’s shoulder is disproportionate and horrendous and he looks vaguely like a jojo character, but I wasn’t even thinking about that until right now.
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thanks guys, 50% of the fandom who has never bothered to check these bios thinks that kaede is like 5′3 (did the developers really put so little thought into her to the point where drawing her correctly in the game didn’t even matter??)
also I would like to point out that, even though this isn’t related to the art itself, yes, a character kaede’s size being only 117 lbs is unfeasible, but this applies to literally every character in danganronpa ever and it’s not new news that it’s unrealistic
update: someone in the tags informed me that in versions of the game that use centimeters, like the japanese version, kaede is actually shorter than shuichi, which just adds another thing to the list of weird decisions the localization team made for no reason. that said, after confirming this, kaede is 167 cm in the original, while shuichi is 171 cm, which are approximately 5′6 and 5′7 respectively, but one inch is still nowhere near as drastic as it is depicted above. (in spite of this, I would rather depict kaede as slightly taller, so I’m probably going to keep doing that.)
the journey continues!
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bro if you want kaede to have shoulder length hair then stick to it to begin with
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you can pretend this is at an angle all you want but they definitely committed the shorter kaede sin a second time
wait a goddamn second.
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DO YOU SEE THIS
no………… it wasn’t kaede who shrank. it was shuichi who got taller
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speaking of which, can we talk about how shady the perspective is in this elevator pic? look at shuichi and kokichi in comparison to kaede. kokichi, who is canonically 7 inches (edit: or 5, if you’re loyal to the original) shorter than kaede, looks taller than kaede. he’s growing too. what steroids are these gays taking
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running into the room, electric boogaloo: I don’t think tsumugi is supposed to be the same height as kokichi
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gonta… gonta you’re lookin a bit like a jojo character there
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I love how kaito’s head looks kind of like it was pasted onto his body. why is he the same size as shuichi? shouldn’t he be high school bully size or something? his torso is teensy
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ah yes, white angie.
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I love this cg but why is shuichi’s right hand so much bigger than his left hand
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I also love how this cg looks like they literally took pictures of trees and pasted them into the background, especially on the left. the shadows are so weird, especially closer to the ceiling, it’s difficult for me to believe they didn’t do exactly that.
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return of Enlarged shuichi
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puberty update: kokichi is now taller than shuichi in spite of shuichi never missing leg day. what crimes will he commit
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I have to mention it, guys. this has to be one of the worst danganronpa cgs. kokichi’s facial proportions look atrocious. look at the way his face sticks out like his jaw is in the wrong place. his scarf is a pasted texture. that’s it. this moment was so iconic but the cg just looks so… so… off. like something is terribly wrong, but you can’t put your finger on it.
you know what? let’s get into that ‘pasted texture’ thing.
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let’s imagine you’re an artist working on a professional game. you’re assigned to draw cgs of kokichi ouma, who has a checkered scarf from hell. sure, it will be terrible to draw, but you only have to draw it once at a time! plus, perspective is pretty important, right? can you be bothered? nah, actually. let’s just copy paste a checkered pattern into the cg, because I’m sure nobody will notice. it’ll blend right in with the other cgs that someone actually put effort into drawing his scarf in, right?
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no. the answer is no and I very much noticed. this genuinely looks terrible and I would understand taking a shortcut like that in fanart or even an indie game but this is a full price pc and console distributed game
(an addition: look at kokichi’s TINY HANDS in that last one)
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meanwhile, they straight up forgot to color in kokichi’s scarf in this cg.
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dude. I forgot about whatever the hell this cg was. anyway look at keebo please just look at him
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lovin kaito’s baby arms
real talk, maybe you could argue that he’s missing muscle because he’s deathly sick, but most of his cgs don’t line up with this, and his arms just look disproportionate to his torso size (granted this is a consistent problem across all danganronpa games and a lot of characters have this weird problem, like hajime, but also kaito is bigger than hajime so I kind of have higher expectations of him) maybe it’s his stupid goatee and the way he reminds me of yasuhiro?? it creates this illusion that he’s older than he is and so I keep expecting him to look more like an adult
oh, also rantaro is missing some of his accessories in that video he made–you know the one–but I don’t wanna go back and screenshot it
also you may have noticed that I’m skipping all of the monokub cgs because I literally do not care about them and I’m not even bothering to check and see if they have artistic mistakes in them
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JIMMY NEUTRON???
