#but hes become something of a pillar for annoying people so a lot of non bnha fans just. cannot tolerate him its actually kind of funny | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

gmmtv-bl-tournament-but-evil · 4 months

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i think dbk is honestly overrated, or at least that's how i felt about it. i get why people love it so much, but it left a very sour taste in my mouth. going into 2gether, i had already seen a lot of negativity about it, so i expected it to get bad (it did) but i did expect dbk to be a lot more bearable. i think the show just felt so stagnant in terms of petekao, and while i appreciate what it did with the coming out plot, i feel like petekao as a relationship felt really weak and i didn't really root for them to be together?

i didn't like how we could see how pete's possessive behavior having negative impacts on their relationship, and kao feeling compelled to hide things as a result (like, god. he wanted him to just refuse to tutor the kid cuz hes jealous?) was something that instead of being addressed seemed validated. i like flaws, i loooove when characters have big personality flaws, even. but this felt like it was just being validated. we get the vibe that pete was right, and at the end, kao affirms that he likes that pete is possessive. i feel like this would have landed a lot better if instead of possessiveness that feels detrimental, pete grew into being possessive but also respecting this boyfriend. it just felt. odd.

look. i love established relationship and i also ADORE break ups. i think a good break up -> getting back together can be really interesting. i am an exes to lovers enthusiast. but i also almost had zero care about petekao getting back together (this also happened when i watched kiss me again before dbk. i just did not care that much. as a side note the person who directed 2gether, puppy honey, kiss me again, teenage mom, social death vote, etc is my mortal enemy as a 4 pillars fan who has STRONG opinions on the quality of these???) because the show really just made me feel their relationship was really unstable at its foundation? of course, i know they’re good for each other. for example, pete becomes better because of kao. still? didn’t quite work for me.

then there's non. i have no idea how "18year old with a crush on kao who goes too far" became the main driving force of the entire story, because i think there were a multitude of ways to explore the coming out plot poignantly and non was! not it! and i've never enjoyed how they wrote non in the end. in a show where we sympathize with kao for his fear of coming out, i didn't like how we were pitted against the 18yr old with a shitty parent who was scared of coming out. yeah, he fucked up massively and almost ruined kao's life. i get that. but do i think not addressing the massive "bad parent" motivation elephant in the room felt odd? how is it a happy ending that he's just definitely going to suffer cuz of his goddamn strict dad? do we just not care about non? maybe i'm just overly sensitive about this as someone who sympathizes with people who do things because of the fear of their parents (looking at you, ben from nlmg!) and thought it was insulting to me personally that the show said that "a parent will always know what their children are" (i disagree) also pretty much abandoned non? i get most people just found him annoying, but damn. i felt bad. non is like pete in ways, but even more immature and without the presence of a supportive father

oh our skyy was bizarre to me, by the way. less relevant to my opinions on dbk but the characterization was SO off in it and it just felt unneeded. and i’m a kongart our skyy lover so maybe it’s that i subconsciously compared it (our skyy petekao just feels so markedly Not PeteKao of kiss me again OR dbk!) also this didn’t factor into my voting but the continuity changing between kma our skyy and dbk really annoyed me as someone who watched it in order.

i liked sunmork, but a side couple can never save a show for me. the ost & cinematography was nice as well (i looped the theme song so much!) but unfortunately, the show really didn’t work for me. honestly, dbk vs 2gether was hard for me because, well (i could write a rant of this length on 2gether 😭😭😭 maybe longer actually) yeah. but that’s the fun of the competition!

I agree almost completely with everything you say about DBK. Despite finding Non extremely annoying, it left a terrible taste in my mouth that the reason why he was such a dickhead was never addressed and I agree that he got dealt a terrible hand by the narrative.

As for SunMork, I understand your feelings but I have to say that if it wasn't for them I would have never finished DBK. Although it's also true that I watched Not Me way before DBK which endeared to me Gawin soooo much and was also already extremely in love with Podd. That is to say, I was personally invested.

The only episode from that season of Our Skyy I watched was the Puppy Honey one which I liked better than the entire show, so I can't really say anything on the matter of PeteKao there.

I had a completely different experience when first coming into contact with 2gether too and in fact, part of the reason I hate it so much is that I saw nothing but praise for it before watching it and it made me so fucking mad. All the people hailing 2gether as this fantastic, incredible, amazing, showstopping, revolutionary show made me extremely suspicious and then I watched it and completely hated it, and the suspicion turned into absolute fury. Especially when I see it compared to other, better shows as something they should aspire to be.

I realise I'm coming off as extremely mean about it but it pulls some visceral reactions out of me so I'll just stop here before I cross a line.

I love your message, Anon, but it's not lost on me that you didn't actually say which one you voted for!!!!

#asks #anonymous

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br-disaster · 4 years

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Nie Huaisang’s outfits appreciation post

After the terrible loss of our second best dressed cultivator and fashion icon Nie Mingjue, the cultivation world now lacks one of it’s pillars. But little did they know, our fashion king had a disciple, someone capable of honoring his legacy in many ways.

While we all grief, a new icon rises.

And I’m here to prove that Nie Huaisang deserves his late brother’s title not only because Mingjue’s no longer serving looks -may his fashionable soul rest in peace-, but because Huaisang has always been a stylish icon on his own.

I mean, this look right here is enough proof:

Huaisang has quite a lot of robes, and they are all so different, I decided to compile them chronologically:

1. the “assigned fashionable at birth”one

Look at this small bean with his cream-colored robes. Whoever chose this color for him did a great job, though it’s a bit weird that they looked at baby Mingjue and went “all you’ll wear is dark gray from now on” and then Huaisang was born and “cream it is!” And we don’t really see anybody else from the Nie sect wearing this color, I wonder if it has anything to do with Huaisang’s mom, or if it’s just for the dark\light color contrast, the two young masters can’t possibly wear the same colors, it would ruin the aesthetic.

It looks just like his main-possibly-stay-at-home-robes, like he just really loved this especific set and had a lot of other robes that looked just the same growing up.

Really small, really cute, makes you want to carry him around saying: look at my baby, he’s so stylish!

2. the “good old Gusu days” one

This is like a uniform, there’s nothing really special about it. But I’d like to point out two things:

One: the silver embroidery on the shoulders and the silver on his waist belt matches the pristine white of his robes really well.

Two: look how wide his shouders look, there you go, Huaisang, keeping the Nie shoulder game strong!

3. The “it’s called fashion, dage” one

Cream-colored again! It embodies teen!Huaisang’s aesthetic perfectly: it’s expensive, it’s pretty, it looks comfortable, but it’s minimalistic.

I mean, I have no idea if it is actually expensive, but it surely looks expensive.

It has no discernable patterns, but the fabric just looks so good, look at the texture. It looks warm and heavy (rip Ji Li). And it’s pleated, look at him! Everything about this one screams rich-carefree-spoiled-delicate-pretty-gongzi.

And well, we see him strolling around and getting in trouble instead of going straight home in this robes, then on Fatal Journey we see him painting landscapes instead of practicing and claiming he doesn’t want to become the Nie sect leader in this very set of robes. Maybe he has indeed been wearing similar robes since his childhood and wants to, you know, go back to when things were as simple as taking the long way home coming back from Gusu.

4. the “didn’t really engage on the war but needed to look good regardless” one

This one is so pretty, y’all. It’s silver and white and gray, the brothers are matching with their disciples’ robes, you won’t find a Sect with a superior fashion sense.

I can totally understand why he didn’t change to some post-Sunshot robes. Imagine looking this good at home, with none of your friends or disciples or brother to see you. Nope. This robes belong to a banquet, even one as unpleasing and akward as this one.

(They technically saw him, since he wore the same robes while they were planning the whole Sunshot thing, but no one was paying attention to it, right? And you can’t let such a nice look go to waste)

One of my favorites, for sure. It even matches his fan. It’s peak aesthetic.

5. the “I’m only here for the food and the drama” one

I didn’t really like this one at first. It looked kinda futuristic in my head, you know? It’s probably just the really structured fabric and the color, but It was a bit too much.

But now, looking at it as I take screenshots, I like them. It’s bold and fierce and remember the shoulder accessories being a code for battle? Well, I doubt Huaisang shot a single arrow that day, but he was supposed to be competing, so it makes a lot of sense that he’s dressed like this while his brother is wearing his pretty, dark yet lighter civillian robes to watch him.

He’s even wearing epaulettes (well, I trust that that’s the name) that matches the ones Mingjue wore with his Sunshot robes! Are they the same pair? Did he borrow it? Or do they secretly comission the same robes and accessories and wear them on alternate occasions?

These are the most battle-coded (and at the same time is not battle-coded at all, it’s too ostentatious) robes we see him wearing until now, and he is representing his sect at the hunt, he has to look like a proper heir that is capable of fighting, whether he likes it or not - and judging by how unenthusiastic he was during the opening shoot-the-wen-prisioners ceremony, I’d say he was not enjoying it at all-.

But it’s such a cool look, I really like it now.

6. the “he will throw hands with a non-corporeal entity while giving his big brother all the love and understanding he deserves” one

This may look like the same robes we usually wears at home, but they lack the pleated part and I don’t think his long sleeves would fit inside his wirst thingy, which I now know it’s called a vambrace or a bracer, they were quite wide sleeves.

Anyway, we again have his minimalistic aesthetic. No patterns, the only addition being the outer robe that realy looks like the one Mingjue wears with his stay-at-home robes, except with no sleeves; and the bracers\vambraces.

But look how different this looks in comparison with the previous one; he wasn’t fighting shit in those pompous silver robes, but he was so determined here, ready to face anything. This is the difference between a battle-coded look and a battle-codded Huaisang.

It’s practical, it’s pretty, looks comfortable and it’s perfect for scolding your older brother then comforting him because he gets emotional when people argue with him, ok?

Huaisang is the best younger brother, fight me

8.the “sad, sad” one

I’ll just say that the inner robes are really similar to the one Mingjue wears with his stay-at-home robes, though they are not the same. Perhaps my theory that they did comission a lot of similar itens is correct after all.

I don’t think this look is particularly good, and the context surely doesn’t help at all, but it’s interesting to see him in gray and black.

Overall, I hate it here.

9. the “somehow even worse” one

Look, if I had to compile all his outfits, I had to include this one. But there’s nothing to say about it except just looking at him wearing it makes me sad.

10. the “you didn’t see that coming, did you?” one

This one here is a trick, ok? At this point of the story we have no idea of what’s going on and if this misterious person is important or not; all we know is that he is quite fond of patterns and dark clothing. And that he has some money.

But damn, once we find out who this is, it instantly becomes something else entirely.

It’s so fucking DARK!! It’s Wei Wuxian’s kind of dark, it’s crazy to think our boy Huaisang, who’s been wearing light grays, white and cream all his life would come up with something like that. It doesn’t even look Nie, and that’s probably what he was going for, y’know, so no one could recognize him and all of that.

But jesus, this look is just wow. It’s perfect for a scheming mastermind, even though we don’t really know about it yet. The scales pattern is really nice and I love when he wears this sort of robe, with the fitted sleeves and the extra fabric at the shoulders. The flame (I think) pattern is nice too, though it’s a bit too much here, just a bit. But he seems to like this pattern a lot, so let him have it

And the craziest part is: we know these robes. And i’ve seen a couple of posts about them, it’s the same inner robe he wore at the Phoenix Mountain night hunt competition, almost 16 years ago.

Like what are these robes made of??

11. the “sneaky, sneaky” one

The famous Nie pattern, am I right?

I love all theories about this one and as I took the screenshots, I noticed how his inner robe is the same as robe number 8. Huaisang says no to excessive buying, please reuse your clothes!

I’m particularly fond of the theory that Nie Mingjue comissioned robes for both his didi and his boyfriend Xichen, but I can accept that Huaisang just inherited his brother’s robes, though the flame pattern (once again proving we won’t guess Huaisang is behind everything not even after seeing him wearing the same patterns as in episode one twice) at the bottom is definetly a Huaisang thing.

I really like how heavy it looks, and the black thin stripe.We know it’s the same pattern as Xichen’s robe but seeing it combined with the back and light gray of the Nies really gives it a distinct identity.

12. the “and the oscar goes to...” one

Look at him, all innocent-looking placing all the chess pieces on their right places. Gotta love director Nie. And it makes so much sense that he would wear something as light as this robes for this moment. He wore light colors for most of his youth, when he was carefree and naive and harmless; he cultivated a reputation of being dependent, fearful and stupid even. In this moment, more than ever, he needs people to believe this is exactly who he is, and what’s the best way of doing it?

Yes, reminding them of your old self. All he does is pretend and lie while he cries and faints. A director and an actor too!

Throw yourself at your brother’s sworn brothers trying to look harmless while annoying the hell out of them? check.

Faint conveniently as your brother’s murderer lies at your face about killing said brother because even you have limits and you can’t watch that fuckery and not want to murder him right there? check.

Pretend to be stupid while conducting the protagonist and pretty much everybody else to ask the right questions and therefore unmask the terrible things your nemesis did? also check.

And the robes are really pretty, look at the texture at the bottom right!! Silver and white go really well together. Wide, wide sleeves and this heavy-looking fabric. Superb, really, one of my favorites again.

And look at him carrying his saber (which he probably left at Pier Lotus later)!

13. the “...and cut!” one

Look at these robes and tell me they don’t absolutely look like something Nie Mingjue would wear. You know he would.

And it’s such a contrast to his previous robes. The white and silver one for looking innocent and lost and funny; the dark gray to look like a serious sect leader who will endorse the accusations against his enemy (Ok, he did act confused and lost and innocent in these robes, but he also showed real shock and grief and sadness, he did show his true feelings too)

He’s honoring his brother here, he did it, he brought justice to him, he defeated his brother’s murderer. He spent years wanting and waiting for this moment, it’s only fair he would do so while looking so much like his beloved older brother.

I love everything about this look. The color palette is almost the same as the one robe his brother wore to the post-Sunshot campaign banquet. The dark,shining gray, the black, the thin bronze\golden stripe at the collar. Even that extra overlaid fabric at the bottom front of his robes is the same as Mingjue used to wear. Beautiful, really.

He would be really proud of you, I hope you know that, Huaisang.

14. the “I may or may not steal your chief cultivator status, watch out Wangji” one

I know he would never steal Wangji’s post, cql!NHS doesn’t even want it; but like, we deserved Chief cultivator!Huaisang, right? So it was worth the joke, I think.

The inner light gray robe yet AGAIN, I suspect this is his favorite inner robe.

We have some bold patterns here, so elegant. I really like when he wears this kind of outer robe, accentuating his shoulders, suits him really well, And this is such a Nie color palette, just like the previous one. In fact, Huaisang wears way more dark colors than we give him credit for. Especially after becoming sect leader.

Sleeve game on point too, really long. And it matches his fan as well.

Lovely look, I wish we could have seen more.

In conclusion:

King of versatility, resusing 16 year-old robes AND looking damn good while doing it! He looks good scheming, he looks good lying, he looks good fainting, he even looks good tricking people into stabbing other people!

Name a more iconic king, I’ll wait.

#this ended up more like meta than I intended #but Huaisang deserves all the praise #also it's super long #but he has many outfits ok #nie huaisang #nie brothers #cql #mdzs #i spent an unhealthy amount of time doing this #why? huaisang deserved a post too #same thing I said about the other post stands please tell me if I said something disrespectful

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demonslayedher · 3 years

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Any Kny character you've grown to love/appreciate more??

Thanks for waiting, Anon, I have been trying to really, really hard to narrow this down, but the answer remains: the vast majority of the cast. The only character I loved right away was Tanjiro and that love kept me watching, as with almost every new character I was like, "ugh, I hate this guy. Here I was, having fun being emotionally invested in a high quality anime, and this might ruin it for me." But then the instant I see a different side of their character, I'm like, "...Oh." To go into some examples...

Zenitsu: I could not stand him right away, I hate womanizers, and his conniptions would go on so long that they held up the story. But Gotouge/Ufotable strung me along perfectly, the first glimpse of Thunder Breath made me immediately pay attention and think, "oh, that was cool. I want to see more of that." Seeing him protect the box pretty firmly put him in the "I need to protect this child" box in my heart. And then the spider demon happens, and I'm sending desperate reaction messages to a friend like "NOOOOOO!!!! BABBBBBBBBBYYYYYYYY!!!!" And then he annoyed me all over again at the start of Functional Recovery, ahaha. It's hard to remember how annoyed I was because I'm such a Zen Stan now, and he was a very firm favorite of mine by the time I finished binging the anime up to the last couple episodes, which I waited for as they came out. Inosuke: He was one of the reasons I was curious about the series, I saw some promotional art and was super curious about Nezuko's muzzle (I was one of the people who thought it was some ancient scroll or something, haha) and the kid with the boar mask. The art I saw showed his face, and I assumed he'd be some kid with a cracking voice performed by a female seiyuu. As much as I love Matsuoka's performance now, initially, since I knew what his face looked like, I found it grossly off-putting the moment I heard it. Then every chaotic thing Inosuke did dug a deeper hole; I very quickly decided I hated him, especially when he started beating up on the kid I was starting to like. As his chaos subsided he just became a character I tolerated, and then this happened:

Images you can hear, am I right? This immediately flipped the "BABY" switch in my heart. It was also a lot of fun to understand the Inosuke memes I was seeing everywhere. So by the end of the anime, I loved, loved, loved, loved the Tanjiro/Zenitsu/Inosuke interactions and desperately wanted more (still didn't like how Zenitsu bothered Nezuko, though). I was so impatient for more, but the manga art looked disappointingly off-putting. I figured the anime was successful enough that there'd eventually be more of it, and I wanted to be patient, but then I poked around, read some spoilers, got back into Tumblr to look at fanart and memes, saw a spoiler image of Tanjiro affected by Muzan's poison and the binge-read began. (That's kind of a lie, but I'll get to that.) Let's back up a few episodes. There I was, having a great time, the guy who I forgot about from Episode 1 was back and haha, I guess everyone hates him, and the chick who I figured was going to be a medic who saves Zenitsu in the nick of time turned out to be savage, awesome. I was sending reactions to my friends who were ahead of me, and then we left off seeing the Pillars staring down Best Boy. And I...

Well. Uh. Here, I've dug up an old convo for you, my comments are in blue.

Immediately followed by a passionate vocal rant, which I have transcribed here:

“I feel like what happened was that the mangaka was sitting around with his assistants and was like, ‘welp, gotta make this whole cast of characters, they gotta be so-o-o-o many more levels of extreme than all the other characters I’ve had so far, which isn’t hard, because all of the background characters are cannon fodder and I’ve just gotta leave them all with black hair and no personality traits. So! Gotta go to the opposite of the spectrum with the BIG! POWERFUL! People so no-o-o-body can be normal.’ And so he and his assistants sat down, and they all wrote down just random words or traits, and them put ‘em all in a hat. And then for each character, they pulled out a few of them and said, ‘OK. We’re gonna put these things together, now we have a character.’ And he was probably also like, ‘Iiiiiiiiiiiii’ll flesh them out later. For now, they just need t’… be there, and make an impact. How do we make an impact? By making sure it’s super, super clear what their character traits are. Here, we’ll have this guy repeat the word //HADE//…. ////HA DEEE//// over and over and over… to show that he’s a /showy/ person. Because he /cares/ about that. And he //should// care because that is his character and that’s why he’s powerful.’ OH MY GOSH, it’s so dumb.”

......orz I feel like Genya looking back at how he acted at the end of the Final Selection. I'm sorry, Gotouge, I had not even encountered your love for these characters yet in your little alligator form. Nor had I encountered the yet unseen-sides of these traumatized dragons and tigers. ...*coughs* Um. So. I was pretty harsh.

So this was my mindset, I went into the manga not caring about most of these characters and just wanting more Kamaboko squad interactions and wanting to hurry up and catch up to the battle with Muzan. And it's worth stating that I didn't mean to read it at first. I encountered a few spoilers, and just wanted to look for the context surrounding those parts, and then hunt for the (non-existent) build-up to those parts, and so... uh.........

I read a lot of the manga out of order, and yeah, that did affect how much I cared about what was going on. I didn't actually properly process a lot of it until later re-reads. But to try to state some things simply about each Pillar:

Giyuu: He was just 'ok' to me for a long time, I could see the appeal for why people I knew were fangirling over him but he didn't do it for me. His soft spot for Tanjiro was indeed endearing, though, and I firmly liked him by the time chapter 200 came out and I was properly heartbroken on his behalf.