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hey um uh kaito you seem to be missing your neck
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hey guys do you like my pregame fanart
so, that done, the sprites are also pretty terrible at times. they’re not as interesting to go through, however, and downloading the full sprite sets for every character and studying every single one of them will drive me insane, so I’ll just sum some of the ones I noticed up. I made things for kaede and shuichi before deciding I wasn’t going to get into it, so here are these.
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that said, other mistakes include kokichi missing his purple highlights in all of the sprites encompassing a specific pose, stray pixels all over the place on everyone, and everyone also has heavily inconsistent shading, but literally all I think about is how pregame shuichi is unshaded and two of kaede’s pregame sprites have glaring outfit change mistakes in them
anyway, thank you for taking the time to read my ridiculous ramble. in all seriousness, there’s this looming presence of some lack of communication in the development team, like with all the art and design inconsistencies, pieces and sprites that look rushed, stray pixels, and missing basic proportional stuff. these are the kinds of things that you supposedly have to pretty much have in the bag in order to get jobs in professional businesses, so it’s really weird to me that this game suffers from so many of these problems. it’s like they tried to make the art so much more crisp than the other games, but it fell on its face as they realized it was going to take longer to draw everything and they started to rush. it’s weird, because the coloring itself looks normal–it’s just sloppily drawn, and the proportions are a mess once put into the context of perspective. many of the cgs look like they were drawn by different people, and I’m still not over the fact that half of kokichi’s cgs have his scarf pasted in as a texture.
the moral of the story is that if you’re selling a game at full price that also happens to be in a series that has had 3 very good games in it already the stakes should probably be higher than this. v3 has been out for more than 3 years and it’s still $40 (did it cost more than that before? I sure hope not), and the overarching quality of the game is just not as high as the other games. I’m not saying that the other games don’t have any problems with their art at all, they’re just not as glaringly obvious and every artistic choice in those games feels intentional.
regardless, I had a blast roasting the art at 2am, so maybe you got a kick out of all this chaos.
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mollymauk-teafleak · 4 years
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that home by and by
Every Fjorclay fic for the next thousand years is going to have this song for a title, huh?
Trigger Warnings: Trans pregnancy, implied childbirth, complications during said childbirth but! A happy ending, I promise 
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Fjord thinks back in the day their children were born and how much he's changed since then
Please consider leaving a comment on Ao3!
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Fjord was glad that there were some things he hadn’t lost.
A lot of things were poisoned for him now, things that he’d used to love, that had once seemed as much a part of him as his bones and ligaments. Taking them out and replacing them with something new had been a long, painful business but there were things he hadn’t lost.
The whisper of the shore on the stones still calmed him, in its regularity and gentleness like the comforting breath of a person you loved beside you in your bed at night. The tang of salt and smell drying seaweed, just on the verge of being something unpleasant but it was familiar. The many blues and greys and greens, half a hundred shades of so few colours, that could be seen in every turn of the waves. A rough kind of beauty, a natural kind that could be cold and raw if it wasn’t yours. Fjord hadn’t lost any of that, it still slowed his heartbeat and relaxed his muscles and brought a soft smile to his face as he walked along the shoreline.
And he’d gained something as well.  
His son’s footsteps weren’t as sure as his own, he’d only learned to walk very recently and the mix of smooth pebbles and sand were proving difficult. But he still insisted on walking by himself. If his sisters were doing it, Fern had to do it too.
Up to a point. If Fjord looked back along the beach, he could see their daughters, gambolling through the surf, splashing and shrieking with laughter as they came up after each wave knocked them back. Their grey green fur was soaked and plastered to their too long limbs, their tufts of hair- pink for Hazel and black for Willow- were spiked up and already stiff with salt. Caduceus was amongst their chaos, up to his knees in water, never letting either girl go beyond the reach of his long arms, chuckling at how pleased they were to be tumbled back and rolled off their feet by the water.
Fern had joined in at first, hesitantly paddling up to his ankles, gripping his tail tightly in the hand that wasn’t latched onto Caduceus’ trousers. But he’d sobbed when the first wave had come up higher than his middle and had scampered on all fours back to Fjord, hiding under his arm.
Fjord hated seeing his youngest upset and frightened, of course he did, but he’d be lying if he said it didn’t feel good to be the one he ran to for comfort and protection.
So he’d wrapped Fern up in one of his hoodies, big enough to be a dress on him, coming down to skate his shins and asked if he wanted to go for a walk instead, just the two of them. Those were the magic words for Fern, drying up his damp eyes and making him smile wide enough that Fjord could see his budding tusks poking over his lip.