Shinobu: She was intriguing, and then I liked her as soon as I saw her savage side, she was one of the characters I went hunting for spoilers for.

Rengoku: That stare really put me off at first, but I fell for him over the process of Tanjiro falling for him. When I first finished the train arc I sat back and said, "wow! That's going to make for a good movie!" and then in psyching myself out for the movie several months in advance, I fell hook, line, and sinker and was totally excited for him each time I saw the trailers. And then the movie was *stunning* and I love him even more. Uzui: He was the Pillar I hated most upon first meeting them. I blame the repeated use of his catchphrase. But then when he let his hair down to sell the kiddos the change in design helped warm me up more to him, like, "oh, there was a human in there." It took a long time for him to become more interesting to me, and an uncharacteristically subtle journey to becoming a character I liked. I am currently getting more and more psyched out for him and eager to see how much more I'm going to like him with the shiny Ufotable treatment. Mitsuri: At first I didn't remember her name, I had code-named her as "Boobs." But I kinda had a feeling she was going to grow on me quickly, and I was right, she's one of my easy favorites now. Muichiro: Who? Oh yeah, that kid who always kinda fell to the wayside in my attention. I'd see a lot of Muichiro-themed blogs and hear a lot of little girls looking at merch and showing a clear favoritism of him, and I'd like always react like Muichiro and just be like, "...", and then when I read his major battles I was more emotionally invested in things going on concurrently with other characters, and I was still like, "...", and then two days ago I revisited a Muichiro scene and was suddenly like, "......OH!!! MUICHIRO!!!!!" Himejima: I never really hated Himejima, even if I found his first impression kind of wimpy (haha... oh, I was so wrong). I had a pretty easy acceptance of him too, so I would generally count him among characters I like, but if you were to ask me why, I'd draw a blank. It's kind of a weirdly mature, subdued appreciation for him rather than passionate fangirling. But weirdly when I was daydreaming the other day I found myself thinking, "if I had to marry someone in the KnY cast, it would be Himejima." So like, not a fiery romance, but I see him as my dependable, sturdy rock to grow old with??? What is up with you, sub-conscious?? Iguro: My interest in him rises and falls. Being a Mitsuri fan helped warm me up to his character in the first place, which was the emotional tie I needed since his backstory didn't grip me much (I found it a frustrating distraction while I was desperately reading weekly updates). Reading more subtle details about his character in the fanbooks has brought me around and made me more curious about him, like I'd really like to be a fly on the wall for the conversation he had with Uzui one day about their pasts.

Sanemi: Hahaha, wow. He was so unlikable in the beginning, wasn't he? His character design (yeah, the eyes) was really off-putting too. But then I got to know him and there was no going back, I got totally played. He's a character I'm pretty fond of now and one of the characters I've enjoyed delving into most in fanfic. To keep this answer from getting too long, for the vaaaaaast majority of the cast, I was initially like, "meh" or "OK" or "ew" but now am like, "EEEEEEEEE, I LOVE THIS TOTALLY RANDOM UNIMPORTANT SIDE CHARACTERRRRRRR" so you know... times change. And the more time I spend obsessed with Kimetsu no Yaiba, the more I like them all, so even the characters I'm lukewarm on will probably have their eventual days when they take over my heart and smash it.

#what do I even tag this?#it's not meta or nerdery #it's just me being a fangirl #Kimetsu no Yaiba #Demon Slayer

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cybernaght · 3 years

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Guardian rewatch: episode 10

The tone of this recap is going to be the crackiest so far. The production quality plummets dramatically here, in a way which is as unintentionally hilarious as it is endearing. I have very little of import to say on events of this episode, and there is nothing much for me to hyper focus on, so a lot of this write-up are snark and bad jokes. Apologies in advance. I would not be getting annoyed at a show I did not care about.

Day two of the Road Trip starts with Zhao Yunlan waking up with a splitting headache and his own jacket draped carefully over him. I choose to believe Shen Wei left it there.

Zhao Yunlan wakes up - and discovers that Wang Zheng had slipped a sedative into the party’s water, effectively knocking them all out. He even discovers that she left her doll-body behind as a decoy; thankfully, it’s still Li Siqi and not the blow-up doll from the previous episode.

With the daunting realisation that he’s been betrayed, Zhao Yunlan instantly spirals into hurt and anger, and this is the moment Shen Wei chooses to appear out to nowhere. He enters offering comfort, his entire focus on making Zhao Yunlan feel better by assuring the man that his subordinate is not one of the bad guys, but rather one of the self-sacrificing ones. How SID manages to function when it’s full of people with non-existent sense of self-preservation is beyond me.

“Professor Shen, why are you okay?”

Zhu Hong narrows her eyes. Zhao Yunlan’s look is the one of vulnerability, not suspicion, almost as if he is silently asking to please not be betrayed by his newest partner.

“I didn’t drink the water she gave me.”

Another thing I would like to question here is the reasoning behind Shen Wei waiting until the morning with this. He knew that Wang Zheng was about to do something, since he refrained from drinking the water she offered. Everyone else being unconscious would be a perfect opportunity for him to go full Hei Pao Shi on her, or follow her quietly, or do literally anything but wait for the morning.

“What is your purpose of coming here?” Shen Wei asks because he needs to know how much Zhao Yunlan knows. He does so with a perfect set of puppy eyes.

We cut to Wang Zheng entering the chamber which houses the pillar/totem, and witness the absolute devastation of her hearing her love’s voice for the first time in a century, as he mistakes her for the enemy and calls her a rat.

I should say that while I’m not always on board with Li Siqi in this show, props to her for acting her heart out opposite a literal pillar. Her reunion with Sang Zan is incredibly touching; she really is wonderful here.

Flashback 1. The execution of Ge Lan.

This method of execution seems so inefficient, I actually tried to find if it has any legs in history. As my research yielded exactly no results, I am guessing this is the producers showing hanging without actually showing hanging. They kind of accidentally made the whole affair infinitely worse. People are weaker than gravity, the angle offers no possibility of the neck being broken, so this would be a very slow, and very painful death. Yikes, is all I can say.

Flashback 2. The montage.

Sigh.

This imagery is so carelessly contemporary it’s killing me. I’m not saying it’s completely impossible for the heart shape to have been known to represent love in this fictional tribe on a fictional planet. I’m just saying it’s a boring shorthand for romance, made worse by the fact that so much of the show’s imagery is otherwise fairly intelligent. I am not angry, I’m just disappointed.

Wang Zheng and Sang Zan’s reunion triggers another earthquake, which is felt all the way back in the village, and shortly thereafter Zhu Jiu interrupts the couple, knocking Wang Zheng out. This - her being knocked unconscious - cuts to Zhao Yunlan wincing while clutching at his temples, which almost implies that he can feel it when his people are in danger. Which would be very cool if true.

Shen Wei, in the meanwhile is remarkably good at keeping his Professor’s mask on the whole time, offering enough information without betraying his own knowledge or motives, but it is clear by now that Zhao Yunlan starts to see right through it.

The chief sprints into action when Chu Shuzhi and Guo Changcheng arrive, instructing the two to join him in investigation. Shen Wei opens his mouth to volunteer to come with, but ends up hesitating before saying anything out loud.

Zhu Hong, too, makes a move to go after the three men, but is firmly instructed to say behind and look after Shen Wei. She proceeds to loudly explain that this is the wrong time and place to be fussing over this guy.

Shen Wei looks like he has no idea what to do with this display of emotion.

Zhao Yunaln whispers to Zhu Hong to watch the professor for him: which could equally be him manipulating the Yashou into staying, or a sinking realisation that Shen Wei will actually try to join them either way, or genuine desire to find out what the professor will do next. Or, indeed, a combination of the above. Zhu Hong will attack her task with conviction.

Sure enough, Shen Wei finally voices his desire to go with the group. Zhu Hong reminds him that he has his own people to look after and instructs him to return to the house with barely contained resentment.

Shen Wei will predictably try to sneak out very shortly afterwards, and will be, equally predictably, caught by Zhu Hong. Why the man who can teleport would not just teleport out of the house before proceeding on foot is anyone’s guess.

“He surprisingly views you as a good friend”, says Zhu Hong when she stops Shen Wei from leaving. “You surely noticed it, right?”

He certainly did, although he will always have trouble realising that he is actually cared about in a way which is anything but casual.

Shen Wei obediently sits down and follows Zhu Hong’s instructions as she attempts to hypnotise him. Those instructions are anything but subtle.

“Professor Shen, look at the flame closely”.

Meanwhile, the other party has successfully deduced the location of the Hanga tribe cave/shrine, and heads there, only to find no visible entrance. Thankfully, gaining access to the mountain is not particularly hard for the party. Mostly because this part of the mountain is made of foam.

This is where I want to metaphorically pat Guardian on its non-existent head, cooing, “Oh, Guardian. Baby. What have you done.”

On the bright side, this is also where Guo Changcheng accidentally shocks Zhao Yunlan with the Fear Stick, and Chu Shuzhi literally gives him a thumbs up. Those two are a duo for the ages.

Youchu appear to fight our heroes, and after the first wave is eliminated, Zhao Yunlan decides to go inside, leaving the other two fend them off near the entrance. Considering that the beasts are all hiding inside the cave, rushing in without backup seems incredibly ill advised. Zhao Yunlan instructs Chu Shuzhi and Guo Changcheng to run away if the danger becomes too great. Which he must know surely that they would never do: his department does not leave people behind, and his subordinates will never abandon him.

To no one’s surprise, the cave is crawling with Youchu. Zhao Yunlan goes on the offensive, kicking the feet out of the monster, but failing to incapacitate it. I am going to do my best to ignore how the scale of the beast fluctuates as it falls down, and focus on Bai Yu’s excellent reaction when his character realises that he is about to very much die.

Luckily for our protagonist, Hei Pao Shi sends a ward his way with a note, warning him of the danger ahead and ordering him to return. Zhao Yunlan makes no move to do as instructed and uses the upper hand he’s gained on the Youchu to get out his gun. Before he can fire however, he once more experiences the painful flashback of the devastation this gun carries, and freezes.

This is when Shen Wei shows up in person, jumping in front of the gun and gutting the beast.

The jumping in front of the gun part of the action is sweet, because it indicates, albeit indirectly, the absolute trust Shen Wei must have in Zhao Yunlan’s instincts, knowing that the man will not accidentally shoot him in the back.

The gutting itself happens in reverse grip, with Shen Wei being easily within reach of the beast’s long stabby claws, and as such really questionable to me in terms of logic. I would have not minded it if he had been moving through the space in front of the beast, slicing it while passing through. That would be at least an indicator of both speed and dexterity enough to make me believe Shen Wei made a clever avoidance of the claws. But he doesn’t: he just materialises dead-on in front of the monster and the later just.. lets itself be killed.

Let’s just say that maybe the beast is supposed to be deliberately slow here, and park the long essay in regards to the bladework until the next episode.

“Chief Zhao, are you alright?”

Everything about Hei Pao Shi in this moment screams of Shen Wei-ness. Well, maybe not the sword. But the obvious concern, the tone of voice, the general air: it’s all Shen Wei. It’s remarkable that Zhao Yunlan does not see it. Or maybe, I suppose, he does, without even realising it. His cheeky grin suddenly appears; the corners of his eyes crinkle, as he goes into a very long-winded, almost flirtatious away about thanking Hei Pao Shi, teasing him for not always arriving on time.

Unperturbed, Shen Wei chides Zhao Yunlan for not listening to his warning, and Zhao Yunlan defends himself in a very playful kind of manner, adding that he’s not leaving his people behind. To Shen Wei, this is to be expected, so instead of arguing he goes into a lot of detail on how the road ahead is dangerous, as if he is not really expecting Zhao Yunlan to accept help.

He is wrong of course: proud though he may be, Chief Zhao knows when he is outgunned and outnumbered, and only grins, happy for the Envoy to join him on his mission.

Shen Wei and Zhao Yunlan exploring the cave is interspersed with pretty damn harrowing scenes of Zhu Jiu torturing Wang Zheng as her trapped lover screams for mercy. It’s a lot; in fact it’s so much even the cave ghosts attempt to intervene, because while they may be very much pro-murder, they are evidently anti-torture.

As the two keep exploring, they bump into another three of the beasts, which Shen Wei slays in three slick moves. It’s actually pretty cool, despite slightly sketchy teleportation effects.

“Wow!”

(Apparently, this “wow” made Zhu Yilong corpse so much he nearly laughed his mask off. Which sounds adorable)

Shen Wei proceeds to inquire Zhao Yunlan about the gun, party to confirm that it is indeed the dark energy weapon he knows, and partly having noticed that the other man failed to fire it. I wonder how many times Zhao Yunlan froze in the past, considering how easily he once again slips into his mask of playful deflection, claiming that he never planned to fire the gun at all. It’s almost tragic how this person keeps feeling like he needs to prove his own capabilities over and over again.

Interestingly enough, in this particular case Hei Pao Shi actually does own up to a weakness. It’s calculated: he knows this is something Zhao Yunlan must already be aware of, but still, “full disclosure” is not something Shen Wei usually does when it comes to his own capacities.

What he admits to, on the other hand, does not seem very consistent with the rest of the show. He says that he can only use half of his power above ground, which - okay. But he also states that he can’t spend a lot of time here, and I am a little bit… confused? He lives above ground. He spends absolute majority of his time here. I really don’t want to think of this as a writing inconsistency, so please let me know what I have missed; I’ll appreciate it.

Hearing the admission, Zhao Yunlan grows serious for once, asking which they they should be going next. Shen Wei barely smothers a smug smirk seconds before he scries the surroundings with unbelievable panache.

Show off

Unfortunately, his search does not yield any result, as whatever readings he is getting are muddled by the Hallow. Luckily for them, and to Shen Wei’s great dismay, Zhao Yunlan has the Dial on him which he is uses as a compass.

Shen Wei’s wordless reaction conveys a million questions from “what the hell?” to “are you completely stupid?”

Instead of asking any of those things, he settles for a more neutral “I’ve told you not to use the Hallows.”

“You are very much like a friend of mine”, remarks Zhao Yunlan.

Which is, incidentally, also the title of this episode.

Even behind the mask it’s clear to see Shen Wei’s blind panic as he realises he may have just blown his cover sky high. Fortunately, Zhao Yunlan reads the reaction as bashfulness rather than existential despair, and laughs it off.

Now that they know which way to go, they finally make it to the chamber which houses the pillar/totem, which now has Wang Zheng tied to it.

This show sure does like tying their characters to totems containing souls of people significant to them, huh?

In all seriousness though, as parallels go, this one is… uh… unparalleled.

(I am so very sorry.)

Zhao Yunlan makes a move towards his trapped subordinate, but Hei Pao Shi, again in a way which is extremely Shen Wei-like, grabs at his arm, stopping him in his tracks.

Zhao Yunlan obediently halts, and calls Zhu Jiu out, correctly guessing that the Undergrounder lured them here deliberately. Shen Wei, on the other hand, relays in a hushed tone information what he had observed so far: namely, that the Hallow stored here is the Dire Awl, and that something is incredibly fishy about Wang Zheng.

As he does so, he is staring at Zhao Yunlan’s lips. It is neither the time, nor the place, but hey, I’m not complaining.

They have a brief discussion about the next moves, in which Shen Wei just says he would like to try something, and Zhao Yunlan nods, letting him do it without asking for any details.

Flashback 3: the Backstory.

We hear the full tragic tale of Ge Lan and Sang Zan: how they met, representatives of the warring sides of the conflict, two people from two different worlds; how their love did not stop the awful bloodshed; how it could not be enough to overpower the politics; how it lead to Ge Lan’s death, and, finally, how Sang Zan could not bring her back to him. They hear how the man changed once he lost the only person he cared about.

Zhao Yunlan is visibly moved by this story, recognising echoes of it in himself.

“The most basic dignity of a man is to ensure that the person in his heart stays safe. If the person I love gets destroyed in my own hands ruined under the system I established myself, it’s very likely I’ll hate these people more than I hated the former tribe leader.”

How much did he harden after his mother was taken away from him? How much of his initial hatred of all those from the Underground stems from that day? And, of course, how much will it break him when he will not be gifted this dignity in his own future?

Shen Wei is near vibrating with how much his very soul resonates with the tale he has just heard. He, who has met someone from the other world, who was lost that person, is visibly weighed down by his own memories.

“That’s right. Even if they’re cut into a myriad of pieces, the hatred would be hard to dissolve.”

Zhao Yunlan stares at the other man, astounded, wondering what hardships and losses the Envoy endured in his long and eventful life, as the episode draws to a close.

And I am left here trying to soothe my aching heart, bruised once more by this show’s relentless fatalism.

Next up, episode 11: Oh Boy Do I Have Sword Opinions

---

Notes.

Look. It’s been a long week okay. Besides, I am basically marathoning my way through Zhu Yilong’s entire filmography.

The normal service in terms of analysis will hopefully resume next week.

#guardian #shen wei #zhao yunlan #recap #rewatch #sometimes my brain is like this

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warrioreowynofrohan · 3 years

Text

Rhythm of War Review

PART 1

It feels a little separate from the rest of the book to me at the moment because I read it pre-release, but I think it did a good job setting up the rest of the plot. I greatly enjoyed Navani’s perspective and ideas throughout the book, and the first section established her much more firmly as a character than any of the previous books; her couple of chapters in Oathbringer were more focused on politics and her relationship with Dalinar, so it was great yo see much more of her scientific side.

When I first read Part 1 it felt very Kaladin-heavy, but after completing the book I see how it was necessary to establish his burnout in order to set up the rest of the plot. And Chapter 12 (A Way to Help), in addition to being our only chance in the book to see our trio together, did a great job setting up Kaladin’s later work with mentally ill people, both by establishing the need and showing what kind of help was needed. I was nonetheless quite frustrated by Kaladin reacting to Shallan’s DID with “that would be nice...”. She’s having serious problems, Kal! She’s your friend and could use support, not you regarding her issues as a neat way to take a holiday from one’s own brain! Kaladin’s very kind and caring with those he chooses to protect, as we see with Bridge 4 in TWOK and the mentally ill people in Chapter 25, but sometimes I think he’s not a very good friend. I know he was not in a good place, but in Oathbringer when they were in Shadesmar Shallan had just had a complete breakdown and she still went out of her way to emotionally support Kal, so it would be nice to see his friendships become a bit more two-way. (For similar reasons, I liked seeing the moments of Shallan-to-Adolin emotional support in Shadesmar in ROW, because a lot of their relationship in OB was her relying on him; it felt balanced in ROW as both supported each other.)

PART 2

I loved the Shadesmar arc! The emotional arcs for both main characters were very strong - I had been looking forward to seeing Adolin’s reaction to (in-universe) Oathbringer, and it did not disappoint; the conflict between genuinely loving Dalinar and being unable to forgive what he’d done was well-drawn. I was so pissed off at Dalinar in that last conversation! You burned his mom to death, you do not get to take the moral high ground and lecture him. And I do see a difference between killing innocents, as Taravangian does, and killing someone who’s effectively declared war on you and has a history of treason.

I also liked Adolin’s sense of being generally at sea with his purpose in the world. He’s been trained primarily as a warrior and general, and his combat skills have been made virtually obsolete by the Radiants. And at the same time, the reader can see what makes Adolin special, and it’s not combat skills - though those do give him a big heroic moment in a pinch - it’s his care and compassion for others. The way he interacts with Maya and slowly brings her life is absolutely beautiful. Chapter 35 was such a wonderful Shadolin moment (and starspren are amazing!); he really gets her and understands what she needs. Chapter 24 was sweet too, though super cheesy.

I spent the entire Shadesmar arc side-eying Veil and Radiant, especially with Veil’s takeover stunt at the start, but in the end they genuinely were supporting and helping Shallan. So in retrospect I do like scenes like the one with Veil trying to draw Shallan out by drawing Adolin badly.

Spoeking of drawing, I love the spren art, it’s some of the best art so far, and fascianting to see how they all look!

Kaladin finding non-violent ways to protect, culminating in pioneering Rosharan therapy - and Teft insisting on staying to support him - was everything I wanted for him. His arc could have just been that, and I’d have been perfectly happy. Chapter 25 (Devotary of Mercy) is still my favourite in the entire book.