So now he was walking along the shore, just the two of them, pausing every so often so Fern could catch up, tail wobbling behind him to help him keep his balance.
“You’re doing good, little man,” he smiled, knowing he didn’t need to raise his voice over the surf, Fern’s enormous ears would hear him.
Fern smiled back, the hood pulled up so his large golden eyes seemed to peer out at him. He’d laden the pocket of the hoodie with stones that had taken his fancy for one reason or another and was now wobbling a little too much for Fjord’s liking. So he held out a hand for him to grip, letting him steady himself, draw himself up to his full, not very considerable height so the top of his head only just brushed Fjord’s hip.
“Tell me a story, papa,” he hummed, leaning into him as they walked on.
Fjord had seen that coming. Fern loved a story, any story about his papa, his days on the Tide’s Breath or travelling the coasts, his days as a mercenary. A lot of them needed to be sanitized for his toddler, a lot of editing that needed doing before the words came out of his mouth but the way Fern’s eyes would shine, like his papa was a hero in every single one, mouthing along to the bits he knew best. It made everything that had happened to him feel worth it, like it really could all be a story that had been leading to something good.
And there was one story that was his favourite.
“Which story do you want, little man?” Fjord asked, even though he already knew the answer.
He pretended to consider, tilting his head and humming before grinning wide and bouncing on the balls of his feet, “I want the story where papa saved me!”
Fjord chuckled, running his thumb along his little knuckles, “You really like that one, don’t you?”
“Yes! It’s my favourite!”
“Well, if it’s your favourite…” Fjord hummed, as if he’d had no idea, as if it was news to him, “So. It starts when your daddy and I were up at the Grove with your nana and grandpa and all your aunties and your uncle…”
“And I wasn’t born yet, was I?” Fern added, one hand sunk in his pocket, making the stones clatter.
“No,” Fjord nodded, “You were still curled up real small in your daddy-”
“But I was the smallest, right?” Fern cheeped, “ Cos mean sisters were sitting on me and squishing me…”
“Little man, who's telling this story, me or you?” Fjord arched an eyebrow fondly.
Fern giggled, hiding his face against Fjord’s leg, “You, daddy…”
He would tell the story, Fjord thought, as his son stooped to pick up another pebble that shone with a smooth, polished blueness.
But it would always go a little differently in his head.
He had been playing with his braid anxiously all morning. Caduceus had woven it into the longer part of his hair on their first night sharing the cramped bedroom he’d slept in for the first fifty years of his life, crammed into the teenage firbolg sized bed that really wasn’t meant to accommodate a full sized Caduceus, his half orc husband and their three unborn children.
Fjord knew the braids in a firbolg’s hair had deep significance, showing what stage of their life they were in through the complex weaves of hair and the patterns shaved into the shorter fur around them. A firblog had only to look at Caduceus’ to know he followed Melora, that he came from the Blooming Grove, that he was wed and everywhere he’d travelled. There were braids for every birthday, for the day you left home, for your wedding day. And there was a braid awaiting the arrival of a child.
Caduceus had told him, in soft voices that wouldn’t carry and wake his family in the rooms perilously close to their own, that ‘mother’ and ‘father’ were common words. Firbolgs only needed one, byrd. Genderless and no limit to how many one person could have, it simply meant the person who had given them life and had promised to protect, love and guard the baby for the rest of their life. It was a title that was earned, rather than being a simple fact of biology.
“So you have as much a right to this as I do,” Caduceus had murmured, as he’d woven the braid into his black hair, fixing it with a bead made of sea glass, a gift he’d been waiting until their arrival to give him, “That’s what you are to them.”
And in that moment, every doubt that had gnawed at Fjord since Caduceus had pulled him into the back room of their cafe and asked in a quivering voice if they could go to the pharmacy on the way home, it was as if it had never been there. All the voices that told him he wasn’t worthy of this, that life had made a mistake in letting him have this kind of joy, they stopped for the first time in eight months. He’d surged into a kiss, holding Caduceus’ stomach between them and telling himself he could do this.
And now, with everything falling apart and those voices chattering so loud he barely kept both feet on the ground, Fjord held onto his braid and tried to remember when he’d believed it.