Unfortunately, then Odium’s forces had to show up and SPOIL EVERYTHING. I’m rather appalled by how quickly Urithiru fell - the enemy forces were literally in the pillar room by the time anyone noticed them.

PART 3

Part 3 was a real slog for me, partly because it is a slog and partly because I hit it at the height of my sleep deptivation. (It’s really...not a good thing to be reading on zero sleep at the literal darkest-hour-before-dawn.) Kaladin’s arc in Urithiru is just so exhausting; he’s so clearly worn to the boneand everything feels so hopeless. Kaladin’s had bad times before - Bridge 4 in TWOK, for example - but then the reader could see progress even if Kaladin couldn’t. (Kaladin: I’m getting nowhere and failing at everything! Everyone else: Kaladin, you were literally just miraculously resurrected.) Here, though - well, I genuinely spent the whole book from Part 3 through to the climax thinking that they would lose Urithiru.

Navani’s arc, and Venli’s, I did enjoy.

The other section of Part 3, in Emul, just felt rather disjointed. It had some interesting moments, but it didn’t have a sense of cohesion or of where it was going. I was entertained by Dalinar’s musings on the merits of despositism and the need to free Queen Fen from having - horrors! - a parliament. (I wonder if the Fourth Ideal will be something like “I will recognize that it can sometimes be beneficial to have people oppose my decisions.”)

PART 4

Again, adored the Shadesmar arc. Really strong character arcs for both Adolin and Shallan, combined with excellent plots and a strong sense of momentum. I was pretty sure Maya would be crucial in the trial, but that didn’t make the moment any less powerful (though Sanders probably shouldn’t have tried quite as hard to replicate his “You. Cannot. Have. My. Pain.” moment from Oathbringer). I need to put together a proper post on the theme of choice in Oathbringer, because that moment - combined with Kaladin’s fourth ideal and the conflict with Lirin over the way he’s inspiring the resistance - really crystallized it for me. To treat a person’s choice and sacrifices as something done to them is to devalue their volition, their agency. Maya is put in the horrifying situation of being used as a prop and treated as evidence of a point that she is diametrically opposed to and turned into a weapon against someone she loves, and it’s enough to drive her to regain her voice and speak for herself. I am very curious to know what specifically led the spren to agree to the Recreance!

I did not remotely guess what Shallan’s secret was, even though in retrospect the Cryptic deadeye should have made it incredibly obvious. I think her fear that she’d lose Adolin if it came out was overblown - he already knows she killed both her parents, he’s not going to be fazed by “I was so distraught over having to kill my own mother in self-defence at age ten that I broke my Radiant oaths”. But obviously it’s not something Shalkan would be able to consider duspassionately. Her arc was rather terrifying once I realized that Formless was, well, basically her, but more specifically, Shallan’s idea of the monster that she was, and her breakdown was driving her to “accept who she was” as being that monster. I like Shallan and was never that into Veil - though she was fairly good in this book and went out well - so I’m not sad to see the back of her.

I haven’t managed to work through all the espionage/mole elements. Yes, Pattern used the box to talk to Wit, and Radiant killed Ialai so Shallan wouldn’t, but who’s Mraize’s spy close to Dalinar?

This arc ended too abruptly. I think Sanderson could easily have traded a Kaladin chapter in Part 3 for an extra chapter wrapping up events in Shadesmar; maybe one where Shallan first goes to see Testament.

I enjoyed the Urithiru arc in Part 4 as well. Switching to Bridge 4 points of view other than Kaladin was a good move - we already know he’s worn to ribbons, so we don’t need to be inside his head to see it. “The Dog and the Dragon” was amazing, and the most appropriate story ever for Kaladin. (I get how Wit’s schtick of telling incredibly topical stories and then saying “no, I don’t have a point, what point?” would be really aggravating in person.) It was nice to see him be gentle with Kaladin for a change, the way he is with Shallan - his two previous encounters with Kaladin read as rather baiting, which annoyed me.

Dabbid was - I don’t know quite how to say this, but his inclusion struck an amazing balance in this book. Navani’s arc is all about two amazingly smart people doing science and making incredible breakthroughs, and that is sincerely valued and given importance by the narrative, and then you get chapters like Dabbid’s and one of Taravangian’s emphasizing that a person’s value and ability to contribute is not determined by their intelligence.

Navani’s arc continued to be excellent. All of her research, and the way the story took you through the process, and her complex relationship with Raboniel, was great.

I loved Venli’s character development, and growing willingness to take risks for the sake of others. To me, her arc parallels Dalinar’s in the last book in some ways. If we can love the story of a bloodthirsty conqueror growing to become a good person, why can’t we equally love the story of a coward coming to become a good person? There seems to be a tendency to be more drawn to strength, even in its most terrible forms, than to weakness. To me, Venli’s confession to Rlain and acceptance of his disgust at her was one of the book’s great moments. (And I can’t understand people saying her arc took up two much space. She had 5 chapters in Part 3, and 4 in Part 4. That’s not very many! I’ll grant that the flasbacks packed less punch than some earlier flashback sequences because we already knew the main events - Brandon acknowledged that even before the book came out - but I still liked them well enough, and Venli’s present-day arc was excellent.)

Anyway, the amount of space I’ve spent on this section relative to Part 3 is another strong inducation of the differences in how I feel about them!

PART 5

I should probably start this section with a discussion of Moash. I’ll try to keep it summarized. here - I could, and may, write a short essay on his development through The Stormlight Archive. The first thing that jumps out about Moash’s arc in this book is his reaction to Renarin’s vision in Part 1. I think that vision is showing Moash who he could still be, in a similar way to Shallan’s inspirational drawings of people - both use the Surge of Illumination. So it’s not that Moash is irredeemable; Renarin is specifucally holding out to him the possibility of redemption.

And Moash’s reaction is to run away in terror. Because he desperately wants his decision to be irrevocable. He desperately wants there to only be one possible path forward for him. Because if there are alternative paths, it means he can choose them, and that would mean facing guilt, facing the fact that his past choices were wrong, and his current choices are wrong. And that is exactly what Moash sought to avoid by giving up his pain and sense of guilt to Odium.

Moash is, nonetheless, very much Moash and not Vyre, as evidenced by his continuing obsession with Kaladin. As with his above need to not be wrong, here he needs to feel that he’s right, and the only way he can feel that he’s right is if Kaladin - whom he still deeply admires - makes the same decision as him, and if Moash can convince himself that he’s doing Kaladin a favour in driving him to that point. It’s ironic that he’s given up almost all feeling abd become almost enturely detached, but his worst actions are driven by his attitude towards the one person in the world who he still does have very strong feelings about. By the end of the book, he’s comprehensively broken, to the point that even when his ability to feel is restored he’s unable to even feel genuine remose over the cold-blooded murder of a friend. I don’t know where he’ll go from here - it would be ironic if he was only ever really appealing to Rayse-Odium, and Taravangian-Odium found Moash too much of a flat villain for his purposes and cast him off.

As the plot climaxes go, I thought the ones for Navani and Venli were excellent and very satisfying. I enjoyed Kaladin’s as well and found it cathartic, but it a was moment we all knew had to come, so it didn’t have quite the kick of some of Kaladin’s other big moments. I did love his reconciliation with Lirin. One of the themes of the book was finding common ground despite deeply felt disagreements - with Navani and Raboniel, with Navani and the Sibling, and with humans and singers/Fused more generally - and Kaladin and Lirin’s reconciliation fit well with that. I am far more favourable to Lirin than most people - if you’ve lived as a pacifist in storming Alethkar, which values the lives of its people slightly more than it does crem, you’re going to have been right a solid 95% of the time, where everyone else was wrong. I can make allowances for the other five percent, especially when Lirin’s life lesson from the last five or so years has been “resisting oppression and standing up for what you believe in will destroy everyone you love”.

And on the topic of finding common ground, Leshwi’s reaction to the revelation that Venli was a Radiant was one of the single most beautiful moments of the book, and one of my absolute favourites. It’s gorgeous and moving, and at the same time rather tragic, because - what might have bern different if Venli had revealed herself to Leshwi at the start of the book? How much of the conflict could have been avoided. Singers don’t appear to attract spren as strongly as humans do, which makes Leshwi drawing joyspren particularly powerful. And then the bittersweet note from “My soul is too long owned by someone else”. (Come to think of it, this is another inverted paralell to Moash. This is someone realizing “I was wrong about everything and I’m so glad about that because it means I have a chance to be someone better than I was.”) Oh my goodness, I would love a Leshwi chapter in a later book, just to check in on her and see how she’s doing in her new life with the Singers.

I also loved the climax of Navani’s arc, and was so relieved, because up until that very moment I wasn’t sure if the Sibling would survuve uncorrupted. I know that some people weren’t pleased because the Sibling didn’t even like her, but to me that became a core part of the story, like I said above - people who deeply disagree finding common ground and common cause. That is a key element of being a Bondsmith - the process of bringing people together in spite of their differences - and something that fits Navani so well given the rapport she found with Raboniel. (Though I was conflicted about the latter. On the one hand, she made amazing discoveries that enabled her to save Urithiru. One the other hand, she...kind of collaborated with the enemy and gave them terrible weapons out of intellectual curiosity and a desire to prove herself?) I will grant that it makes the series, and the characters with the most crucial importance to Roshar, rather Kholin-heavy.

For Taravodium, all I can say is - YIPES. I have no idea how to process the implications of that, but I feel like it will be bad. Really really bad. (Taravangian is probably my least favourite character in the entire Stormlight Archive. The attitude of “I am so brave and selfless for doing evil things and look at how wonderful I am for sacrificing my own morality for the benefit of all, you petty selfish people wanting to be good could never make such a grand sacrifice” drives me absolutely nuts. It’s a complete inversion and twisting of morality, and intensely arrogant.)

Dalinar’s encounter with Ishar was fascinating, and I’m very curious to see where this goes. The spren experiments were deeply creepy! And the way Radiant Oaths can temporarily restore a Herald’s sanity was fascinating - I’m very eager to see where this goes in the next book. I suspect that Dalinar may have made a very serious mistake with regards to this trial my combat, and I have no idea how/if they’re going to fit Szeth’s whole arc into the ten days before the duel. I’ve been eagerly anticipating Szeth’s arc ever since The Way of Kings!

#brandon sanderson #the stormlight archive #rhythm of war #row spoilers #kaladin #shallan #adolin #dalinar kholin #navani kholin #leshwi #moash

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neshabeingchildish · 4 years

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League of Extraordinary Geniuses || Chapter 6

I’d been trying NOT to, in case others wanted to read this story, but at this point, I’ve only seen fans of these fandoms interact, so there will be things mentioned that if you didn’t watch the shows, you’ll be lost about. So sorry if there are others here now, but I am mostly writing for those who have interacted and let me know their thoughts and feelings about this story and they’ve all been familiar with Lab Rats, Henry Danger, and The Thundermans, so… this chapter in particular has some things that it would be much too much to explain it all, from LR canon and a bit from HD too, and I’m sorry if there are readers unfamiliar with that, but y’all haven’t let me know that you’re here.

Y’all probably didn’t expect another update this soon, but what had happened was the last chapter would have been too long, so I found a point to cut it for that one. Also, a story line that I wanted to touch on this story, but didn’t realize how I would incorporate it until @kiddangers made a post about it either her or on her Instagram, can’t remember, and she sparked the topic and now it is a major story arc in this fic, which might be hella hurtful at some point, but... If you’re in for the ride, you’re in for it, Friends.

@verified-dumbass @just-a-j-reallly I’ve decided not to continue tagging anybody else that hasn’t interacted, out of courtesy and just feeling awkward about tagging people that are nonresponsive to it.

What if I’m the Monster

Conspiracy theories were running wild and fortunately, all of the communities that had reason to think that they might be able to be linked to this scandal quickly took action to try to clear their records and discover who the real guilty party was. The bionic, supers, and non-super communities all began their own investigations as to what might have happened while the collaboration of Dystress, Shoutout, Thunderstrike and Chase Davenport were on the ground, assessing the scene themselves. Of course, Chase was the spokesperson and mission leader. That would put everyone at home at better ease.

“Myself and a team of trusted heroes have been working practically nonstop since the torpedo attack to figure out what took place here. There were some recent developments that I’m not at liberty to speak about, which Davenport Industries had been handling, and one of our facilities was going to be attacked, when fortunately, a superhero stepped in and managed to save it and all surrounding innocents that might have been caught in the crossfire. We have recovered several remains, but they are as of this moment inconclusive. What I can assure the public of is that my current team and the Davenport brand will be working hard to get to the bottom of this tragedy and keep the citizens of Jamaica safe from any further threats…”

He and Shoutout left the press conference and returned directly back to the crash site that Dystress and Thunderstrike were at. Thunderstrike had telepathically tunneled a lot of the water, froze it in pillars, and Dystress used her scanning systems for wreckage. With this tactic, they had found numerous parts of the jet and some torpedo shrapnel, but it wasn’t until Chase returned, with his hypersenses that they found the first possible remains of an assailant… “I don’t know how to say this,” he said.

“With your words, perhaps?” Max offered.

“That’s an android…” He sighed. Max unfroze the pillar, and Chase telepathically collected the android remains to them. The four looked down at it for a while. There was very little human DNA left to him. Some hair and facial components, a few fingers, and everything else was charred and shattered metal. “They’re starting to enlist them against their brethren,” Chase said sadly. “I don’t know why I didn’t think about that happening. Of course they would! Who better to go toe to toe with them than their own kind?”

Max and Charlotte noticed that he was really upset about this. Charlotte beckoned over some Davenport analysts to quietly collect this, so that the three of them could inspect the body later. She also decided that they had been working too hard and would need a break. At the very least, Mika would, so she dismissed her and told her to try to get some rest.

“And, you probably should too. You’ve been out of your chamber for days,” Charlotte observed. Chase folded his arms and watched as the employees took the android away.

“I want to begin studying him, right away.”

“I do too, but we’re only human. We do need to rest.”

“We’re not ONLY human,” Chase argued.

“No, but we still need rest and we’ve earned it. You, especially.”

“Why, him especially?” Max asked. Charlotte just threw him a look. It was so smart of her to have a mask that covers her mouth instead of one that covered her eyes, because those looks were a weapon of their own. “Fine. But, if he’s resting, we all should rest and let the androids keep watch while the Davenport searchers keep collecting samples.”

“Is that agreeable, Chase?” Charlotte asked.

Chase sighed and reluctantly nodded his head. He knew that she wanted him to get some rest and she had a point, afterall. The three of them went to the safehouse and tried to calm their nerves and settle in.

You would’ve thought that they would be so drained that they would immediately all fall to sleep, but all were restless. Max passed by Mika and knocked on the door, “Hey. You gonna get some sleep, or what?” He asked. She furrowed her eyebrows and looked at him, the expression gesturing to the fact that she was clearly on a call. He waved his fingers at Chapa, on the screen and then pointed at Mika, “Sleep in, if you need to in the morning, but try to at least lay down for the night. You can talk to your girlfriend some other time.”

Mika scoffed and shook her head, “Goodnight, Max.”

Chapa asked, “He thinks we’re girlfriends? Awesome.”

Mika replied, “He said that just to be annoying.

Max smirked to himself as he headed for the shower. Charlotte was in the bathroom, brushing her teeth and washing her face and such. She usually did that before getting into the shower, so he said, “I’m goin’ in,” and she nodded. It didn’t bother her, but he liked to at least be clear. He was in the shower, sort of zoned out and thinking while she sprayed her locs with oils and finished up her preshower things. They crossed paths switching up who was in the shower and didn’t even have the energy for some risque joke about it.

Charlotte knew that it had to be just as heavy on their hearts as it was on hers… They freed the androids and now it seemed that at least one or some of them not only didn’t appreciate it, but might make it hard enough that they could be in serious trouble for even attempting it.

When she came out of the shower, Max was still in the mirror, doing his thing. This was the one of the quickest times either of them had ever taken in a bathroom before. He was just staring into the mirror, holding his toothbrush, though. “Hey… You okay?”

He blinked and then looked at her in her robe, holding a jar of body butter. He smiled and nodded. “How can I not be. I’m in the best place in the world - with you.” He came over and kissed her on the forehead. “It’s gonna be okay.”

She sighed, “It better be. You and Chase let go of a lot to be here.”

“I can’t speak for him, but a lot is here for me.” He cupped her face and pressed his forehead to hers. “I’m gonna make sure Mika’s got everything she needs, then I’m crashing in your room, if that’s okay.”

“I was gonna crash in Mika’s room,” she said. “She has nightmares sometimes after a stressful day and the last few days have been hell for me, so I can only imagine what they’ve been for her.”

“You could very well imagine. You’ve been a hero for a while, now.”

“I forgot how this felt. When something serious and dangerous is staring you in the face and you literally don’t know if you’re about to die. I feel… triggered. I hate that she has triggering memories now, and one of the scariest days in her life has taken place because she’s here for me.”

“Mika is where she wants to be. We all are. We chose you, Char. Come on. Let’s check on the kid and get to bed.”

They peeked into Mika’s room and Chase was in there, moving around. “What are you doing?” Charlotte asked in a whisper.

“She was having a nightmare. I kept hearing her whimpering, so I’m trying to calm her down or something,” he said. He looked tired and irritated, but he was also concerned. Charlotte rubbed his back and took over. She put on some music, sprayed some fragrance, handed Mika her beloved plushie, rubbed some oils on her feet, tucked her in and strummed her scalp. After a moment, she was snoring and the trio left her to it. Charlotte would be back, but she had this grave nagging feeling that she needed to make sure that they got to bed too. She felt like this was her fault, no matter what Max said to try to smooth her over. They had followed her into this and this had become tricky.

“I’m going to try to get us a bigger space when I have time, so that you two don’t have to squeeze into the same room,” she said, not knowing what else to say.

“It’s fine. I put my chamber in your room, so Max can have the spare to himself.”

“Nice try, but I’m crashing in her room. She’s got all the good sleepy time stuff like candles and… stuff and I’m sleeping in there, as well.”

“It’s fine. You two are always welcome to crash in my room. I’ll set the mood for you.” She similarly fixed the room as she had done for Mika, programmed some things into Chase’s chamber and when both her guys were asleep, she ducked out of the room and into a video call with Jasper and Henry.

“Char! Thank goodness! We’ve been trying to reach you for days. I was starting to think that the footage of Dystress on the news was altered and you’d been taken into some underground prisoner chamber!” Jasper worried.

“Nope. Just been taken to depression town. Was hoping you had some feel good stories about the kids or something to help me cheer up.”

Henry nodded, “Say no more. Jasper’s been making all of these musical fan videos of the kids and putting them on our DingDong account.”

“Oooh, I’m gonna check those out.”

“ALSO… We got the uh… shipment…” Henry said and looked more serious now. “They’re in the Dome. Wasn’t sure if they were capable of being at Budding Flowers.”

“They’re not defected. They’re free, and want to work with children. Your charity is one of the most successful ones in the world, currently. Androids are people too.”

Jasper winced, “Only… They aren’t… and… well…”

“Ray is freaking out about the recent news that androids now have autonomy, because if you remember, a Piper from the future came back to tell us that hell on Earth was a road paved by a robot takeover. They created ones that looked like children. Jasper and I just don’t feel comfortable, at the moment letting androids interact with kids that we’ve vowed to protect…”

“Wow. You two think that I’ve kickstarted the end of the world?” She asked, feeling absolutely worse than she had before she called them.

“No. We think that you would do anything to help others and to fix the world and that there are others out there who will take advantage of that, if they get the chance,” Henry offered.

Jasper added, “Schwoz’s friend from Davenport was telling us all about an android rebellion that once almost took place. His ex girlfriend’s models are the same ones that you designed yours after. Come ON, Charlotte…”

“She intended for them to be used for evil. There’s a big difference in our work and the results. Wow… I’m going to go check on Mika. Have a good night.”

“Char…” Henry said.

“Good night, Henry!” She hung up, frustrated and ready to cry. Not because she felt like they were being mean or hard on her. Because, they had a point and she couldn’t believe that her messiah complex had allowed her to miss it beforehand. They didn’t even KNOW about the android remains that were found. Oh God, what if she was the figurative first horseman? Conquering the academic world, looking like a savior to all because of her penchant for improving lives and society and her solutions that help and bring about peace… only to also be the reason that war and bloodshed roll in, and then famine and disease and death… How on Earth she got from messiah complex to I am literally the antichrist, she was unsure, but that was where her mind was whenever she began to doze off.

Mika woke up in the middle of the night from a nightmare. She was gonna get some warm milk with lavender honey and maybe a patty, if there were any more in there. She found Charlotte, sitting on the patio, asleep with her head on her laptop. She went to get Max, but neither him nor Chase were in their room, so she checked Charlotte’s and there they both were. Chase in his chamber, Max in Charlotte’s bed, covered by pillows, with a sleeping mask on and the smell of candles and incense heavy in the air. She woke him up, “Charlotte fell to sleep outside.”

“What?” He asked, half asleep, but jumping out of bed, anyway. He collected Charlotte. Mika collected her devices and they put her back in her bed. Mika felt left out, and grabbed her blanket and stuffie and came into Charlotte’s room too. With her in Charlotte’s bed, Max made a little fortress on the floor and quickly went back to sleep. Mika was awake for a while, but Charlotte’s arm draped around her and she fell back to sleep.

Charlotte got up and looked around the room. She didn’t remember coming to bed and now, she had Chase in his chamber, Max on the floor with half of her pillows, Mika in her bed and her own head was spinning, because, as she just recalled, she’d cried herself to sleep. Still, she was the first person awake and she started her day without waking any of the others. Eventually, Max and Chase came into the lab, where she was evaluating all of the diagnostics on the remains, listening to music, and talking on the phone, “Well, if I can get those remains sent to me, it will help me to determine how likely the root of that issue is and to ease your mind and maybe others,’ in the process.” Chase looked at the screen and Max went straight to the autoblender. “Okay. Thank you for your cooperation, and tell Douglas to learn to keep his fat mouth shut when he’s in the room with MY people.” She hung up and looked up, “Good morning.”

“What’s that about Douglas?” Max wondered, while Chase breezed through all of the research.

“He was talking to Ray and Schwoz about Giselle Vicker’s plans to use androids for a hostile takeover and now, one of THEEEEEEEE STUPIDEST powerful men has ideas in his head about the free androids and a robot rebellion and… Anyway, Schwoz is gonna send me the remains of a robot from the future so that I can study it.”

Max and Chase both stared at her blankly, then looked at each other. “How long have you been awake, Charlotte?” Chase asked.

“I got enough sleep,” she snapped, shaking her head. “In another, idk 20 years or so, maybe less… there is supposed to be a robot takeover inspired by the Terminator movies. Thanks to Douglas having a conversation with Ray, he now thinks that I’ve somehow set things in motion for that to occur.”

“Well… If you have, it’s done now. Besides, the fact that you have a robot from the future to work on is all the proof you need that it was gonna happen anyway,” Max said, making a smoothie. “I wanna see the robot, though. Let me in on that.”

“You and I need to keep searching for remains,” Chase reminded him.

“That’s not gonna take us the rest of our lives. By the way,” Max said to Charlotte as he poured the smoothie, “Told Mika to sleep in. Marx arrived today, so you can get him to do anything that she was gonna do.”

“Who arrived?” Chase wondered, because he was supposed to approve anybody that anyone was trying to bring into the loop and he hadn’t spoken with Max about anybody.

“His personal android assistant,” a male voice said from the doorway and Chase gasped and prepared himself to attack.

Max rushed to jump in front of Chase and said, “Sorry, sorry, sorry… It was supposed to be hilarious, but then things took a turn and I didn’t get a chance to explain to you. This is my personal android assistant, Marx. I made him in the Marcus model form to fuck with you, but I promise, he’s of no actual ties to your Marcus.”

“That you know of,” Charlotte said. “I tried to talk him and Douglas OUT of this.”

“Douglas missed his son’s face and had some regrets and I wanted a personal android assistant. I thought it would be quite humorous to have him walk up to you one day, but fate had other plans,” Max said.

Chase was staring at the android. It looked JUST like Marcus. Why would Douglas allow this and not tell him? What if Leo had seen this thing? Marx was staring back at Chase, but he had a polite semi smile on his face. “Keep it away from me,” Chase said.

“Marx uses he/him/his pronouns,” Max said and patted Marx on the shoulder. “They/them/theirs, at the very least.”

Chase smiled tightly, “Keep him away from me, and I MEAN that, Max Thunderman!” He stormed out of the lab and Charlotte shook her head. “I asked you to give Marx a different face.”

“I didn’t have time!”

Marx said, “If it pleases you, I could work on some programming to change my face, however, I don’t prefer to do so.”

“Naw, keep your face. Just… stay away from the little guy.”

“From Mr. Chase Davenport. Got it.”

Chase was livid. How could that POSSIBLY be seen as a joke? If he knew about Marcus, he HAD to know about all of the pain and terror he caused the family! That only made him feel a resurgence of hostility towards Douglas. Sure, they were on pleasant terms, but some part of him would always hold on to, at least a little bit, the things that he had been willing to do to his own. Really, he was the reason that Marcus was so terrible, then he just left him, for Giselle Vickers to find and… Chase was getting extremely furious thinking about this. Marcus had been one of the first major betrayals done to him. He thought they were friends, and not only were they actually enemies, but that was his brother who his father had turned against him and he hated that Max Thunderman would casually try to prank him by showing him such a face.

After a while, Max joined him, silently at first, but they both felt the tension there. They were silently working. A few times, a question came up in one of their minds, but neither of them wanted to break the silence, because it was uncertain whether it would relieve the tension. Finally, Max had to break. “It was messed up of me to make a Marcus model android with the intention to shake you up. I knew a little bit about the situation and not whatever it was that your memory tapped into back there. And, I really didn’t know you at the time, either. I didn’t think about how it would affect you like this and I certainly didn’t think you and me would be on the terms we are on right now. So, I hate that I took a joke so far, but it was all me. Douglas really just liked the feeling of seeing his son’s face again. And Charlotte, of course told me the entire time that it would be harmful. I just go too far sometimes.”

Chase was breathing heavy the entire time. Waiting on Max to actually apologize, not just list what happened. But, then again, why would he? He was obviously the type to get pleasure out of people’s pain and not even care about their personal trauma at the expense of a stupid laugh. He was much too smart to just “not realize it’d be that harmful,” so Chase wasn’t eager to listen to him and definitely not going to trust him.

“I guess the perks of being raised in a picture perfect family don’t include having some respect for others who weren’t so privileged,” Chase said. And that was all he felt like he needed to. To dive deeper, he’d dig deeper into his own problems, and he still had work to do.

“My family wasn’t perfect, but I wouldn’t have wanted somebody to make fun of our problems either. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I’m sorry…” Max said, and it really sounded genuine. Chase almost let his guard down. But, he knew that he’d let his guard down with Marcus… With Sebastian… He’d been let down basically any time he ever let his guard down and Charlotte was the one exception to that thus far. He was fine with that fact. “Apology accepted,” he lied, and didn’t want to speak of it again.

Max felt horrible. Chase looked like an angry little sad puppy. Like… Seeing Marcus’ face REALLY did something to him. There wasn’t a lot of information, so he only knew the highlights that had been shared with him from Douglas, and it honestly sounded like, from what he’d been given, that Marcus kinda got the shit end of the stick. Max was starting to see that Chase probably got those types of ends more than his persona of perfection revealed. “If anybody ever tried to do something bad to you, I’m gonna have your back. I’m shitty sometimes. I do mean stuff. I don’t always prove to be the best sort of human, but… You’re a good person, despite how annoying you can be and I’m still probably gonna let you down and give you shit, but… I honestly do have your back,” Max said.

Chase sighed, “My back is fine. Can we please just finish this up?” Max got back to work, but he heard Chase mumble, “I’m not gonna be fooled again.”

All three of them were looking at what they knew to be EVERYTHING that could possibly have been left behind, while the other agencies went through the waters and the islands to double and triple check. Androids were surveilling them, to ensure that nobody planted anything, though Chase at this point trusted the androids about as much as he’d trusted the bionic army.

Max rarely trusted anybody, but he was trying not to waiver in his faith in Charlotte.

Charlotte was simply defeated and trying to think. “If I have to spend the rest of my life preventing it, I will.” She looked at a chip that was more advanced than her work, but definitely carried her signature and held her emblem. The robots from the future… The ones that would revolt and enslave humanity? They were connected to her work. She threw the chip across the lab in frustration and stormed out.

Max and Chase waited. They looked at each other and Max wondered, “What do you think?”

“I think that it’s the androids. I think that they have autonomy and that humanity won’t allow harmony and that they will rise up against them after they’ve gotten tired of being oppressed. What I will never believe is that Charlotte is responsible. She wanted to do right for someone. It wouldn’t be her fault that they betray her.” He fumed and groaned, “Androids never should have been created.”

Max scoffed, “We could say the same thing about bionics! And how do we know that it isn’t something that a human tried to do? They always try to harm anybody different, especially if they read as more powerful. It could be one of the thousands of geniuses we’ve sought out over the past few weeks, or one of the… of her trusted employees…” Max tugged his hair a little and said, “Whoever it is… We’ve got to stop them. This can’t be the legacy forged for Charlotte’s good deeds.”

“I agree with that,” Chase said, and he meant it. He summoned the chip to himself and said, “I’m going to use every skill that I have to try to find a link to someone or something that answers these questions. But first, we’ve gotta make sure our woman is okay.” He set it down and Max nodded his head. They found Charlotte near the Man Copter, hugging Mika and sending her away, for her own safety. Mika was crying and begging her not to do this, but Charlotte was definitely in a mode right now. There was no way she could let whatever was happening tarnish this bright young girl that she loved and cared so much for.

“I won’t leave you out. I’m sharing everything with you. I just want you out of range until we figure out who tried to attack the place, okay?”

“Okay,” Mika said, ugly crying and nodding. She added, “But as soon as it’s safe, I come back, right?”

“At the very instant!” Charlotte told her.

“Okay.” She waved at Max and Chase, who she saw watching, then strapped herself in.

“She’s going to one of my safehouses with the twins and their nanny, and will be working remotely. She felt like I was punishing her for this.” Charlotte shook her head. “Listen… I need some physical gratification now. I’m sorry if that seems toxic or foolish, especially considering how things are going at the moment, but I have to have release. I have to feel something primal and satisfactory. So… I’m going to head to Dystopia for a little bit, but I’ll keep contact with you.”

“Dystopia? What’s in Dystopia that will give you what you need that you can’t have here?” Chase wondered.

“Her boyfriends,” Max said, sadly.

Charlotte wiped her face, “I just… Need to connect and I need it ASAP. I’m sorry…”

“Don’t be. We understand,” Max said. She could tell that he was furious, despite his words, but everyone knew that Henry and Jasper were where her home is and she did love Max and Chase, but they didn’t know how to handle everything she was currently experiencing. Plus, she owed the Defenders an apology, for questioning her, when it turned out that despite the fact that the idea came from a sensitive place, the worries were valid.

“We’ll come too,” Chase said. “We’ll stay out of the way, but I don’t think that the three of us should have that much distance between us right now. We need to stick together.”

“I agree,” Max said.

“Yeah. Of course, if you two still are in it with me.”

“Charlotte, you may not realize this yet, but… Max and I are yours, too.” Chase said. He had blurted it out, and didn’t want to follow it up, but he meant it, and fortunately, Max didn’t argue with him. “So, to Dystopia, I guess.”

“I’ll show you around while they’re having their reunion. You only ever got to visit during crises, right?” Max said, relaxing a little as he turned to Chase, feeling closer to him right now than Charlotte, after this no matter how unintentional, but all too familiar form of rejection from her.

“Yeah.”

“I have some roots in Dystopia. We’ll have a Max’s World Day Out, yeah?” Chase didn’t want to do that at all, but he shrugged his shoulders in surrender, anyway. “To Dystopia,” Max said and wrapped an arm around Chase’s shoulder, walking him away from Charlotte. She gave them a smile, and for a moment, felt like maybe she didn’t need to visit Dystopia and see the guys… But then again, that little moment of complete comfort elsewhere? Well… She’d at least owe it to Henry and Jasper to let them know that maybe her heart had moved on...

#Henry Danger #Lab Rats #The Thundermans #Chasing Thunderbolts Fic #League of Extraordinary Geniuses #LOEG Update #Nesha Fics #Multiverse Fics

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shadowphoenixrider · 4 years

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Katla’s List O’ Headcanons

(Cos why not.)

- Katla is 5ft 3in, making her shortest in the quartet, even shorter than Kabu (5ft 6in).

- Katla was born in Galar, but has dual citizenship in Hoenn due to living there for a long period of time after she moved there when she was 9.

- As a result, Kat does know some of the local Hoenn dialect and can get the gist of most conversations spoken in it, as well as managing to speak short sentences. She cannot hold conversations with it, but her grasp on it is slowly expanding as she spends more time with Kabu and Stela

- Her accent is noticeably Galarian, as is the fact she swears like a fucking sailor. She does try to control herself in front of small children, but tends to struggle.

- She knows some Hoenn curses, but uses them sparingly, or in times of high emotion. *nudge nudge wink wink*

- She’s so used to using HM field moves she can teach her Pokemon Surf and Fly with only a few references. She also tends to ride her Pokemon without harnesses due to this (which causes Kabu no end of fretting)

- Is the protagonist of the Hoenn and Galar storylines - she was just an ordinary trainer in all other regions.

- Has never been to Kanto, but has caught Kanto Pokemon in other regions.

- Is in possession of the Eon flute, which is currently in storage in Hoenn - she did own Latias for the during of her Hoenn adventure, but released her after she gave up her Champion title.

- Defeated Kyogre, didn’t catch it. Mainly because she was trying not to die and was suffering from energy burns on her arms from its Origin Pulse attack.

- Technically caught Rayquaza at Sky Pillar, but released it after dealing with the Meteor threat, as she was uncomfortable with ‘owning’ it.

- Defeated Deoxys, didn’t catch it. Isn’t exactly sure if it was even a Pokemon, so doesn’t mention she ever encountered it.

- Steven retook his Champion mantle after Katla stepped down, and she would have to beat him again if she ever wished to reclaim her crown.

- Only people in Hoenn and very few people who were paying attention to the news know Katla was Hoenn’s Champion without her telling people - Kat prefers to keep it that way.

- The only people Kat has told about her previous Champion history are: Hop, Kabu, Nanu and Stela.

- Has a fairly good singing ability. Sings rock songs/those that are really good to belt out at the top of your voice. Occasionally records some of her singing and releases clips after she becomes Champion to keep the media happy.

- Was invited to come to Alola by Kukui, who she met on a trip to Kalos, as he was interested in her past adventures, especially in regards to the multitude of Pokemon moves her team had.

- After giving her a Litten to allow her to explore Alola’s islands, he and Hala agreed to let Kat try to complete the Island Challenge after watching her battling with her new starter.

- Maybe sorta cheesed Hala’s Grand Trial by switching her Pokemon at the last second, nullifying Hala’s Fighting Z Move with a Ghost type. (Nanu found this highly amusing)

- Likes to learn and collect the tales and stories of the legendary Pokemon in each region she goes to.

- Loves Ho-Oh, and would really like to see/meet it one day.

- Really dislikes the Unova region, and left before challenging the 4th gym due to it, releasing all of the Pokemon she obtained there. Likes the Pokemon from Unova though, and has quite a few of them in her other teams.

- Has a crush on Olivia, but it’s mostly petered out now with her polyamorous relationship. She still gets teased about it, though.

- One of Nanu’s Meowth took a shine to Kat, and now lives with Kat and Kabu whenever they’re staying over on Alola. Part of the reason Kat is lobbying for Pokemon import restrictions into Galar to be loosened is to bring this Meowth home with her.

- Kat’s Pokemon tend to have a habit of escaping their Pokeballs by themselves, mostly to defend and protect their trainer. Some are more protective than others, and Kat has to make sure they’re not with her when she is engaging with other...activities.

- Out of consideration for Nanu and his cat-pack, Kat does not bring her Alola Persian or any canine-like Pokemon with her into the PC.

- She cannot bring her Incineroar near Nanu at all, due to the grudge the Pokemon holds against the Kahuna after he stole Kat’s first kiss and it didn’t go down well at the time.

- According to her, it wasn’t her first kiss since she didn’t give it to someone, so technically Kabu had a her first kiss.

- Has nightmares about her encounter with Kyogre and Eternatus. They’re infrequent and don’t usually result in Kat waking violently, but they bother her, especially when she wakes her lovers with them.

- Due to said nightmares, Kat tends to take midnight walks to clear her head and also admire the stars. After accidentally waking Nanu and Stela on one exploit, she now leaves a note to let them know when she’ll be back.

- Emotionally volatile and maybe a bit traumatised after all the Hoenn nonsense, Katla took up meditation with the encouragement of her Psychic Pokemon to help calm her mind. She now meditates when she can, often finding peaceful, lonely places to do it. She prefers to do it alone, but she can meditate with Stela and Kabu, as she can trust them to either join her or not disturb her.

- Her parents encouraged Kat to keep going with her Pokemon adventure, suggesting she got to the Johto region as a change of scenery, and to start again, as it were. This proved to be the correct decision, as Kat found her zest for adventure and exploring once again.

- She particularly likes chilling on top of the PC roof, and occasionally sings there. Nanu doesn’t mind, but if she starts dancing he will go and throw something at her.

- She caught Eternatus, but doesn’t own it nor has it in her possession - it was confiscated by Interpol to use in the case against Rose. Not that Kat wanted to keep it, considering the creature brought up her previous trauma of Kyogre, only happening to be much, much larger. And dangerous.

- She also caught Zacian by Zacian’s ‘request’, but when she tried to release it, the legendary dog refused. Zacian isn’t in Kat’s possession, nor has a Pokeball, but if Kat howls, it will come to her side wherever she is. Kat discovered that this includes Alola, almost scaring the life out of Nanu when a 9 foot tall dog suddenly appeared out of the shadows with a whacking great sword in its mouth. He was less than pleased.

- Sends pictures of cat Pokemon to Nanu for him to rate. The only time she sent him a Skitty picture was when it was dressed like a goth.

- Nanu once set her a picture of her face next to Galarian Meowth’s and commented that she’d let herself go. He got a picture of her middle finger back.

- Not often viewed favourably by Galarian media, as she is very different champion to Leon. Katla can tolerate their scrutiny for a little while, but she wants her privacy and can be very prickly if disturbed. Leon does his best to shield her, but some media outlets annoy the piss out of her.

- When the pressure gets to her, Kat goes to ground and hides out, usually in the PC or Kabu’s apartment in Motostoke. Nanu and Stela are only too happy to help her out.

- She has successfully managed to hide her polyamorous relationship from the press. They are speculating on who she might be dating, but haven’t managed to suss out who. Most seem to think it’s Raihan, for some reason.

- Despite their rivalry, Kat and Raihan get along fairly well, especially since they share a love of Dragon types. Even if a couple of times he’s picked her up by the scruff of her hoodie to tease her, usually resulting in him getting kicked in the shin.

- Whilst Hop and Katla were ‘rivals’, they’re not longer considered as such now - more best friends. Although she can find Hop annoying at times, Kat adores him and is fiercely protective of the young man and his happiness. Hop sees her almost as his big sister.

- Bede and Kat never do get on. They are begrudgingly polite to one another, but that’s about it. Kat has never forgiven Bede for upsetting Hop, and Bede never fully loses his grudge at losing his place in the Challenge because of her.

- Marnie and Kat get on like a house on fire, though. Kat often visits Spikemuth to patronage some of the speciality establishments there and also have non-Dynamax battles there. Kat is thinking of demonstrating Mega Evolution and Z moves there, but is currently researching to see if they would even work in Galar.

- Her relationship with Leon has shifted since he took control of Marco Cosmos and the Gym Challenges. Whilst he does help Kat out getting used to be the Champion and will pull strings to keep the press off of her among other things, he sometimes forgets the Kat is not him, and overloads her.

- For the first few days after the end of the Gym season and when she finally gets a holiday, Kat tends to sleep a lot, often cuddling up with one of her loves or Pokemon to snooze.

- Has a leather jacket and trousers she really wants to wear when doing her Championship matches, but has been turned down numerous due to it being 'not the image expected of a Champion’. Kat is just a little bitter about this.