Something was very wrong. Even he, who was going off whatever knowledge he’d been able to glean from websites and had been gladly deferring to Constance the whole time, could sense it. It was in the anxious, set shoulders of the other Clay’s sharing the clearing with them, the way Calliope was pacing, how strained Corrin’s prayers had become, how tightly Clarabelle clutched the first two babies, tiny, perfect little girls Fjord already knew he would take apart the world for. Cad’s moans grew tight and cracked at the edges, the composure and focus he’d managed to maintain flaking away gradually and his grip on Fjord’s forearms becoming painfully tight. He was terrified, Fjord could see it, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it but share the sacred pool where every Clay since the grove was founded had been born and watch as it’s crystal waters began to turn accusingly red.
And when the tension finally broke, there was only a crushing silence. Not the rustling of the leaves in the winter air, not the ringing of Cad’s last cry, not the undergrowth moving. The grove held its breath, waiting, and received no reply.
All that came was Constance’s voice, soft and heavy, the hand that wasn’t holding the source of the terrible silence reaching to touch Caduceus’ face, “I’m so sorry, sweet one. It isn’t your fault, it just happens sometimes when there’s many…”
Caduceus pulled away, from her hand and out of Fjord’s arms, the first time in hours they hadn’t been touching. Water broke over the lip of the hot spring and soaked into the grass around them, blood and all steaming in the cold bite of winter air. The forest around them seemed to sigh, like it was in mourning too, some of the sunlight going out of the clearing. Sounding far away, Clarabelle started to cry and Colton cursed. And Caduceus, his shoulders heaved like he was still in labour, like his body thought if he kept going there would be something he could do to stop this. Sobs were rising in his chest, the heavy, broken kind that seemed like they would never stop.
The only thing that managed to tear it’s way out of his throat ahead of the tears was a rasping, shattering whisper, “Why...why would she do this?”
Fjord didn’t have to ask who his husband meant.
Inside, he seemed to split into several versions of himself, pulling in different directions. One strained towards Caduceus, to hold him and give him comfort he was in no state to accept. One lurched towards his daughters, now crying fitfully in their aunt’s arms as if they knew they should be three. One wanted to lash out in fury, at who he couldn’t have said. One just wanted to run, to flee and leave it all behind.
And one just stood and whispered bitterly, it’s your fault. Already, not even a second old, and you’ve failed. Why did you think you could do this?
Fjord felt oddly frozen, suspended for a moment, caught between all these versions of himself, unable to feel anything.
And then, a memory. A lashing storm, one of a hundred the Tide’s Breath had sailed through. But that time, for no reason other than simple bad luck borne of a worn robe or just the wrong balance or a shift in the wind, a mate had gone overboard. Lost had been the word immediately passed among the crew, as soon as they’d disappeared because how could it be anything else? But Vandran, his old captain, had said otherwise. He’d leapt over the side, snatched them from the grip of the rolling waves and heaved them back onto the rain soaked boards after nearly ten minutes of heart stopping waiting. And even then, when their skin had been pale and still and lifeless, Vandran had pounded on their chest, refusing to give up. Fjord remembered Sabian saying it was useless, they were beyond help, but Vandran had kept up that steady rhythm and then, in defiance of all the gods, they had sat up, heaved up what looked like half the ocean and taken a breath.
So much of Vandran that Fjord had worn like armour, he’d had to discard. Bits that were false and sour, bits that hurt more than they helped. But that was one thing his old captain gave him that he’d kept a hold of, the thing he’d realised standing on the bucking deck and watching colour come back into a face that had seemed dead.
To never give up on someone, not while there was still a chance.
In the present, in the middle of the grieving forest, Fjord snapped back into himself and surged upwards, water running down his body.
“Give them to me,” he said, voice tight and urgent, “Please, give them to me. Let me try.”
Constance could have argued, she could have told him in the same, sad tone that there wasn’t anything he could do. But her eyes, the colour of lavender in the winter, changed and she handed the baby to him.
Not his whole hand, not like Vandran had done. The baby was tiny, smaller even than their sisters, and looked even smaller in their stillness. Just his fingers, pressed to their breastbone, once, twice, three times, on and on in a regular pattern, keeping count in his curiously still mind. Fjord could smell water, not the earthy smell of the natural springs or the melting snow, but the sharp bite of salt water and he could hear the waves as blood rushed through his ears.
Behind him, through his sobs, Caduceus was begging in a faraway voice, “Please, Fjord, please, please…”
Caduceus had put everything into this up until now, aweing Fjord more every day for nine months. But this, this he could do for him. And he was not going to fail him.