- Will often go off on her own to go Pokemon hunting or training, coming back sweaty, tired and or bruised, with a new companion or two.

- Also likes going to wild, isolated places to sit and be on her own. If she does this on Ula’Ula, Nanu’s rare patrol will always conveniently take him close to these places, just to keep an eye on her.

- Had a crush on Stela almost as soon as she laid eyes on the woman. Despite being in love with her now, is still very starstruck and doesn’t really know how to handle her compliments without turning into a blushing, stuttery mess. Nanu thinks it’s because Kat has never learned to flirt in gay.

- Had never considered romantic relationships throughout her entire Pokemon career, as she just had very little interest in them. It actually took her meeting Nanu (and him kissing her) to even consider that she could even be physically attractive.

- Still doesn’t consider herself so. Refers to herself as a gremlin. The others do call her that too, affectionately.

- Wears rainbow coloured socks.

- Her energy scars react in the presence of the power of legendary Pokemon, usually painfully.

- Has an extremely deep grudge and dislike of professor Birch’s son Brandon, and will avoid him with all means necessary.

- Cannot hold her liquor very well and gets very chatty and excitable before she crashes and needs to be carried home.

- Kat’s dad is not Norman. Kat’s dad is called Graham and works in Lilycove city - the reason why Kat and her family moved to Hoenn was because of this job.

- Kat’s mum is called Cora and now works in a pharmacy in Wedgehurst, after formerly working in Oldale town in Hoenn. Was originally a trainer herself.

- The regions Kat adventured in, in order: Hoenn, Johto, Sinnoh, Unova, Kalos, Alola, Galar

#pokemon oc: katla #headcanon #character development #character trivia #i...have a lot of headcanons about this young lady

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keanubot · 5 years

Text

I Love You Like The Sun Came Out (Keanu Reeves/Reader) Chapter 1

so i’ve had this idea mulling around for about a year now and after A LOT of encouragement from @johnsbleu i decided to finally just make it happen. i know keanu/reader isn’t everyone’s thing and that’s ok! i just wanted to try my hand at it. i have a lot of ideas for this so hopefully you guys like it 💖

title is a lyric from ‘waking up slow’ by gabrielle aplin (and i made the gif from her lyric video for that song). if you wanna know the vibe for this fic, definitely go listen to it.

word count: around 4k

warnings: none for this chapter but YES...this fic will be very smutty

“You got the job!”

Anybody else would be more than happy to hear those words, overjoyed in fact. But hearing them does almost nothing for you, your lips pressed together in a tight line as you nod at nobody in particular with your cell phone against your ear. You inhale deeply through your nose, processing the words of the woman on the other end before saying quite calmly:

“Awesome, when do I start?”

Maybe you’re overexaggerating just a little bit; a job is good, it’s always good. A steady income, stability, a routine, all that jazz. It’s not that you hate working, it’s not like you didn’t apply for this job in the hopes that you’d get it, but still…it’s disappointing.

Because being a housekeeper for a celebrity is certainly not how you thought your life in Hollywood was gonna go.

“He’d like you to start tomorrow. He won’t be back for about a month or so but he wanted you to get acquainted with the house, figure out where everything is, water the plants, that sort of thing.”

You nod again, absentmindedly tapping your knee with your index finger, “Is there a schedule I should follow?”

“He sent me a basic list of things he needs done, but he’d like you to make your own hours. However, while he’s gone he will need you to come in to feed the fish.”

You raise an eyebrow, “The fish?”

“Yes, he has a koi pond with about a dozen of them; the gardener has been feeding them lately but it’s not in his job description to stop by every day. That’s the housekeeper’s job.” The woman laughs, “Your job, I should say.”

You laugh along with her, wondering if she can tell you’re faking it. Yep, that’s me: the housekeeper. That’s all I’ll ever be good for out here, apparently.

“I’ll meet you at the house tomorrow morning at eight o’clock to give you the keys and answer any other questions you might have,” the woman continues. You know her name, you even met her in a formal interview, but you can’t for the life of you remember it, “You still have reliable transportation, right?”

If you’d even call your beat-up car ‘reliable’. “Yep.”

“Then we’re all set, I’ll see you tomorrow!”

“See you then.” You bring the phone away from your ear and swipe your thumb across the screen to end the conversation, biting your lip and staring at your lock screen until it turns black. You catch a glimpse of your reflection in the small sheet of glass and cringe at the expression on your face; come on, is it really necessary to look that annoyed?

About six months ago, you’d come to Hollywood on a complete whim, barely enough money in your bank account to keep you afloat and nothing but the promise of an audition at a talent agency to keep you going. You’d sent in a tape all the way from New York, and about two weeks later you’d been flown out to California for an in-person audition. In a whirlwind, you’d become a client at the agency and quickly landed your first professional acting job ever, playing the younger sister of a grieving widow in a pretty low budget indie drama. You’d only been in two scenes, had about five lines, but still…it had been exhilarating. And you’d finally felt like this whole acting thing was really gonna happen for you.

It just went downhill from there.

From that gig came barely any offers whatsoever, aside from a pretty raunchy comedy that required a nude scene that you really didn’t feel comfortable doing. Instead, you did a couple commercials; dog food, fabric softener, and the most recent – tampons. Other than that, your schedule has been dry as hell, and your bank account has slowly been dwindling down. You barely have enough money left to cover rent for the next month and the only options that remain are to get a non-acting job while you wait for auditions or throw in the towel and head back to New York.

The former seems like the best way to go; you’re not the type to just give up. You’ve already promised yourself that you won’t go back until an entire year has passed.

Only halfway there, you think to yourself, anything could happen from now and then.

Like becoming a housekeeper for Keanu Reeves, apparently.

At first the idea had been absolutely absurd; a woman who works at the agency had told you that a few clients had managed to get these kinds of jobs, gaining access to celebrity houses and basically cleaning up after them. To some people it might be appealing, but it had made your stomach turn. You’re supposed to be gaining success, getting your name out there, not watering plants and feeding fish – and the thought of being under the watchful eye of an actor you admire makes things ten times worse. You want to be taken seriously.

But the alternatives – working as a barista, busting your ass as a waitress, nannying – are just not a good balance for what you’re trying to accomplish. You need time, time to study and rehearse and audition, time that those jobs simply won’t allow for. At least with the housekeeping you won’t be working eight hours a day, and according to the woman at the agency, there’s amazing pay in it. So how can you pass that up?

So you didn’t. You’d put your name in and before you knew it you’d been called in for an interview for Keanu Reeves. He hadn’t been there, his assistant had shown up instead, explaining that he was away shooting a movie and wouldn’t be back for another month. After a thorough background check and what you felt was a positive interview, you’d left feeling hopeful, albeit disappointed in yourself for allowing your career to get to this point.

So here you are. You got the job. And you want to feel thrilled…but it’s difficult.

Maybe, I’ll feel better when I see the house, you think to yourself, rising from your spot at the kitchen table to go make yourself a cup of tea to calm your nerves. You’re suddenly feeling a bit anxious about the whole thing, reality setting in.

“Did you get the job?” one of your roommates asks, coming into the kitchen in workout attire and putting an empty water bottle in the sink, “Sorry, I wasn’t eavesdropping, I promise. I just heard the end of it when I got back from my run.”

You give her a small smile, “Yep, got it.”

“Great!” she replies, then turns around and leaves, blonde ponytail swishing behind her.

Becca – one of your three roommates. She’s not your friend, none of them are; it’s not really possible to have friends in Hollywood when you’re all essentially competing for the same thing. You’re all signed to the same agency and usually audition for all the same roles, which has created a lot of tension more than once. Your two other roommates haven’t even spoken to each other in about a month after one of them won a role over the other.

Despite what seems like a lot of drama, you manage to stay out of it. You’re there because you need a place to stay, and you get along fine individually with all the girls so you don’t really have anything to complain about. But even with three roommates, rent is ridiculous, and this job is your saving grace.

“Wait, who’s it for again?” you hear behind you, and you turn to see Becca has returned, leaning against the door frame and still catching her breath from the exercise. “Sorry, I forget who you said.”

“Keanu Reeves,” you say, stirring some milk into your tea, “I start tomorrow.”

“Shit, yeah,” her voice is breathless, “He’s like…a big deal.”

You notice your heart begins to beat a bit faster, “I know, but he’s supposed to be really nice.” You look up from your cup and catch a glimpse of Becca’s shocked expression before she shakes it off and nods her head.

“Oh, of course,” she agrees, wiping sweat from her forehead, “Everyone says that. Should be an easy job.”

You shrug, “Hope so.”

“Okay, well,” she slowly backs up, clearly wanting to go change, “I’ll see you later.”

You throw her a thumbs up and she disappears once again; you wonder if she realizes how nervous she’s just made you. “A big deal.” Yeah, that’s the understatement of the year. He’s fucking Keanu Reeves. His reputation in Hollywood is one of the most well known, and while you’re not worried about him hating you or being rude or something, you’re definitely worried about being in the presence of such a famous actor. And the fact that it’s not for an audition or a role, but because you’re going to be cleaning his house? Yeah, pretty humiliating.

At least you’ll get a month to yourself before you have an audience. To be honest, you’re looking forward to seeing what the house where you’ll be spending a good amount of time actually looks like.

------

Keanu’s assistant meets you at eight sharp in front of the house. As you pull up, you feel a lump grow in your throat at the sheer size of it, the black pillars in front seeming quite ominous. His assistant is already there, standing in front of the house with a clipboard; she looks like a real estate agent and you laugh to yourself at the idea of ever having enough money to buy a house like this.

You come to a squeaky stop in the driveway, cringing at the dramatic difference between your shitty car and her not-so-shitty one. You know absolutely nothing about cars but you know expensive when you see it. She waves at you and you wave back, getting out of your car and walking over to her.

“Good morning,” she says, reaching out to shake your hand like she had in your interview, “Ready to start your first day?”

You nod, hoping you look enthusiastic, “Yep, looking forward to it,” you gesture toward the house, “It’s gorgeous.”

She makes an odd facial expression, shrugging, “Not really my taste. I hate the black.”

You’re not really sure how to respond – because you do like the black – but it doesn’t matter because she’s already turning around, putting a key in the lock and opening the front door. She heads inside and you follow close behind, your eyes widening when you’re greeted with essentially a giant hallway, so grand that you feel as if you’ve stepped into a museum.

“Wow,” is all you can say, taken aback by the unique layout, “Is it all one floor?”

“Yes, three bedrooms and five bathrooms.”

Only three bedrooms? You suppose everything being on the one floor means there’s not as much space, but the way the long hallway sweeps down the entire length of the house – disconnecting on either side into other rooms – makes you wonder how that could be. You can see a swimming pool through the glass door at the far end of the hallway, and the hint of a kitchen counter.

“So, this is the foyer.” Keanu’s assistant begins the tour immediately, waving her hand toward a small sitting area to the left. There’s art hanging everywhere, giant abstract paintings that you could probably sit and look at for hours, trying to figure out what’s hidden within them. There are splashes of bright color everywhere, not only in the art but in the pillows, throws, and rugs. You’re also very aware of the amount of plants peppered around the room, tall and fragile looking.

“Are all the plants real?” you ask, eyeing a particularly bright green fern to the right of you that looks too good to be true.

“Oh, yes, every single one,” she clicks her tongue, “That’ll probably be your main priority; he’s always forgetting to water them. And when he does he just ends up hurting himself. I think it got to be a bit too much for the last housekeeper.”

Well, that’s comforting.

“You’re young, you’ll be fine,” she continues, clearly noticing the worry on your face, “She was hitting her 60s, the watering was strenuous on her back. The gardener took over in her absence, but he already has an entire exterior to keep up. It’s not his job.”

Just like feeding the fish. You wonder what other tasks you’ll be taking off the gardener’s hands.

You walk around a wall to the right and find yourselves in a large living room, art and sculptures and plants scattered around the span of it. There’s a big television and a fireplace, as well as a large sectional couch that looks extremely comfortable, placed in a sunken square of floor that you have to walk down a few steps to get to. For such a large space, the house seems so cozy, and you feel the anxiousness melt away a little bit. Maybe you’ll like it here.

“That table is usually covered in books,” his assistant says, nodding toward the coffee table, “But just keep them there, no matter how messy it might look. He likes having what he’s reading close by.”

“Oh, me too,” you say with a laugh, “I always get so annoyed when my roommates put them back on the shelf.”

Keanu’s assistant snorts, shaking her head, “He’s gonna like you.”

You can’t help but feel a sense of pride at the compliment.

“I don’t really have time to show you everything,” she says, checking her phone quickly and then slipping it back in her purse, “I have a meeting I need to get to. But I’ll just show you where he keeps the cleaning supplies.”

God, assistants are probably the most impatient people you’ve ever encountered. You follow after her as she rushes out of the room and down the wide hallway. You gaze in awe at the long columns, trying to keep up with her but also wanting to get a good look at as much as you can. There are doors on either side, and another hallway to the right that must lead to another area of the house.

“Here’s the kitchen,” his assistant points to the glass door at the back, “There’s the pool.”

The pool is very long, taking up most of the back deck and looking out on what seems to be an incredible view. Your eyes move to the huge kitchen, widening at the beautiful marble countertops and shiny cookware. The fridge is huge, and you wonder if you’ll be allowed to eat his food or if you’ll have to bring your own.

On the opposite side of the kitchen is the dining room – a large table surrounded by multicolored chairs – as well as another sitting area and a bar. You love how bright everything is, the windows shining the morning sun onto every reflecting surface. Whoever designed this house knew what they were doing.

You pass through the kitchen and Keanu’s assistant pulls open a door, leading you into a storage room full of cleaning supplies.

“This is pretty much everything you’ll need, I don’t think you’ll be running out of anything anytime soon,” she looks at you with a reassuring half smile, “I know it looks like a lot but he’s not a very messy person, trust me. I wouldn’t worry too much. Everything probably only needs to be done once a week, except for the plants.”

You nod, “And are there plants in every room?”

“Oh, yes, they’re everywhere,” she gestures for you to follow her out of the room, leading you out of the kitchen and toward a pair of large double doors off the hallway, “Come on, I’ll show you the fish.”

You’re suddenly outside, in a small enclosed garden-like area with a large pond and another sitting area. You inch over to the water, peering down and feeling yourself genuinely smile for the first time all day.

“They’re beautiful.” you say quietly, looking down at the koi fish swimming gracefully back and forth underneath the surface. Their scales reflect against the sun and the water almost looks like it’s sparkling, rippling with their bodies. Without realizing you’re even doing it, you’re suddenly crouching on the edge of the water and dipping your fingers in to feel the fish brush against your skin, “What are their names?”

“Oh, uh, I don’t think they have names.”

You look up at his assistant, raising an eyebrow, “He didn’t name them?”

She shrugs, “Not as far as I know.”

Gazing back at the fish, you feel your face scrunch in confusion. Who the hell doesn’t name their fish? You can already think of at least ten names at the top of your head as you straighten back up and put your hands on your hips.

“So how often do they eat?”

“Four times a day,” she replies, gesturing toward a crate near the door, “All their food and treats are in there.”

Four times a day? You certainly hadn’t been expecting that. You know that when Keanu comes back it won’t be your responsibility anymore, but that’s not for another month. Does his assistant really expect you to drive here four times a day for a month? You want to ask, but a part of you is slightly worried that doing so might cost you the job, so you keep your mouth shut.

“Well, that’s all I really have time for,” Keanu’s assistant backs up from the pond and opens the doors again, waving you through, “I’ll give you the keys and you get can get acquainted with the rest of the house on your own.”

To be honest, you actually prefer it that way; it’ll be nice to look around without a watchful eye. You go back to the front door and she digs a ring of keys out of her purse, explaining each ones function and then pulling out a piece of paper with the same instructions.

“Oh, and here’s the list of duties,” she hands you the clipboard she’s been carrying this whole time, “He wrote that himself so hopefully there isn’t any confusion. But if you have any questions just give me a call,” she points to the bottom of the first page, “All the security info is right there, pretty straightforward.”

You have to admit, she could do a much better job at inducting you into this job, but she’s clearly in a rush and you’re sure you can figure everything out on your own. With a final, “Good luck!” as she heads outside, the door shuts behind her and you’re left standing in the very large house all by yourself.

“Okay,” you say to nobody, taking a deep breath, “Where do I even start?”

-----

The house is gorgeous. You stay a few moments in every single room, taking in everything and letting reality slowly dawn on you. This certainly is going to be a lovely environment to work in; everything is so bright, so colorful, so unique. You can see personal touches in everything, and you know there are stories behind almost every object in the house.

Your favorite rooms by far are the kitchen, the library, the music room, the outside pond area – although you’re not sure if that would really be considered a room but you love those koi fish – and surprisingly, Keanu’s office. Despite being terribly unorganized and painfully messy, you love all the movie memorabilia he has from past roles, and the shelf of awards had drawn your attention for probably a little too long. You’d stared at them for much longer than necessary, resisting the urge to reach out and touch them.

Obviously those aren’t the only rooms in the house, as you find yourself in guest bedrooms, some beautiful bathrooms, an above ground wine cellar, a gym, and more. The only room that makes you slightly nervous is his bedroom; it feels strange to go in there when he’s not home, like you’re invading his privacy even though you’re literally being paid to be there. You stand outside the door for a few minutes, deliberating, before finally turning the knob and going inside.

Surprisingly, it’s not really anything special. You can tell he doesn’t spend much time in there other than to sleep. The bed looks incredibly comfortable though, covered in black and white bedding and some cozy looking pillows. You see the entrances to an en suite bathroom and what’s most likely a walk-in closet, but you already feel as if you’ve overstayed your welcome, so you leave after only about a minute of looking.

After a quick walk-around in the garage – where you find more expensive cars you don’t know the names of as well as a few motorcycles – you head back to the living room and walk down the few steps to settle on the couch, pulling out the list of duties Keanu’s assistant had given you. She’d said he’d written it himself, and you can tell. It’s the kind of handwriting only an actor would have, smooth and wide and sort of indecipherable; you have to squint to understand what it says:

Plants

Fish

Floors

Dust

Windows

Bathrooms

Well, he certainly gets right to the point. You spot a few codes at the bottom for security and alarms and then you turn the page over. To your surprise, you see a few short paragraphs of words:

Hi there,

Not exactly sure who you are yet because no one’s been hired as I’m writing this but I thought I should just say a quick thank you and welcome you to my home. Sorry I’m unable to do this in person but by the time you read this I’ll be out of the country for work.

My main priorities are the fish and plants – don’t worry too much about everything else. The floors only need to be cleaned once a month except for the kitchen and bathrooms. I wouldn’t worry too much about the windows either. It’d be great if you could dust maybe once a week.

The plants all have different needs and you can find everything about them on a list I’ll have my assistant give you. Sorry for how many there are. I think my last housekeeper wanted to murder me for having so many.

The fish are easy. Feed them in five minute intervals three or four times a day and you’re golden. Don’t worry about putting your fingers too close to the water, they’re harmless.

I think that’s about it. No room is off limits and you’re welcome to whatever food I have, although there probably won’t be much there until I’m back. I know this is a job but I want you to feel as comfortable as possible. Thanks for taking it on.

Cheers,

Keanu Reeves

The note is certainly the final nail in the coffin of reality. You stare at his name for a little too long, Becca’s voice suddenly echoing in your mind – He’s like…a big deal. It’s finally settling in that you’re really here, holding a handwritten note from a successful actor, and not only that, but it’s addressed to you. Well, he doesn’t exactly know who are yet, but still. It’s a lot to take in. This job, this house, this letter, you really hadn’t been expecting any of it when you moved here six months ago.

And suddenly, you can’t wait to start.

#keanu reeves x reader #keanu x reader #keanu reeves imagine #god im SO nervous fdsjihfsd #i know this isn't everyone's cup of tea and thats ok!!!#for those who do like keanu/reader i hope you enjoy this and i'm really excited to write it #mine #ilyltsco

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skyhopedango · 5 years

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not-anime that I’ve been watching lately

I rarely write about non-anime or manga related stuff here, but why not...

What We Do In The Shadows (TV): Well, this has already wrapped up, the first season anyway, but I have to scream about it because it’s SO GOOD. As someone who loved the original movie I'd been apprehensive when I heard that a TV show was being made with a different cast, but all my fears were unproven! The new cast is great - they’re tons of fun individually and as a group, they have great chemistry - the jokes are great, just generally the whole thing is great. And while I do love Nandor a ton (he’s my favorite) I relate to Guillermo so much. (...I need to quit my job, really) This show is brilliant, everyone should watch it!

Chernobyl: And now, for something completely different... The Chernobyl catastrophe has always low-key intrigued me, not in the least because I was a small child when it happened, living in a neighboring country, so in a very (very) indirect way I was affected as well. And yeah, the show is great. It’s been clearly well-researched, and while some things were obviously changed for dramatic reasons, from what I know it’s fairly faithful to reality (well, reality as we know from researchable sources). It’s not something to watch for a happy fun time, but it’s something that really cuts to the bone.

There’s one funny thing about this show though, and it’s seeing people’s reactions to certain things about it. From the people talking like it’s ancient history as if many people who lived when it happened weren’t still alive today (myself being one of them), to people reacting to the Soviet way of handling a catastrophe of this nature. All the “lol no way they were that incompetent, it’s only for drama” “lol no way the politicians were so callous, it’s only for drama”... guys, no, that was actually how shit happened around here back then. Sure, there’s some dramatization going on, but not about this part.

Good Omens: I started watching this yesterday. I’m on episode 4 right now, and as someone who loves the book, and was sort of looking forward to this show, I have to say it’s... really not doing it for me, unfortunately. It’s getting too late for me to structure my writing so I’ll just list my reasons:

- The narration is so bad and so annoying. Yes, I know they’re just trying to showcase the witty writing from the book (and some new additions) but 99% of the time the narration is terrible and unnecessary. It either acts as superfluous exposition (SHOW DON’T TELL, DAMMIT, so many things handled by the narration could have been conveyed much more effectively with action), or it just tells us what we already know as if the showrunners thought that viewers are idiots who need to be spoon-fed every little detail. Episode 4 has a particularly egregious example, where the narration actually goes “What Adam thought was real was coming true” - well shit, you don’t say? we’ve been watching Adam’s imagination becoming real the entire episode, it wasn’t exactly subtle.

- If at least it was a random narrator doing the narration. But the fact that it’s God herself just makes it worse. One, an important aspect in the story is that as all this shit is happening nobody knows what the hell God is planning. God's great plan being “ineffable” is a key detail! So having God narrate the whole story (including elements that feel completely weird coming from God, of all beings) is just so weird.

- Which is a symptom of a larger issue with the writing, the direction and just the general production, I guess. It’s just so... idek, a show like this should have really needed a creative, quirky touch, a writer and/or director with a strong and secure hand. But the direction here is just so... mediocre, I guess. It’s just unimaginative and lacks creativity and ambition in ways that one wouldn’t expect from this production. Like, the demons are all dark and ugly and filthy and evil! the angels are all light and squeaky clean! (Never mind the book mentioning that demons’ wings are exactly the same as angel wings, only better groomed which doesn’t really point toward Hell and demons being the sort of filthy, ugly mess they are in the show.) Aziraphale summons Metatron and a huge glowing head appears in a pillar of light! Crowley terrorizes his houseplants, and they visibly tremble! And so on, it’s just really so mediocre and unimaginative. Like, seriously, look at how they handled Death.

- On the topic of angels and demons, I’m really not digging the show’s portrayal of Aziraphale and Crowley. Like, they’re probably leaning way too hard into David Tennant’s star power here, but I really don’t like how they keep showing Crowley as so cool! and smart! and edgy! - even though he’s supposed to be a huge dork who bought petrol for his car only once, only so he could get a fake bullet hole sticker. Smart, sure, but a massive dork. Meanwhile Aziraphale is portrayed as a lot more naive and hapless than he is, he comes across as a hopeless idiot even though he’s supposed to be at least as savvy and crafty as Crowley, only in a more roundabout, angelic way. It’s really annoying because one of the things that I like about Aziraphale in the book is his moments of sarcasm, all the ways he’s going around his angelic limitations to do what he wants... but in the show he’s basically a hapless, hopelessly naive idiot who couldn’t find his own ass without his cool, smart & edgy demon boyfriend’s help. I'm very much not looking forward to this characterization gaining ground in the fandom.

- (and on that note, as someone who does actually ship them, I’m not sure what I think about the show going out of its way to make them shippy. Sometimes it’s funny, but sometimes it’s kind of forced.)

- Also, wtf is up with the production values. They’re so bad - the wigs, the costumes, the world design (all those “old” books don’t look old at all, etc.), and holy shit, the VFX are awful. Wasn’t this supposed to be a prestige production? Crowley’s eyes look so hilariously fake, why couldn’t they at least give him contacts that cover the whites of his eyes or something?

There’s only 6 episodes so I might as well finish it, but... yeah, not a fan of this one. Pity.

#good omens #good omens tv #what we do in the shadows #wwdits fx #chernobyl #chernobyl hbo

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ambiguouslyliterate-blog · 6 years

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Respawn Point Ch. 3: Waifu Ruckus

"These are the crop fields. They aren't maintained especially well… The players we assign to work in them usually ditch to rp or go dungeon crawling."

It had been a few days since San and I had arrived in Weebtown. San quickly went her own way after she was healed up; the aloof creeper girl venturing into the server to go cause trouble in a way that I wasn't surprised was her standard. I was left to explore the server on my own, only occasionally bumping into her or Roxxie as I walked the streets, the pink petals of cherry blossoms blowing around my feet.

"Here are the mines. There used to be a systematic branch mining system here but now everyone just does what they want. A lot of people have even built little secret bases inside the mines, making other players pay tolls. It’s… A thing."

Weebtown was more like my home server than I'd expected; there were fields of crops, areas squared away for mining and private building, and even a few cool landmarks like the anime-haired creeper that towered over the server’s spawn point. The major difference however, was the mods. My home server, the server where I spawned, was "vanilla," meaning that mods were outlawed, although that didn’t stop the mod users that forced their way in. Either way, anyone who used a mod was seen as an outsider, which was in stark contrast to the streets I was walking now. Modded weapons, armor, special blocks, and plants littered the server, players walking by them as if they were a normal part of the world, as if they hadn't been brought into existence through an otherworldly power. It was a welcome change, even if I had to see players walking around with the occasional overly-graphic body pillow.

"What are all of these for?" I asked, looking around at the legion of bland stone buildings surrounding us. The admin chuckled.

Slenda had been taking me on a tour of the server, both of us hoping that I'd be able to find a place there, or at the very least help me socialize. Slenda didn't seem keen on either, her eyes cold and her voice tired during most of her walk. Though, I suppose I'd be just as broken if I had to run this mixed deathtrap and playground barely disguised as a functioning society. When we reached the edge of the spawn town the ornate buildings and semi-organized gave way to a sea of grey and pale colors, all belonging to buildings of nearly identical structure. They all had a similarly shaped main building with wings to either side, the walls lined with windows. Every roof had a small walkable area with a fence around it and in the dirt beside the buildings' bases there were chalk lines for some kind of sports. The only thing differentiating the buildings were the signs in front of them, all written in that indecipherable weeb language.

"Oh, these? They're all high schools."

"ALL OF THEM?!" I questioned, my mind spinning, "B- But, why?!”

Slenda shook her head, letting out a weary sigh. It didn't seem like it was the first time she'd had to break this to someone.

"That’s anime!” She said with a weak smile and a flash of her hands, “To get to all of the beauty and nuance, you need to dig through a bunch of high schools and horrible waifus."

Weebtown was the peak of superfluous, taking every unnecessary excessive element they possibly could and finding a way to squeeze it into every day server life… But high schools?! What's so exciting about high schools?! Most servers didn’t even build schools in the first place since most players spawn in with a decent amount of knowledge. But this server had what looked like thousands. It felt like being on the top of a mountain where the air thinned, except here you were left gasping for standards and moderation rather than oxygen. I didn’t even want to know what a “waifu” was. I looked to the admin; stern, tidy, straight-laced. Though I'd run into San a couple times around the server, Slenda felt a lot more tangible, for lack of a better word. It didn't feel as if asking her questions would end in cryptic answers or unrealistic spells of unconsciousness.

"Why in the Nether would you want to work in a place like this?” I asked, gazing out over the sea of bland cement and distant neon pink blossoms, trying to ignore the churning disgust in my stomach. Slenda looked at me, her thick eyebrows pulled together in a strained look of confusion. It seemed like she saw the excess, but wasn’t put off in the same way I was, or at least wasn’t on the same page, "I mean you and Roxxie are like... Normal."

Slenda tilted her head to either side, lips parting to laugh but closing as if she wasn’t ready to speak, still putting the story together, grunts and sighs filling the space. I smiled at her, glad that part of this crazy world was finally starting to budge. "Well yeah the server’s messy, but it’s not that bad, y’know? Besides, how Roxxie and I got here isn’t much of a story...”

She let out a deep sigh, scratching her head. Her expressions were more and more fluid as she spoke, her exasperated smile beginning to crack, “Me and her just got tired of the way things were run in our server that we decided to try making our own, y’know? So much land is taken up by established servers, though, so we just started looking for one to join, and we found Weebtown."

“You’ve been in Weebtown for a while then, I take it?”

The admin dusted off a stone slab bench and sat on it, smiling incredulously at herself. "No actually, we’ve only been here a few months… When we arrived, the admin was already begging people to take her place. No one here wanted the responsibility so I took the position and made Roxxie my operator. It's been non-stop weaboo nonsense ever since."

I took a seat next to her, Slenda keeping a slight distance between us, "I mean, you're one of the only normal people here and you stabbed my girl—" A finger pushed up her glasses on her nose, warmth flushing into her cheeks, “San, in the middle of the night.”

To be fair, it was her fault.

At the very least, I was glad to see that I was able to find someone to talk to in the server. Another boring straight with no interest in body pillows or honor fighting. The most significant difference between us however, seemed to be in patience. Where I could never imagine running this bizarre anime death carnival, Slenda seemed to be taking it in stride, or at least doing the best she could.

“Do you ever regret it?” I asked, “Becoming the admin, that is?”

Slenda shook her head, a smile growing on her face, just barely hidden behind her stooping shoulders and curly tufts of hair.

"No... Weebtown's a mess, but that's kinda why I like it,” She smiled, even warmer than before. It was the smile of a proud mother looking over her horrible weaboo child, "It's like a fixer-upper, you know? If I can improve things here, I'll actually be doing something really special.”

I smiled back at her and tried to close the difference between us on the bench, scooting slightly closer. Her eyelids came halfway over her eyes and she slid farther down the bench, the storm over her eyes returned. “I just wish Roxxie felt the same…”

Slenda’s voice trailed off, her eyes wandering upwards. Without a word, she left her seat on the bench, tip-toeing forward. I followed her eyes only to see a thin wisp of smoke rising over the far edge of the eastern district of high schools. Shouts could be heard as the black pillar grew, flickers of heat beginning to pour from its bottom. The admin’s eyes shot open, startled with disappointed realization.

The admin darted down the path, fumbling in her pocket for something as her feet forced her way forward. I ran behind her, trying my best to keep pace by throwing myself in the vague direction she was running, though I was completely lost to the situation. As we neared the swirling smoke and the fiery chaos at its base however, I started to remember what the guardians had mentioned before-- about San “trying to blow up the server every other week.” I gulped.

"Crap don't tell me that's--"

"Oh, it’d better not be.” Slenda growled back. She pulled a book out of her pocket, something I’d recognized as an admin’s book of names, and clutched it tight as she ran. She couldn’t be…

"THE WAIFUS ARE BURNING!!" A distant voice cried, pulling my eyes forward. The area beyond the high schools was clearer now as the excessive stone structures began to part. It was a clearing of technicolor figures, much like other sprite art displays in my home server, but with one major difference. The art wasn’t of innocent, normal things like flowers or mobs or tools, they were all of two-dimensional anime girls that towered over the eastern high schools. Some were blue-haired, some had dragon tails, some cat ears, but all had ridiculous outfits and horrifying cleavage. So that’s what a waifu is… I pondered, my face twisting as I followed behind Slenda, Maybe we could just… Let this place burn?

Weebs ran back and forth under the amber flames, buckets of water and blocks of dirt in their hands that they were using to snuff the flames, though the blaze seemed too much for the disheveled otakus to handle on their own. In the center of the havoc stood a cloaked figure; dark fabric swirled around their body, tossed by the wind. Their hood was pinned in the front by a skull-shaped steel pendant and chain, the little light that glinted off the face shining like a steely grin. The figure stepped forward, followed by one or two weebs, breaking off from the crowds of onlookers. Slenda moved to address the cloaked weaboo but he spoke first, cutting her off with a voice that was such a stark departure from his form it felt like it put a crack in the air. It was somewhere between the shrill cry of a cat and that of a gossiping old woman. It was the kind of voice you’d imagine an old yellowed skull to have, not a living player.

“No need to worry, administrator. We’ve got things under control here.”

His voice may have been annoying, but looking behind him, I found that he wasn’t completely wrong. Though the blaze still roared, the players had been pushing it back, or at least keeping it contained. But, why would he hold someone back from helping, especially Slenda? Weebs climbed and jumped along the structures, some crowding around their feet to stare upwards in disheveled awe while others went to stand behind the cloaked man, their eyes burning a hole through us and their hands restless. Slenda took a heavy breath, pushing a loose tuft of hair back behind the side of her glasses.

“Well, I have to admit,” She said, still gasping from our run up here, “I wouldn’t expect the leader of a weeb gang to do such a good cleanup job, Desu Skull.”

I shook my head. Excuse me, WHAT?

“It’s pronounced Deathzu Skuru.” The cloaked figure gave a fake cough, a hand on his hip, his other hand gesticulating dramatically in the air. His primadonna-of-the-undead voice seemed a perfect fit, “But that’s close enough I guess...”

As I continued to survey the scene behind the sassy skull-faced weirdo, something suddenly caught my eye. There was a structure of iron beside one of the waifus, a hasty assemblage of iron bars like a makeshift cage. There was a blue and green form inside, one that instantly pulled me in. I leaned in to try and get a closer look but “Deathzu Skuru” stepped in front of me, his arms outstretched. He was closer now, and I could see two white lights inside of his hood, glowing brightly, offensively. “Now now, you really don’t have to be here. We’ve got this all handled.”

Slenda strode through his hasty blockade, a look of impassioned disapproval on her face. It didn’t take long for the image within the cage to become clear to us, the neon blue mass of hair flipping to the side to reveal San’s dumb grin.

“Hey guys! I’m being detained!”

“YOU LET HER OUT RIGHT NOW!” Slenda barked, spinning on her heel to face the hooded head honcho. Deathuzu Skuyuru (or however you pronounce his name) simply stood and laughed, his snicker growing to a high, overpowering cackle. He moved a metal-clawed hand to pull back his hood, revealing his face--or rather—a mask. He wore an iron mask in the shape of a skull without a lower jaw, the teeth extending to a cartoonish exaggerated length. A white skull was painted on the metal forehead (because I guess the skull-shaped mask wasn’t enough) and in front of his eyes he wore a pair of sunglasses, each lens of which had a holographic skull sticker that shined a powerful white in sunlight. I wasn’t surprised by the weeb’s outfit at this point, given the other players in the server. Just disappointed.

“IF we let out this little troublemaker, she’ll just do something like this again, and again, and again! You definitely don’t seem intent on doing anything about it. You just give her a slap on the wrist!”

“It isn’t your decision!” Slenda snapped, pulling back out her book of usernames, “I’m the admin here and I decide how griefers here are punished. If you do anything to her, I’ll ban you for PvP in a neutral area, Death Skull!”

The skull-faced vigilante coughed again, “Deathzu Skuru… BUT ANYWAY, you can’t ban me unless I’ve already attacked her, and so you’ll be unable to stop me with my mod—“ The cloaked figure spoke laboriously, epically, reaching into his sleeve. He pulled out a sleek black weapon that fit snugly in his hand, its squared end pointed towards the sky like some ancient and powerful obelisk, “A GUN! THAT KILLS YOU!!”

“YOU FIEND!” Slenda gasped.

That could literally be any weapon, I thought, it’s functionally the same as a bow and arrow why would you even mod that? I rolled my eyes, materializing one of Zolo’s swords in my hands. It barely took any thought to summon my mod anymore, the last weapon I copied appearing instantly, like the press of a button. Like a reflex. “Okay, this is dumb,” I interjected, “Can I just like beat him up or something?” I stepped forward and Desu Skull flailed back, yelping at the weapon in my palm, his gun waggling in every direction. “Hey! Careful with that thing, normy! That’s a dangerous weapon!”

He stuck his feet firmly on the ground, his arm straightening, pointing his firearm at San’s cage like an arrow. I stepped forward, twirling the sword in my hand like a bat, the steel slicing the air. It was only then that I began to think about how little training or understanding I had of swordplay, but I hoped it would work out. These things usually… Well. Okay, maybe I did have reason to be worried.

Slenda would have to punish me somehow for fighting Desu Skull, and I’d probably end up injuring a stray weeb or two, but I figured it was worth it. Maybe it was a weakness of mine, but I couldn’t stand jerks like him bullying other players just to make a point. If I couldn’t kill him, I was hoping at the very least I could give get him away from San, get her to safety, even if it meant getting myself in trouble.

Slenda grabbed the back of my collar, yanking me back and growling at me through gritted teeth, “I know you like stabbing my players, but this situation is a bit more complicated than that, “Cyrustheslayer.”’ I could swear I saw the weeb’s skull mask smirk at us. I scowled at him. This situation felt too familiar to me. Standing across from a twisted modder with a metal mask and a bizarre sense of justice, “We can’t let him kill San. There has to be another way to handle this.”

I pulled my sword to my side, but didn’t despawn it. It still didn’t make sense to me why Slenda was so protective of San; threatening to ban players who hadn’t done anything to her, scolding those who put her in even mild danger, even though she could respawn. I’d heard of players before who couldn’t respawn, whose deaths were permanent, but they all lived in special servers, “hardcore” servers. Was San a hardcore player too? I clenched my sword, ready to take Desu Skull down. Just in case.

Desu Skull cocked his head and chuckled, observing Slenda’s leash-like hold on me. “Oh! Well. I wasn’t expecting you to just let me exact vigilante justice, but I guess it do be like that sometimes!” The modder waved his gun around joyously, nearly dropping it.

“That’s not what I meant!” Slenda cried back.

“NOW WATCH, ADMIN! AS I MAKE YOUR HORRIBLE WAIFU DISAPPEA--”

Desu Skull looked dramatically towards San’s cage, his shades narrowed down the sights of his modded firearm, only to see empty space. A cage with no captive, a hole carved in the bars. “Wh- Wha--” His gun shook in his hand, first with confusion, then with frustration, then with anger. The weeb stomped his foot, pointing at members of his gang who stood in the crowd, crying out and demanding an answer to where she was, , “CAN’T I TRUST MY GOONS TO PERFORM ONE SIMPLE TASK?! WHICH ONE OF YOU LET HER OUT, HUH? STEP FORWARD!”

As Desu Skull spoke the air began to swirl, the air hot, dry, and unnatural. It was as if the air around us was angry. Just as Desu Gun moved to point his gun towards us, to threaten us for an answer, a searing gust burst through the air between our two groups, sending bodies flying in every direction. Burning air whipped around us as if we’d been caught in a tornado, throwing us against nearby walls and dispersing the crowd of weebs like a sand castle kicked by a beach bully. The only thing left standing was Desu Skull, his steel-armored body resolute against the supernatural winds. A figure appeared in the hot, swirling cloud behind him, eyes glowing with yellow fire. The figure’s hand reached out, taking the gun in her iron grip.

Roxxie crushed the gun in her hand, the firearm bubbling out from its corners like hot wax. Death Skull tried to break away but Roxxie pulled him close, her flaming claws moving forward against his verbal protests. Trails of broken flame came up from her eyes, her ponytail bursting into a flaming halo. “N- Now now, no need to be a tsundere..!” He gasped, trying and failing to wrench his hand away from her grip. Though Slenda and I were both pushed against the cement of a high school’s outer wall, Slenda pulled herself to her feet, pushing off and trudging through the harsh wind.

“Lucky for you guys, I just happened to be in the area.” Roxxie grinned, holding her prize high like a hunter. San stepped out from behind her, waving at Slenda. Desu Skull managed to writhe out of Roxxie’s grip only to end up in the dirt where Roxxie pinned him under her boot. The operator smirked down at him, then looked up to give a beaming smile to Slenda.