When his mental count reached thirty, he bent and exhaled air into those tiny lungs, two heaving breaths to give them what they couldn’t take in themselves. Then more compressions, counting again, thirty to two breaths. The only sound was Caduceus’ high, thin pleading, and the sea that only Fjord could hear.
And the, finally, a small, spluttering cry, a new voice in the Grove.
Fjord laughed, delight rushing up to fill the vacuum inside him that had allowed him to work without falling apart. His chest felt like it might burst as he lifted the baby to his chest, and held them close, just in case anything else tried to ruin this moment.
Caduceus had burst into fresh tears of pure relief, rising up out of the water to throw his arms around them, trying to thank him but unable to get the words out. Still grinning because if he didn’t he’d break too, Fjord kissed his cheek and made gentle, soothing noises, both to his husband and to the baby. Their son.
“It’s okay,” he murmured, holding them both in the circle of his arms, “It’s all okay, we’re all here. We all made it.”
Because they didn’t pull away from each other for a while, because they just couldn’t bring themselves to, they didn’t see the flowers- the perfect ring of bright, white flowers that had sprung up out of nowhere around the edge of the pool, filling the air with their scent.
“Because you saved me, right papa?” Fern beamed, blinking up at him in adoration, “You saved me so the Wildmother sent the flowers as a present.”
There were a few things Fjord left out of the story when he told it to Fern, he clipped away a lot of the fear and downplayed it as much as he could but his favourite part was the flowers.
“She was welcoming you three,” Fjord nodded, “Because she knew you were special.”
“And because my papa saved me,” Fern insisted, tugging on his hand, “Because he’s a hero.”
Fjord’s throat felt like it was tightening as he bent and swept Fern into his arms, pebbles in his pocket rattling. He covered his little grey green cheeks in kisses, making him giggle and writhe, clinging to his shirt so he didn’t fall, not that Fjord would ever drop him.
“I don’t much care about being a hero,” he admitted, as his son’s tail buffeted him playfully, “I only care about being your hero.”
Fern giggled, reaching up to pat at his face, “Love you papa.”
Fjord smiled, swaying with his son bundled in his arms, listening to his daughters and husband laughing just behind them, safe and well.
It had been difficult, getting to where he was, building this new version of himself.
But he’d gained far more than he’d ever lost.
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angstsplatter · 5 years
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This is a little something I wrote for a magical realism contest that seems to have gone under and disappeared. It’s about two unlikely traveling companions coming to terms with each other. Tumblr crashed each and every browser I tried a copy’pasta on, so I’m including just a snippet before linking to the full story, which can be read on google docs (and hopefully not edited but I had to link from my phone because google on laptop swears it “just can’t share”). Please note that no oppressions here are meant as some allegory for real world oppressions. Anti-orc stigma exists right alongside racism, ableism, sexism, and sizeism (and etc.!) as we know them. This story does touch base specifically with racism, ableism, and sizeism.
On the Road
“Fatass orcs thinking the sidewalk belongs to them,” some skinny white man with an obvious comb over muttered under his breath, as if I hadn’t stepped into the gutter, risking getting hit by a car, so he wouldn’t have to leave the relative safety of the sidewalk during my short walk to stretch my legs. “I hear the darker they are, the more humans they’ve eaten,” some snarky teen girl loudly commented to her friend as they smoked behind the gas station, where the bathroom large enough to accommodate my race of orcs was located. The comments stick in my head, refusing to stop bouncing around in there and give me a moment of relief.
If it’s not that I’m an orc of Clan Gorosh – big and thick and apparently inherently intimidating – it’s the deep hornblende-like color of my skin that can appear a rich glauconitic green to coal black depending on the light. If it’s not the color of my skin or my ancestry, then it’s who I love and how (not that I’ve dated in years) – and if it’s not that, then it’s all of them or any mix of them. That’s what makes it so easy to move on from town to town, to never put down roots. Doing so also feeds the monster in my brain, though, and I don’t mean how most sentients think of us orcs having monstrous, murderous instincts. I mean the depression: that which tears at my mind and heart, ripping it apart and eating it, small piece by small piece. It’d be bad enough on its own but when others confirm what I’m thinking, how I’m feeling… well, it’s better to keep moving. Better to make sure I’m always alone. It’s easy enough to lie to yourself and pretend the next place will be better – or at least not worse – when you’re alone. When you’re alone, there’s no one there to tell you otherwise.
That’s not why I got into truck driving, but it is why I stayed. I got into it truck driving because it doesn’t require a whole lot of face-to-face time with people, who tend to become defensive and aggressive when facing down orcs, especially if they’ve never really been around us before and especially if we’re Gorosh and absolutely huge compared to them. Employers consider that bad for business. Truck driving is mostly just the driver on the road and deliveries, most of whom go to poor workers who probably grew up in neighborhoods similar to mine, a clash of humans and orcs with a smattering of vampires and the occasional outcast fae (usually elves) all trying to survive poverty, and aren’t as intimated by orcs – by me.
By now, my job is a shield. The long, odd hours keep me from regular contact with anyone, which includes my maus, or moms, especially as I’ve taken to a mostly nocturnal schedule in order to avoid even more people. Stretching over the wheel, I pull into the well-lit truck stop as carefully as possible. I’ve long since learned that any slight accident can result in a fight I just don’t want any part of. It’s not that I couldn’t win most the fights just based on my sheer size: it’s that I don’t want to fight. Hunching over, I drop out of the truck in a jump that would probably hurt a human’s knees and do some minimal stretching before filling up the tank. I briefly debate heading inside for some food but decide that my snacks will last, instead doing a cursory once around the truck to ensure everything looks alright. Nothing much has ever happened to my truck, and in my comfortable routine, I almost miss it. The back straps for opening and closing the back are not how I carefully leave them. It’s possible I was in a hurry after the truck was loaded and did this myself, but the unlocked door tells me it’s more likely a stowaway. I let a growl burble up through my throat and pull back my lips to expose my tusks just a little more. That should be enough to scare whoever was brave or reckless enough to stow away on my truck. I yank on the strap to set the door in motion, glowering back into the back.
They haven’t bothered really trying to hide. “Oh. Eheh. Hi there,” the sentient waves. I don’t immediately place them as a dwarf, but the longer I look, the more clear their heritage becomes. Of all the sentients I might have been expecting, the dwarf in front of me isn’t really one of them. My purposefully set murder face (as the humans call it) easily crumbles into one of confusion as my bravado and anger melts into interest.
“Er – hi?” I respond, not really sure what to do next. Nobody is on TV as much as the white humans, but dwarves aren’t a totally unheard of sight. With the color of my own skin, darker than the greens and browns of many other Gorosh orcs and even darker than the tans of some other clans, it surprises and disappoints me to suddenly realize that I never thought of dwarves as having dark skin. The ones on TV are always white. The one in my truck is only a few shades lighter than I am with a jet black beard and equally dark eyes. Other physical aspects seem different to me as well, and it takes me a moment to think that dwarves, like all other sentients, must have different races/clans/families (or however they must classify themselves in their own culture) just like the rest of us.
“I suppose you’ll be wanting me to get out, then.” The stowaway’s accent is lilting, deep and beautiful. I’ve never heard another like it before. I wonder if it’s a dwarven accent or they simply grew up somewhere I’ve never come in contact with before.
“It’s kind of illegal,” I reply, smartly, as if they aren’t aware. I wonder where my usual eloquence has gone.
The dwarf laughs and swings their body around, revealing that one leg is gone from slightly above the knee. My arms twitch as if to help catch them if they fall when they fling themselves out of my truck. The height getting in and out of the truck is nothing for me, but dwarves are more than several feet shorter than I. The missing leg must not be new, though, because the dwarf lands easily – if not heavily – on their other leg. Dwarves are definitely sturdier than your average human. “It was nice meeting you,” they say, giving me a salute that reminds me of the human military but must be dwarven in nature for its differences. Then with a shake of their arms, two canes swiftly appear, bursting forth from each of their sleeves.
“Good luck.” I don’t know why I say it. Something about this dwarf is making me even more awkward than usual. I yank on the strap to close my truck back up as the dwarf begins to walk away. Trying to not look behind me, I lock the door, then start to the left back to the driver’s seat, abruptly switching towards the right as I remember I need to finish walking around my truck, no matter how unlikely it is that I’ll encounter another issue.
“Or maybe you could give me a ride?”
I turn. The dwarf looks both hopeful and resigned. I open my mouth once, gaping like a fish. I sigh. I’ve never picked up a hitchhiker before, and I don’t know what draws me to it this time, but on instinct and already regretting it, I answer, “sure.” I gesture towards the passenger side of the truck. “I’ll have to unlock that for you.”
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ayellowbirds · 6 years
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Here’s Part 25. Oh my gods, it’s almost over?