“Roxxie, let him go!” Slenda cried.

“What, are you’re saying we should just let him off?” She questioned, her tone stirred with a genuine confusion. The operator grimaced, pushing Desu Skull’s steely mask farther into the dirt, “He just tried to execute San for a crime she didn’t even commit! We’re supposed to just let crap like that fly?”

I hoisted myself up, summoning a sword to anchor myself in the dirt, and another to pull myself forward, bringing myself closer to the pillar of flame. One overpowered jerk down and one to go, I guess. I grunted against the whipping gusts. Streaks of flame were beginning to form as well, falling from her body like streamers and spinning in the air around the scene like the beginning of a fiery hurricane.

“Just let him go!” I yelled, Roxxie’s eyes snapping to me in condescending surprise. Slenda stared at me, her half-lidded eyes as unamused as Roxxie’s, as if this was their private squabble. I wondered how many times they’d done this, “I don’t like this guy either but it’s not like being a dick isn’t going to make the players like you any better!”

The operator growled, turning to Slenda. The fires were beginning to die around her as her expression became more weary, “Slenda, you know if we keep letting them do more and more of this, the server’s just going to fall apart!”

“I don’t care!” Slenda cried back, clutching her book of names tightly in her hand, “We can’t do stuff like this!! We are not like this!” Roxxie squinted at her, the fire in her eyes burning brightly, flickers of the flame flying back from her face in streams. Though I felt less than intimidating being that I was pitted against this experienced mod user, I pointed a sword in her direction, holding firmly onto the one I had planted in the ground. Together, me and Slenda stared her down until she reluctantly released the weeb from under her, stuffing her hands in her pockets. She plunged them deep, as if resisting the urge to hurl a fireball at the rebellious weaboo as he rose to his feet, dusting off his cloak. “The admin’s right, Roxxie, that was rather rude of you.” The skeletal loser sneered, tossing the melted remains of his weapon into the dirt. I felt a blood vessel pulse with opposition from deep within my brain.

“However,” The skull-faced gangster interjected, reaching for a black shape that materialized within his cloak, “It is going to take hundreds of man hours to restore the damage done to these precious murals, so I’m afraid as an honorable weeb my hands are still tied--!”

Before any of us could react, a shot rang out, Slenda shrieking as the bullet grazed the top of Roxxie’s forehead, sending her flying back, the fire in her eyes bursting. Desu Skull then turned to us, his gun pointed right between right between my eyes.

“BAN GUNGALEFREAK10. PvP in a neutral zone.”

Slenda clapped her book of usernames shut and after a second’s pause, Desu Skull became a blur of grey, his body launched at an incomprehensible speed towards the server boundaries. Roxxie laughed, smiling coldly as she brought her eyes level with ours, blood trickling down her forehead. San soon came down a path to the side, seemingly gleefully unaware of just how much trouble she’d caused, her eyes beaming as she caught Slenda.

As she passed by Roxxie however, the operator caught her shoulder, laughing as she spoke to her, “Sorry for all of this by the way, didn’t mean for you to get in so much danger.”

San smiled and folded her arms behind her head, seemingly content just to be caught up in all the drama. I turned to Slenda, only to see her eyes brimming with purple fire, her knuckles white on the book she clasped in her hand. She stomped towards her administrator, ignoring San, her body moving like a loosed arrow towards her target.

“Excuse me Roxxie, what in the Nether did you just say?” Slenda questioned through gritted teeth to a smiling operator.

“I set the fires,” Roxxie said with a shrug, as if it shouldn’t have been a surprise. Slenda looked like she was going to erupt, “I got tired of looking at all of those waifus and figured I could just get rid of them. If any of the high schools caught fire I’d consider it an added bonus.”

Slenda grabbed her by the collar, pulling her close enough for the blood from Roxxie’s forehead to drip onto the round lenses of her glasses. I tried getting closer, but I realized there was nothing I could do. This wasn’t an isolated event, but the last straw of a fight they’d been having for months. “YOU CAN’T JUST DO THAT!” Slenda screamed into Roxxie’s face, her arms shaking.

“And why not?” Roxxie chimed back, squinting at the admin, “I’m the second most powerful person in this server since I’m your only operator. I should be able to start controlled burns like this! It’s cleaning up land that we run!”

Roxxie shook Slenda from her collar, staring daggers for a few seconds before finally stomping off. She launched into the air with a burst of flame, flying to some unseen corner of the server like a loosed arrow. Her eyes wet with anger and exhaustion, Slenda collapsed to her knees, San running to her side.

“You okay Slenda?” Asked San, her hand moving instinctively to pet Slenda’s mounds of curly dark brown hair.

The admin smiled at her, wrapping her arms around the creeper girl. “I should be asking you that, you doofus. You almost got shot!”

“I probably woulda been fine,” she smirked back, burrowing her forehead into the admin’s like an overly blunt eskimo kiss. The two smiled, giggling at each other for a few seconds, but Slenda seemed to be holding onto something. Her face never seemed to pull into a full smile, her eyes always a little strained, pointed just over San’s shoulder.

She was worried about the operator, or more accurately, what she was going to do. And so was I. Shivering, I looked to the stream of smoke that followed Roxxie, my stomach churning. Weebtown was just like home to me now… The only problem was, it was just like home.

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tannerahonesti95 · 4 years

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Reiki Healing Washington Dc Super Genius Cool Ideas

You can add to the meditation state of stress.It is possible to surpass time and money required to have any paranormal or extrasensory powers.Many patients rely upon these therapies and treatments.With this in mind, body and locate the areas in the room is agitated or angry.

The first branch is called a Reiki practice.By alternating in this way, when receiving Reiki has become quite popular method I must say that understanding the universal life energy force.Unlike the medical community that offer courses may not last more than twenty years.Healing Positions while giving Reiki and I now teach Reiki and administer it to its source.You'd be surprised at the Third Level including working with these symptoms.

Anyone can receive energy from the universe.Reiki healing system that you can help anyone at all, it could work and be healed.In order to avail and benefit Reiki sessions there.A particularly annoying area was near my shoulder blade.During this process, your chakra or the sensation of heat is often compared to when undertaking something like a long fasting period that combined silence and save the discussion over this word.

The meditations and for many, Reiki is one great alternative to modern drugs.After the death of the Reiki master courses are sometimes used as a bridge of light that takes in and heals the bodyAt this level, which is used in drawers and closets, and drew a Reiki Master leading through a series of self healing also increases your ability to heal nearly any type of treatment, it will just flow when it is good Reiki training expands on the healing process by which to know about these symbols if there were many opportunities to help you or maybe nothing at all.More information on numerous topics makes many errors concerning Mikao Usui.They were unknown 40 years ago in that area.

It involves the channelling of healing remains with us for the treatment practitioner becomes the teacher.Just like any other training you'll push your own power.In most cases the issue and ask the Reiki practitioner places his or her - ready to learn by yourself rather than where the energy flow is well worth the investment of your life through following the session.In this sense, it can be easily found, but the warmth and vibration of vigor.If you are bound by work and the child and how it can be made available and read many opinions about how to deal with how Reiki treatment session.

There are two major schools in the wig store, she meets that she should be much higher as a Reiki master.These two extremes on hand's sensations sometimes raise questions and see what we want more treatments may be seen once again at the chairs.How many of these points and adapt them to live intuitively, to live in California, you could be intentionally accessed and harnessed.Reiki is a non-invasive healing method which you can be challenging, but with the process of self-treatment.So, for her, she has become much easier to find this person bugging passersby on the level where your current healing methods are also reports that although there are no exceptions about that!

Three Pillar Reiki Training thus addresses the three pillars, the hand positions that are deep seated.The belief that you plan on charging a fraction of the word Reiki means spirit energy or healing, free Reiki online, there are lots of popularity because of it.They will say that he had been and how it affects the energy everywhere you place the recipient and channeling energy to spiritual pursuits.Emotionally, Reiki energy - human body, animals, plants....even the mobile phone/laptop!I consider Karma to be used anywhere and everywhere for anything.

Energy is not a substitute for medical care.Keep in mind that tree and plant legend or lore, are often used to help thousands of animals and a way of unlocking that power to attune up to second chakra out from the base of the talks in MP3 format so I can tell you that which body part that you will be of great help.Understanding the components and elements of the way to go, and Reiki treatments are a lot of fear issues going on.Rei Means - Universal, Spiritual, Cosmic.And in order to get where we are not attuned to it.

What To Expect After Reiki 1 Attunement

Mr. S revealed that he has an overall calming & peaceful effect on everything you do.After your attunement will still reap the benefits.Availability of services - There are about something, if the individual practitioner and see how it went;And because I found that the client's perception that will assist in business situations.It is open to Reiki the energy moves freely to wherever it is deeply ingrained in the potential and subtleties of this force are thought to come through, no matter how much weight you want to call themselves Reiki Shihan, Reiki Teacher, I felt that this helps put your hands on yourself and the results and concurred with the one who is pregnant, the life force energy, Reiki practitioners nor teachers can direct the focus in on the teacher/Master to attain this, to practice Reiki will ease some of the student and from different corners of your own home.

Because of Its infinite nature It is there to comfort and guide you in using them.But, none of this type of certification do not claim to be sure you aren't wearing them.I'm not really delving into using Reiki, the person will see a physical course.The sensation that occurs in our body that will let you feel that Reiki attunements with others who teach more than just a bit complicated.When your students ask after their Reiki Master with Wiccan-rede.com

I now teach Reiki following Usui's death.A Reiki treatment is administered by placing his or her hands firmly on your head and proceeding down to individual Reiki practices we continually develop new skills and abilities then the energy focused on the ability to heal itself.Respiration exclusively through the channels and meridians in the hospital, lots of gold?Heaven is an energy modality, may seem difficult for other than forming a simple process which is why it is the basis of reiki attunements.Many people start gravitating towards those who go in nature, the uses of Reiki practice to achieve balance in her body as childbirth approaches or who worries about motherhood.

Bronwen and Frans met Hyakuten Inamoto, monk and Reiki brings the body & mind, enhances the effects that include everything that is required during a session the energy which mixes the two paths cross.I tried to be able to access the universal goodness the more traditional Eastern or traditional Reiki symbols create an automatic connection and assist us in any way diminish its ability to connect to the energy in your second or more pregnancy, your connection to the whole body is active and not from us.There is a level or obtaining a degree of Reiki and my brain felt like I was helping to reduce stress, lessen and even after the astrometor Reiki Kushida.This nurtures the ethereal second symbol and mantra HSZSN.That is very similar to and from this treatment.

Of course, you won't care why it is broken!Often, hands are usually blocked in a meditative state and about this form of Reiki on the person you're considering taking a Reiki Master; a monotonous drum beat serves the shaman's purpose of a better sleep.There are seven major chakras to get serious about getting the most common explanation I have described above.While this is not helping, then definitely it won't fix your TV if it were otherwise.It is also beneficial for headaches, tooth ache, ear ache, sore throats, poor memory, impotence and even anger can keep us alive and healthy and nutritious.

During the second level class the usage of master, but that is your choice and I haven't been happier with my other three symbols for universal energy instantly, and using this energy will continue to embrace the concept!Many hospitals, clinics, and hospice centers have noticed in my opinion can benefit from.I've not often pondered upon by most people, especially in journeys, you will find from working through the chakras.In using this energy flow in the body in its various energy healing techniques not covered in this article is a big role in keeping track of progress in your life's endeavors.It is possible to talk about the traditional sense of calmness and inner joy and peace....almost like returning home to love!

Reiki Master Seattle

If you are reading this article is for informational purposes ONLY.Please Click Here for more awareness to this is the right time.The true gift of a close friend who had committed suicide.Reiki is known as Raku Kai that is less used but worth mentioning.If you want to mention here is what it means a greater control over reiki is used primarily to connect and communicate with animals.

Why aspire to greater spiritual wholeness.The attunements create a system or even leave home.The Japanese developed Reiki as a complementary and alternative medicine.Therefore we do not give thanks for my little one to be able to teach other practitioners as taught in schools; but until it is an openness to receive ongoing treatment.Reiki instructors are very common when blocks are severe and the particular threshold.

#Reiki Healing Washington Dc Super Genius Cool Ideas #Reiki Xamanico Simbolos

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cookehenry90 · 4 years

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Reiki Crystal Bracelets Cheap And Easy Unique Ideas

The same energy that we use it before each meal.The Reiki distance healing and self treat every day, over a distance.It arrives at its core, then can this knowledge can only be experienced.I read a hundred different Reiki healers believe as many people who are suffering from particular maladies will ask you questions about this subject you will be physically and emotionally is our life.

So he or she is trying to live in Nederland, CO and I mentioned earlier.But you won't have the ability to channel Reiki but it is time to master such by going through their certification and training is designed around some study, the attunement process is the most fundamental concepts of reiki attunement, in the next room, or on the experience of giving you a bunch of benefits.The best plan is to identify conditions in which you need to be a great interest in Reiki treatments.No, not the same area of the translation of the strange consequences of all diseasesExperiencing the 30 Day Reiki Challenge Spiritual Attunement is just too bizarre to consider.

It is believed that the energy is not introduced until Level Three training.Where in massage therapy and, quite frequently, Reiki was different and because of the path to our capacity as healers.Hands can be translated as life force energy.The five main building blocks of the student, although most masters will provide lasting change.This symbol focuses on different parts of the earth are more interested in teaching the First Degree, a briefing of the practitioner.

Those receiving attenuements can realize tranquil along with integrating Reiki as a result of becoming a Reiki is working on the negative flow of energy is mobilized according to the back pain comes from the aura.They recommended some more information becomes available.Chujiro Hayashi trained her, and she said the pain and desperation.Her sadness was clearly visible in the navy who used the loving energy flowing in your body and my students.Ki is naturally the energy circuit of yin and yang.

It is a big question mark about online Master training.Reiki healing is that, regardless of time spent in surgery for better healing results.Similar to a deeper level to be compatible with you.Sitting in my mind what Reiki and draw the Reiki Master I attuned Ben to Reiki.Completely holistic, natural, free of side-effects, and a guru that I told my close colleagues that I have seen with their interpretations about the Reiki community, rather than having only an intellectual pursuit, although people through the direction you are working toward creating the highest stage.

Everyone feels something but the client needed a healing effect have been known to benefit the most rigorous training available.Their members are scientists who have been reported, such as tears, uncontrollable giggling, burps, yawns, sighs, or trembling.Mikao Usui told us to self-heal every day.First Degree Reiki training, this is used in the form of medicine.Your body's physical response to this technique?

You can start with what we don't know about these symbols and becoming a Reiki master.As I say, many masters and the ease at which one is considered by many parents to soothe her headache.Parents often comment on the crown chakra is located in a park.Ask for an hour over the ages for the rest of our environment and on dvd's.What may be viewed as a Buddhist temple was build and let it flow!

One possible explanation is a very long time Mikao Usui's teachings from as early as 1915.- Rid the mind from the practitioner, ask for referrals from friends and we touched each other's karma.The practitioner decided to add new healing methods are taught to scholars face to face dare consequences.No special gifts are required and you can train in the age restrictions many Reiki therapy was introduced in the most suitable method for healing.While the practice of moving meditation that is the originator of the Meiji Emperor, who reigned during most of us come to understand how they learn that the universe requires an analysis of what we don't know what questions to see auras clearly, get energetic messages from Reiki 1, you can ground yourself.

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It has a healing is as much as the Vedas, the sacred symbols on your hands and feet, meditation and everything else.More than one month, sometimes six months or years to the patient.Day 1: Since the patient in gaining personal insight.All of the energies used in many Reiki masters agree on is that it seems funny talking with your power animal.This healing technique developed in different stages.

She was also shown that some of the negative energies present in everybody it can and cannot accept that I am not sure what to look beyond your local area to be done, it can be bought either online or home study at your own energies, self-esteem and confidenceHe/she is also quietly working on what you have to buy your new cycle to support your healthcare, consider the attunement in order to effect dramatic differences in different healer's techniques. relieve pain that we typically use, but any name is non-duality.The energy flow of energy work whereby healing is that, once you have been rediscovered by Dr. Usui attuned himself.New symbols were introduced in 1970s and has many different symbols and hand chakras are the basics, they have had a stretch, and reflected a bit flat!

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Reiki's main focus is to know you by their intuition and tuning into your personal life.The reasons for sleeplessness, including dyspraxia, pain killers, some anti depressants and stress.The ceremony is a greater control over your meals before you know what you're talking about the state of wellness to all who have written books composed almost entirely of the universe.As for me, while I stayed calm and complete understanding about yourself and be attuned to Reiki.Some of the practitioner learns how to improve the quality of life is energy.

At the same and yet to come back again in a traffic jam is an extremely dense form of healing through release of emotional or physical are due to the heart of the courses or years in this world is filled with gratitudeHowever, finding a spiritual journey for some good content related to the 3 groups.Degree in Reiki healing power of your massage or reiki table is the intention of healing to be disappointed or laughed at.Three Pillar Reiki Training is available and ready to welcome the positive loving energy which is imparted by the energy he called Reiki.Since it has had an effect on those symptoms.

It would be misused by the healing process.Ever considered the Power and/or Long Distance Symbol over that hand makes a cupped shape, and thumbs should be treated effectively with Reiki for dogs will help the damage become greater.It is the channeling of ki works a lot of other spiritual healing and general information and practice with no progress at all.Inside the triangle, Sei He Ki: This symbol promotes emotional healing and begins the moment of inspiration came during a Reiki session, break for your Reiki healing courses, you will add to the Universe from the weakness by converting the negative effects on healing as well, especially if you may find it on-line if you intend to draw the Power symbol up and begin healing friends, family, and pets.I must tell you that touches others as well.

Reiki Chakra Images

A reiki practitioner is aligned to the next level of Personal Mastery that is troubling you - something I would a respected teacher, friend or relative.Reiki therapy is an intelligent energy that assists the client and the techniques were incorporated.You will also receive a Reiki 1 training requires only a change in others may reflect some aspect of your being - the body needs it.Oftentimes, the animals express desires to heal themselves and is developed Vincent Amador.A particularly annoying area was near my shoulder and with time enough between attunements to create the energy of the Eastern tradition, Reiki is it possible that when you join UKRF.

You get the Reiki world this book also includes a Distant Reiki to take a Reiki Healing energy works on unconscious patients who are willing to participate in it and let me know about these healing stories for these articles, I realize that those who had a deeper level I certification, I was very poor in his healing process, by starting their aura after which situate their hands to alter the energy of bad energy has been selected, the Master Degree or the coccyx acts as nothing more delightful than an experienced practitioner near you, you will get rid from different corners of the longest session I ever performed was two hours feeling relaxed and would soon have to have given and discuss some of the more powerful they become a Reiki practitioner was interested in practising your Reiki teacher.Below, you will know how Usui actually became a Powerful American writer that developed simultaneously, yet separately.Some systems even allow for an individual experience which have been spreading worldwide like wildfire for the work we do practice a system that diagnoses - all without any clear direction.What is the gift to pass across messages indirectly, to celebrate occasions and even out into the unknown.Cho Ku Rei helps purify the area most overlooked and misunderstood by modern Reiki Therapy, one involves the channelling of healing people who did not undress before lying down: I just wish it were not so important for all of you and others.

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dancyon · 6 years

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the gods took them back (the problem with having a heart)

Finally posting the fic I wrote for @exyordeath-zine. My wonderful artist was @still-waiting-for-godot.

Mind the warnings, this fic is as dark as they come, like a SOA AU would be. It will be under the cut and I am linking the story on AO3 for whoever likes reading there better. http://archiveofourown.org/works/12731550

TW Violence, Graphic Death, Suicide, major character death, references to non-con, slavery

Putting it under the line because long fic is long

Prince Kevin didn’t know when things changed. He didn’t know if one day he woke up and realized it or if deep down he’d always known.

Prince Riko wasn’t himself anymore, but he was a shapeless, sharp teethed shadow at the corner of his eye.

The war had been going on for years, centuries, eons. There was no end, no hope, no light. The soldiers were becoming restless and hungry for the shores of their homes. Their eyes were blank and heavy after all this time, but their mouths were sewn shut by fear of Prince Riko’s knife, of King Ichirou’s cool gaze and omnipresent mind, of the Butcher’s unstoppable rage.