After this is done, there’s going to be a lot of editing. Not only on this, but Cypora’s Guide to Becoming an Evil Queen, too. I got tons of helpful feedback from @thesylverlining on the original text, and in addition to fixing issues with it and tightening it up, I’m going to go back and forth between these two to try and keep them cohesive and consistent as a pair of stories. As for the next Cypora’s Guide? Well, maybe that’s for next November. I started with a B title , and then a C title... now let’s see what will be a good D title....
Oh, yeah. The story. We pick up where we left off:
Beyond the gate, the land was within a forest, as before. But it seemed to be one in a valley that rose up around them, lined with strange, pale trees.
No, that wasn’t quite right. It wasn’t a valley, it was more like the land itself was warped and bowed in the distance, and instead of growing upwards, the trees seemed to grow relative to the angle of the land. It skewed the horizon in ways that gave Cypora a headache. That was only the distance, however; immediately outside of the gate, towers rose up around them, ranging in height from as tall as a great tree, to the level of Cypora’s waist.
She approached one of the smaller ones, nearby. It reminded her of something between a mushroom or fern growing out of the ground, and a raw crystal on a stone. The whole of it was black, and had a strange smoothness that felt somewhat oily while being quite dry. Set within each were numerous orange panels, and Cypora realized they were windows. Within, she could see the rephaim of small folk; shreteles and kapelyushnikles milling about.
“Yasker, come take a look,” she called, and the little fellow bounded over in long leaps. He looked through the windows, and then backed away as a line of tiny shades wandered out of a door that Cypora hadn’t even realized was there.
They seemed to walk through each other with ease, and even passed through Cypora at the level of her ankles and calves, but at the same time, they interacted with things around them. It was as though the rephaim existed out of sequence with one another and mortals, but not their environment.
Looking back to where they’d come from, Cypora saw that the grove of trees had been replaced by a stone tower, made of twisting columns that intertwined organically. When she floated back over to that, she saw that the stone had a grain to it like wood.
“Looks like petrified wood,” Caracosa observed from beside her. She turned to the towers. “Jet, and amber, or maybe copal?”
“Those are…” Cypora felt the idea at the edge of her mind. Something she’d read in an old book. As she ran her hand over one of the shretele-sized buildings, it came to her. “It’s all petrified plant matter. Fossils of trees and sap.”
Orangella whistled, which made Sharf whine. Or maybe the lack of wood did it. Cypora knelt down to pet her, and dug in her pockets. She’d taken to carrying wood chips for just this reason; Sharf took the offered treat without further protest and busied herself with munching.
The others looked around; Licoricia peeked into one of the human-size buildings, while her sister kept watch around her. Licoricia called out, “there’s humans and the like in here. I’m not sure about all of them?”
“Things smell weird, here,” Sefora sniffed the air, and leaned low to the ground. After a moment, Sharf followed her lead.
“Do you see anyone familiar?” Cypora asked Shiaroc, who watched as a large, shrouded shape walked out of one of the buildings, and into another. She shook her head.
Someone tapped Cypora on the shoulder, and she jumped a bit. It was Qurra, pointing up. “How about him?”
Cypora followed the frustrating girl’s finger, and saw him. Three meters tall if he was an apple’s height, but far too slender for that stature. Horned, shaggy, and hunched, with a lantern in one hand.
“The Old Goat,” she whispered. The first overlord she had known of from the dungeon, and the first one she knew to be killed.
He stopped in his stride, and turned his head toward her, then leaned down.
“Hoom, taking you long enough it was,” he said, his voice that strange chorus of many voices at once that it had been when Licoricia called upon his spirit years ago. “You’ll want to speak to one of Her angels, then.”
The 15th of Vernary, 5647 CC
It had turned out to be a rather long journey to meet with an angel of the dead, even in Sheol. Scoloaster sat with the others, listening to Orangella’s report; her face had appeared in the fire beneath a pot Acantha was using to prepare a meal for the living and the few dead who could still stomach the idea of food.
“We almost didn’t realize it had been a day,” Orangella explained, “but Caracosa’s been hanging onto a pocketwatch like it was a life-raft.”
“But why should the Old Goat be so aware?” Scoloaster mused. “Rephaim are not, you know, chatty, by nature.”
“Well, we figure,” Orangella began, and then shrugged, “I mean, he figures, too, that it’s half because he was an overlord, and half because we sort of woke him up way back then.”
“Could Licoricia ‘wake up’ others, then?” Keturah asked.
“Yeah, but we’re holding off on that. We don’t want a bunch of shades asking for resurrections before we even know what it’s going to cost.”
“That makes sense,” Bang said. “But I don’t like that you’re going so far away from the dungeon, to meet this angel.”
“Oh, get this,” Orangella said, smiling and seeming to lean in through the vision in the fire. “We haven’t left the dungeon! This whole huge valley is apparently part of it, probably on account of there’s so many rephaim here.”
“Maybe,” Acantha began, staying quiet while stirring the soup in the pot for a few more turns, “something about the Dungeon System?”
“Maybe,” Orangella agreed. “We don’t really know much except what the Old Goat is telling us and that Caracosa agrees with. But it seems like the edge of the valley borders some kind of city, called—”
Orangella disappeared from the flame for a moment, and it sounded like she was checking with someone on the other side.
“—Kaf, yeah,” she confirmed. Apparently it’s a big one, so we should be able to meet with an angel right away.”
The 19th of Vernary, 5647 CC
Even angels of death had schedules, and the earliest they could be seen after ringing the gigantic bell to call the attention of the angel overseeing this region was days later, as confirmed by the attending spirits. Waiting in Kaf hadn’t been so bad. They had followed the rules Caracosa had given them, and it turned out the city had accommodations suitable for mortals. The rephaim there seemed more aware of them, and even operated businesses.
It wasn’t even so much of a city, as it was a city-sized office, with towers of shelves lined with tomes and scroll cases, many with far larger duplicates that could have served as buildings, themselves. The angel who oversaw it was known as Hitpartsutza’am, and contrasted so sharply with the mundane nature of the situation that Cypora could only wonder at how they managed it. Several stories tall, the angel had the form of a vast bull, with the face of a beautiful golden-skinned human set beneath the chin of their otherwise bovine head. Immense columns of steam rose from their nostrils at all times, and Cypora had to remind herself again and again that others had surely dealt with this angel in the past.
“We would like to know of the costs for either raising as zombies or dybbuks, or even outright resurrection of the rephaim of the dungeon known as the Timber Barony,” Cypora said, offering as deep and respectful a bow as she could manage. “As well as our companion, Caracosa.”
Hitpartsutza’am billowed huge clouds of smoke, and gave an almost imperceptibly small kick of their hoof. It was enough to send a quake throughout Kaf, and caused a book to tumble into Cypora’s hands. She nearly fell over with the sudden weight of it, but managed to simply open it up.
Inside, written out in multiple alphabets, were page after hundreds and hundreds of pages of names and descriptions of deceased dungeon-dwellers. In each case, there were glowing golden numbers indicating the approximate values of different types of raising. Some were so close in price that it seemed absurd to even consider doing anything less than true resurrection, while others varied by vast sums between bringing them back as a bodiless dybbuk, and restoring them to healthful and hearty life. Others still cost absurd amounts to begin with, mere pages from those who could have been brought back with the change left over from another.
“Perhaps we could have some time to consult this to reach a decision?” Shiaroc asked. Hitpartsutza’am snorted again.
“The karishnik will see thou out,” they said from both bull and human mouths at once. “Make an appointment when you are prepared.”
The being that came out from behind Hitpartsuza’am to escort Cypora’s group looked like a cross between the forms of a human and fish, with the broad and heavy-bellied physique of a circus strongman or sideshow wrestler, all in ashen gray and trailing a finned tail.
“One of the bloody-mouthed beasts,” Caracosa whispered to Cypora and the others.
The reason for the title was obvious as the karishnik made their way from the distance between Hitpartsuza’am and Cypora: what she had mistaken for a belt or sash across their stomach was instead revealed as a broad, open mouth of shark, with countless blood-stained teeth set within in what seemed like endless rows.
“Hhhh,” they rasped, arriving before Cypora, and looking over her head to her companions. The mouth on their belly moved when they spoke, but only dripped blood, and made no sound. “Hungry. Follow.”
As the whole group Orangella filed in behind them, Licoricia took the book between their hands; Licoricia was reviewing it as they walked. “How do you figure we figure out the exchange rate? Who appraises our stuff?”
“Weigh treasure, balance soul,” the karishnik responded, without looking back. Again, it repeated, “hungry.”
Caracosa had warned them that the beasts might tempt them to feed them and transgress against the laws of Sheol, but Cypora hadn’t realized they did this by being annoying.
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