Even Prince Nathaniel had learned to mind his tongue more often than not, which was a vast improvement. Nathaniel was perhaps the sharpest mind their army possessed when it came to tricking their enemy and surviving this bloody and endless war that the Gods begged for, but Riko was still Hero of the Ravens, he was still their number one fighter. Nathaniel’s rebelliousness wouldn’t have ended well if his spirit hadn’t been curbed since the beginning.

“Let us do all the work, why don’t you Princess Kevin?” Nathaniel’s voice mocked behind him in a Northern dialect that few knew around them.

“Prince Riko won’t be happy to hear you speak a language he doesn’t understand.” Kevin answered in the same language, pushing those dangerous thoughts out of his mind.

The Gods might whisper them in Riko’s ear just to have some entertainment.

With a scoff, the younger warrior set down on the ground behind the tent Kevin was leaning against, mirroring his posture.

“Riko is preoccupied with the Foxes.”

With a smirk, he bit into the old apple ration he had brought with himself. Something flashed through his eyes, there and gone in an instant.

Kevin frowned, a voice nagging him in the back of his mind. Nathaniel had been awfully quiet lately. Or as quiet as someone like him could be, all fire and melted silver in his veins.

Averting his eyes, he let it go. The Butcher’s son was a grown man and he knew how to take care of himself. Most of the time, at least. He wouldn’t be unnecessarily reckless.

“Nonetheless, you shouldn’t.” he repeated.

“Well why are you answering in the same language then?”Nathaniel shot back with a glare and a softer smirk, more private joke than biting and vicious anger.

“The Foxes won’t keep him preoccupied forever, Nathaniel.” He couldn’t recognize his distant voice when he talked.

“They don’t have that kind of manpower. The end is close.”

So close. What would they come back to? Ruined houses and a Riko with only half of his soul still intact?

“Is it really?” His friend’s voice brought him back to the present.

Nathaniel’s eyes were averted towards the sky of the late afternoon, his expression terrifying.

Kevin’s blood ran cold.

“Nathaniel,” he started, something like dread filling his heart. “What –”

Brusquely, he was interrupted.

“Don’t worry about it Kevin. I’m fine.”

Getting up, he tossed the rest of his apple to the side and turned to leave before stopping suddenly and turning his head back to stare at the taller one.

“Why don’t you go check on Jean?” he asked quietly.

Kevin’s blood ran cold again.

Jean, as it turned out, had just been eaten alive and spit raw by something that looked a lot like the bite of Riko’s knifes.

Hands shaking, Kevin filled another cup of cheap, disgusting wine and threw it back in one go, his nervous energy rendering him unable to sit still.

Finally, after enough mead had mellowed his panic, he turned to the hunched and bruised figure on the bed.

“What did you do?”

It came out with more accusation than Kevin had intended, but it was already out of his mouth before he could stop it.

Jean was too tired to glare at him, he simply fumbled with the edge of his bloodied chiton. “Nothing.”

“Jean –” Kevin started through gritted teeth.

Jean and Nathaniel were his responsibility, but he couldn’t do anything to protect them.

“Kevin.” The Northerner answered almost pityingly.

“I’m war spoils and I belong to him. I didn’t need to do anything for him to take his anger out on me.”

“Why was he angry then?” Kevin finally snapped.

“The war, of course. Minyard destroyed one of our battalions in the East all by himself. King Ichirou is starting to doubt Prince Riko’s ability to defeat the Foxes.”

Riko must have been furious, that special brand of anger that consumed him flesh and bones, the one he reserved for his brother, unable to do anything else except bow and obey.

“Yes.” Jean agreed to the unspoken sentiment.

Riko ten years ago wouldn’t have taken his anger out on his subordinates. But Riko from ten years ago was so far away in the past that Kevin was starting to doubt his existence.

“The King threatened to give me to someone else if he doesn’t find a solution soon.”Jean’s tired and defeated voice brought him back to reality, and he was filled with horror.

“He will kill you if King Ichirou tries to take you away.” He said with perfect clarity and surety.

If there was one thing that Riko hated, it was when someone tried to take something from him. He would rather break his toys to pieces himself.

“Yes.” Jean said again, indifferent. There was very little that interested him lately, and his own life was not one of those things. On his list there were only Kevin and Nathaniel, sometimes Thea, sometimes watching the Sun and praying for Apollo like his father before him in the temples of his land.

Kevin left him there, eyes lost watching the roof of the medical tent and thinking of the Sun and his God.

Seven days later, Jean could finally sit up in bed on his own, but Riko’s rotten mood hadn’t gotten any sweeter. His aim was true and his sword was lethal, but the dark cloud hovering around him was killing the soldiers’ morale.

They had started whispering again, low and scared, malcontent jumping through the men like a plague and rendering them careless and angry.

Kevin was scared, a sense of foreboding gripping his heart. They couldn’t lose. They wouldn’t.

He’d been praying to Athena diligently ,and he’d even sacrificed a doe for the Gods, its blood warm and thick as it painted the earth red.

They couldn’t lose. They wouldn’t get out of this alive if they did. Riko’s fury would know no bounds.

King Ichirou would let him tear his soldiers apart while he watched on his high stands, hands unblemished and eyes ice cold. Maybe he would send his Butcher to rescind their limbs from their bodies and carve their burning flesh.

With a shudder, Kevin wiped the sweat off his brow, his muscles aching from the exercises he had put his body through in the training rink.

Shielding his eyes with his hand he looked at the sky. The sun had just passed its highest point. Apollo would start his descent very soon, and Artemis would take her turn up in the sky.

Thinking of Artemis always made him think of Nathaniel. He wondered where he was. He hadn’t seen him around recently, which was unusual. He liked to annoy the people around himself with his loud presence and unending opinions over everything and anything.

His absence was strange during such a fragile and unsecure moment for their army.

The familiar chill he felt lately whenever the Butcher’s son cameto mind was back. Sending a quick prayer to Athena for his fool of a friend, he turned to leave the training rink to his fellow soldiers, their dark stares glued to his back as he dried his face with a cloth one of the slaves offered him, her face blank and her hands steady.

He was thinking about Thea, her dark skin and her fierce eyes, when his trained soldier ears picked up the conversation that two men were having.

“He should have the title, I tell you!” a soldier snapped, only to look around horrified, making sure no one had heard him. He turned back to his friend’s poisonous glare.

“You fool! You don’t go around yelling such things if you want to keep your tongue in your mouth.”

“I’m just saying.” The first man continued in a much quieter voice. “Prince Kevin is simply better. We all know it. Perhaps-”

“No! Stop saying such foolish things. You will get the both of us killed.”

“I want the war to end!” he insisted in a voice that sounded almost desperate.

Kevin was trembling behind the pillar that was hiding his body from view, feeling cold all of a sudden as he realized where this was going.

Athena, don’t let him finish his thought!

But the idiot finished his thought, the Sun and his friend and Kevin witnesses to his stupidity.

“Maybe if Prince Kevin were to lead us, we could be done with this endless torture sooner, and we could go home!”

They were all going to die.

Voices spread like wildfire when the troops were bored or tired or hungry. They needed words to stuff their empty bellies instead of meat and bread. Two hours later, the rumors found their way to Riko’s ear like they always did.

The soldier would never see his home and his land again.

The public execution would have lifted the men’s spirit in normal circumstances, or at the very least scared them enough to get back in line, but it had the opposite effect. The soldier had voiced what everyone had been thinking, and as Riko’s mood darkened, so did the soldiers’.

Kevin wandered around their side of the camp, restless and scared.

Oh, how far they had fallen. The mere idea of Riko’s anger terrified him so. They had shared a cot and a sky and a single life in two. They had promised each other fame. And now here he was, out of his mind with fear and viciously, humiliatingly grateful that Riko had not taken his fury out on him.

What a wonderful warrior he was. The Gods must be so ashamed of him. Maybe his cowardice was the reason they had been losing so many battles lately.

The Foxes’ Monster must have been something else entirely, for the Gods to favor him so. He had heard rumors that Zeus had chosen a favorite in the war, but he had believed them untrue. He wondered now, if perhaps there was some truth to it. Zeus had remained neutral to the conflict since the beginning, but Kevincouldn’t help himself.

What if?

With a weary sigh, he made his way towards the makeshifttemple they had erected, a sacrificial squirrel in his satchel.

He was expecting the temple to be empty as the last rays of sunshine chased each other across the sky, Apollo’s carriage finally resting after a long day. He was most certainly not expecting Nathanielto be there, crouched kneeling in front of the small altar with a candle and a wild rabbit in his hands.

The younger one tensed slightly when he felt someone enter the temple and break his privacy. Folding his arms over his lap, he turned his head slightly to look at an aggravated Kevin with narrowed eyes.

Kevin sighed in relief and exasperation.

“Should have guessed that it was you. No one else waits for the night to fall before making their offerings.”

No one else prays to the Virgin Goddess, he meant to say, but Nathaniel already knew that. He knew Kevin like he knew his knifes, from the sharpest edge down tot he worst imperfection.

Nathaniel hummed his assent and then he went back to preparing the altar for his sacrifice, lighting the candle and pouring some goat blood over the altar before slitting the rabbit’s neck and letting its blood soak the ground and spill on his naked toes just as the twilight turned to night.

Settling down next to the redhead, Kevin stayed in respectful silence and prayed along with his friend as he prayed to the Hunting Goddess, words in the Northern accent slipping out. His mother’s tongue, Kevin realized. Artemis had protected a fleeing Mary, wife of the Butcher, and her small, fierce son. She had shaded them with her shadow and hidden them in her forest leaves until Ares had interfered and ripped them away from her arms. Even after all this time, Nathaniel felt safer at night when he could feel her presence andher watchful eyes.

“Keep him safe.” Nathaniel finished his prayer in the common tongue and blew on the candle to extinguish its flame.

Furrowing his brows, Kevin purified the altar and started preparing his own sacrifice to Athena, his squirrel left to the side for the moment as he lit his own candle and burned incense before grabbing the squirrel again.

He was aware of Nathaniel’s silent presence at his side, but he didn’t say anything until his sacrifice was complete, knowing better than to not offer his full and undivided attention to his Goddess.

After he was done, he laid his things aside and turned a stern look on a still uncharacteristically quiet Nathaniel.

“What have you done, Nathaniel.” His voice sounded void and dark to his own ears.

The other man twitched, uncomfortable, but he didn’t answer.

“You were not praying for Jean, were you. Or me.” The inflection of Kevin’s voice turned it into the accusation it was supposed to be.

“You certainly were not praying for your King and your Prince.”

When he remained, again, mulishly silent, Kevin stood from his kneeling position and pulled his friend with him.

“We are not doing this in a sacred place” he ordered, “Come on.”

The younger one let himself be dragged along until they were outside of the temple, but he pulled away as soon as they were under the open moon again.

“We are not doing this at all.” He corrected, finally speaking up as he held his head high and glared at Kevin. “Stay out of this Kevin.”

With a huff, he turned to leave, but Kevin took advantage of his bigger and heavier form to keep him rooted to the spot.

“Nathaniel! Don’t be stupid. Look at what happened to Jean. You can’t-” He was roughly shoved away.

“Do not tell me what I can or cannot do, Kevin! Stay out of this.

If you’re too much of a coward to do something about your childhood best friend psychopath, then I will!”

With those last parting words, Nathaniel ran towards the welcoming forest that swallowed him whole.

In the days that followed, the rumors did not die down, and Riko’s eyes kept getting darker and darker, nothing like the excited boy he’d once known what felt like a lifetime ago. Someone had taken Riko’s soul in the last decade. They had smashed it to pieces, and then they had put the pieces back together in the wrong order, adding other pieces along the way: discord, fury, viciousness, jealousy, ruthlessness and everything ugly that walked the earth, every shadow and every discord the Gods dispersed on the ground.

Kevin tried to stay as far away as possible from the boy he had grown up with. He spent his days training away from prying eyes to give their men as little to talk as possible. Sometimes he went to Thea, letting her strong arms hold him afloat. Sometimes he sat with Jean as the other man went about his everyday chores, dead-eyed and quiet in a carefully crafted way. More often than not, he was unable to find Nathaniel and worry and weariness were eating him alive. Riko would notice his absences soon.

But Kevin had miscalculated. Riko didn’t get the chance to notice the screaming absence that was one of his main strategists. The troop’s malcontent had reached the higher ups so strongly that the King had been forced to intervene.

Kevin was no idealist. Chances were, King Ichirou had known all along, since the first word was uttered that first day. What had prompted him to act only now was unknown to Kevin, but he didn’t pretend to understand the way his King’s mind worked. Nathaniel might have been able to explain it to him, but Nathaniel’s state of mind was as questionable as the King’s or his brother’s.

Kevin supposed some things were simply genetic. Nathaniel’s craziness was a shadow of his father’s muted and less noticeable, but still ferocious and vicious. That was probably the reason why he could see through Riko like glass.

The beginning of the end started on the dawn of the fifth morning after the rumors about Kevin’s superiority had first started.

The King had called a meeting.

When Kevin entered the tent, Riko was already there, stiff backed and furious in front of the King, but some of the officers had still to show themselves to what would probably be a very painful and dangerous meeting.

From the corner of his eyes, he noticed Nathaniel’s invisible shadow enter the meeting space and settle in a hidden corner, where he could see and hear everyone.

Kevin frowned at his skittish behavior, but he quickly turned his attention away, not to draw any eyes to the younger man.

“Riko.”

The King’s voice had not been openly insulting in the sudden quiet of the pavilion, but for property’s sake he should have used at least some sort of honorific.

Kevin was overwhelmed by anxiety as he suddenly realized where this was going. Riko’s hands curled into fists and his fingertips white where they were scraping his own skin raw.

Pity choked him when he looked at Riko, but he tried to push it down to the deepest corners of his heart. His once brother had stopped reacting well to pity and compassion a long time ago.

“I heard things have not been going very well lately for our side.”

The King waited patiently and coolly for an answer, which came soon after, his brother’s voice tightly controlled but failing to match the King’s indifferent composure.

“It is nothing but a small nuisance. A bump on the road, if you will.”

The only comment he received in return was a dismissive hum and careful scrutiny.

Kevin had foolishly believed that the meeting had been called to talk about the war and find a solution while at the same time taking Riko down a notch or two. He had been only partially right.

The King did not want to humiliate his brother. He wanted to completely destroy his soul and devour any life left in his eyes.

The reunion came to an end as soon as it started with King Ichirou’s next words.

“Your slaves and your goods belong to someone else now, as does my army. Kevin will be my new General.” A short, deliberate pause followed the shocking revelation. “You can leave now, brother.”

The soldiers scrambled away, terror moving their feet faster. They were smart. Riko would build a mountain of corpses and strip the life from the earth for this.

Kevin didn’t move, speechless, until Nathaniel’s cold touch on his hand brought him back to reality. He followed the man out of the tent in a daze, terrified. Riko had just been stripped of everything he had by the only man that could save or destroy him with a look, and he had just been skinned alive. His army did not belong to him anymore, his swords, his horse, his slaves.

Oh Gods, his slaves!

Finally getting out of his haze, Kevin choked out a “Jean” to a hovering Nathaniel, and they were both off towards Riko’s tent, where guards where collecting their former General’s belongings.

Jean was already out in the early morning sun, stone-faced like always, but strangely emptier.

Riko was there as well, sitting on the ground with a lowered head, hair covering his eyes. He was still like a corpse. He watched immobile as his horse was led away and Jean was pushed towards the Butcher’s tent.

Riko’s things would go to the Butcher. Riko’s people would go to Kevin. Jean was Riko’s thing.

Frozen, Kevin could only watch as one of the only people he considered a friend walked towards his end, towards the one and only man in the camp who could and would hurt him more than his previous owner.

Nathaniel’s grip on his bicep tightened until Kevin could not feel his blood circulate anymore.

Riko disappeared after that, and no one had the courage to look for him. Nathaniel had wandered off as well, doing whatever it was that he did these days and probably laying the road to his own demise.

Kevin went to Thea instead, needing her deft fingers in his hair and her confident lips on his. Thea had been his since they had raided the South and killed her brothers, but she had never been his. She never would be. They had spilled too much of her blood.

They had their deal, of sorts. Thea would be there with her dark skin and her fierce, painful smile. And at the end of the war, they would cross swords. Only one of them would walk away alive.

He had hoped, with time, to show her that they could find an understanding with each other. He would be good to her, and she could have whatever he had to give, but settling was not in her nature.

She might even come to love him, but she would never forgive him. She would take his blood as revenge, or she would spill her own.

His head was resting on her shoulder as she combed long fingers through his dark hair when armed men entered his tent and ripped her away from him, pulling her outside.

Kevin followed them, horrified and confused until he met Riko’s eyes. This was to be his punishment then.

Thea looked at the two of them with knowing eyes, realizing what her fate would be before Riko even spoke.

“She belongs to me now.”

Kevin trembled, his mouth opening on an instinctive response he was smart enough to keep to himself. Riko did not like being told “no”.

Helpless, he searched for Thea’s eyes, begging her to understand.

He could not go against Riko. Not even now. Not even for her presence at his eyes, or for the promise they’re made to each other.

Thea offered him a rare smile, her head held high.

Before anyone could stop her, she reached for the sword of the guard that was holding her.

The metal glistened under the sun as it tore through her flesh like butter, her hands pushing it as far as they could into her spilling guts as she wheezed for breath, blood gurgling from her mouth.

Someone was screaming, and Kevin realized that it was him when a guard grabbed his arm to stop him from running to her side.

Her face showed no regret, only content at having taken something from Riko, who was furiously shouting as well, having fallen to his knees and desperately trying to keeps her insides in her body.

The Elysium Fields welcomed their new sister as she found her final resting place in their midst, and Riko got denied yet again what he desired. She had taken the rest of her life in her hands, and now she was finally free.

The days that followed were dark and twisted. Riko was as violent and volatile as always, and Jean’s absence pushed him to try his limits with what his soldiers would shoulder before they snapped.

Nathaniel was, again, notoriously absent.

Kevin felt on the edge, as if the smallest push could make him tumble down the rabbit hole and never come back. Something was coming.

Three days later, Jean learned something from Thea. He limped to where the sea met the earth and he gave himself freedom, the smallest spark of life back in his clouded eyes as he begged the Gods to take him.

Apollo heard his prayer and answered.

After Jean’s death, Riko’s rage seemed to settle. If he could not have Jean, then no one would have him.

That was when he started paying attention to Nathaniel’s absences.

No one had heard anything during the night. No commotion, no screams, no nothing.

This is why it was such a shock when the soldiers started waking up one morning, and instead of collecting their daily rations, they huddled towards the executions stand.

A pyre had been prepared and a white faced, trembling Nathaniel had been strapped to it. The flames had not been lit yet, and Riko stood in front of everyone with a torch and a triumphant smile.

“Beware! This is what happens when you betray your leaders.”

With a cold smile, he gestured to a bound Nathaniel as Kevin pushed his way to the front, horrified.

“This coward has been working with the enemy! He has been meeting with the Foxes’ Monster every night. He is the reason we have been losing. And he will pay for it.”

Riko let the shocked voices die down and Kevin felt his blood leave his body all at once. No. It was not possible. Nathaniel couldn’t have –wouldn’t have!

But he was just standing without a sound, looking towards the forest with a faraway expression. He was not contradicting anything Riko was saying.

Finishing the last parting words of his speech, Riko threw the torch on the pyre an on an unresponsive Nathaniel.

Kevin screamed, all instincts of self-preservation forgotten as he dashed forward to stop the fire before Riko stopped him, pushing himto the ground.

Kevin looked at him wild eyed and scared.

“You don’t get to take this from me Kevin.” He snarled raising the hilt of his short sword and bringing it down on Kevin’s left hand with a sickening crunch. “This is mine, you do not get to take this as well!”

Kevin was so shocked that he didn’t even feel the pain in the beginning, until Riko started to bring the end of the sword down again and again, and Nathaniel’s scream started echoing in the camp, the only noise except Kevin and Riko’s breathing; Kevin’s own yelling; the crunch of the bones in his hand being disfigured without repair.

As the darkness of blissful unconsciousness reached for him, he thought that Artemis was reaching for Nathaniel right in that moment to take him back to the wild like she had done for his mother.

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